DIRT 2, Mass Effect 2, Wolfenstein, & Compute Performance

With DIRT 2 our benchmarks once again swing back in favor of NVIDIA. At 1920 the GTX 560-448 is 14% of the 6970, never mind the 6950. The advantage over the GTX 560 Ti is even greater, with the GTX 560-448 coming in at nearly 20% faster. Throw on Zotac’s overclock and now the GTX 560-448 is as fast as the GTX 570. If you still don’t believe the GTX 560-448 is really a slower GTX 570, then this should be rather convincing proof.

And we swing back the other way with Mass Effect 2. The GTX 560-448 falls short of the 6950 by 5%, and compared to the GTX 560 Ti it only leads by 6%, highlighting the fact that GF110 and GF104 can be very different architectures at times. Furthermore as Mass Effect 2 responds well to memory bandwidth, even with Zotac’s overclock the GTX 560-448 still comes up a bit short of the GTX 570. This is one of the few cases where the GTX 570 has a distinct benefit even with its limited advantage on paper.

On our final game, the OpenGL based Wolfenstein, AMD and NVIDIA once more swap places with the 6950 squeaking out a small lead over the GTX 560-448. As with other cases where the GTX 560-448 fails to gain on AMD’s cards, it also fails to differentiate itself much from the GTX 560 Ti, this time only taking a meager 4% lead.

Our final performance benchmark is a quick look at compute performance using the Civilization V texture decompression test. In spite of this not benefiting from NVIDIA’s multithreading optimizations, NVIDIA’s drivers and architecture still give the GTX 560-448 a solid lead over AMD’s cards. The benefit over the GTX 560 Ti is also more pronounced at 16%. Interestingly in spite of the GTX 570’s compute performance advantage on paper, the GTX 560-448 can tie it at stock clocks and overtake it with Zotac’s overclock, showcasing that this benchmark isn’t exclusively tied to compute performance.

HAWX, Civ V, Battlefield BC2, & STALKER Power, Temperature, & Noise
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  • Marlin1975 - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link

    hahahha.... spoken like a true nvidia employee/spokesman/shill.
  • Mathieu Bourgie - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link

    "Then the issue of microstutter arises which barely affects nVidia hardware, for what can only be presumed to be a ATI driver problem."

    That's rubbish, Tech Report and Tom's Hardware articles covering micro-stuttering clearly proved that micro-stuttering is an issue on both AMD and Nvidia video cards.

    While I'll agree that on average, Nvidia drivers tend to be less problematic, the quality of AMD drivers has improved over the years, aren't as problematic as they used to be and aren't nearly as far behind Nvidia drivers as you paint it.
  • greylica - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link

    It's another card based on Ferm(ented) hardware. I will pass by for all of GTX 4XX and 5XX waiting for cards that do respect their own specifications in OpenGL without fails like the well known Nvidia problem about GLReadPixels...
  • Alka - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link

    Hey, I've seen you're picture before Mathieu. Aren't you the guy who steals the Tom's Hardware best graphics cards for the month format and content? You pass it off as your own on your personal blog, right?
  • Mathieu Bourgie - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link

    Stealing from their content?

    If you paid attention to the content of my article and compared it to the content of Tom's Hardware article, you'd notice that my recommendations tend to be quite different from theirs and that they are backed by factual performance numbers coming from various sources, including AnandTech. I also tend to publish my monthly updates before Tom's Hardware do.

    Stealing "their" format?

    It's like saying that PC makers are copying Apple ideas because "Apple did it first", when Apple didn't do it first. Apple took an existing idea and improved on it and then when some PC makers decided to have their take on the idea, Apple fanboys are crying that PC makers are copying "Apple's idea".

    In the past, many other websites, who write about various topics, did "value comparison" articles and did so before Tom's Hardware did theirs. Guess what? Such "value comparison" articles existed before the Internet was mainstream.

    The concept that I'm stealing "their" format is as ridiculous as someone saying that website B, who did a review on the latest CPUs, stole website A format because website A were the first to review the latest CPUs.
  • Alka - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link

    Dude, you've directly copied and pasted sections of their article without giving credit. That's beyond your own take on a value comparison.

    Do you really want me to post specific examples of your plagiarism?
  • Mathieu Bourgie - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link

    Alka,

    While I wouldn't be surprised that our articles share some similarities, including similar recommendations, which is to be expected since our articles cover the same products available on the market, accusing me of directly copying and pasting sections of their article without giving credit is taking your comment to a whole other level of disrespect and makes me wonder what's your goal here, if not only trolling...

    "Do you really want me to post specific examples of your plagiarism? "
    While I'd have no problem listening to you and perhaps making some correction(s) to my article if it possibly looks like someone may think that I could have copied content from Tom's Hardware article, I would rather not do this over this comments section at AnandTech, out of respect for Ryan, Anand and the rest of AnandTech's team, whose articles I truly enjoy and wouldn't want to add a bunch of unrelated comments to their great articles.

    I invite you to contact me via:
    - The contact form on my website
    - Facebook
    - Twitter
    - Google my name
    - Etc.

    You have plenty of ways to reach me if you want to further discuss this, without filling this comment section with comments unrelated to this article and without bothering everyone else here.

    Thanks,
    Mathieu
  • Alka - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link

    No point, you've clearly convinced yourself that shameless plagiarism is acceptable without giving proper credit.
  • JonnyDough - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link

    Irregardless of any fanboyism here, or whether or not you steal text,

    "That's rubbish, Tech Report and Tom's Hardware articles covering micro-stuttering clearly proved that micro-stuttering is an issue on both AMD and Nvidia video cards."

    That is truth.
  • formulav8 - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - link

    One of the most useless and fannish posts on here.

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