{"id":9920,"date":"2009-08-04T12:54:16","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T12:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=9920"},"modified":"2009-08-08T09:03:59","modified_gmt":"2009-08-08T09:03:59","slug":"2560x1600-performance-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/2560x1600-performance-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"2560&#215;1600 Performance Investigation (updated)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Article Update: <\/span><\/strong>I&#8217;ve added a 0xAA section which tests nine newer titles.<\/p>\n<p><!--pagetitle:Introduction--><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Introduction<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My stalwart 19\u201d CRT died a few months ago and that put me in the market for a new display. With displays as they are right now, the best option for my gaming habits was a 30\u201d LCD so I could reach the lofty resolution of 2560&#215;1600.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s so special about 2560&#215;1600 you ask? Take a look at the relative pixel counts:<\/p>\n<p>2560&#215;1600 = 4096000.<br \/>\n1920&#215;1200 = 2304000.<br \/>\n1920&#215;1080 = 2073600.<\/p>\n<p>As you can see, 2560&#215;1600 is over 4 million pixels and has around twice the pixel count of the two 1920 modes. To push that many pixels the GPU requires a lot more grunt, and also a lot of VRAM to make everything fit locally.<\/p>\n<p>Now that I have the display, I\u2019ve completed a range of benchmarks at said resolution on my <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">GTX285<\/span>, and compared them to my <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">GTX260+<\/span>. This article can also serve as part 2 of the <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=6374\" target=\"_blank\">GTX285 vs GTX260+ vs 4850<\/a> article I did a little while ago.<\/p>\n<p>Transparency AA will also be used where possible and playable, with <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">SS<\/span> denoting super-sampling, and <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">MS<\/span> denoting multi-sampling.<\/p>\n<p>The text charts are also color coded as usual, but since the GTX285 completes a clean sweep in the benchmarks, only one <span style=\"color: #cc99ff;\">purple<\/span> highlight in the <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">% Change<\/span> column is required.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:Setup--><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Hardware<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (reference 3 GHz clock). <\/li>\n<li>nVidia GeForce GTX285 (1 GB), GTX260+ (896 MB), both at reference clocks.<\/li>\n<li>4 GB DDR2-800 RAM (4\u00d71 GB, dual-channel). <\/li>\n<li>Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R (Intel G33 chipset, F7 BIOS). <\/li>\n<li>Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic.<\/li>\n<li>30\u201d HP LP3065 (maximum resolution 2560&#215;1600).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Software <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Windows XP 32 bit SP3<\/li>\n<li>nVidia driver 186.18, high quality filtering, all optimizations off, LOD clamp enabled. <\/li>\n<li>DirectX March 2009. <\/li>\n<li>All games patched to their latest versions. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Settings<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>16xAF forced in the driver, vsync forced off in the driver. <\/li>\n<li>AA forced either through the driver or enabled in-game, whichever works better. <\/li>\n<li>Since I\u2019m on XP, all DX10 titles were run under DX9 render paths. <\/li>\n<li>Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games. <\/li>\n<li>All results show an average framerate. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:30\" HP LP3065--><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">30\u201d HP LP3065<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Before I get to the benchmarks, I\u2019d like to take a moment to describe the display itself. As you\u2019ve seen from the hardware setup on the previous page, my new display is a <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">30\u201d HP LP3065<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Before buying this device, I did a lot of research across the 30\u201d panels. Being a die-hard CRT user, I simply could not tolerate significant input lag or ghosting. Most panels in this size category have horrific input lag, especially the Dell 3008 which I looked very closely at. The significance of the HP LP3065 is that it has no video processor and no overdrive, and thus has extremely low input lag. It\u2019s as snappy as the 22\u201d TN I briefly used, and I can\u2019t detect any significant lag compared to my old CRT. I\u2018ve not seen any significant ghosting on it either.<\/p>\n<p>The panel itself is massive and makes the 19\u201d CRT look positively tiny. You can\u2019t truly appreciate how big such a display is until you see it in person right in front of you. Gaming on it is like gaming on a projector; guns are so big, it\u2019s almost like you\u2019re holding them yourself.<\/p>\n<p>The colors are great with rich reds, blues and amazing greens. I hadn\u2019t realized how many different shades of green many games used for vegetation until I saw them on this display. The first outdoor area in <em>Far Cry<\/em> looks absolutely amazing. The panel\u2019s uniformity and viewing angles are also far better than the TN panel I was briefly using too.