Setting New Benchmarks with our Top 4 Configurations:<\/span> Introduction<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Since our last benchmarking for Part One [here]<\/a> of our GPU shootout, Catalyst 8-9 and new certified Geforce drivers, Nvidia 178.13, were released.\u00a0 In our previous article, we used Catalyst 8-8 vs. Geforce 177.41 as we examined the performance of five video cards and came to some interesting conclusions.\u00a0 The cards we tested were: HD4870-512MB, HD4870X2-2GB,\u00a0 GTX280, 8800 GTX, and 2900 XT.\u00a0 8800GTX and 2900XT represented the top and midrange cards of the last generation.\u00a0 The resolutions we test at are fairly demanding for any PC – 1920 x 1200 and 1600 x 1050.\u00a0 We used a combination of\u00a0 ten benchmarks, including modern PC games’ built-in performance benchmarks and custom time demos as well as synthetic tests.\u00a0 For this Part Two, we added a couple of more games and refined our testing slightly.\u00a0 Our CPU for the last article is e8600 at 3.33 GHz which we now overclock for this one; and we always use the DX 10 pathway in Vista 32, whenever possible for this entire series.<\/p>\n -We saw our two older cards – GTX 8800 and 2900 XT \u2013 both struggle at 19 x 12 with all the details maxed – and especially with 4x\/AA and 16xAF.\u00a0 The 2900 XT – a midrange card of the last generation – could not really handle even 16 x 10 with all the details, never mind adding antialising and anisotropic filtering.\u00a0 Even the venerable 8800 GTX has finally had its day in our opinion, after remaining on top for almost two years.\u00a0 So our new testing will be done with 4870-512, 4870×2, GTX280, and crossfire X-3 (CF-X3 = 4870 + 4870X2).\u00a0 We’re going to determine if 3.33 GHz is enough speed on the CPU and we are also going to use the next drivers, Catalyst 8.9 and Geforce 178.13.\u00a0 There wasn’t that much performance difference between driver releases from both vendors \u2013 barely a percentage or two improvement at best, if any, and only for a few specific games; the newer drivers appear to address bugs and 4870X2\/crossfire performance in the 8-9 driver release.\u00a0 So we will start right out with a brand new set of benchmarks and compare the performance of Cat 8.9 to Geforce 178.13 and set a new standard.\u00a0 Of course, you should look back at our first article [link] and get a rough idea of what changing out an older e4300 CPU for e8600 [both at 3.33Ghz] did for the top 3 cards and also for Crossfire X-3 [CF-X3 = 4870X2 + 4870].\u00a0 Since our older video cards, 2900xt and 8800GTX, havw been tested to death elsewhere and are found wanting at the resolutions and in the games we are choosing, we’re going to restrict ourselves to our top three cards and crossfire. We already know 8800 GTX and 2900 XT midrange cards from the last generations simply do not cut it with the latest DX10 games at 19×12 and even 16×10. So we will be testing with 4870\/512MB, 4870×2, CF-X3, and GTX280.<\/p>\n This time we’re not going to directly compare performance with Catalyst 8.8 \u2013 although you can indirectly infer by looking back at our last charts –\u00a0 but now we are going to establish new<\/strong> benchmarks with Catalyst 8.9\/Geforce 178.13, our newly overclocked e8600 and our P-35 motherboard.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For our Part III article immediately following this one in our GPU Shoot-out<\/em> series,\u00a0 we will switch out our PCIe 1.0 P-35 motherboard and began testing with our PCIe 2.0 X48 motherboard so that we will compare motherboard performance to each other using the identical set of drivers and hardware.\u00a0 This way we will see 4870X2 and Crossfire improvements by upgrading our platform and we can make continued comparisons with Nvidia’s evolving drivers for their top card, GTX280.\u00a0 We will be able to clearly see if the platform change will make a huge difference and of course we will need to clock our CPU identically on both boards.\u00a0 So for this article to be consistent with our series, we chose 3.99 GHz as it was the last completely stable overclock on the P35 motherboard with e8600.\u00a0 All other settings are identical to both motherboards and we will be able to directly compare the 1.0 PCIe specification to 2.0 as well as crossfire performance of P35’s crossfire 16x + 4x PCIe to x48’s full 16x + 16x specification.<\/p>\n As an interim, in this article \u2013 Part 2 – we’re going to show you the overclocked improvements with Catalyst 8.9 and AMD top configurations and also improvements with Nvidia’s top card, 280GTX over its older driver release.