Published in Reviews

Gainward GTX 470 tested

by on24 May 2010

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Batman Arkham Asylum

Batman Arkham Asylum is one of the games that features PhysX effects, but if you’re playing it on one of the Radeon cards, you’ll have to turn them off.

Another important thing to note is that switching from 1xAA to 4xAA causes a higher performance hit on the HD 5870 than on the GTX 400 cards. The right answer to the question of “why is that?” has not yet been found, but has turned into a rather hot discussion subject.

“Quote from AMD:  In this game, Nvidia has an in-game option for AA, whereas, gamers using ATI Graphics Cards are required to force AA on in the Catalyst Control Center. The advantage of in-game AA is that the engine can run AA selectively on scenes whereas Forced AA in CCC is required to use brute force to apply AA on every scene and object, requiring much more work.”

“Quote from Nvidia: “We are proud of the work we do in The Way It's Meant to be Played. We work hard to deliver kickass, game-changing features in PC games like PhysX, AA, and 3D Vision for games like Batman. If AMD wants to deliver innovation for PC games then we encourage them to roll up their sleeves and do the same. NVIDIA Developer Relations”

Batman results show that AMD doesn’t quite fare great with antialiasing, but it gets better without it. 

At 1920x1200 and no antialiasing, the difference is only 4.7%, but the GTX 480 makes it much higher after we turned 4xAA on – it beats the HD 5870 by as much as 45.9%. The difference at 2560x1600 with no antialiasing is once again minimal; only 2.8%. However, after turning on 4xAA, the gap extends to 50%.

At 2560x1600 in Batman Arkham Asylum sees the HD 5870 perform as much as 82.8% slower after applying 4xAA, while the GTX 480 performance drops by 25.3%. The same scenario results in the GTX 470 running 27.5% slower, which is similar to the GTX 480.

Turning on 4xAA antialiasing at 1920x1200 results in the GTX 480 performing 23.1% slower. Performance drops by 26.3% when you turn on the 4xAA antialiasing at 1920x1200 resolution with the GTX 470. On the other hand, the performance of the HD 5870 drops by as much as 71.4% with same settings. These results clearly show that antialiasing causes higher drops in performance on AMD HD 5870 card.

Not much to complain about Radeon HD 5870’s performance in Batman as it scores almost 60fps at 2560x1600 and 4xAA. It’s a pity that PhysX is intended only for Geforce cards.

The GTX 470 ends up slower than the HD 5870 at resolutions with no antialiasing by 16.6% and 20.5%, respectively. Upon turning on 4xAA on, the situation changes in the GTX 470’s favor. It manages a nice comeback and beats the HD 5870 by 16.3% at 1920x1200 and 19% at 2560x1600.

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At 1920x1200, the GTX 480’s PhysX capabilities are 26.6% better than the GTX 470’s. At 2560x1600, the GTX 480 outruns its little brother by 22.7%.

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Last modified on 14 June 2010
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