Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
I said they'd be higher due to higher clocks, but keep in mind he said Crysis, not warhead and AMD are AHEAD of Nvidia in Crysis, and behind in warhead, so if he meant crysis, then his results are even more out there. The point being 5850xf is OVER 20% ahead in Warhead(would be even further in Crysis vanilla) and a 20% overclock, unless Raven is doing it, rarely gains you 30% performance.
Theres also the little issue of 5850xf's, well I've literaly never, ever seen a 5850 that can't do 850Mhz, if its reference or has a voltage control non reference, frankly I've never seen a 5850 unable to get past 900Mhz, which is a 20-25% overclock, and mine overclocked over 40%.
Cpu won't make much of a difference, marginal difference, peak max might be higher, but for a couple seconds in an entire level that will make marginal difference. Anything from a tricore 3Ghz to a 17Ghz hexcore will make little difference to overall results.
The main question would be, how did you get the average, did you run fraps to keep track of the fps.
Basically the benchmark is canned, and won't give identical results as in game all the time and different levels perform differently, some will favour Nvidia some AMD, the benchmark though gives a rough idea how fast a setup is. Basically 5850xf's should average 30-35% faster, they overclock further than 480gtx's, so both setups at max overclocks should extend the 5850's lead.
unfortunately in "real gaming" things like min/max fps will be fairly different to benchmarking, though shouldn't ultimately make a huge difference. Sometimes you just get a load that takes ages, or a background task that causes a 1fps min for 2 seconds in a 5 hour gaming session, it doesn't change how good or bad a card performs but, there is a reason people try to use standardised benchmarks as it minimises the differences.
As for 460gtx sli being on par with 5850, no, its not, in any way. Also those are sonic platinum versions or, 17.5% overclocked at standard, and a "standard" 460gtx 1gb vs a standard 5850 according to anandtech, are over 10% slower than 5850's, sli/xfire that might gain a bit, but go past, no.
Basically as I suggested earlier, your single card performance looks woeful frankly, while the dual seems to scale well vs the single card, but overall performance is just not where it should be.
Basically you'd need a suprememly excellently clocked 480gtx to match a 5850xf in the vast majority of games, and really 5850xf's are very much underclocked cores to start with and easily do 5870 speeds, and more.
480gtx's aren't remotely "bad" cards, they just aren't great, even at £200 they aren't brilliant, just insanely better value than they were. A 6950 costs the same, is basically a 6970 and is just plain faster, not by miles but less power, faster. The Gigabyte editions have great cooling, which is a HUGE factor for me as anyone reading my posts would know, stock cooling from both companies is a joke, not horrible just, not great and both companies could EASILY release silent cards for stock speeds.
I also won't suggest you don't get a 480gtx, it will be a downgrade in most things but, plenty of people play a single game, or two, consistantly, if Nvidia has a huge advantage in the game you happen to play all the time going Nvidia is a great option, the reverse is true aswell.
