heaven benchmark gtx 480 sli

nalla · 13 Sep 2010 at 11:17

hi all just wanderin if any of you have 480's sli at 2560 x 1600, as i was wandering if this heaven benchmark is any good, the reason i ask is that most of my games do not us close to 100% gpu, some games are using as little as 45 - 50% of the gpu's according to msi after burner, i am using drivers 260.52. although the heaven benchmark did use more but never went over 85% and dropped as low as 60%.

Unigine
Heaven Benchmark v2.1
FPS: 52.6
Scores: 1325
Min FPS: 5.2
Max FPS: 93.3

Hardware
Binary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1500 Release May 21 2010
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7600) 64bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz
CPU flags: 3780MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 8.17.12.6052 1536Mb

Settings
Render: direct3d11
Mode: 2560x1600 fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Replication: disabled
Tessellation: normal

Unigine Corp. © 2005-2010

Duff-Man · 13 Sep 2010 at 14:40

Well, seeing less than 100% GPU utilisation fairly often in games is to be expected, even at 2560*1600, as the GTX480 SLI setup is extremely powerful, and can often finish its workload before the CPU (i.e. inducing CPU limitation).

That said, in heaven benchmark you really should be getting all-but 100% GPU load. I'm fairly sure I have near-100% GPU load on my GTX480 SLI setup, even at 1920*1200. I'll check when I get home to be sure. Certainly running the crysis benchmark at 2560*1600 with 4xAA I get a ~100% load all the time.

To be sure there isn't a fundamental problem, check with furmark. If that isn't at 100% GPU load then you have some sort of issue. Probably driver related.

Antx777 · 14 Sep 2010 at 01:00

MY GTX 480 SLI Results at STOCK Card settings

==================================
Unigine
Heaven Benchmark v2.0
FPS: 71.5
Scores: 1801
Min FPS: 36.1
Max FPS: 147.4

Hardware
Binary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1500 Release Mar 7 2010
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7600) 64bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU X 980 @ 3.33GHz
CPU flags: 4199MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 8.17.12.5896 1536Mb

Settings
Render: direct3d11
Mode: 2560x1440 fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Replication: disabled
Tessellation:normal

==========================================

And overclocked (1113 volts/841 core/1682 shader/2100 memory:

Unigine
Heaven Benchmark v2.0
FPS: 83.4
Scores: 2101
Min FPS: 39.1
Max FPS: 168.7

Hardware
Binary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1500 Release Mar 7 2010
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7600) 64bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU X 980 @ 3.33GHz
CPU flags: 4200MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 8.17.12.5896 1536Mb

Settings
Render: direct3d11
Mode: 2560x1440 fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Replication: disabled
Tessellation: normal

This is running an i7 980X@ 4.2 RESOLUTION: 2560x1440

MSI Afterburner was 96%+ on each core through out. (258XX drivers) your running Beta yes?

cainer · 14 Sep 2010 at 01:22

maybe you should use heaven v2.1 like the OP? is there much difference between the v2.0 and v2.1 ??

Antx777 · 14 Sep 2010 at 01:27

cainer said:
maybe you should use heaven v2.1 like the OP? is there much difference between the v2.0 and v2.1 ??

HEAVEN KNOWS

Changes in version 2.1

Support of OpenGL 4.0, including hardware tessellation
Added stereo 3D support in several modes:
Anaglyph
Separate images
3D Vision
iZ3D
Several minor optimizations

http://unigine.com/products/heaven/

Not sure if there will be any "performace/Frames" increase though

PaulyD · 14 Sep 2010 at 08:15

I would get that 930 overclocked and let those 480's stretch their legs

Muel · 14 Sep 2010 at 08:26

nalla said:
CPU flags: 3780MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT

It's already clock to 3.8ghz by the looks of it. Is a 3.8ghz 930 really a bottleneck for 480 SLI?

PaulyD · 14 Sep 2010 at 09:39

Ohhh, my mistake.. Looked at CPU model rather than CPU flag..

Should be fine then, rather low min at 5.2fps though even with the hefty res

nalla · 14 Sep 2010 at 12:28

thanks for the replys looks like there may be a problem, i may look at a format soon anyway as i have been getting a few freezes in games quite big ones too, which isnt good espescially when playing racing games.

or will the 980x make that much difference.

Antx777 · 14 Sep 2010 at 12:39

nalla said:
thanks for the replys looks like there may be a problem, i may look at a format soon anyway as i have been getting a few freezes in games quite big ones too, which isnt good espescially when playing racing games.

or will the 980x make that much difference.

