Video Perspective: AMD A8-3850 vs Core i3-2105 on Modern Warfare 3

Subject: Graphics Cards, Processors | November 21, 2011 - 10:00 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: video, sandy bridge, mw3, modern warfare 3, Intel, APU, amd

There is little denying that Call of Duty: Modern Warfar 3 is a success; I think it sold like 19 billion copies on the first night.  Something like that.  So, as we have done quite a bit in recent months, we wanted to see how our processor-graphics based solutions compared to each other in the title.  We recently took a look at how Battlefield 3 performed and we had a lot of great feedback on that post - so let's try this again!  

Luckily for gamers (or not, depending on your point of view), MW3 is pretty light on graphics hardware.  We did our testing at 1920x1080 with the following quality settings:

With 2x anti-aliasing enabled and most quality settings turned up to their highest options, the game still looked pretty good during our testing.  No, it's no Battlefield 3, but very few titles are.

Both systems come in with a total cost of about $450 with the Core i3-2105 and A8-3850 at the center of each configuration. 

As you might guess, the integrated graphics on the AMD Llano APU outperforms the Sandy Bridge graphics, but by how much?  Check out the video for all the details!

NVIDIA driver support on Linux

Subject: Graphics Cards | November 18, 2011 - 02:15 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: linux, nvidia

We have seen benchmarks of the graphical performance of the GPU portion of Sandy Bridge as well as Llano for Linux users but NVIDIA has been quiet as of late.  That changes with this huge round up from Phoronix which assembles more than a dozen NVIDIA GPUs and associated drivers, the open-source Nouveau driver and the official NVIDIA Linux driver.  This is more than just a comparison of pure performance, there are a variety of features that are unavailable on the Nouveau driver that are present in NVIDIA's.  That can make a big difference to someone looking to transcode video or optimize certain tasks.  It is 24 pages of dense information, consider yourself warned.

"Back in September I provided the most comprehensive AMD Radeon Linux graphics comparison that took 28 graphics cards from all supported ATI/AMD Radeon product families and tested them under Linux using the latest Catalyst driver as well as the open-source Mesa/Gallium3D driver. In this article is a similar comparison on the NVIDIA side as I take most of the GeForce graphics cards at my disposal and try them under the NVIDIA binary Linux driver and the community-developed open-source "Nouveau" driver. Not only is the OpenGL performance looked at for multiple generations of NVIDIA hardware, but the thermal and power consumption is compared too. In certain OpenGL workloads, the open-source Linux driver is now faster than NVIDIA's own driver for select graphics cards in a fair comparison, but overall the NVIDIA blob still reigns supreme."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• Gigabyte GeForce GTX 570 Super Overclock Review @ Hardware Canucks
• Catalyst 11.11 Windows 7 Driver Analysis @ Tweaktown
• HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ Video Card @ Benchmark Reviews
• MSI Twin Frozr III 6950 1GB @ Overclockers.com
• PowerColor HD 6970 Devil 13 2 GB @ techPowerUp
• VisionTek Radeon HD 6850 Video Card @ Benchmark Reviews
• PowerColor Devil 13 HD6970 Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven
• Sapphire HD6670 Low Profile Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven

Heard of the AMD VISION Engine?

Subject: Graphics Cards, Processors | November 15, 2011 - 05:22 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: AMD VISION Engine, amd, fusion, APU, steady video

The AMD VISION Engine is the name that AMD is using to describe the new features they are offering for users of their GPUs, APUs and those with both.  One example is the AMD Steady Video feature that Ryan and Ken showed off in July.  That is not all, this encompasses the hybrid Crossfire that exists in Llano laptops with discrete GPUs straight through to support for 30bit colour depth (aka 10bit per channel, 10 bit per pixel) and the GPU accelerated Flash. 

If you are interested in getting more from your APU then head to the AMD VISION site to download their driver package, think of it as a Catalyst with benefits.