\u00a0 As we continue using Catalyst 8.9 in Part 3 we will show further performance improvements by switching out our motherboard to X 48.\u00a0 Future articles that are actually being written and benching that is taking place right now will include Cat 8-10 vs. Geforce 178.24, and then we compare the Nvidia Big Bang Drivers with Catalyst 8-11 and finally with Catalyst 8-12 \u2013 the new \u201cStream\u201d drivers which was released Dec 12. \u00a0 Soon we hope to have this series completely updated.\u00a0 So this Part 2 will be quite a relatively short article and we will get right to testing:<\/p>\n Catalyst 8-9 vs. Geforce 178.13 As before, we continue to test everything at 1650×1050 and 1920×1600 resolutions. These are probably the most common resolutions that most gamers would be using for upper-midrange and top cards from\u00a0 this generation. As in Part I, we decided to test HD4870-512, HD4870X2-2GB [with both cards also crossfired together as crossfireX-3] and the fastest single GPU, Nvidia’s GTX280.\u00a0 As before, we took some of the very latest games and we benchmark them for you at the most demanding in-game settings, with Vista 32 and in DX-10 whenever possible with 4xAA\/16xAF – if they can be set in-game and except for Crysis<\/em>. These settings are probably the most commonly chosen and difficult settings for new games that a modern PC will run. The games we are testing as the same as the last review including, Crysis, Call of Juarez, F.E.A.R., STALKER, Half-Life2, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (ET:QW), Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3), Lost Planet,\u00a0\u00a0 PT Boats DX10 demo<\/em>, as well as the synthetic benchmarks, 3DMark06, Vantage and Fur benchmarks. We added GRID<\/em> and FarCry2<\/em> to our “shootout” series, also.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Let’s begin with this round of testing. We are using Catalyst 8-9 and Forceware 177.83 \u2013 only final certified drivers are used for our regular testing all through this first part of this review and all through our series. Identical 250GB hard drives are set up with the latest version of Vista32-SP1; each with identical programs, updates and patches – the only difference are the video cards. We used a Gigabyte P35 Crossfire MB – 1.0 PCIe spec and CF 16x + 4x for this Part Two as in our previous article. The testing hardware is detailed in the following chart:<\/p>\n Test Configuration<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Test Configuration – Hardware<\/span> <\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n Test Configuration \u2013 Software<\/span> <\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n Test Configuration \u2013 Settings<\/span> <\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3DMark06<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n 3DMark06 still remains the number one utility for a system benchmark. The numbers it produces aren\u2019t necessarily indicative of real-world gameplay or any gameplay in general, and for that reason we really dislike using it to compare different systems. However, as long as the rest of the tech world uses it to evaluate gaming performance, we will too. We find it mostly useful for tracking changes in a single <\/em>system. There are four “mini-games” that it uses for benchmarking graphics, as well as two CPU tests. The scores are “weighed” and added together to give an overall number and there is a further breakdown possible with these mini games that we are now showing to you.<\/p>\n Above\u00a0is Canyon Flight,<\/em> a\u00a0scene from\u00a0one of the four benchmark “mini games” used to benchmark GPU performance.\u00a0 It will give your PC a real workout even though the default resolution is only 12×10 (as pictured)!<\/p>\n Now we see our top GPUs \u201cstretch their legs\u201d as it were, as we overclock our e8600 to almost 4Ghz – within 10Mhz!\u00a0 We note our HD4870 – which was getting 13023<\/strong> with Cat 8-8 and e8600@3.33Ghz – is now getting 14548<\/strong> with half of it coming from the CPU score 2932 to 3654.\u00a0 But in an exact comparison, using Cat 8-9 both times<\/em>, we see 4870X2 going from 16514<\/strong> with e8600@3.33Ghz to 19395<\/strong> with e8600@3.99Ghz!!\u00a0 The CPU score only increased by the same amount as with 4870\/512 but now the graphics score also increases with this fast multi-GPU solution.\u00a0 The GTX280 shows a more modest increase \u2013 rather in-between the 4870 and the x2 and closer to the X2’s performance leap with the CPU overclock.\u00a0 As with Catalyst 8-8, CrossfireX-3 does not offer much over 4870X2 with Cat 8-9 drivers.