GeForce GTX 460 1GB SLI vs. Radeon HD 5870 CFX @ [H]

FrgMstr

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GeForce GTX 460 1GB SLI vs. Radeon HD 5870 CFX - In light of the GeForce GTX 460 1GB SLI providing superior gaming performance compared to Radeon HD 5850 CFX, we wanted to game the 460 SLI against AMD's Radeon HD 5870 CFX and check out performance. The results are surprising as we match up this $460 SLI setup against the $780 CFX configuration.
 
3 years ago my kids built our 1st gaming rig. They thought SLI was the way to go. :p

DSCN4901.jpg


I think I am going to sell my 5870 and get a couple of GTX460s and make that the last hurray for my 680iSLI mobo.
 
Something still seems off about the two reviews. We've seen SLI vs. CF before, even by [H], and the gap was never this big.

I mean, look at 5850 CF vs. GTX 470 SLI: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/05/10/galaxy_geforce_gtx_470_gc_sli_review/3

GTX 470 SLI is across the board faster, but not by all that much. Yet suddenly GTX 460 SLI is mopping the floor with 5870 CF?

5850 CF vs. GTX 470 SLI in BFBC2 are neck and neck: http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI3MzQ0MDEwMWh0SGNIbnFhTEdfNV83X2wuZ2lm

Yet 5870 CF is losing bad to GTX 460 SLI in BFBC? http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI4MTAzMjM1MmFlWk5qclJDU2JfMV80X2wuZ2lm

Something is seriously wrong, and I'm shocked that [H] doesn't seem to have really investigated wtf is going on. It saddens me to see little more than a small paragraph talking about the *huge* discrepancy going on when previously there were entire articles devoted to such things. If it turns out that for whatever reason 460 SLI really is just that good compared to even 470 SLI, then that's great, but to just take it at face value with little apparent questioning of the results doesn't sit right with me.
 
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Nice little writeup there guys. It's a great time to be a gamer on a PC.
 
Thanks for the read! Interesting. AMD's answer should come in the form of the 6K series...


BTW -
"For those of you that have motherboards that will not run full x16/x16 PCIe 2.0 bandwidth, we have an article coming next week that shows you what kind of real world gaming impact running x16/x8 SLI will have on your experience. "

TY TY TY TY!!
 
Damn! Those little 460's are are turning out to be good looking. I'm guessing that the 465/470's would scale just as good. I do agree that AMD should be worried about this. I have been thinking about going dual GPU again after looking at getting a bigger monitor.

I am on a 22inch LCD so my 5870 is more than enough, but I will be "upgrading" soon.
 
Man, those GTX 460s scale well.
Maybe, a little too well...
*suspenseful music*
 
Something still seems off about the two reviews. We've seen SLI vs. CF before, even by [H], and the gap was never this big.

I mean, look at 5850 CF vs. GTX 470 SLI: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/05/10/galaxy_geforce_gtx_470_gc_sli_review/3

GTX 470 SLI is across the board faster, but not by all that much. Yet suddenly GTX 460 SLI is mopping the floor with 5870 CF?

5850 CF vs. GTX 470 SLI in BFBC2 are neck and neck: http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI3MzQ0MDEwMWh0SGNIbnFhTEdfNV83X2wuZ2lm

Yet 5870 CF is losing bad to GTX 460 SLI in BFBC? http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI4MTAzMjM1MmFlWk5qclJDU2JfMV80X2wuZ2lm

Something is seriously wrong, and I'm shocked that [H] doesn't seem to have really investigated wtf is going on. It saddens me to see little more than a small paragraph talking about the *huge* discrepancy going on when previously there were entire articles devoted to such things.

Don't forget that these cards are pretty highly OC'd even from the factory. Performance wise due to the OC they probably get in the same area as the GTX 470 under SLI.
 
Something still seems off about the two reviews. We've seen SLI vs. CF before, even by [H], and the gap was never this big.

I mean, look at 5850 CF vs. GTX 470 SLI: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/05/10/galaxy_geforce_gtx_470_gc_sli_review/3

GTX 470 SLI is across the board faster, but not by all that much. Yet suddenly GTX 460 SLI is mopping the floor with 5870 CF?