This one goes all the way to 11! The November Catalyst update is here.

Subject: Graphics Cards | November 15, 2011 - 05:06 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: catalyst, catalyst 11.11, amd

Head to AMD for your newest version of Catalyst as the November update arrives for download.  

Highlights this month include:

NEW FEATURES

• Adobe Flash Player 11 support
• Enables full support of the GPU accelerated Stage 3D API and Stage 3D applications
• Supported on the AMD Radeon HD Series of GPUs, A-Series APU and E-Series APU

RESOLVED ISSUES

Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System:

• Images and textures are no longer corrupted (Blue) in Rage.
• Bezel compensation now works correctly with Far Cry 2.
• Screen tearing is no longer randomly observed while moving a window on the desktop while in Clone mode or Eyefinity mode.
• A black screen is no longer observed when extending displays. 
• Homefront no longer crashes randomly when Crossfire is enabled.
• DC – Universe Online no longer hangs soon after selecting a character and entering the game.

AMD Catalyst Linux introduces:

• OpenSUSE 12.1 early look support
• Seamless GPU Compute support
• The AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) OpenCL runtime is now enabled by default within the AMD Catalyst driver for Linux.  Applications that leverage OpenCL for GPU based compute tasks will automatically benefit from the significant performance boost that this provides

The rest of the release notes can be found here.

Win a Free Copy of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim from PC Perspective

Subject: Editorial, General Tech, Graphics Cards | November 11, 2011 - 12:09 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: skyrim, giveaway, contest

Want to play Skyrim?  Want to play Skyrim...for FREEE??  Well to celebrate the release of the new The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim game this week we are giving away a free retail Steam code for it right here on PC Perspective.  

What do you have to do to enter?  There are a handful of ways:

1. Make a comment on this post.  That's pretty simple right?  You don't have to register, though we would appreciate it!
2. Like PC Perspective on Facebook: http://facebook.com/pcper
3. Follow PC Perspective on Twitter: http://twitter.com/pcper
4. Circle PC Perspective on Google+: http://gplus.to/pcper

If you do all four, you'll have four entries into the contest.  If you already follow @pcper on Twitter, then you are already entered.  (And likely you'll be entered for future contests as well!)  If only do one or two, then you are still entered, just with fewer shots at the goal.

The contest will run through tomorrow (November 12th) at 4pm EST so get your entries in SOON!!  Good luck!

UPDATE!!  We have our winner.  Picking from a random.org number between 1 and 3850 (combined entries on comments, Google+, Facebook and Twitter) the winner was....Jared H!!!  Congratulations!  I have sent off an email to verify and pass on the Steam code.

Make sure you stay tuned for Monday morning when we should have another BIG contest starting around a certain processor launch...

Godly graphical domination can be yours; for about $3000

Subject: Graphics Cards | November 8, 2011 - 06:20 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: asus, ROG MARS II Limited Edition

If you can find an ASUS ROG MARS II Limited Edition card for sale, without having to buy the whole system that is, you would have a pair of GTX580 class GPUs on a single PCB.  That is hard, but not [H]ard enough for a certain hardware review site.  They decided that the only way to satisfy their overwhelming graphics lust was to get two cards, giving them the power of quad SLI in just two cards.  That might seem a little greedy when only 999 of these cards were produced but there is only one way to utter graphical domination ... until you realize the competition is a pair of HD6990s.  Either way you will be seeing over 70fps in Battlefield 3 at a resolution of 5760x1200.  You will need more than a 1000W PSU to run stable but you will be able to laugh at those poor GTX590 owners.