Yes, but i definitley don't think you need a 980x to get your frames up that much. You have enough CPU power. Maybe a clean uninstall of your 260 drivers, and drive sweeper, then install the drivers again?.

I had a similar prob with low benchmarks (and games) with my older system (QX9650/Striker II formula MOBO/DDR2 ram) And a ATI 5970. I think my mobo/ram combination was holding it back big time. Not so much your system though. Getting more "%" on the MSI reading with GPU usage would be my first objective though. Can't think really. Have you done a memtest?, as some bad ram in my system crashed it at least a dozen time ***PER DAY*** I sence it's not a GPU issue though....

Duff-Man · 14 Sep 2010 at 12:47

PaulyD said:
Ohhh, my mistake.. Looked at CPU model rather than CPU flag..

Should be fine then, rather low min at 5.2fps though even with the hefty res

It can happen easily. If you get just a single instance of paging, and the benchmark hitches, it records a very low minimum framerate. Try it again and you likely won't see that.

RavenXXX2 · 14 Sep 2010 at 12:53

With heaven you should let it loop the first run first then run the bench, as said it skips a lot when buffering textures in to the vram when initially run

nalla · 14 Sep 2010 at 12:57

ok will try that, also im having some very high temps in my system atm, due to the position of my pc, its under a bench backed into a corner, so the 480's exhaust the heat out back it rises, i have an antec 1200 cases with a big fan on top which is obviously sucking back in the heat that the 480's exhaust, i have just pulled it away from the wall from under the bench and took the side panel off and temps almost instantly dropped by 17 begrees on the cpu from 87 to 73 in about a minute ( under 100% load ). will try the benchmark again with pc from under bench see if that makes any difference.

Duff-Man · 14 Sep 2010 at 13:08

The fan on top the the 1200 should be blowing air out of the case, unless you changed its orientation? But it's hard to argue with a 14C drop in CPU temps. That said, unless the GPUs are experiencing thermal throttling, it's hard to see why this would solve your problem. GPU load should still be close to 100%. I suspect a software / driver issue of some kind.

nalla · 14 Sep 2010 at 13:10

just ran heaven again got a better minimum of 23, but a worse average of 48.1,gpus got up to 89%, temps didnt go above 69 on the gpu's.

nalla · 14 Sep 2010 at 13:19

just re run the benchmark same settings as first post,

Heaven Benchmark v2.1
FPS: 48.0
Scores: 1210
Min FPS: 22.6
Max FPS: 84.7

Hardware
Binary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1500 Release May 21 2010
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7600) 64bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz
CPU flags: 3780MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 8.17.12.6052 1536Mb

Settings
Render: direct3d11
Mode: 2560x1600 fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Replication: disabled
Tessellation: normal

Unigine Corp. © 2005-2010

re ran again at at 2560 x 1440 same as antx777

Unigine
Heaven Benchmark v2.1
FPS: 58.8
Scores: 1481
Min FPS: 24.7
Max FPS: 111.7

Hardware
Binary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1500 Release May 21 2010
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7600) 64bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz
CPU flags: 3780MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 8.17.12.6052 1536Mb

Settings
Render: direct3d11
Mode: 2560x1600 fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Replication: disabled
Tessellation: normal

Unigine Corp. © 2005-2010

results are up a bit at 1440 but the gpu loads were steady at 95% whereas they were up and down at 2560 x 1600, so does that meen that my cpu is a bottleneck at 2560 x 1600

Antx777 · 14 Sep 2010 at 13:20

Have you got Nvidia Control panel set to Default etc. Not sure if it makes any difference, but I click "restore to defaults" Also, any Background tasks running unecesserlily?. also, what does your CPU say in the task manager at default, because I had a problem last week were a program was drawing 8-10% CPU usage in idle mode. (it was RAC = Reliability Analysis Task)

I've just downloaded the 2.1 version Nalla, will give that a run, and see if its same less/more etc. May be a bad unigine install?

Ant

nalla · 14 Sep 2010 at 13:32

well ive just done antoher run but with core temp and msi running so i can see them as its benchmarking, and according to core temp my cpu usage never went above 21%, is this normal.

Antx777 · 14 Sep 2010 at 15:03

2.1 gives me lower scores: (Cards@stock) maybe 2.1 is more demanding...

67.7
Scores: 1704
Min FPS: 37.2
Max FPS: 127.2

and GPU is 92% ish rather than the 96+on versiomn 2.0.

nalla · 14 Sep 2010 at 15:48

what about your cpu usage as mine is terrible, at 21% max