\u00a0 Later we will see if it has anything to do with the crossfired 2nd card being in a 4xPCIe slot; and also note that the second 4870 has 512MB VRAM compared to the 4870X2’s 2GB.<\/p>\n Here are the results of our 3DMark06 benchmark comparison:<\/p>\n As with Part I of our testing, the results are pretty self explanatory.\u00a0 We can see the ranking and we note that HD4870X2 scales well but crossfireX-3 barely scales with this combination of drivers\/HW in this synthetic benchmark.<\/p>\n With 3-D Mark06 \u2013 in Part 1 – when we briefly tried our older Intel CPU, e4300 – even when it was overclocked from its stock clock of 1.8 GHz, all the way to 3.33 GHz – it still fell rather short of e8600 at its stock clock of 3.33Ghz. This is probably because of e8600’s much larger cache and newer optimizations. It is noticeable even with a single HD4870-512MB video card. We can also noted that when you are using a card of the 4870X2 class, it starts to make a significant performance difference. So we decided to do all of our video card testing with e8600 at its stock clock for the last article. Since we are seeing even further significant improvement with our e8600 overclocked to near 4 GHz, we will now begin to compare all<\/em> video performance with this new<\/strong> overclock.<\/p>\n Interesting.\u00a0 We are starting to include the 3DMark06 mini-games as they specifically compare the video cards performance.\u00a0 We note that it is more significant than the final 3DMark overall score might suggest and we will use them in all of our benching as long as we use this benchmark. Here we also note that 4870-X3 outperforms 4870-X2 in every test!\u00a0 Also, we can see that the 4870X2 – simply by being paired with the faster CPU – almost catches up to the crossfired X-3 configuration.\u00a0 From this, we would have to suggest that if you are using a 4870X2 – or even a GTX280 \u2013 as mindboggling as it may appear – the fastest stock Core 2 Duo CPUs barely keep up with them, and if you want total performance, you might consider overclocking it safely, which is beyond the scope of this article.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Vantage<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Now we move on to Vantage<\/em>, Futuremark’s latest test.\u00a0 We feel the same way about Vantage as we do 3DMark06 – it is useful for tracking changes in a single<\/em> system.\u00a0 As is has become a new de facto standard for measuring gaming performance, we will not ignore it either.\u00a0 There are two mini-game tests to 3DMark06’s four; Jane Nash<\/em> and Calico<\/em>.\u00a0 Also there are two CPU tests but we are focusing on the graphics performance<\/p>\n Above\u00a0is a scene from\u00a0Jane Nash<\/em>; to the right is Calico<\/em>.\u00a0 This time they are shown at 19×12 and with every setting maxed out.\u00a0 For the benchmarking results below, we used the default tests.<\/p>\n Vantage <\/em>results:<\/strong><\/p>\n Again we see the 4870, 4870X2 and GTX280 ranking unchanged from with Catalyst 8.8 and Geforce 177.41.\u00a0 This time crossfireX3 had less trouble running this benchmark, especially the first graphics test, Jane Nash<\/em>, as it did with the previous drivers.<\/p>\n Fur Benchmark 1.2 is Open Gl and a synthetic benchmark.\u00a0 We just run 19×12 resolution and 4xMSAA.<\/p>\n – it looks like a rotating big fur donut that has become recently infamous in tech discussions for overheating GPUs just by running this test.\u00a0 We had no issues with it.<\/p>\n Here are the FurMark<\/em> results:<\/p>\n It’s hard for us to believe that the 4870-512 is faster than 4870-X2\u00a0 or crossfireX-3.\u00a0 Since Catalyst 8.9 showed a performance drop from Cat 8.8, we are suspecting ATi currently has issues with Open GL.<\/p>\n Call of Juarez DX10 benchmark<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Call of Juarez<\/em> is the first ever DX10 benchmark from Techland that was released in June 2007 as a fast-paced Wild West Epic Adventure Shooter. Call of Juarez <\/em>is loosely based on Spaghetti Westerns that become popular in the early 1970s. The game features playing as two different characters and two very different styles of play: Billy ‘Candle’, a young fugitive accused of murder and his step-uncle and hunter, Reverend Ray, an ex-outlaw who turned to religion.