"The ASUS ROG MARS II Limited Edition video card brings true dual-GeForce GTX 580 GPUs to the table. Take two of these and you can have a true GTX 580 Quad-SLI system. We'll dive into performance, including Battlefield 3, and see what these can do directly compared to 4-way CrossFireX."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win @ Guru of 3D
• EVGA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win: The Raw Power Of Two GPUs @ AnandTech
• EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2 WIN 2GB DirectX11 Video Card Review @Hi Tech Legion
• ASUS ENGTX570 DirectCU II Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
• EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win Dual GPU Review @ Hardware Canucks
• Sparkle X560 Ti DF Calibre @ OC3D
• Mobile GPU Comparison Guide @ TechARP
• Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide @ TechARP
• HIS Radeon HD 6950 IceQ X PLUS Edition @ Guru of 3D
• ASUS Radeon HD 6770 DirectCU Silent @ Guru of 3D
• Sapphire HD6970 2048MB @ kitguru

Alienware Lowers Price on GTX 580M and Changes Our Opinion in the Process

Subject: Graphics Cards, Mobile | November 7, 2011 - 01:16 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: m18x, m17x, hd 6990m, gtx 580m, alienware

If you read our recent mobility GPU comparison using the Alienware M17x, you might have wondered why the price on the GTX 580M was $300 more than that of the Radeon HD 6990M when performance was so close.  Well, I guess you can no longer say we didn't do anything to help the consumers (you wouldn't say that, would you?) because today Alienware has dropped the price of the GTX 580M by $225!!

It looks like Alienware and NVIDIA have listened to our feedback and decided to drop the price on the GeForce GTX 580M on the M17x, M18x and others - and by quite a bit!  As of this writing you can go to the Alienware.com website and now upgrade from the HD 6990M to the GTX 580M for only $75 - that is a $225 price drop compared to last week.  

What does this do for our opinions and thoughts on the battle between the HD 6990M and the GTX 580M?  I think it makes the added benefits of the NVIDIA ecosystem (Optimus, 3D, Verde driver updates, PhysX) much more attainable and in my book well worth the additional cost.  With this price change, Alienware has really shifted my view on the mobile GPU of choice.

I am going to update my award from the Gold to the Editor's Choice for NVIDIA's GTX 580M for this specific reason - be sure to read the full review if you haven't already!  Happy gaming!

A sub $200 AMD FirePro benchmarked on Linux

Subject: Graphics Cards | November 3, 2011 - 01:17 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, firepro, V4900, linux, turks

Workstation graphics cards tend to be significantly more expensive than their desktop counterparts, something the new AMD FirePro V4900 seeks to overcome.  The card is available for less than $200 but still comes with the advantages of the FirePro series, workstation application certification, a three-year hardware warranty and greater technical support than with a desktop GPU.  Performance wise, the benchmarks that Phoronix ran showed the card to be nicely between the V4800 and V5800 so perhaps not worth immediately running out and upgrading from the previous low end model but definitely worth considering for new machines.

"AMD is announcing today a new FirePro workstation graphics card. What is being announced is not a new ultra high-end creation, but instead it's a new entry-level graphics card to fit in between the FirePro V4800 and FirePro V5800 / V5900: it's the AMD FirePro V4900. The FirePro V4900 will retail for less than $200 USD while offering up some nice capabilities for the price. Here is a launch-day look at the FirePro V4900 along with the first Linux benchmarks of this latest AMD workstation graphics creation."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ 1GB @ Legion Hardware
• VTX3D Radeon HD6770 & HD6670 Streamer Edition @ Kitguru
• Catalyst 11.10 Windows 7 Driver Analysis @ Tweaktown
• Sapphire HD6970 Battlefield 3 Flex Edition @ Guru3D
• i3DSpeed, October 2011 @ iXBT Labs
• The Effect of GPU Memory on Surround & Stereo 3D Performance @ Hardware Canucks
• KFA2 GeForce GTX 580 Anarchy Edition SLI @ kitguru

Video Perspective: AMD A8-3850 vs Core i3-2105 on Battlefield 3

Subject: Graphics Cards, Processors | October 31, 2011 - 02:22 PM | Matt Baynum
Tagged: video, sandy bridge, Intel, bf3, battlefield 3, APU, amd

Everyone is playing Battlefield 3 these days; we even had a virtual LAN party this weekend where forum members and PC Perspective team members played from about 10am until well after 1am ET. We have done more than our fair share of Battlefield 3 articles as well including hardware performance on high end graphics cards, multi-GPU scaling and more.  

