| ASUS GeForce GTX 460 SLI Performance |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Olin Coles | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 02 August 2010 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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DX11: Unigine Heaven 2.1The Unigine "Heaven 2.1" benchmark is a free publicly available tool that grants the power to unleash the graphics capabilities in DirectX-11 for Windows 7 or updated Vista Operating Systems. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. With the interactive mode, emerging experience of exploring the intricate world is within reach. Through its advanced renderer, Unigine is one of the first to set precedence in showcasing the art assets with tessellation, bringing compelling visual finesse, utilizing the technology to the full extend and exhibiting the possibilities of enriching 3D gaming. The distinguishing feature in the Unigine Heaven benchmark is a hardware tessellation that is a scalable technology aimed for automatic subdivision of polygons into smaller and finer pieces, so that developers can gain a more detailed look of their games almost free of charge in terms of performance. Thanks to this procedure, the elaboration of the rendered image finally approaches the boundary of veridical visual perception: the virtual reality transcends conjured by your hand. The "Heaven" benchmark excels at providing the following key features:
Although Heaven-2.1 was recently released and used for our DirectX-11 tests, the benchmark results were extremely close to those obtained with Heaven-1.0 testing. Since only DX11-compliant video cards will properly test on the Heaven benchmark, only those products that meet the requirements have been included. Cost Analysis: Unigine Heaven (1680x1050)Test Summary: Our test results with the Unigine Heaven benchmark tool appear to deliver fair comparisons of DirectX-11 graphics cards. The 768MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 clears past the Radeon HD 5830 by 6-FPS, and also surpasses the GeForce GTX 465 in this test. Reviewers like to say "Nobody plays a benchmark", but it seems evident that we can expect to see great things come from a graphics tool this detailed. For now though, those details only come by way of DirectX-11 video cards. It's worth noting that if there was a cost involved with Unigine's Heaven benchmark, the ASUS GeForce GTX 460 would cost $2.15 less per frame than the Radeon HD 5830, and also cost less than all other DirectX-11 video cards. Two GeForce GTX 460's in SLI costs $5.55 per frame than the Radeon HD 5870, and also outperforms the Radeon HD 5970.
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Comments
Great article!
Were I to go with a 2x460 purchase I'm at the limit of my expansion and if the cards don't hold up, I'd have to discard/sell them and start over.
I'm probably worrying about nothing though. A 2x460 setup, even before overclocking is such a huge jump from my GTX275 (OC 666MHz). I imagine it will more than satisfy my needs for this generation of cards. I'm just a worrier.
There's no indication that the GF104 will support triple-SLI. It appears to be reserved for their GF100 GPU.
That 460 SLI is great if you plan on playing one game at a certain resolution and tech setup for many years. The two games from this year REVIEWED...AvP and Metro2033 are games requiring more than 1GB at max settings...So it means SLI is playable at lower resolution but can't max most games at high resolution from 2010 which means 460 SLI will utterly fail in games from 2011 which will be even more demanding and will come with full physics engines.
1536 - 2048MB VRAM is what you should plan on having prior to going full SLI or Crossfire, specially if you are going triple monitor you need all the VRAM you can get. 1024MB is the new "baby-face" minimum.
i7 930 - OC to 4.0ghz with V6 fan cooler
RAM - Xtreem 2x3 6gbs
GPU - single HIS 4870X2
Mobo - Asus P6X58D Premium
PSU - Antec True Power 800w
Resolution - 1900x1020
Driver - Catalyst 10.7a
Since the graphics card give me so much problems, like minor stuttering and inconsistent fps in some games(yes, Crysis is one of them). My biggest disappointment is in Starcraft 2, though I can max out all, during some cutscenes and missions, the fps drops significantly (18-22). So, I am thinking to upgrade my graphics card and can you kindly suggest me which one I should choose: 460 SLI, single 480 or 5970 ? I think I will need to replace my PSU with higher 1k or 1.2k though if I do SLI.
Budget-wise, I am open to anything but I just want to get best of both world, value + performance since I believe why should I waste my money if I just need to take some time to search for the best instead of buying the most expensive(either gtx480 or 5970) which seems to be most powerful without knowing anything.
Since articles from you and tomshardware showing how new fermi is promising ##tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-460-sli-geforce-gtx-480,2694.html, I am thinking to give it a try but I am also worried if later when I want to upgrade, I will be in dead end. For SSD, any enlightenment for why I should use it ? I just know that it would be great for OS booting up part and data consistency.
SSDs will make everything open faster, and levels will load much quicker.
What I understand is like SSDs is reading from flash memory instead of magnetic tape so it will reduce the time for cycling and finding data from tape. Okay but how about games ? Since if I do partition, games will take huge amount (at least 200-300gb) and for that whole to be faster loading time, I need to use SSD and install all the game on that SSD ? That seems like it will be quite expensive though. Okay, thanks for the enlightenment and appreciate your help !
I was interested when it was released but pondered that for most purposes it wouldnt give any advantage whatsoever.
I'm unsure of how well it works with gaming, just a bit sceptical.
While I beleive that Nvidia has a real winner in the 460. The SLI scaling is really impressive so comparing a 5830 crossfire would have been nice. Keep up the good work
Still, since one GTS 460 easily beats a single 5830, and since two 460's in SLI are nearly twice the performance of one, it could be surmised that a pair of 5830's isn't going to beat an SLI set of 460's anyway.
I'm currently running 5870's in CF. It works great at 2560X1600 and the picture quality is fantastic (BC2 in DX11 is unreal). I held off until after the disappointing 480 launch where heat and power consumption was unacceptable to me.
Nvidia's SLI has always seemed more mature\robust to me so any comparisons between same level cards in single and dual modes is much appreciated.
Again thanks for the great reviews I've been sending links to this site out to friends I don't know how you've slipped under our radar :)
Please, it's f o n d a m e n t a l e xme!
benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=680