5850 CF vs. GTX 470 SLI in BFBC2 are neck and neck: http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI3MzQ0MDEwMWh0SGNIbnFhTEdfNV83X2wuZ2lm

Yet 5870 CF is losing bad to GTX 460 SLI in BFBC? http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI4MTAzMjM1MmFlWk5qclJDU2JfMV80X2wuZ2lm

Something is seriously wrong, and I'm shocked that [H] doesn't seem to have really investigated wtf is going on. It saddens me to see little more than a small paragraph talking about the *huge* discrepancy going on when previously there were entire articles devoted to such things. If it turns out that for whatever reason 460 SLI really is just that good compared to even 470 SLI, then that's great, but to just take it at face value with little apparent questioning of the results doesn't sit right with me.

Driver performance differences are so much greater when comparing old 197x NV drivers to the latest 258x NV driver for one thing.

NV driver performance has improved more than AMD's driver performance - NV - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/06/16/nvidia_forceware_25721_driver_performance/

AMD - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/07/01/amd_ati_catalyst_driver_performance_comparison/

With ever evolving game patches and driver improvements, it is harder and harder to compare older evaluations, things change.
 
@kllrnohj

Well, there have been 2 or 3 major nvidia driver releases since the last evaluation. Just that alone can be a huge factor on NV's side. I would love to see a revised review of the GTX470sli/480sli vs 5870cfx configs. At least that's my theory...

*edit: brent beat me to it.
 
Fixed, thanks for the eyes. - Kyle
 
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Wow. Just....wow.

I'm gonna have to agree that something aint right. I don't think its a conspiracy or anything, I think its much more likely that AMD hasn't optimized their drivers for CrossfireX. That's all I can think of.

A 5870 will stomp all over a GTX460 so its hard to believe they'd get beat in SLI.

AMD needs to do a little investigating cause right now there doesn't seem to be any reason to buy ATI at all if your budget is over $200 and you can run 2 cards.
 
I don't know for how long the disparity of xfire vs sli sky rocketed. But I don't think it only applies to the newest cards.

Nvidia has much better game support and performance scaling than AMD, depending on the game and resolution I've seen scaling reaching 100% in many cases. crossfire doesn't come even close.
 
AMD drivers are the reason I cut ties with my 5870. Believe me, I was waivering whether to pick up another and go crossfire...I'm glad I didn't! I'm much happier with my dual 470s and nvidia's mature and always advancing drivers.
 
I'm gonna have to agree that something aint right. I don't think its a conspiracy or anything, I think its much more likely that AMD hasn't optimized their drivers for CrossfireX.

All we do is install the games like you would, install the latest drivers, and play the games.

We have shown you that the 5870 is a tremendously competent competitor to the 480 in a single GPU situation. We have shown you that 5870CFX gets trounced with 480SLI. Now we show you that 460SLI is just as good or better than 5870CFX. Should we really be surprised?

The data that we were seeing lead to this article. We did not put it together on a lark. All the factors seemed to be pointing directly to the information we have shown you today.

CFX scaling SUCKS compared to SLI.
 
Unless this is something that AMD can fix with drivers I don't see how anyone but the most dedicated Red Team fan could POSSIBLY go with an XFire setup vs. SLI at this point.
 
Wow 460 SLI performance looks fantastic under the latest Nvidia drivers. They have really developed a new midrange champ. Move over 5850, heck move over 5870, there's a new sheriff in town! It's hard to beat a pair of $229 video cards with that kind of performance potential.
 
Performance and price make the GTX 460s a hell of a deal. One that's difficult to pass up. Certainly makes me want to sell off either my 4870x2 and/or GTX 285 and replace it with a pair of Galaxy GTX 460s.

Thanks for the article. Great information as always.
 
Hasn't it already been established that CrossfireX is pretty much a mess with the newest catalyst drivers? Also seems pretty obvious that CFX has been slower in these two latest GTX460 SLI reviews than in previous articles using CFX or a 5970.

Take this article for instance: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/25/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/5
Here the 5970, which is noticeably slower than 5870CF, does far better in both AvP and BC2 than the 5870CF does in this article.
 
Hasn't it already been established that CrossfireX is pretty much a mess with the newest catalyst drivers? Also seems pretty obvious that CFX has been slower in these two latest GTX460 SLI reviews than in previous articles using CFX or a 5970.

