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 Gameguru Mania News - Aug,11 2010 -  
GeForce GTX 460 1GB SLI vs. Radeon HD 5870 CFX - tech
(hx) 03:35 PM CEST - Aug,11 2010 - Post a comment / read (11)
The chaps over HardOCP have the GTX 460 SLI going head to head with a Radeon HD 5870 CrossFireX and the results are very impressive. Here's a taster:
GeForce GTX 460 1GB SLI real world gaming performance is superior to even AMD's fastest high-end single GPU video cards in a CrossFireX configuration. And do keep in mind this is real gaming, not benchmarks. There is no getting around or denying the awesome performance of SLI configured GTX 460 1GB video cards. The excitement is even more pronounced when you can find very highly overclocked GTX 460 cards like the Galaxy GTX 460 1GB Super OC for $229 after $10 MIR. These cards simply represent a great value for the gamer and hardware enthusiast.

We've found previously that GeForce GTX 480 SLI provides tremendous performance well out pacing Radeon HD 5870 CFX in pretty much every newer game released (and we have a follow-up on that coming soon). You can see here where specifically in AvP, that GTX 480 SLI destroys 5870 2GB CFX. So maybe we should not be surprised by what we are seeing here. It seems, that GTX 480 SLI is not the real competition for 5870 CFX after all, it seems that these much less expensive GTX 460 1GB video cards are the 5870 GPU's real competition. AMD should be worried about this. CrossFireX scaling needs some work....a lot of work. SLI is blowing CrossFireX out of the water with these newer GPUs.
last 10 comments:
JamieKirby(07:58 PM CEST - Aug,11 2010 )
next time, they should set the clock settings on the super clocked nvidia card and then test again or get a super clocked version of the ATI card and test again.

Its like testing rival Race cars to see which one is faster, when one has a suped up engine, while the other has the default engine.

Its not a balanced test.

ykazka(10:11 PM CEST - Aug,11 2010 )
i agree. F... Nvidia. i hate this company. Their product is overpriced and not that good. ATI is better, at least for now.

psolord(10:49 PM CEST - Aug,11 2010 )
The GTX 460 is a great card. There's no doubt about that. That comes from a guy that owns both 5850 crossfire and GTX 460.

What Kyle tryed to prove, is that you can get awesome performance for less money and that much is true.

It is indeed a bit exaggerative and you cannot draw general conclusions from just two games and that's where the wrongness of this article lies. Other than that, there is no reason not to believe that two 460 OC are faster than two 5870s, in these specific games.

Trust me when I say though, that ATI's Crossfire has progress a long long way from where it was before. Otherwise there was no way I would spend 500 euros just for graphics cards and that's just on one of my rigs.

I agree to the general FuckNvidia consensus though. They are just too murky for my liking. Just bought the GTX 460 for support, since I see them in a very bad position and I don't like that. Just to contribute to competition, you know! (i wanted a better card for my secondary rig anyway and had a tax refund so there you have it lol)

Baconnaise(01:46 PM CEST - Aug,12 2010 )
I have to agree with Psolord somewhat. I just bought a GTX 460 for another comp for about two hundred dollars. It's quiet it runs cool and the performance is amazing along with the features (EVGA). The article is just saying the mid range or cheaper range of cards can keep up pretty well with high end. The facts are a GTX 470 or equiv card is going to run you around four hundred (I've seen some for 350-370 with rebates) maybe more once you include taxes shipping if any.

There are issues with both companies products in my experience as I have both. I don't understand why people have this company loyalty issue as all companies eventually have bad streaks or good streaks. I've got Nvidia cards that are still running strong (7800GTX 512mb and 6600GT and Geforce 2 and 3) and ATI AIW cards theater cards and even the first and second gen radeons. They both can make a good product and even duds.

