GTX460 "review"

[apoppin]

in most cases yes but if your cpu is at stock 2.4 then it will severally limit any gpu upgrade you make.

Not in most games and certainly NOT with any GTX 460. i am almost finished testing right now with GTX 480 using Phenom 955 II X4 at 2.6 GHz, 3.2 GHz and at 3.8 GHz and in SO many games there is little to no performance difference (even at the bottom end) - and we are talking a CPU range of 1,200Mhz (from 2.6 to 3.8 GHz) - as long as you are playing at 1080 resolution or higher and you max out the GPU.


Next testing is Phenom II X2 550 at the same 2.6, 3.2 and 3.8 Ghz. Then a repeat using HD 5870 and HD 5870 CrossFire. Of course, everything is getting compared to Core i7 at 2.6, 3.2 and 3.8 GHz - just like before when i used HD 4870-X3 TriFire .. very little has changed since last year.

Also, in most games, C2D or Phenom II is fine with GTX 480; you do not need Core-iAnything

Your conclusions about his C2D at 2.4 GHz and GTX 460 are not supported by anything factual.

==========

BtW, this is NOT a "review" You need to realize that this is NVIDIA's *leaked* internal testing from their "Reviewer's Guide to GTX 460" .. or at the least, Gigabyte's, which is usually based on nV testing - i.e. best case for GTX 460.

You are looking at a "Press Deck". If you are unsure, look at the slide that has "Selling Points":

* "Performance close to Generic HD 5830"

How do you feel about the power requirements?:

* "Minimum 450W System Power required with two 6-pin power connector"

 

[Russwinters]

The only game I can think of off the top of my head that currently really needs some CPU horsepower is WoW, because of it's ancient engine.

People are upgrading from 7800GTX to 5850s and seeing 2-5 fps increases because they are using 2.4ghz c2d and equivalents.


But for most games with new tech, they are designed to utilize the GPU much more then the CPU, for that reason it doesn't take alot of CPU power to run them well.

 

[toyota]

Not in most games and certainly NOT with any GTX 460. i am almost finished testing right now with GTX 480 using Phenom 955 II X4 at 2.6 GHz, 3.2 GHz and at 3.8 GHz and in SO many games there is little to no performance difference (even at the bottom end) - and we are talking a CPU range of 1,200Mhz (from 2.6 to 3.8 GHz) - as long as you are playing at 1080 resolution or higher and you max out the GPU.


Next testing is Phenom II X2 550 at the same 2.6, 3.2 and 3.8 Ghz. Then a repeat using HD 5870 and HD 5870 CrossFire. Of course, everything is getting compared to Core i7 at 2.6, 3.2 and 3.8 GHz - just like before when i used HD 4870-X3 TriFire .. very little has changed since last year.

Also, in most games, C2D or Phenom II is fine with GTX 480; you do not need Core-iAnything

Your conclusions about his C2D at 2.4 GHz and GTX 460 are not supported by anything factual.

his 2.4 E6600 would be like my E8500 at 2.1-2.2 and it will most certainly limit a gtx460 1gb from performing its "best". the gtx460 1gb will be much quicker than my gtx260 and I can already clearly see differences with my cpu at 2.2 than with it at stock. I am not saying most games wont be perfectly playable because they will but it will still clearly limit a gtx460 1gb and even gtx460 768mb. in fact there will be a few games where playability would even be affected but of course thats only a handful. if he can oc to around 3.0-3.2 then about 95% of the cpu limitation will be gone with a card like a gtx460 1gb in all but those few extremely cpu intensive games.

point is that in something like BC2 averaging more than 30-35fps would be almost impossible with an E6600 no matter what gpu he upgrades to. sure you can crank the AA at 1920 so as to make it seem the gpu is all that matters. all that will do is keep you at the same framerate so you are out of luck if you want MORE performance out of those cpu intensive games with the AA tuned down or off.

 

[Meghan54]

I am waiting for reviews from sites like Anandtech, Tech Report etc for a decent GeForce GTX 460 review.

Quoted for truth.

So far, the only thing posted is a press kit release with "benchmarks" done back near the end of June by Gigabyte.....or nvidia. Certainly no benches done by anyone independent.

Shall wait for testing by independent testers before determining if it has any viability.

 

[bryanW1995]

in most cases yes but if your cpu is at stock 2.4 then it will severally limit any gpu upgrade you make.

