Hmm... GTX480 and unheavenly performance?

strumpusplunket · 5 Feb 2011 at 08:37

Think my new GTX480 is performing below where it should be according what it posts in the Heaven 2.1 benchmark (the only benchmark I'm currently using to compare cards).

My GTX460 @ 885MHz core posted scores of: min 23.9; ave 35.2; max 67.0; score 887.

My new GTX480 gets at 760MHz core: min 29.0; ave 44.2; max 82.1; score 1114
And at 825MHz core (current): min 30.6; ave 46.7; max 86.3; socre 1177.

So this is an increase of 25% at 760 core and 32% at 825 core.

Isn't this a little low? Should the 480 outperform the 460 by around 50%?

And according to Overclockersclub's* benchmarking, I should be seeing 35-37 average at my settings for the 460 stock-OC (about right), and for the 480 I should be getting... 53 at stock and 60 or more at my overclock!

Now that's a big under-performance it seems like I'm getting.

Any explanations? Any solutions?

* I presume I can link them. They don't seem to sell hardware and they're an American site, I believe?

Michaeljcox24 · 5 Feb 2011 at 09:08

I suppose it all depends what resolution and settings you run Heaven at really. However, you may be onto something because I just ran heaven on my machine, at the same clock speed as you quoted, and final score is 1319

And mine being the next card down from yours (but not sure of your settings), you may well have a point.

I've tried uploading screen to image shack but can never get it to work for some reason.

strumpusplunket · 5 Feb 2011 at 09:13

I'm running at 1680x1050, 4xAA, 16xAF, tesselation normal, everything else at default.

I didn't do any driver changes when changes from my 460. Just took it out and slotted the 480 in. That shouldn't make any difference, though, right, with them both being nvidia 4xx series cards? It detected the 480 and asked for a restart as you'd expect.

Bit concerned here. For 30% more performance, I've got a 50% more expensive card and loads more power draw, heat and noise compared to my 460...

straxusii · 5 Feb 2011 at 09:16

I think it is the res, at higher res the 480 will start to pull away more. But to be honest 30% faster than a 460 is not to be sniffed at (apart from personally I wouldnt put up with the extra noise I suspect)

Michaeljcox24 · 5 Feb 2011 at 09:16

Funny you should say that. I posted about this a while back, because I had a big performance increase when I went to the lastest (266.58)

You should try it.

Michaeljcox24 · 5 Feb 2011 at 09:19

strumpusplunket said:
I'm running at 1680x1050, 4xAA, 16xAF, tesselation normal, everything else at default.

I didn't do any driver changes when changes from my 460. Just took it out and slotted the 480 in. That shouldn't make any difference, though, right, with them both being nvidia 4xx series cards? It detected the 480 and asked for a restart as you'd expect.

Bit concerned here. For 30% more performance, I've got a 50% more expensive card and loads more power draw, heat and noise compared to my 460...

Ok I will run at those settings and see what i get. I had AA on 2 and AF on 2

strumpusplunket · 5 Feb 2011 at 09:24

straxusii said:
I think it is the res, at higher res the 480 will start to pull away more. But to be honest 30% faster than a 460 is not to be sniffed at (apart from personally I wouldnt put up with the extra noise I suspect)

Well, sure, 30% extra performance is pretty good.

But, here they're posting results of 53fps at stock and 60 at 804MHz core at the same settings I used. So my 46.7fps at 825MHz core looks pretty puny!

Michaeljcox24 said:
Funny you should say that. I posted about this a while back, because I had a big performance increase when I went to the lastest (266.58)

You should try it.

Yeah, I know that the latest drivers give a big boost in Heaven specifically, but I'm not really just after the best Heaven score I can get and I'm worried about the idle fan speeds other have been getting with newer drivers. What I am concerned about is performance compared firstly to my 460 and secondly to the results from OCClub (who will be using older drivers because it's not a brand new review)...

Michaeljcox24 · 5 Feb 2011 at 09:27

Ok...

Just ran @ 1650 with 4AA and 16AF and final score was 1145, does that help?

SpiritOfTheAge · 5 Feb 2011 at 09:27

strumpusplunket said:
Think my new GTX480 is performing below where it should be according what it posts in the Heaven 2.1 benchmark (the only benchmark I'm currently using to compare cards).

My GTX460 @ 885MHz core posted scores of: min 23.9; ave 35.2; max 67.0; score 887.

My new GTX480 gets at 760MHz core: min 29.0; ave 44.2; max 82.1; score 1114
And at 825MHz core (current): min 30.6; ave 46.7; max 86.3; socre 1177.

So this is an increase of 25% at 760 core and 32% at 825 core.

Isn't this a little low? Should the 480 outperform the 460 by around 50%?