We had some requests and questions about what was the lowest priced hardware you could play the game on and while we had run some tests on the GeForce 9800 GT, I decided to take a stab at running BF3 at its lowest settings with integrated graphics on Intel's Sandy Bridge processor and AMD's A-series APU.  Here were our test settings:

We ran at a fairly low resolution of 1366x768 (both indicative of mobile resolutions as well as low-end hardware restrictions) and the Low in-game preset.  As it turns out this was the level at which the A8-3850 Llano APU was able to maintain an average around 30 FPS while the Intel Core i3-2105 (both priced around $140) was able to reach only a third of that. 

With both systems coming in at the ~$450 mark, this could qualify as the lowest priced PC that is capable of getting you into the BF3 action!

You can see our full comparison right here in this short video!

NVIDIA Upgrading GTX 560 to 448 CUDA Cores?

Subject: Graphics Cards | October 27, 2011 - 07:41 PM | Matt Baynum
Tagged: nvidia, GTX 560, geforce

A rumor that I read over at Guru3D seems to think that the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, a card that has been very successful in the ~$230 graphics market, might be getting an upgrade just in time for the pending holiday buying season.  According to the report, the new version would move from the current 384 CUDA core count to 448 cores, essentially adding another full SM (symmetric multiprocessor) to the GPU.

A collection of current GTX 560 Ti cards...

Guru3D notes though that the "new" GTX 560 Ti would be based on the GF110 GPU (same as the GTX 580 and GTX 570) simply because the GTX 560 Ti uses all the available processing cores of the GF114 design.  The GPU on this new card would be a GTX 580 with two SMs disabled, rather than the single SM disabled on the GTX 570.

Here are the reports other details:

It features 14 active SMs, which include 448 SP / CUDA Cores and 56 TMUs; 320-bit memory and 40 ROPs - a very similar configuration to the old GTX 470. Along with increased performance, power consumption is expected to rise over the 384 SP GTX 560 Ti. A benefit to using GF110 means the revised 560 Ti will feature 2 x SLI connectors, enabling 3-way SLI.

While I believe this part could definitely exist, I wouldn't think NVIDIA would simply remove the current GTX 560 Ti and replace it; instead I would imagine the company would go for the "GTX 565" route, or something similar to it.  Maybe a GTX 560 Ultra.  Either way, a new card that would fit in to the price slot somewhere between the GTX 560 Ti ($230) and the GTX 570 ($340) would be a welcome addition, especially with games like Battlefield 3 and Skyrim set to take advantage of that horsepower. 

A best of three HD 6950 battle royal

Subject: Graphics Cards | October 26, 2011 - 05:36 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: hd 6950, amd, gigabyte, msi, xfx, factory overclocked

Heading to The Tech Report will bring you to a round up of HD6950's including Gigabyte's GV-R695OC-1GD, the MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III 1G/OC and the XFX HD-695X-ZDDC.  The GPU clocks range from 830MHz to 870MHz and RAM ranging from the stock 1250MHz to 1350MHz, with the MSI and XFX offering their own overclocking tools and Gigabyte relying on the Catalyst Control Center for further overclocking.  MSI's offering came out looking very good, with the best performance and the best power efficiency and thanks to a mail in rebate it picks up the best ratings in the round up.  It is a close race though with the cards performing very similarly, as you can see in the review.

"We've gathered three souped-up Radeon HD 6950 graphics cards from Gigabyte, MSI, and XFX. Which one delivers the most bang for your buck?"

