| ASUS GeForce GTX 460 SLI Performance |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Olin Coles | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 02 August 2010 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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DX10: Far Cry 2Ubisoft has developed Far Cry 2 as a sequel to the original, but with a very different approach to game play and story line. Far Cry 2 features a vast world built on Ubisoft's new game engine called Dunia, meaning "world", "earth" or "living" in Farci. The setting in Far Cry 2 takes place on a fictional Central African landscape, set to a modern day timeline. The Dunia engine was built specifically for Far Cry 2, by Ubisoft Montreal development team. It delivers realistic semi-destructible environments, special effects such as dynamic fire propagation and storms, real-time night-and-day sun light and moon light cycles, dynamic music system, and non-scripted enemy A.I actions. The Dunia game engine takes advantage of multi-core processors as well as multiple processors and supports DirectX 9 as well as DirectX-10. Only 2 or 3 percent of the original CryEngine code is re-used, according to Michiel Verheijdt, Senior Product Manager for Ubisoft Netherlands. Additionally, the engine is less hardware-demanding than CryEngine 2, the engine used in Crysis. However, it should be noted that Crysis delivers greater character and object texture detail, as well as more destructible elements within the environment. For example; trees breaking into many smaller pieces and buildings breaking down to their component panels. Far Cry 2 also supports the amBX technology from Philips. With the proper hardware, this adds effects like vibrations, ambient colored lights, and fans that generate wind effects. There is a benchmark tool in the PC version of Far Cry 2, which offers an excellent array of settings for performance testing. Benchmark Reviews used the maximum settings allowed for DirectX-10 tests, with the resolution set to 1920x1200. Performance settings were all set to 'Very High', Render Quality was set to 'Ultra High' overall quality, 8x anti-aliasing was applied, and HDR and Bloom were enabled.
Although the Dunia engine in Far Cry 2 is slightly less demanding than CryEngine 2 engine in Crysis, the strain appears to be extremely close. In Crysis we didn't dare to test AA above 4x, whereas we used 8x AA and 'Ultra High' settings in Far Cry 2. The end effect was a separation between what is capable of maximum settings, and what is not. Using the short 'Ranch Small' time demo (which yields the lowest FPS of the three tests available), we noticed that there are very few products capable of producing playable frame rates with the settings all turned up. Cost Analysis: Far Cry 2 (1680x1050)Test Summary: The Dunia game engine in Far Cry 2 demonstrates a preference towards NVIDIA products over ATI, which allows a single GeForce GTX 460 video card to dominate performance over the Radeon HD 5830, and even beats the Radeon HD 5850. Because of the major differences in performance with Far Cry 2, the GeForce GTX 460 (and all other GeForce cards) offered the best performance and cost per FPS of any DX11 video card. Of course, this also translated into impressive SLI performance. Combined into an SLI set, the GeForce GTX 460 surpasses both the Radeon HD 5870 as well as ATI's flagship 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!
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