Take this article for instance: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/25/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/5
Here the 5970, which is noticeably slower than 5870CF, does far better in both AvP and BC2 than the 5870CF does in this article.

That's a different map, the map I'm using now, Refinery, is more graphically demanding, heavier texture/bandwidth, more aliens and tessellation, than the Ruin map. NV drivers have also come a long way fast since Fermi launch.
 
Kyle, kinda makes that 5870 Matrix CFX kinda boring. Maybe 3 of them can beat the 460's sli? Just sayin.
 
That's a different map, the map I'm using now, Refinery, is more graphically demanding, heavier texture/bandwidth, more aliens and tessellation, than the Ruin map.
Fair enough. What about the BC2 though? That was always ATI's game, and in the previous article I linked the 5970 is running it at 12XCFAA with minimum of 28 and average of 50fps. In this article the 5870CFX, which should be 10-15% faster than the 5970, is running it at 4xAA at minimum 12 and average 44 fps. There definitely seems to be something off with these newest drivers. There's also been people reporting that their second GPU is running just slightly above idle usage when gaming with 10.7 drivers in some games.

Ah yeah, found an even better comparison. In the article kllrnohj linked to(http://hardocp.com/article/2010/07/26/geforce_gtx_460_sli_performance_vs_amd_gpus/), the single 5870 is getting 16 minimum and 42 average fps; almost identical to what 5870CFX is getting in this article, using the same settings. In other words, CFX isn't working in BC2 with the newest drivers.
 
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Fair enough. What about the BC2 though? That was always ATI's game, and in the previous article I linked the 5970 is running it at 12XCFAA with minimum of 28 and average of 50fps. In this article the 5870CFX, which should be 10-15% faster than the 5970, is running it at 4xAA at minimum 12 and average 44 fps. There definitely seems to be something off with these newest drivers. There's also been people reporting that their second GPU is running just slightly above idle usage when gaming with 10.7 drivers in some games.

Ah yeah, found an even better comparison. In the article kllrnohj linked to(http://hardocp.com/article/2010/07/26/geforce_gtx_460_sli_performance_vs_amd_gpus/), the single 5870 is getting 16 minimum and 42 average fps; almost identical to what 5870CFX is getting in this article, using the same settings. In other words, CFX isn't working in BC2 with the newest drivers.

See post:
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1036036158&postcount=47
We made sure that AMD had notice of the article and the results. AMD verified CFX profiles for the games were included. AMD has informed HardOCP of NOTHING in terms of its drivers being broken.

So when it is all said and done, when you buy the cards, install the latest drivers, and play the game, we show you the performance you will get.

If AMD is going to break its CFX all the time, I am going to leave it in AMD's court to let us know that. HardOCP just tells you guy the real world experience.
 
Something seems very off. When I get home I am going to test this.
 
Well, maybe they should read their own forum more.

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=279&threadid=136956&enterthread=y
Catalyst 10.6 and the hotfix (+ Various Profiles)
Catalyst 10.7 (+ Various Profiles)

both give me roughly half fps on Battlefield Bad Company 2

i have a 4870x2 using the Cats 10.5 hotfix drivers i get around 70-80 fps

but using 10.6 or 10.7 with the latest profiles i get 30-40 fps
This has been WELL-DOCUMENTED over the net (i.e. check out Guru3D.com forums, EA's BFBC2 forums, overclock.net forums, etc etc.). Anything past 10.5 is absolute trash for crossfire/5970.
I don't suffer from any crashes, black screens or anything like that just half the frame rate that i get with the 10.5a's

Its as if crossfire is off, something in the 10.6 & 10.7 driver has changed.
I have exactly this issue- more or less half the framerate I had on 10.5 with 10.6 and 10.7, (with crossfire 5870s)
 
I have done a quick look and installed MSI Afterburner, turned on the OSD, and ran through my map in BC2, I am seeing between 55%-80% GPU usage on both GPUs as I play through, so CFX is working. What I notice is that it fluctuates, and often times there may be only 55%-60% usage on each GPU, meaning efficiency and CFX scaling is low, but both GPUs are very much being tapped for performance, just not anywhere as one would want, idealy you'd want at least 80% GPU usage each GPU and even better would be 100% usage across both GPUs, I think SLI comes to the closest to this. I can tell you guys that AMD is looking at both maps in AvP and BC2 that we test in. That's the best I can do for now, I have other evaluations to work on at the moment.
 