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• Great Value from Sapphire: Radeon HD 6870 Dirt 3 Edition and Radeon HD 6850 Vapor-X @ X-bit Labs
• Inexpensive Hi-End: MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III 1 GD5 Power Edition/OC @ X-bit Labs
• Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 DiRT 3 Special Edition Review @ OCC
• AMD’s flagship HD6990: is silent air cooling possible? @ kitguru
• Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide @ TechARP
• Mobile GPU Comparison Guide @ X-bit Labs
• EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified 3 GB @ X-bit Labs
• Gigabyte GTX580 Super Overclock @ OC3D
• Palit GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo 1GB @ Tweaktown
• ZOTAC GeForce GTX 550 Ti Video Card Drawing @ Legit Reviews
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti @ Phoronix
• Palit GTX 560 Ti Twin Light Turbo Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven

Almost Time! Battlefield 3 Release, Is Your Hardware Ready?

Subject: Graphics Cards | October 24, 2011 - 03:06 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: radeon, nvidia, geforce, bf3, amd

I know that you might have Battlefield 3 overload by now, but I wanted to make sure you all remembered to take a look at our BF3 Performance Guide from a couple weeks back to make sure your PC is ready for what might be the most anticipated and talked about PC titles in years. 

Here is a summary of the content we have written based on the game - make sure you know ALL of it so you can get your system prepared for the pending battle!!

• Battlefield 3 (BF3) System Build Guide - What you need to succeed
  • Come see our easy suggestions for building a system for BF3 (or upgrading) based on your target resolution and quality settings.
• Battlefield 3 Beta Performance Testing and Image Quality Evaluation - Day 1
  • We test quite a few graphics cards to see where your setup currently stands with Battlefield 3.
• More Battlefield 3 Beta Performance Results: GTX 460, Radeon HD 5850 and 9800 GT!
  • We added some lower end cards to the performance article as well including the very popular 9800 GT.
• PCPer Live! Battlefield 3 Beta Party and Discussion @ 10:30pm EST
  • You missed it, but it was fun and we are going to be doing more next weekend!
• Battlefield 3 Beta: Caspian Border Performance and Screenshots
  • Come see the performance results from our 64-player testing on the Caspian Border map!
• Battlefield 3 (BF3) Beta Performance: Quality Preset and SLI Scaling
  • Here you can see how performance scales from Ultra to High, Medium and Low presets as well as how much performance gain you can expect from SLI scaling.

Keep checking back at PC Perspective as we are planning on doing some more fun live streaming of our BF3 matches and be sure to sign up for the official PCPer "Fragging Frogs" platoon in Battlelog!

Blizzcon 2011 Day 1 Photos

Subject: General Tech, Graphics Cards, Shows and Expos | October 21, 2011 - 07:28 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: wow, starcraft, nvidia, LG, diablo iii, diablo, blizzcon 2011, blizzcon, asus, antec

Hey everyone!  I am still busily collecting information at Blizzcon 2011 but I thought I would share with you some of the photos I took from the first half of the first day of the show.  If you haven't experienced Blizzcon before (and I hadn't) this is one hell of a celebration of PC gamers.  Even if you aren't a fan of StarCraft, World of Warcraft or Diablo, this is an impressive event with a main stage area seating 15,000!!!

Check out all the photos on our Facebook page here (available to public as well!)  I'll have some coverage of the Antec, ASUS and NVIDIA booth as well later in the evening so be sure to check back.

Here are a couple more samples, but be sure you check out the link above for ALL of the the photos!!

