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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  • ericore - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link

    Its fine that they need to make money; but they insult my intellegence which is why I am putting them down.
    There is no justification for buying this reviewed card; any statement in contradiction to this is a folly.
    It is true that Nvidia has superior drivers, and superior professional support, and superior architecture for professionals.
    But most people fall out of this branch, and therefore AMD is the better contender for shear gaming performance and Eye Infinity far superior
    than what Nvidia offers. AMD's control panel, can use some work; you're right about that, the total garbage aspect reveals in fact that you are
    an Nvidia fanboy; you betrayed yourself. I don't care for the microstutter argument. As for the AMD has less features argument, it is absolute garbage; I gagged at your narrow-mindedness as you seem only able to present the professional perspective rather than being objective. AMD in fact, for consumers offers all relevant features that Nvidia offers plus more, minus 3D which is still irrelivant at this point; we (the ppl) don't have 3D TVs. Cuda is superior, but AMD can still rape ( you heard me right ) Nvidia in software like Elcomsoft Wireless Auditor, conversely ditto for Nvidia regarding video rendering. Ha you Nvidia fanboy, blessing and protecting each feature Nvidia has to offer; isn't that cute. Power users lol, let's get one thing straight power users does not mean Professional; only professional means that. Power Users just means users who can and do use wide variety of software, can extend beyond this software, and has knowledge of programming; check mark to all, I have. You naughty Nvidia fanboy.
  • cactusdog - Monday, December 5, 2011 - link

    Its funny when people complain about AMD drivers when its obvious they have not used them, or are very new to them.

    CCC isnt " Ad ridden" The AMD home page can be completely disabled (unticked) to not show any web content. Only someone who is unfamiliar with AMD software would not know that.

    CCC has built in overclocking control and manual fan control and all the settings one would need. If you cant cope with them you can set CCC to Basic mode.

    The only people that complain about AMD drivers are 99% of the time first time users and have little to no experience with it.

    Crossfire/SLI is a different matter and both companies have issues. I've been recommending against a multi-gpu setup for years. If you choose a multi-gpu setup be prepared for driver issues, stuttering, waiting for profiles, and some games that will never have multi-gpu support.

    I've used both and never had driver issues with either, but I prefer AMD image quality to Nvidia. Thats the most important thing for me. I dont use anything that can make use of Cuda, and physx is mostly a marketing ploy.
  • HStanford1 - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link

    I've got two 460's and never had to bother with botched drivers or microstuttering.
    Maybe I'm just lucky, but I dread the day it happens
  • bill4 - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link

    There's a lot to like about your reviews, but why the same old dated games you've been benchmarking forever? Why no BF3, Crysis 2, Witcher 2, etc benchmarks? EG, the latest and greatest most demanding games? Heck you guys even still use Hawx, I have NO idea why that game has a sequel and is 500 years old! I dont care what these video cards do on old games where they get 140 FPS, which I see in so many reviews! I look at the results in the most demanding games.

    Well the reason you mentioned in one review for using Hawx is, "it's the only flight game with a built in benchmark" or something like that. As if you just want to press a "benchmark" button and not do any actual work. Seems lazy, just use fraps or something for a bench and update your games, please!
  • Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link

    We update our benchmark suite every 6-12 months as necessary. As you've noted the current suite is rather long in the tooth and we'll be updating the benchmark suite next month (December) when we switch the testbed to SNB-E. In the meantime we're using the current suite to keep the tests consistent for this generation of cards.
  • Alexo - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link

    Switching to SNB-E will be a disservice to most of your readers (which don't use that platform) as it will give skewed results.
  • carage - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link

    Does anyone know how this card handles HDMI Audio Bitstreaming?
    I assume it would inherit the same half-baked feature set as the old 570.
    So HTPC users should steer away unless proven otherwise.
  • Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link

    As HDMI audio bitstreaming is a function of the GPU (rather than drivers or otherwise), it will be the same as GTX 570/580.
  • Per Hansson - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link

    carage: what's wrong with it on the 570 & 580? (I own neither)
  • jweller - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link

    How is $280 considered "budget"?

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