Tom(05:54 PM CEST - Aug,12 2010 )
Only hate I have towards nvidia is their prices. No duh they gouge as ati does(has done) forever. ATI might not gouge as much anymore but that's just their marketing strategy to sucker new buyers and those that don't know a lot to buy their cards. But in terms of a better card, better support nvidia kicks ati's ass all over the place. For these reasons it is why I would put my money down to get an nividia card. I've been a ati customer numerous times over 20 years. Their cards suck ass period, their support is pitiful and in terms of developers making game, nobody gives a shit about ati. I'll never put an ati card in a pc I build for people or in my pc. Never. Hands down right now, I'd buy a 460 GTX before I touched an ati.

gx-x(06:02 PM CEST - Aug,12 2010 )
well, I dont like dual GPUs or SLI/CF setups since lots of things dont work the way they are supposed to (micro stutter, no profiles, only one GPU used etc etc), and I had gtx260 and it was a great card. I sold it for ~160 euros in December 2009, bought HD5850 for 210 euros. No gtx460 can beat that. It ticks on 840/1100 no sweat, and if by any chance I picked up 2 of them and made CF, I would have liked to see a test of SLi gtx 460 overclocked manually beating these babies (without raising voltage or changing default fan speed! My 5850 can go to 1050mhz with fan speed on 60% and a raised voltage).

I expected a lot less from Fermi actually, it turned out good. If gtx460 price tag was around ~180 euros it would be a best buy and pure ownage. gtx480 is waaaaaay overpriced but that's enthuziast card, unlike gtx470 and 465 that are 'fail' cards because they are overpriced as hell and are beaten down by a half year old products from ATi.

btw. I really do prefer nVidia over ATi, but HD5xxx is a damn good product line! HD4xxx up to 4890 gave me constant trouble with various things, while GTX 2XX simply worked :)

Tom>
But in terms of a better card, better support nvidia kicks ati's ass all over the place.


True that. +1

but, like I said, HD5xxx is a really good product, cheap feel in hand but they are quiet, cold and almost "issues" free :)

psolord(11:43 PM CEST - Aug,12 2010 )
@ Tom

Having used ATI cards constantly since the 1900XT, I have to say that I faced minimal problems. Yes, I hear people all around having various issues with ATI, but I am sorry to say that, in most cases, it is their fault or simply a badly configured Windows system.

In windows XP there was more pain with ATI, that much is true. Since Vista onwards, I don't know, everything just works for me guys. I have a 1.5TB HDD for my main games, and a 1TB for throwing in the old ones. You can imagine that this are a lot of games, and although my Steam folder is 700GBs large, the rest of the games are not Steam *ahem* that means they are not auto updated and still all the times I have gone back, they work fine, with all ATI hardware. That really has something to say about how far ATI's drivers have progressed.

Truth be told, I have one complaint from ATI and that's a policy issue really. It's just how ATI handles the whole HDTV and their multiple refresh rates which can be a pain in some games. Nvidia on the other hand, just hard locks everything to 60Hz and all is cool and dandy! So all in all, regarding drivers, one complaint from ATI and zero from Nvidia. Both are really great in that department really.

The reason why ATI is getting so many complaints, is because they were stupid enough, to throw in one more layer, called Microsoft Net Fuckwork. This alone has cause so many problems. Nvidia is more straightforward with their graphics card control, not relying to such shit. Still, in a properly configured system, no problems occur. What the hell, I have three PC, all of which had ATI cards+Catalyst before I got the GTX 460 for the middle one and all worked fine. I don't think that Catalyst likes me more than somebody esle, unless that Catalyst AI shit does more than it is credited for, lol!

psolord(11:53 PM CEST - Aug,12 2010 )
@gx-x

True, with the 5000 series, ATI hit the jackpot. They did most things right this time. Great idle power consumption, low noise, low load consumption. Just remember that the GTX 460 consumes 160W at stock, while a 5850 consumes 150W. So still ATI holds the best performance to watt ratio. Same goes for die area to performance ratio. GF104 is still bigger than Cypress and both 5870 and 5850 have a Cypress, but in 5870s case, it consumes 188W.