Trim the memory and crank the voltages; MSI's R6950 Twin Frozr III PE

Subject: Graphics Cards | October 17, 2011 - 12:09 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: R6950 1GB Twin Frozr III Power Edition, msi, hd6950, factory overclocked

The MSI R6950 1GB Twin Frozr III Power Edition is a bit of an odd duck.  While it comes with MSI's custom cooler, the Twin Frozr III, and a 50MHz overclock on both the RAM and GPU, it sports only 1GB of GDDR5 which is half of what a reference card possesses.  On the other hand MSI has given you direct control over the voltages being fed to the GPU, memory and VDDCI, overclockers might find themselves more interested than they might have thought at first.  [H]ard|OCP compared it to a reference 2GB HD6950 and only saw issues with the smaller memory size when enabling anti-aliasing on games which did not support FXAA or MLAA, apart from that there was little real impact from having 1GB of RAM.  On the other hand the overclocking showed a lot of potential, though [H] did feel that they could have pushed the card further with updated MSI Afterburner overclocking software.

"Today we will be looking at a 1GB Radeon HD 6950 from MSI sporting its latest cooling innovation, the Twin Frozr III. Will 1GB of VRAM constrain the Twin Frozr III, or will Triple Over-Voltage support give it enough boost to soar past a 2GB HD 6950 and GeForce GTX 570?"

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 Dirt 3 Edition @ TechwareLabs
• MSI's R6870 Hawk Review @ Madshrimps
• ASUS EAH6770 DC SL/2DI/1GD5 @ Hardwareoverclock
• XFX HD6950 DD, HD6870 DD and HD6790 DD @ kitguru
• Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 Dirt 3 1GB Dual Fan Video Card Review @ Hi Tech Legion
• HIS Radeon HD 6970 IceQ MIX 2GB Review @ Real World Labs
• Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 FleX Edition 2GB Graphics Card Review @ eTeknix
• Silent Games: Three Unique Graphics Accelerators on Radeon HD 67xx with Passive Coolers @ X-bit Labs
• Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo 6990 Cooler Review @ Kitguru
• Deepcool Dracula: Super Efficiency without Much Noise @ X-bit Labs
• x264 HD Benchmark 4.0 @ TechARP
• NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 Kit Review @ Hardware Canucks
• NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 w/ 3D LightBoost Review @ Legit Reviews
• Asus GeForce Matrix GTX 580 Platinum 1536MB Graphics Card Review @ eTeknix
• EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified Video Card @ Benchmark Reviews

AMD May Release 28nm 7000 HD Series GPU In December

Subject: Graphics Cards | October 15, 2011 - 12:34 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: amd, gpu, graphics card, southern islands, HD 7000

Tom’s Hardware reports that a source within AMD has indicated that the company may release their upcoming Southern Islands GPU earlier than expected.  Previous rumors suggested that AMD would have their performance desktop graphics cards out in the first quarter of 2012 with the lower clocked and mobile processors coming out a bit sooner than that.

If this new information turns out to be true, we may be seeing the high performance desktop graphics cards released in limited quantities of 7000 to 10,000 units in December with a full rollout of the company’s 28nm graphics card lineup in the months following.  Specifically, the first cards may be available as soon as December 6th, 2011.  It remains to be seen whether or not the lower power cards will still be released before the high performance desktop cards.

Personally, I'm interested to see how AMD's approach with their Southern Islands GPU will match up against Nvidia's current and future (more) general purpose computing design.  Are you excited for Southern Islands?

Just Delivered: Asus HD 6770 DirectCU Silent

Subject: Graphics Cards | October 5, 2011 - 12:49 AM | Josh Walrath
Tagged: silent, Passive, HD 6770, cooling, asus, amd

Something nice was dropped off at the house today, and I thought I would share.

Passive, eh?  HD 6770?  Sure enough...

How long has it been since I last saw a passive midrange video card?  Well, I would guess it would be in 2007 with the Gigabyte 8600 GTS Silent Pipe.

Don't worry, I have permission from the owner of that site to use this picture.

Read more about this delivery here.

Gigabyte's new GTX 580 doesn't need SupaPipes, the whole card is Supa!