And according to Overclockersclub's* benchmarking, I should be seeing 35-37 average at my settings for the 460 stock-OC (about right), and for the 480 I should be getting... 53 at stock and 60 or more at my overclock!

Now that's a big under-performance it seems like I'm getting.

Any explanations? Any solutions?

* I presume I can link them. They don't seem to sell hardware and they're an American site, I believe?

I found that if you just benchmark it one time, you get a lower min and overall score, try benching it 2 times and take the result of the second time, heres my results on a gtx 480

strumpusplunket · 5 Feb 2011 at 09:34

Michaeljcox24 said:
Ok...

Just ran @ 1650 with 4AA and 16AF and final score was 1145, does that help?

Thanks, mate. Appreciate that. Yes, your card is pretty much neck-and-neck with my 480@825MHz, so clearly something is wrong, even allowing for a little bit of a boost with newer drivers...

SpiritOfTheAge said:
I found that if you just benchmark it one time, you get a lower min and overall score, try benching it 2 times and take the result of the second time, heres my results on a gtx 480

Yeah, I know. I always let it run through the loop once before benching. It's not just my minimum frames, though, but the max and average as well that are well below what I would expect.

This is annoying and puzzling...

Michaeljcox24 · 5 Feb 2011 at 09:44

Just ran through a loop and then benched on the 2nd loop (never tried that before) and the score went up to 1169.

When I was pondering over the idea of getting a 480 on the mega deal, a couple of lads talked me out of it saying an overclocked 470 came close to a 480 in performance. However, I assume this is at stock 480 performance.

So for an overclocked 470 to be close to an overclocked 480, it's a funny one.

Yes, if I was in your shoes, I guess I would be asking questions too.

strumpusplunket · 5 Feb 2011 at 09:46

Yeah, at your speeds you'd expect to be matching stock 480 performance. However, my 480 is under-performing at stock, and with a 17% overclock... well, it shouldn't be posting scores so far below OCClub's ones, nor ones on a par with a clocked 470.

Why do these things never go smoothly...

Buckster · 5 Feb 2011 at 09:51

checked GPU temps ?

SpiritOfTheAge · 5 Feb 2011 at 10:01

strumpusplunket said:
Yeah, at your speeds you'd expect to be matching stock 480 performance. However, my 480 is under-performing at stock, and with a 17% overclock... well, it shouldn't be posting scores so far below OCClub's ones, nor ones on a par with a clocked 470.

Why do these things never go smoothly...

I have not overclocked my480, but get similar results to you now ive upped the aa to 4x and AF to 16x, so mine performs similar to yours, you sure this is not just normal, and maybe the CPU they are using makes a difference? im on a C2Q, if they are using i7s then that may account for it.
Either way im getting a vastly improved performance in games over my old gtx 275 so im happy to get the boost for £200.

strumpusplunket · 5 Feb 2011 at 10:01

Buckster said:
checked GPU temps ?

No problems as far as a 480 is concerned. 87C max at 64% fan speed, so still a decent amount of both temperature and cooling headroom.

Guess I may have to get around to reinstalling drivers, but I don't expect that could make this kind of difference...

strumpusplunket · 5 Feb 2011 at 10:04

SpiritOfTheAge said:
I have not overclocked my480, but get similar results to you now ive upped the aa to 4x and AF to 16x, so mine performs similar to yours, you sure this is not just normal, and maybe the CPU they are using makes a difference? im on a C2Q, if they are using i7s then that may account for it.
Either way im getting a vastly improved performance in games over my old gtx 275 so im happy to get the boost for £200.

Well, yeah I'd considered that my CPU might be a factor, but two points lead me away from that: 1, CPU is not going to present a major bottleneck in a pure GPU benchmark. Games, sure, but a Heaven run? Not so sure. And 2, Michaeljcox is using a C2Q clocked lower than mine and achieving similar scores with a GTX470.

Do you mean you get similar scores to my overclocked results? Would you mind posting your stock scores?

Michaeljcox24 · 5 Feb 2011 at 10:22

I'd be interested to see if a driver re in stall makes any difference.

Cleeecooo · 5 Feb 2011 at 10:24

Not enough to RMA. My 6970 has the same problem and RMA was not accepted

strumpusplunket · 5 Feb 2011 at 10:34

Cleeecooo said:
Not enough to RMA. My 6970 has the same problem and RMA was not accepted

You mean lower-than-expected performance? In Heaven or other games/benchmarks too?

Don't need to think about RMA yet anyway, as it's still within DSR period.

bee · 5 Feb 2011 at 11:33

cpu limited? i went from a q9550 to a 2500k using a gtx 480 and despite what most people say i got HUGE gains in many many games