They should post warnings on all dual core intel cpus releases since the original c2d's came out: "Warning, if you do not achieve a minimum 33% overclock on this cpu then you must check your man card at door"

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally Posted by apoppin
Not in most games and certainly NOT with any GTX 460. i am almost finished testing right now with GTX 480 using Phenom 955 II X4 at 2.6 GHz, 3.2 GHz and at 3.8 GHz and in SO many games there is little to no performance difference (even at the bottom end) - and we are talking a CPU range of 1,200Mhz (from 2.6 to 3.8 GHz) - as long as you are playing at 1080 resolution or higher and you max out the GPU.


Next testing is Phenom II X2 550 at the same 2.6, 3.2 and 3.8 Ghz. Then a repeat using HD 5870 and HD 5870 CrossFire. Of course, everything is getting compared to Core i7 at 2.6, 3.2 and 3.8 GHz - just like before when i used HD 4870-X3 TriFire .. very little has changed since last year.

Also, in most games, C2D or Phenom II is fine with GTX 480; you do not need Core-iAnything

Your conclusions about his C2D at 2.4 GHz and GTX 460 are not supported by anything factual.

his 2.4 E6600 would be like my E8500 at 2.1-2.2 and it will most certainly limit a gtx460 1gb from performing its "best". the gtx460 1gb will be much quicker than my gtx260 and I can already clearly see differences with my cpu at 2.2 than with it at stock. I am not saying most games wont be perfectly playable because they will but it will still clearly limit a gtx460 1gb and even gtx460 768mb. in fact there will be a few games where playability would even be affected but of course thats only a handful. if he can oc to around 3.0-3.2 then about 95% of the cpu limitation will be gone with a card like a gtx460 1gb in all but those extremely cpu intensive games.

Why do you always insist on arguing with professionals? When you see kobe do you lecture him about hard work? When you see warren buffet do you criticize his investing technique? Do you tell Frenchmen that they aren't running away properly??? /rant

 

[evolucion8]

(I know that many people think that the 5000 series shaders are weaker vs 4000 series shaders, but please bear in mind that 5000 series has better IQ quality and that probably costs that performance amount - read BFG10K articles on AF/AA of 5000 series).

I think less ROPs is what kills 5830 performance.

But it's indeed weaker, look at the Radeon HD 4550 vs HD 5450 review. The HD 4550 runs 50MHz slower, but shares every spec identical to the HD 5450, and yet, the HD 4550 outperforms it by a noticeable margin. Look at the Anandtech's HD 5450 review. I think that the nVidia GTX 4x0 series has the same issue. Seeing an Allienbabeltech review, I saw the GTX 275 being on par or slighly slower quite often compared to the GTX 465, and the GTX 465 has more of everything except TMU's. Odd. I hope we don't reach a wall in future architectures, having more of everything and less efficiency compared to previous solutions

Why do you always insist on arguing with professionals? When you see kobe do you lecture him about hard work? When you see warren buffet do you criticize his investing technique? Do you tell Frenchmen that they aren't running away properly??? /rant

Yeah, is sore to my eyes. I think that Intel is paying him, is a miracle that he hasn't said to me that I need to Core i7 myself..., you get cold, get an i7, if you loose your job, get an i7, if your gf dumps you, get an i7, if your neighbor runs over your dog, buy him an i7!!! Happyness in life is priceless, for everything else, there's the Core i7!!!

 

[toyota]

They should post warnings on all dual core intel cpus releases since the original c2d's came out: "Warning, if you do not achieve a minimum 33% overclock on this cpu then you must check your man card at door"

he has a 9800gtx and I was referring to him making a huge gpu upgrade. every game is different but yes a stock e6600 would most certainly limit a way faster card. of course that doesnt mean it wont be faster than the 9800gtx because it will. it certainly wont come close to be fully utilized in the more cpu intensive games though. all I suggested was a mild oc on the E6600 which would make perfect sense for pushing a much faster gpu.

 

[toyota]

Why do you always insist on arguing with professionals? When you see kobe do you lecture him about hard work? When you see warren buffet do you criticize his investing technique? Do you tell Frenchmen that they aren't running away properly??? /rant

I dont give a damn what he does or who he is because that doesnt change what I have seen with my own eyes and at 1920x1080 no less. I certainly know from my OWN experience what a Core 2 can and cant do when used with a gtx260 and gtx470 at various speeds. a stock E6600 would most certainly keep a high end card from performing near its potential especially in the more cpu intensive games. but again a simple and mild oc on that E6600 would eliminate most of that. its not like I told the guy with the E6600 to go buy a faster cpu like an i7 or anything like that.