Subject: Graphics Cards | October 4, 2011 - 05:17 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: nvidia, GTX580, gigabyte, Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 Super Overclock

Gigabyte's new GeForce GTX 580 Super Overclock card sports a custom cooler with three fans and frequencies that can be changed from 772MHz GPU and  f 1544 MHz RAM (1.5GB) to 855MHz and 1710 MHz at the flip of a switch. Those used to AMD cards might be disappointed by the outputs, two DVI ports and one mini-HDMI output seem sparse compared to a Radeon.  From X-bit Labs testing, the card proves faster than the HD6970 in all but one test by a range of 11% - 24%, however you are also looking at paying at least 30% more than an overclocked HD6970.  See how your favourite games performed on the Gigabyte board in the full review.

"Today we are going to talk about features, functionality and performance of a very interesting and very fast graphics accelerator built on the most powerful GPU from Nvidia."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

• ASUS GTX580 DirectCU II Graphics Card Review @ OCIA
• MSI X460DX Review @ TechReviewSource
• ASUS GeForce GTS 450 Direct CU Silent Video Card @ Tweaktown
• Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide @ TechARP
• Catalyst 11.9 Windows 7 Driver Analysis @ Tweaktown
• Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 DiRT 3 Edition Review @ Neoseeker
• Sapphire HD 6850 1GB Vapor-X Edition @ OCC
• Sapphire Radeon 6850 Vapor-X with Dirt 3 @ TechwareLabs

Battlefield 3 (BF3) Beta Performance: Quality Preset and SLI Scaling

Subject: Editorial, General Tech, Graphics Cards | October 1, 2011 - 01:49 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: sli, gtx 570, gtx 460, bf3, battlefield 3

I know, we've been talking a lot about Battlefield 3 this week, but I have yet another set of numbers and results that I think you guys will want to see.  Previously, all of our BF3 benchmarks have been run under the Ultra quality presets but it is obvious that not all GPUs or gamers are going to want to target the highest settings the game can accomplish.  With that in mind I decided to test a couple of cards at Ultra, High, Medium and Low presets in order to guage how well the game scaled based on image quality.

For this round I wanted to use a high end card as well as an older, much more popular (and currently low cost) card; the result is tests on the GeForce GTX 570 1.25GB and the GeForce GTX 460 1GB reference platforms.  We used the Operation Metro map and the initial outdoor section for our testing as it was the most strenuous in the beta thus far.  

As a side note, if you want to see how the image quality actually changes from the Ultra, High, Medium and Low presets, check out this page of my previous performance article that included screenshots and even some animated GIFs as demonstration.

Here are the results:

On the more powerful GTX 570 you can see that BF3 scales pretty well from the Ultra settings through the Low options in even steps.  By moving from Ultra down to High a gamer would see about 34% better performance and 22% better minimum frame rates.  The jump to Medium gains another 41% while the move to Low gets another 25% on top of that.  The gap between Low and Ultra is about ~2.3x.

The GTX 460 sees similar levels of performance grades though the move from Ultra to High only gains you about 28% and averages of 33.8 FPS or so.  I would still consider that on the low side of a good game play experience and thus the move to Medium (which is 82% faster than Ultra) seems like the sweet spot for BF3.  

I know we also had some requests for SLI scaling performance and, in particular, with the GTX 460 1GB cards.  Since this card has been so incredibly popular we thought this would be the perfect candidate for the "SLI Upgrade Path" option and you can pick one up for $150 (or less with rebates).  Let's see how well Battlefield 3 scales with multiple GPUs.

At the Ultra quality settings we saw a 60% scaling capability by adding in a second GTX 460 at stock speeds while at High settings we see that rate increases to 84%!  That is pretty impressive and for the cost investment of a second GPU it looks like you are going to see better than average scaling.  Considering this is with the first driver release and with a beta version of the game, I can only see multi-GPU scaling rates going up as the full retail release hits.

With these results and some others we have done through the week we are ready to put together our Battlefield 3 system build guide.  Stay tuned!