| MSI N460GTX HAWK GeForce GTX 460 |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Bruce Normann | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Friday, 24 September 2010 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Far Cry 2 Benchmark ResultsUbisoft 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. HDR and Bloom are automatically enabled in DX10 mode.
Even on a game that typically favors the Green Machine, the performance of the latest NVIDIA GPU in this test is nothing short of amazing. It's not worth even running the numbers; the advantage for the GF104 chip is so overwhelming. Using the short 'Ranch Small' time demo (which yields the lowest FPS of the three tests available), many of the midrange products we've tested are capable of producing playable frame rates with the settings all turned up. Now it seems we have a midrange video card that absolutely dominates this game. If you like this game, the GTX460 is for you. You don't even have to overclock it to get good frame rates, even though you probably will...
The higher resolution testing doesn't change the rankings at all, and the MSI N460GTX HAWK still produces stellar results at 1920 x 1200. With these kinds of average frame rates, there is less chance of any stutter making it into game play. I was curious to see how well the GTX460 did on minimum frame rates, given the outstanding performance on average, so here is what I learned:
The minimum frame rate never dropped below 50 FPS, and there are only two sharp dips in the chart, at the very beginning. It was probably one of the many explosions, the first one takes place at close range, and has a lot of detail associated with it. I've been glancing at these charts every time I run this benchmark, even though we generally don't report the results, and this is definitely one of the smoother and flatter curves I've seen. Our next benchmark of the series puts our collection of video cards against some fresh graphics in the recently released Resident Evil 5 benchmark.
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Comments
On the other hand, the 400 platform is Fermi/PhyX/Cuda and DX11 of course--being that the 285 isn't all that! It seems like what we're getting is a great DX11 Fermi/Cuda PhysX card that runs DX11 games, but doesn't give us more speed than the old cards of yesteryear, and even less in DX10 games.
Comparing old to new is frustrating at best, because they are so different. But maybe you should also consider the price point,........
My 2GB EVGA GTX-285 card was well over $500.00 when it was new, and these GTX-460's are well under half of that price. So I'm about to order two of these for SLI performance that will destroy my GTX-285's capabilities and also get all of the latest technology in rendering eye candy as well. (for less money)
I think that these cards, (especially two of them together) will amount to a definite 'Win-Win' in the consumer marketplace.
On the other hand if your card is older than the 200 series you've got a reason and price point that says upgrade now. The 460's will have you kicking butt and taking names at a much lower price point that those who recently bought the 260's or 285's
The issue really comes to the forefront because GTX460 cards are almost universally wicked overclockers. Just about every single card sold since day one will take a 25% overclock in stride, with very little additional voltage, or none at all if you're lucky.
For me, I love the DX11 eyecandy, and it's only going to get better with newer titles, IMHO.
Nice Review!
Until someone comes out with a water cooled model, every hardcore overclocker is going to want this card.