Seems about right.. In Mass Effect 2 I get about 20-80% GPU usage across both, which is odd I think.
 
Not sure about the rest, but the BF BC2 sticks out to me.

From the review of the GTX 470 SLI, Brent got higher frame rates with 5850 CFX @ 8x AD MSAA, then the 5870 CFX with 4xAA

You did mention that it was a different map, I'm just surprised to see such a huge diff map to map =)

otherwise the GTX460 SLI seems like a pretty good setup for $500, nearly $100 over the cost of a single 5870 and the same price as a single GTX480 :O
 
This is good info here. And further pushes me back into the nvidia camp. Regardless of weather it's drivers or whatnot. The results speak for themselves. Next video card upgrades are going to be at least one 460
 
I have done a quick look and installed MSI Afterburner, turned on the OSD, and ran through my map in BC2, I am seeing between 55%-80% GPU usage on both GPUs as I play through, so CFX is working. What I notice is that it fluctuates, and often times there may be only 55%-60% usage on each GPU, meaning efficiency and CFX scaling is low, but both GPUs are very much being tapped for performance, just not anywhere as one would want, idealy you'd want at least 80% GPU usage each GPU and even better would be 100% usage across both GPUs, I think SLI comes to the closest to this. I can tell you guys that AMD is looking at both maps in AvP and BC2 that we test in. That's the best I can do for now, I have other evaluations to work on at the moment.

I get similar fluctuations in BC2 with my 460's in SLI. It never goes over the mid 80%'s although it's really all over the board. (I run in 1920X1200 btw) Performance is butter smooth although I did notice that as rather odd compared to most other games.

I haven't used ati/amd for years although when I did I never cared for their drivers - I always thought nvidia has had better polish... that is ofcourse a completely unsubstantiated opinion ;)
 
"For those of you that have motherboards that will not run full x16/x16 PCIe 2.0 bandwidth, we have an article coming next week that shows you what kind of real world gaming impact running x16/x8 SLI will have on your experience. "

How about i5 configuration as such 8x/8x would yield any differently from 16x/8x ?

Beyond that - thanks for the excellent review.
 
How about i5 configuration as such 8x/8x would yield any differently from 16x/8x ?

Beyond that - thanks for the excellent review.

This is what I'm interested in. Since I just game I saw no advantage of an i7 over an i5...but I forgot to take the x8/x8 limitation into account went I built my rig 6 months ago.
 
I was pretty much convinced before but this seals the deal for me. I am off to go buy my 460's before you cannot find them anymore or newegg jacks up the prices!
 
Pretty much what I had to say about the results was said in the prior evaluation. I find it odd that no one at [H] has caught the huge discrepancy with past evaluations and the current ones. The reviews normally are about the whole experience. Yet the this "sorry it works cause everyone says it works" when you have previous data that is so far apart feels like a 180 on [H]. What I liked about [H] is when there was something that needed uncovering that affected us [H] readers they went deep into the issue.

Glad I'm just not the only one that picked up on this. When there is new tech out I get really excited especially if it's GPU tech. And a big part of that is waiting for [H]s evaluation of it.
 
The thing that is wierd is that in the past, you would basically get SLI so that you can get the most performance possible i.e. take the best card, double it (or 3x or 4x it), to get the best.

Now i am contemplating SLI from a below top level card so that I can good performance over an overly hot and expensive system (480SLI). Wierd but kind of makes sense?
 
460 gtx. FTW.

I only have 1 right now but will SLI when the price drops drastically.
 
Great article... Now I can't wait to read the 16x/8x article... This is what I've been waiting for. REAL GAME PLAYING on this type of setup. looking forward to it...
 
I have also heard of serious problems with installing CFX, as well. Some installations require rebuilding Windows 7 completely before being able to enable CrossfireX. Some cases, the second card must be taken out, the drivers removed, the drivers reinstalled, then the second card put back in before CrossfireX will be able to be enabled. It won't even give the check box much of the time.

I'm sure glad I got my GTX 470 instead of the 5850 I was originally planning.
 
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