Mass Effect 2

Electronic Arts’ space-faring RPG is our Unreal Engine 3 game. While it doesn’t have a built in benchmark, it does let us force anti-aliasing through driver control panels, giving us a better idea of UE3’s performance at higher quality settings. Since we can’t use a recording/benchmark in ME2, we use FRAPS to record a short run.

Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2 ends up being another game with a lot of stratification. Working our way from the top the 1GB GTX 460 has a clear advantage over the 768MB GTX 460 even with an overclock, giving it a 15% lead at stock clock speeds. Meanwhile the 768MB GTX 460 has a 16% lead over its equally priced competitor, the 5830. In spite of the 5830 taking a sizable loss here though, the 5850 keeps a  7% lead over the closest GTX 460, while the GTX 465 is at parity with the 768MB GTX 460.

Curiously, we’re still seeing something we saw with the GTX 465 at its launch: the stellar performance of the GTX 285. Even with the 1GB GTX 460’s better performance over the GTX 465, it still loses to the GTX 285.

DIRT 2 Wolfenstein
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  • Howard - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    What?
  • Zok - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    Excellent writeup! I really enjoyed you going into depth on the architectural changes. I couldn't agree more that it's superb to see NVIDIA get back into the efficiency game - whether it be performance/price or performance/watt (and, by extension, temperature). Here's to hoping that AMD was sitting on something to combat this!

    P.S. Small typo: For everything but the high-end, this year is a feature yet and not a performance year.
  • thekimbobjones - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    Let the price war begin.
  • homerdog - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    "Here we use the DX11 renderer and turn on self shadowing ambient occlusion (SSAO) to its highest setting, which uses a DX11 ComputeShader."

    I don't think that's what SSAO stands for. Sorry for the nitpick.
  • chizow - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    Yeah I believe the proper term is Screen Space Ambient Occlusion but self shadowing is how its often explained to give an idea of what it is.
  • gentlearc - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    The graphs shown are leaving out too many new derivatives of cards, making is good for contrasting results, but poor for consistent data comparison. Conveniently left out are many cards in one graph that are in another. I'm disappointed in your presentation and find you've concentrated too much on the presentation of your article.
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    Out of curiosity, what's not in our graphs that you'd like to see? At 2560 we run a limited number of cards because most cards are too slow to post a passable framerate, otherwise at 1920 and 1680 we have the complete 5700/5800/5900 series, GTX 400 series, GTX 200 series, and Radeon 4800 series, along with a 3870 and 8800GT. Is there something else you would like?
  • SpaceRanger - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    What I'd like to see is the ATI card that is in direct competition with this highlighted as well. Having to search for the 5830 or 5850 out of all those bars turned me off.
  • estaffer - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    need some cheese with your whine?
  • SpaceRanger - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    Sure.. a good Gruyère please...

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