<\/p>\n<p>Despite not having a video processor, the panel handles scaling of non-native resolutions very well (it always fills the screen, so to stop this you\u2019ll need to use your GPU\u2019s scaling). There are a lot of resolutions including the common 1680&#215;1050 and 1920&#215;1200 widescreen ones, CRT resolutions like 1600&#215;1200 and 2048&#215;1536, and even my old favorite: 1920&#215;1440. The display correctly identifies these resolutions without a driver and they\u2019re automatically visible to any applications that don\u2019t have hard-coded resolutions.<\/p>\n<p>Many applications that have hard-coded resolutions can still be made to run at 2560&#215;1600, and after some tinkering I\u2019ve managed to get 65 out of my current 96 installed games running at 2560&#215;1600. This figure will rise when I get a more powerful GPU as I have several newer games that don\u2019t yet run acceptably at this resolution.<\/p>\n<p>My only real gripe is that it isn\u2019t 120 Hz, but realistically that\u2019s going to take years before it arrives on panels this size. So for now I believe I\u2019ve purchased one of the best gaming monitors available in consumer space, and I\u2019ve been loving the several days I\u2019ve already spent gaming on it. I\u2019m currently playing through <em>Painkiller<\/em> again at 2560&#215;1600 with 8xMSAA, and it looks stunning.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:0xAA--><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">0xAA<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll start with the most demanding games I\u2019ll be testing today, so I\u2019ll test them without AA. I personally wouldn\u2019t run games at these settings because I prefer at least 2xAA whenever possible, and I\u2019ll drop the resolution to get it if necessary.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9925\" title=\"text-0x1\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/text-0x1.png?resize=300%2C356\" alt=\"text-0x1\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9922\" title=\"graph-0x\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/graph-0x.png?resize=574%2C599\" alt=\"graph-0x\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><br class=\"spacer_\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Even without AA the GTX285 is still <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">25.43%<\/span> faster than the GTX260+ overall in these tests. Still, without AA the pressure on bandwidth and the ROPs is eased which doesn\u2019t allow the GTX285 to stretch its legs. Let\u2019s try some benchmarks with AA next.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:2xAA & 4xAA--><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">2xAA &amp; 4xAA<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>These settings are a more realistic representation of what I would use in actual gaming.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9925\" title=\"text-2x-4x\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/text-2x-4x.png?resize=264%2C255\" alt=\"text-2x-4x\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9922\" title=\"graph-2x-4x\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/graph-2x-4x.png?resize=573%2C476\" alt=\"graph-2x-4x\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/graph-2x-4x.png?resize=573%2C476 573w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/graph-2x-4x-300x249.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 573px) 100vw, 573px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><br class=\"spacer_\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We see the GTX285 provides an overall performance advantage of <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">29.12%<\/span> over the GTX260+, which is a significant amount.<\/p>\n<p>In particular, <em>Stalker<\/em> and <em>Bioshock<\/em> are over 30% faster and much more playable. I\u2019m actually quite impressed with <em>Stalker\u2019s<\/em> result as I remember the game absolutely crawling on my 8800 GTS at 1600&#215;1200 with no AA when it was first released. Replaying the game at 2560&#215;1600 with 2xAA and transparency super-sampling is going to be a real treat.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:8xQ & 16xCS--><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">8xQ &amp; 16xCS<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Next I\u2019ll move on to slightly older titles which have enough performance to run at higher AA levels. I\u2019ve put the 16xCSAA results first because the workload is less than that of 8xQ (8xMSAA).<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9926\" title=\"text-8x-16x\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/text-8x-16x.png?resize=267%2C255\" alt=\"text-8x-16x\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><br class=\"spacer_\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9923\" title=\"graph-8x-16x\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/graph-8x-16x.png?resize=575%2C477\" alt=\"graph-8x-16x\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/graph-8x-16x.png?resize=575%2C477 575w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/graph-8x-16x-300x248.