\u00a0 Call of Juarez<\/em> features it’s Chrome Engine using Shader Model 4 with DirectX 10, so the usage of Vista is mandatory. This benchmark isn’t built into Call of Juarez<\/em> but is a stand-alone that runs a simple fly-through of a level that’s built to showcase the game’s new DX10 effects. It offers great repeatability and is a good stress test for DX10 features in today’s graphics cards although it is not quite the same as actual gameplay as the game logic and AI are stripped out of the demo. Still it is very useful in comparing video cards performance. When running the benchmark, you get the highlights of the Call of Juarez’<\/em> features captioned right on the screen as they are demonstrated:<\/p>\n physics-based particles via geometry shader Performing the benchmark is easy. You are presented with a simple menu to choose resolution, anti-aliasing, and two choices of shadow quality options. We set the shadow quality on “high” and the shadow map resolution to its maximum, 2048×2048. At the end, the demo presents you with the minimum frame rate, maximum frame rate, and average frame rate, along with the option to quit or run the benchmark again. We always ran the benchmark at least a second time and recorded that generally higher score.<\/p>\n Call of Juarez<\/em> still demands a lot from single-GPU solutions.\u00a0 Fortunately 4870X2 and\u00a0 crossfireX-3 scale really well. <\/p>\n Crysis<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Now we move on to Crysis<\/em>.\u00a0 It is the most demanding game released to date for any PC. Crysis<\/em> is a sci-fi first person shooter by Crytek and published by Electronic Arts, November, 2007 worldwide and is the first game of a planned trilogy.\u00a0 Crysis<\/em> is based in a fictional near-future where an ancient alien spacecraft is discovered buried on an island near the coast of Korea. The single-player campaign has you assume the role of USA Delta Force, Jake Dunn – referred to as ‘Nomad’ in the game.\u00a0 He is armed with various futuristic weapons and equipment, including a “Nano Suit” which enables the player to perform extraordinary feats, battling\u00a0 both extra-terrestrial and North Korean enemies, in four different locations.\u00a0 Crysis<\/em> uses DirectX10 for graphics rendering, and includes the same editor that was used by Crytek to create it.<\/p>\n A standalone but related game, Crysis Warhead<\/em> was released in September, 2008. It is notable for providing a similar graphical experience to Crysis<\/em>, but with less graphical demands on the PC. We will eventually add it to our benchmarking. CryEngine2 is the game engine used to power Crysis<\/em> and Warhead<\/em>. It is an extended version of the CryEngine that powers FarCry. That same original CryEngine also became the basis for the Dunia Engine that powers Ubisoft’s FarCry2<\/em>, a less demanding game engine.<\/p>\n As well as supporting Shader Model 2.0, 3.0, and DirectX10’s 4.0, CryEngine2 is multi-threaded to take advantage of SMP aware systems. Crysis<\/em> also comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions and Crytek has developed their own proprietary physics system, called CryPhysics. There are three built-in demos that are very reliable in comparing video card performance. However, it is noted that actually playing<\/em> the game is a bit slower than the demo implies.<\/p>\n GPU Demo, Island<\/strong><\/p>\n Here is Crysis’ Island Demo<\/em> benchmarks, at 19×12 resolution, then 16×10:<\/p>\n From our uneven comparison to our last article’s Catalyst 8.8\/GeForce 177.41 and e8600 at stock speeds, we can still see that your Crysis’<\/em> experience will benefit from a faster CPU – no matter what you have – and that crossfireX-3 still suffers from immature drivers. <\/p>\n Quake Wars: Enemy Territory Quake Wars:Enemy Territory<\/em> is an objective-driven, class-based first person shooter based in the Quake universe. It was developed by id Software and Splash Damage for Windows and published by Activision. The back-story actually takes place as a prequel to Quake II. Quake Wars<\/em> pits the combined human armies of the Global Defense Force (GDF) against the technologically superior Strogg, an alien race who has come to earth to use humans for spare parts and food, and it allows you to play a part – probably best as an online multi-player experience – in the desperate battles waged around the world in mankind’s desperate war to survive.<\/p>\n Quake Wars<\/em> is an OpenGL game based on id\u2019s Doom3<\/em> game engine with the addition of their MegaTexture technology.\u00a0\u00a0 It also supports some of the very latest 3D effects seen in today\u2019s latest DX10 games, including soft particles.\u00a0 id\u2019s MegaTexture technology is designed to provide very large maps without having to reuse the same textures over and over again. With MegaTexture, a single extremely large texture is used to handle the basic terrain, with texture management handled by a pixel shader program.