| PNY GeForce GTX 460 OC XLR8 Video Card |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Olin Coles | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 01 September 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 the reference NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 to dominate performance over the Radeon HD 5830, and also beat ATI's Radeon HD 5850 by a significant margin. Of course, the overclocked PNY GTX 460 XLR8 video card only improves the already substantial lead and adds 5.3-FPS more performance beyond the stock version. 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.
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Comments
How do they compare in performance and noise?
In terms of noise, there's almost none... as in no audible sound. Even with the fan turned to 100% power, the PNY cooler is extremely quiet.
Also, PNY has a RMA graphics card promotion specifically for BFG customers. Send in your BFG card, whether it works or not, and you'll receive a 25 percent discount on select PNY video cards. They'll also throw-in "Just Cause 2" from Square Enix by way of an online download redemption code. So those of you left holding the bag with BFG cards that malfunctioned, can get a better deal than the rest of us with PNY, and a free game. Visit PNY.com or call PNY directly at 1-888-316-1193. The promotion runs until October 31, 2010.
The GTX 460 Hawk review will be posted soon.
You're right though, I haven't been making mention of the sound levels. I'll update my articles to make note of this. Thanks.
In Metro 2033, the two results are 1920x1200 and 1680x1050. I've since replaced the chart with an updated image.
People mention noise a lot with cards, I don't mind noise, i want the fan speed. Any help would be appreciated.
Yeah. EVGA and Gigabyte have released BIOS for their respective cards. Their BIOS allow the cards to go to "maximum" speed (theirs is stuck at 70% before the update)while PNY hasn't. Initially my card would stay about 68C before. Even while the card was overclocked. But for a couple of days now, even with my same overclock settings, the card will get to 80C and crash the game out. I purchased the card the Friday after Thanksgiving. So I got them recently.
Note, when not overclocked the temps get about 70C under a full load.
So the moral of the story is don't purchase these cards to replace your 9800GTs in SLI unless you are sure you have enough connectors from your existing PS, or unless you are replacining your PS as well.