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 575px) 100vw, 575px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><br class=\"spacer_\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here the overall performance gain is \u201conly\u201d <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">26.64%<\/span>, but the GTX285 still makes these titles much smoother during actual gaming over a GTX260+. Most titles are under 60 FPS on the GTX260+, but are well over on the GTX285.<\/p>\n<p>The original <em>Fear\u2019s<\/em> performance at 2560&#215;1600 with 16xCSAA is particularly impressive as that game used to absolutely maim video cards back in the day.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:8xS & 16xS--><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">8xS &amp; 16xS<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And finally, what review would be complete without testing the combined mode super-sampling modes? Let\u2019s see how my graphics cards cope at 2560&#215;1600 with these modes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9921\" title=\"text-8xs-16xs\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/text-8xs-16xs.png?resize=269%2C290\" alt=\"text-8xs-16xs\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><br class=\"spacer_\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9924\" title=\"graph-8xs-16xs\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/graph-8xs-16xs.png?resize=573%2C510\" alt=\"graph-8xs-16xs\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/graph-8xs-16xs.png?resize=573%2C510 573w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/graph-8xs-16xs-300x267.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 573px) 100vw, 573px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p>These results closely mimic those when I tested the <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=6374\" target=\"_blank\">GTX285 against the GTX260+<\/a> at 1920&#215;1440 using these modes, where some of the biggest performance gains between the cards were witnessed. Here the two top titles (<em>Quake 3<\/em> and the original <em>Unreal Tournament<\/em>) &#8211; both a decade old &#8211; score the highest performance gains witnessed today, <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">36.51%<\/span> and <span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">37.06%<\/span> respectively.<\/p>\n<p>As for the rest of the games, the GTX285 ensures we\u2019re hitting well over 60 FPS while the GTX260+\u2019s performance is quite pokey in some cases, especially in the faster paced games like the original <em>Call of Duty<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It should be worth mentioning that 16xS actually renders the internal image four times bigger, so that means the GTX285 is pushing over 16 million lit, textured, shaded and anti-aliased pixels more than sixty times a second at this setting. This helps to put some of the astonishing performance modern GPUs offer into perspective.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle:Conclusion--><strong><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Conclusion<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Based on the results today, we can see that single card solutions are quite capable of putting out respectable performance at 2560&#215;1600, even in modern games, and even when running AA. In older games, higher AA modes are quite achievable.<\/p>\n<p>We also again witnessed around a 30% performance gain from the GTX285 over the GTX260+ on what many would consider a \u201cslow\u201d CPU \u2013 my dual core E6850 running at stock speeds (3 GHz). This yet again proves that as long as you have a half decent CPU, the GPU is by far the biggest factor in gaming performance by a wide margin.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t be scared to upgrade your graphics card because you don\u2019t have the fastest quad core CPU around, especially if you love using high AA levels like I do. As I\u2019ve proven time and time again, CPU requirements for gaming tend to be vastly overblown in tech forum discussions.<\/p>\n<p>I hope you have found today\u2019s results as interesting as I have and rest assured, I\u2019ll be bringing you more 2560&#215;1600 results in future reviews.<\/p>\n<p><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">Please join us in our <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/abt\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">Forums<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">Follow us on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/alienbabeltech\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/twitter.com\/alienbabeltech', 'Twitter']);\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #99ccff;\">For the latest updates from ABT, please <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?feed=rss2\" target=\"_blank\">join our RSS News Feed<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=9920\"><img decoding=\"async\" align=top title=\"Author: BFG10K\" src=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/article-image.png\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":10043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7814,7],"tags":[1703,1957,1958,496,900,1959,121],"class_list":["post-9920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-technology","tag-1703","tag-2560x1600","tag-1958","tag-gtx-260","tag-gtx285","tag-hp-lp3065","tag-nvidia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}