NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 590: Duking It Out For The Single Card King
by Ryan Smith on March 24, 2011 9:00 AM ESTBattleForge
Up next is BattleForge, Electronic Arts’ free to play online RTS. As far as RTSes go this game can be quite demanding, and this is without the game’s DX11 features.
Most of the time BattleForge is a balanced game, and this situation proves it nicely with the GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990 returning the exact same score of 99.6fps at 2560. Against the GTX 570 SLI however there’s nearly a 10% gap, almost perfectly matching the difference in shading performance between the two setups.
Unusually—and had we not run this multiple times we would not have believed it—our overclocked GTX 590 underperforms the EVGA GTX 590 with its mild factory overclock. This is one of the reasons we believe we’re blindly triggering OCP, as even if Battleforge were largely memory bandwidth limited our overclock still has a nearly 5% increase in memory bandwidth. The fact that scores are going down means something is amiss.
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BreadFan - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
Would this card be better for the P67 platform vs GTX 580's in sli considering you won't get full 16x going the sli route?Nfarce - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
The 16x vs. 8x issue has been beaten to death for years. Long story short, it's not a measurable difference at or below 1920x1080 resolutions and only barely a difference above that.BreadFan - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
Thanks man. Already have one evga 580. Only reason I was considering was for the step up program evga offers (590 for around $200). I have till first part of June to think about it but am leaning towards adding another 580 once the price comes down in a year or two.wellortech - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
You won't get 16x going the CF route either.....although I agree that it doesn't really matter.softdrinkviking - Sunday, March 27, 2011 - link
i hope your screen name is from the budgie song!softdrinkviking - Sunday, March 27, 2011 - link
that comment was to breadfan.7Enigma - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
Comon guys, I would have thought you could have at least had the 6990 and the 590 data points for Crysis 2. Perhaps a short video as well with the new game? :)Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
It's unlikely we'll be using Crysis 2 in its current state, but that could always change.However if we were to use it, it won't be until the next benchmark refresh.
YouGotServed - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
Crysis: Warhead will always be the benchmark. Crysis 2 isn't nearly as demanding. It's been dumbed down for consoles, in case you haven't heard. There are no advanced settings available to you through the normal game menu. You have to tweak the CFG file to do so.I thought like you, originally. I was thinking: Crysis 2 is gonna set a new bar for performance. But in reality, it's not even close to the original in terms of detail level.
mmsmsy - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
I know I can be annoying, but I checked it myself and the built in benchmark in Civ V really favours nVidia cards. In the real world scenario the situation is almost upside down. I got a reply from one of the reviewers last time that it provides quite accurate scores, but I thought that just for the heck of it you'd try and see for yourself that it doesn't at all. I know it's just one game and that benchmarking is a slow work, but in order to keep up the good work you're doing you should at least use the advice and confront it with the reality to stay objective and provide the most accurate scores that really mean sth. I don't mean to undermine you, because I find your articles to be mostly accurate and you're doing a great job. Just use the advice to make this site even better. A lot of writing for a comment, but this time maybe you will see what I'm trying to do.