 

[ArchAngel777]

My 8400GS was CPU limited with my Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz. It took my Core i7 @ 4.2Ghz to really increase the frame rate. I run my games in Windowed mode at 48x28 resolution. I do run 4X AA though and I thought for sure that 4x AA would shift the bottleneck to the GPU. Turns out that pushing 1.3 kilopixels still results in a CPU limitation.

 

[toyota]

My 8400GS was CPU limited with my Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz. It took my Core i7 @ 4.2Ghz to really increase the frame rate. I run my games in Windowed mode at 48x28 resolution. I do run 4X AA though and I thought for sure that 4x AA would shift the bottleneck to the GPU. Turns out that pushing 1.3 kilopixels still results in a CPU limitation.

poor attempt at humor

 

[GaiaHunter]

But it's indeed weaker, look at the Radeon HD 4550 vs HD 5450 review. The HD 4550 runs 50MHz slower, but shares every spec identical to the HD 5450, and yet, the HD 4550 outperforms it by a noticeable margin. Look at the Anandtech's HD 5450 review. I think that the nVidia GTX 4x0 series has the same issue. Seeing an Allienbabeltech review, I saw the GTX 275 being on par or slighly slower quite often compared to the GTX 465, and the GTX 465 has more of everything except TMU's. Odd. I hope we don't reach a wall in future architectures, having more of everything and less efficiency compared to previous solutions

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=12648


Image quality - AF of the 5000 series is superior so does more work. At same specs it is natural that is slower and I believe Anand reviews use AF by default. Additionally certain calculations related to it were moved to the shaders.

 

[3DVagabond]

The 5830 compares favorably with the GTX-275 (HD 4890), In this "review" though the GTX-275 slaps the HD 5830 around. I'm not taking this too seriously.

 

[dookulooku]

The 5830 compares favorably with the GTX-275 (HD 4890), In this "review" though the GTX-275 slaps the HD 5830 around. I'm not taking this too seriously.

Did you even check the details? When you bench at 8xAA, obviously the 5830 is going to be slapped around silly. Now the big question is whether 16 ROPs or a 192 bit memory interface is going to be a bigger bottleneck -- which card will see a bigger boost in performance when going from 8xAA to 4xAA, which is what's typically used in reviews.

 

[BFG10K]

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=12648

Image quality - AF of the 5000 series is superior so does more work.

Like I said in the article, it filters more angles, but it also underfilters surfaces more, which leads to visible detail transitions in-game.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Like I said in the article, it filters more angles, but it also underfilters surfaces more, which leads to visible detail transitions in-game.

So, you reckon it does more work or less work?

 

[evolucion8]

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=12648


Image quality - AF of the 5000 series is superior so does more work. At same specs it is natural that is slower and I believe Anand reviews use AF by default. Additionally certain calculations related to it were moved to the shaders.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2931/15

"Moving away from the 5450 for a moment, besides the Radeon HD 5770 this is the only other card in the 5000-series that is directly similar to a 4000-series card. In fact it’s the most similar, being virtually identical to the 4550 in terms of functional units and memory speeds. With this card we can finally pin down something we couldn’t quite do with the 5770: clock-for-clock, the 5000-series is slower than the 4000-series.

This is especially evident on the 5450, where the 5450 has a 50MHz core speed advantage over the 4550, and yet with everything else being held equal it is still losing to the 4550 by upwards of 10%. This seems to the worst in shader-heavy games, which leads us to believe that actual cause is that the move from DX10.1 shader hardware on the 4000-series to DX11 shader hardware on the 5000 series. Or in other words, the shaders in particular seem to be what’s slower.

AMD made several changes here, including adding features for DX11 and rearranging the caching system for GPGPU use. We aren’t sure whether the slowdown is a hardware issue, or if it’s the shader compiler being unable to fully take advantage of the new hardware. It’s something that’s going to bear keeping an eye on in future driver revisions."