Anyway, all that is too technical maybe. I consider GF104 to be a great chip. Maybe the best Nvidia has ever made. If you see Stone Giant runnign on a GTX 460 and a 5850, you will jump off you chair. We are talking 100% more performance here. Still this is a Nvidia tailored demo, but still....!

As for the 5850 feeling cheap, you should really grab a fell off a GTX 460, lol! This is a flimsy card.

Here is my unboxing video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwqyI591Rgg

There is a visual comparison of the 5850 with the GTX 460 at the end. I think it is very obvious which one is the weaker assortment! :P

No problems though. The card is very solid. Only complaint is that its cooler blows all the hot air inside the case and that had as an immediate effect, that my CPU temps rose by 7C at load! :shock: The Thermaltake Armor case is not as good as advertised though. Too much plastic and not so great airflow.

gx-x(12:05 AM CEST - Aug,13 2010 )
well psolord, maybe you just don't notice little things that can bother some of us. For instance, since 10.4 drivers, using overdrive (enabling overclock) causes 2D clocks to be 400mhz core and default 3D value for memory (I think) instead of 157/300 (in case of my 5850). This results in 15C higher temps, higher fan RPM (noisier card) and more Watts being wasted.

that said, IQ has been degraded (cannot be fixed) for many games since 9.8 drivers (shimmering in games where previously there was none), unless you turn supersampling at 2X (if supported by game) IQ is similar to nVidia's "performance" preset, while it was better then "high q" before.

On a side note, 10.7a drivers kill performance in CF setups on BF-BC2 (you can read that in almost every forum), before 10.5 on certain levels game had artifacts and eventually crashed on HD5xxx series (I had that problem like many others) and there are various issues that are still not addressed by ATi from before 10.3 drivers.

Need I mention that annoying mouse cursor bug is back again for 5xxx series with 10.7 drivers? (I never had that bug, but some people have that bug again now)

I also had x1900xt, after that I tried some other Ati cards such as 2600xt, 2900xt but I went for nVidia 7600 instead (drivers, noise, temperatures), later I picked up 3850, I had incompatibility problems with mainboard that caused 2D artefacts, I went for 9600GT instead. When 4xxx series went out, I picked up 4850, I had powerplay issues, 2D artefacts, only solution was to lock clocks of the card manually so power play gets disabled. Problem solved, clocks constant 3D clocks or I had to change motherboard again, or manually switch profiles from 2D/3D, I just opted to pick up gtx260 instead.

So you see, some of us DID have problems :) gtx260 developed one dead DVI conector so they gave me 4890 instead. that worked fine (MSI cyclone) no problems, but I sold it and picked up 5850. And 5850 is really a good product! Except for minor driver issues. Oh, btw, CCC is piece of shit, thanks japanmd for makin RadeonPro, nvidia CP clone that works with profiles :D I feel like I am 10 years ahead of regular ATi users :P

psolord(11:16 AM CEST - Aug,13 2010 )
gx-x> well psolord, maybe you just don't notice little things that can bother some of us. For instance, since 10.4 drivers, using overdrive (enabling overclock) causes 2D clocks to be 400mhz core and default 3D value for memory (I think) instead of 157/300 (in case of my 5850). This results in 15C higher temps, higher fan RPM (noisier card) and more Watts being wasted.

that said, IQ has been degraded (cannot be fixed) for many games since 9.8 drivers (shimmering in games where previously there was none), unless you turn supersampling at 2X (if supported by game) IQ is similar to nVidia's "performance" preset, while it was better then "high q" before.

On a side note, 10.7a drivers kill performance in CF setups on BF-BC2 (you can read that in almost every forum), before 10.5 on certain levels game had artifacts and eventually crashed on HD5xxx series (I had that problem like many others) and there are various issues that are still not addressed by ATi from before 10.3 drivers.