\u00a0 By using this technology, which uses a small memory footprint, QW’s<\/em> artists could construct one very large map that is unique with no repeating terrain tiles.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n In this follow-up to the free Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Quake Wars<\/em> adds controllable vehicles and aircraft as well as multiple AI deployables, asymmetric teams, much bigger maps and the option of computer-controlled ‘bots; and of course, its setting is updated from World War II to 2060. Online and offline play modes are available as PC versions let you play individual campaigns against bots and allows the player combat as both sides. The Human weapons and vehicles are mostly based on modern combat weapons and vehicles but updated for the 50 years into the future. The Strogg have alien weapons and vehicles, some unique and some similar to what the humans have.<\/p>\n For our benchmark we chose the flyby, Salvage Demo<\/em>, from Quake Wars: Enemy Territory<\/em>.\u00a0 It is one of the most graphically demanding of all the flybys and is very repeatable and reliable in its results. It is fairly close to what you will experience in-game.<\/p>\n Salvage Demo fly-by:<\/strong><\/p>\n Unlike with Catalyst 8.8, CrossfireX3 now runs with Quake Wars – <\/em>but there is still visible artifacting and color banding.<\/em> Unfortunately, the ATi drivers for crossfireX3 are probably still immature as well, as the game is probably heavily CPU-bound and thus we see reverse scaling for crossfireX-3 compared to 4870-X2.\u00a0 GTX280 also turns in a very respectable performance results, but sits at the bottom of the chart.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n F.E.A.R.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n F.E.A.R. – First Encounter Armed Assault<\/em> – is a DX9c game by Monolith Productions that was originally released in October 2005 by Vivendi Universal Production. Later, there were two expansions with the latest, Perseus Mandate<\/em>, released in 2007. Although the game engine is aging a bit, it still has some of the most spectacular effects of any game, showcasing a powerful particle system, complete with showers of sparks, puffs of smoke and dust for collisions with objects and walls as well as including bullet marks on walls and other visual effects including “soft shadows”. This is well highlighted in the built-in performance test although it was never updated.\u00a0 This performance test will tell you how F.E.A.R.<\/em> and its first expansion Extraction Point<\/em> will run, but Perseus Mandate<\/em> is more demanding on your PC graphics.\u00a0 We always run 2 sets of tests with all in-games features at ‘maximum’ – one featuring “soft shadows” and the other with 4xAA instead, as they do not run well together.\u00a0 F.E.A.R. <\/em>uses the Jupiter Extended Technology engine from Touchdown Entertainment.\u00a0 Lithtech was initially developed inside Monolith Productions; later on, the team that worked on the game engine was detached from Monolith into a separate group, Touchdown Entertainment<\/p>\n F.E.A.R.<\/em> Benchmarks<\/strong><\/p>\n First we test at 19×12 with no AA but with Soft shadows enabled:<\/p>\n now with AA\/No SS<\/p>\n let’s try again at 16×10:<\/p>\n No surprises here.\u00a0 Even crossfireX-3 scales pretty well. <\/p>\n Half-Life2: Lost Coast<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Half-Life 2<\/em> is still a popular game and is our oldest game we review. Half-Life 2: Lost Coast<\/em> is an additional level for this 2004 game. Lost Coast<\/em> was released October, 2005 as a free download to all purchasers of Half-Life 2. Lost Coast <\/em>was developed as a playable tech demo, intended to showcase the newly-added high definition range lighting – HDR – features of the Source Engine. Lost Coas<\/em>t features minor storyline details that were scrapped from Half-Life 2<\/em>. A flyby of this level is played during the HL2<\/em> video stress test and it is very repeatable and quite accurate.<\/p>\n It appears that all of our video cards will hit the maximum 301 Frame rate cap.\u00a0 Only the minimums are interesting.\u00a0 You can certainly experiment with maxed-out filtering on any of these cards. <\/p>\n
\n-GTX280, HD4870-512MB, HD4870x2 and 4870 Crossfire-X3<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
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\nfully dynamic real-time shadowing
\nsoft-edged grass and leaves
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\nHDR-correct AA<\/p>\n
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