The HD 5x00 series has even more texturing and filtering units, so it isn't an excuse of being slower because of the higher quality anisotropic filtering, which isn't much better than previous generation of Radeons, due to the higher transitions (Like BFG said). Besides of the Custom Filters Anti Aliasing resolve (Which also used Shaders on previous generations), the only thing moved to the shaders was the Interpolators, which were totally eliminated, the HD 48x0 series leaned toward being Interpolator limited in many scenarios, hence couldn't be able to reach it's maximum TMU performance. Moving the interpolator to shader hardware, and having twice the stream processor means that the HD 5x00 is able to reach much closer to its theorical pixel/texel fillrate and filtering.

 

[bryanW1995]

he has a 9800gtx and I was referring to him making a huge gpu upgrade. every game is different but yes a stock e6600 would most certainly limit a way faster card. of course that doesnt mean it wont be faster than the 9800gtx because it will. it certainly wont come close to be fully utilized in the more cpu intensive games though. all I suggested was a mild oc on the E6600 which would make perfect sense for pushing a much faster gpu.

I was agreeing with you on this point. overclocking a c2d ~ 30% is literally the click of one or buttons in your bios, and many will do closer to 50% with no effort at all.

 

[bryanW1995]

I dont give a damn what he does or who he is because that doesnt change what I have seen with my own eyes and at 1920x1080 no less. I certainly know from my OWN experience what a Core 2 can and cant do when used with a gtx260 and gtx470 at various speeds. a stock E6600 would most certainly keep a high end card from performing near its potential especially in the more cpu intensive games. but again a simple and mild oc on that E6600 would eliminate most of that. its not like I told the guy with the E6600 to go buy a faster cpu like an i7 or anything like that.

It depends on how you configure the card. As BFG has stated on more occasions than I can count, a high end gpu paired with a low/middle cpu is perfectly fine when you turn the eye candy up in the vast majority of games. if you want 100 fps then that might not be the case, but shooting for 30-40 fps with the highest quality settings possible makes the gpu rather the cpu the bottleneck. I, personally, like games that make more use of the cpu (dragon age, civ 4 are my current flavors of the month), so I have an overclocked i7. But I recognize that I'm in a clear minority in this instance.

 

[RussianSensation]

so I have an overclocked i7.

Time to upgrade your sig!

 

[extra]

The only game I can think of off the top of my head that currently really needs some CPU horsepower is WoW, because of it's ancient engine.

People are upgrading from 7800GTX to 5850s and seeing 2-5 fps increases because they are using 2.4ghz c2d and equivalents.


But for most games with new tech, they are designed to utilize the GPU much more then the CPU, for that reason it doesn't take alot of CPU power to run them well.

Wow doesn't really need much CPU horsepower. Core2Duo is just fine. It'll play on a P4 decently. You could play WoW on an Atom if you turned settings down.

Now, Everquest2 needs CPU power. Badly. The difference between 3.8ghz and 4.4ghz on a core i7 is very noticeable at times. It's poorly programmed and a half, lol.

 

[bryanW1995]

Time to upgrade your sig!

doh! in my defense, I still have the x3350, it's just across the room now, quietly crunching seti and playing lots of diego and dora. And I agree with anand that an ssd made a hell of a lot more difference to my overall computer performance than the new cpu.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I am getting tired of hearing this statement. It isn't like the 460 is a new arch like when the 480 launched. This is based on the same platform, so drivers really are not going to do anything at all.

-Sure they will, the GF104 core that this card is based off on is not simply a GF100 core cut down, but a redesigned mainstream part that lacks much of the HPC excesses of the GF100 cards. Current drivers undoubtedly leverage some of those HPC components to improve gaming performance, and are best suited for GF100 cores.

 

[acx]

http://www.coolaler.com/showthread.php?t=242673

 

[NoSoup4You]

The argument for Core i7 over C2D isn't in the framerates but in how smooth the gameplay is on a quad core compared to a dual. Same argument could be made for a Q9550 over a C2D. My Core i7 is silky smooth even though it runs most games at a similar framerate that my old E8400 @3.6Ghz did. Some games do run noticeably faster on the quad (GTA4, Bad Company 2) but it's how buttery smooth the gameplay feels that makes the difference noticeable. My old C2D ran everything at great framerates (it was a beast!) but there was occasional "hitching" that I wasn't even aware of until I had a taste of what gaming on a quad is like.

I will say this, however - upgrading from my very old Socket 939 X2 4400+ @2.4Ghz to the E8400 @3.6Ghz had MONSTER improvements all across the board. And I also saw improvements in Crysis when overclocking from stock on the E8400. Just saying...