Wow, a single 480 is faster than a 5970 in metro 2033, incredible!
Seems in most games, a GTS 250 or 4870 will still be ok. But then, where's the fun in just ok
THe problem being that Metro is a tech demo/launch Nvidia title/programmed to make AMD look as bad as possible.
If it was a half decent game and Tess/DOF improved IQ that would be one thing, but its an incredibly generic, and short game(though very pretty without tess/dof) but the two major features that differentiate performance between the two brands of cards, are IQ sucking, performance killing awful attempts at killing performance.
You'd be completely barmy owning 4x480gtx's or 2x5970's to enable DOF, at all, it just reduces IQ horribly, is completely unreleastic and offers no benefit, except sucking less badly on Nvidia hardware, but thats what it seems to have been added for. I would actually enable tesselation on both those setups because why not, will still run plenty fast on either. However on a single 480gtx/5870 I wouldn't enable tesselation on EITHER because the performance drop for IQ you really won't spot without pausing, screen shotting and zooming in, isn't worth the drop on the Nvidia or AMD cards.
Unfortunately, also Tom's results, as shown, don't tie in with other sites, even then when using incorrect and dodgey Metro and Crysis results, which other sites have managed to get those settings to work without issue, the 480gtx beats it incredibly marginally, at a specific resolution with specific prices.
Use UK prices, and the 480gtx value goes out the window, use proper results for that resolution in the two flawed games, and the value goes out the window, use a resolution more people would use(1920x1200 is still 10,000 more popular than 2560x1600) and value goes out the window.
But yes in that very unique situation, with broken settings causing bad results on AMD for no reason, the 480gtx becomes slightly less horrifically useless, though you're still required to pay through the teeth to get said "value" .
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