Need I mention that annoying mouse cursor bug is back again for 5xxx series with 10.7 drivers? (I never had that bug, but some people have that bug again now)

I also had x1900xt, after that I tried some other Ati cards such as 2600xt, 2900xt but I went for nVidia 7600 instead (drivers, noise, temperatures), later I picked up 3850, I had incompatibility problems with mainboard that caused 2D artefacts, I went for 9600GT instead. When 4xxx series went out, I picked up 4850, I had powerplay issues, 2D artefacts, only solution was to lock clocks of the card manually so power play gets disabled. Problem solved, clocks constant 3D clocks or I had to change motherboard again, or manually switch profiles from 2D/3D, I just opted to pick up gtx260 instead.

So you see, some of us DID have problems :) gtx260 developed one dead DVI conector so they gave me 4890 instead. that worked fine (MSI cyclone) no problems, but I sold it and picked up 5850. And 5850 is really a good product! Except for minor driver issues. Oh, btw, CCC is piece of shit, thanks japanmd for makin RadeonPro, nvidia CP clone that works with profiles :D I feel like I am 10 years ahead of regular ATi users :P

Yes I am familiar with the Overdrive issue. I have seen it as well. There is also one more bug, in which when DXVA clocks are active, for example when you are watching a HD flash video in Youtube, or some HD movie with Kmplayer/MediaplayerClassic, the clock does not just to 3D, if you launch something 3D.

Honestly although these are indeed bugs, they don't bother me. I just use MSI Afterburner for the overclock and I am fine. Don't forget that Nvidia does not even offer Overclocking options any more, through their Nvidia Control Center! You need an extrernal program for that.

Regarding the image quality, I haven't seen any difference between the GTX 460 and the 5850. Both latest drivers. It all looks the same and keep in mind that I use a Philiphs Full HDTV with IPS panel capable of displaying way more than the 10bits per color that these cards can display, so any differences would be easier to spot. I am not saying there are no image differences, I just say that whatever they are, the don't matter and you certainly cannot claim a better experience from one card over the other.

As for BC2, I finished it a while back and worked fine. Yeah I understand that it will be frustrating for people that are in the multiplayer business and still play it.

I had powerplay issues with my first 4850. I just did some BIOS editing and presto. I am not so sure if that was ATI's fault though. ATI is not the one writing the BIOSes for the cards. This new 4850 I have now on my small PC, works fine whatsoever.

Obviously I am not saying that ATI is a Saint. Neither is Nvidia. Both have their ups and downs and while ATI has these minor but more frequent problems, Nvidia screws up bit time when they do. The huge Vista screw up, the bump gate problems and the 196.75, are the first to pop in mind.

In any case, both have progressed quite well so far, problems aside. I hope they both stay in business and bring great products like the 460 and the 5850. ;)

gx-x(04:05 PM CEST - Aug,13 2010 )
well, nVidia removed OC from CP looong time ago :) I used RivaTuner for that and I was always happy when I could use RT for ATi cards too! Not just because of OC.

As for IQ, as I said, it's just shimmering on horizontal textures (like when you enable trilinear optimizations). I think I was plating mass effect 2 at that time exit game, update driver, come back to game and...I start seeing shimmering. :/ My friend told me that he noticed the same thing in GTR.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I had DFI LP Dark T2RS Plus when I bought 5850, and 5850 didn't output anything to display :/ I put the card on friends computer with T2RS Turbo version of DFI and it worked fine. :S I managed to exchange the MB as defective and get Turbo version instead and it's all ok. Funny thing is - these things NEVER happened to me with nVidia.

ofc, both manufacturers have ups and downs and their bugs (that BSOD stack overflow with nVidia under Vista comes to mind). And I just hope next nVidia line won't include advanced features that no one needs, ones Fermi is packed full of. Those things just make more expensive products. I also hope that nVidia makes their "eyefinity" possible without SLi.

btw. I game on Dell 2209WA, IPS panel :P Since my first PVA I could never go back to TN panels

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