God the people that try to find things to bitch about in every review thread is bullshit. Put the fucking tinfoil hat away guys.
+1.
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God the people that try to find things to bitch about in every review thread is bullshit. Put the fucking tinfoil hat away guys.
Its nice to see ATI responded and fixed a glaring driver problem with their top end cards. However, the 5800's have been out for 10 months +, and they're just now getting around to addressing the issue? That speaks very poorly of them.
Man I wish XFX had 460's on the market.
First off, thank you very much for doing a second review with a more "corrected" driver released from ATI.
However the reviews, even starting from the prior ones where the 460 just raped the 5850s, have felt biased towards Nvidia (I run Nvidia currently). I think that it should have been made very clear during the original reviews how big of a performance hit that the drivers had made on the CFX, and not that the cards were the limiting factor. Which is VERY relevant to reviews as the same piece(s) of hardware will perform at a much higher rate than shown once the driver issues are fixed. With about 5 minutes of searching the web I found how hard the newer drivers had hurt the CFX setups.
During those original reviews, there should have been a pair of 5850's running on the older 10.5/6 drivers that were much faster as to give a more fair judge on what the cards were "capable" of. And leave it to the consumer to decide if they should wait for ATI to fix their drivers or jump on the immediate fix in the 460.
While I am glad that reviews like those help force ATI to really get on their driver team, I think a little bit more fairness is deserved not to ATI, but to the readers.
The previous article was nvidia favorable because the GTX460s shit stomped all over the 5850s. Every reviewer should always test the latest drivers regardless of bugs or performance issues, there should be no going back in time and comparing older drivers unless it is specifically a review of drivers. I expect the latest drivers on AMD's site to work and if they don't and it makes them look bad in reviews well tough fucking shit. I'm not gonna play musical chairs with drivers for either company. Release one driver and make it work, not that I don't expect drivers like any piece of software to have bugs but when they get worse and worse as time goes on, you're doing something seriously fucked and wrong. These Crossfire problems have been stated many times in many forums, it shouldn't be Brent and Kyle's job to make the Catalyst team get off their asses and do something.
it shouldn't be Brent and Kyle's job to make the Catalyst team get off their asses and do something.
First off, thank you very much for doing a second review with a more "corrected" driver released from ATI.
However the reviews, even starting from the prior ones where the 460 just raped the 5850s, have felt biased towards Nvidia (I run Nvidia currently). I think that it should have been made very clear during the original reviews how big of a performance hit that the drivers had made on the CFX, and not that the cards were the limiting factor. Which is VERY relevant to reviews as the same piece(s) of hardware will perform at a much higher rate than shown once the driver issues are fixed. With about 5 minutes of searching the web I found how hard the newer drivers had hurt the CFX setups.
During those original reviews, there should have been a pair of 5850's running on the older 10.5/6 drivers that were much faster as to give a more fair judge on what the cards were "capable" of. And leave it to the consumer to decide if they should wait for ATI to fix their drivers or jump on the immediate fix in the 460.
While I am glad that reviews like those help force ATI to really get on their driver team, I think a little bit more fairness is deserved not to ATI, but to the readers.
I would love to see a comparison of the SLI/crossfire scaling of the GTS450 vs. 5750/5770. Seems lik the 57xx series has had less crossfire issues than the 58xx series, though I never benchmarked my 5750s with any of the newer drivers, I never noticed a performance problem, and when I DID bench them with I think Cat 10.3/10.4, I had 180+% of the single card performance.
The previous article was nvidia favorable because the GTX460s shit stomped all over the 5850s. Every reviewer should always test the latest drivers regardless of bugs or performance issues, there should be no going back in time and comparing older drivers unless it is specifically a review of drivers. I expect the latest drivers on AMD's site to work and if they don't and it makes them look bad in reviews well tough fucking shit. I'm not gonna play musical chairs with drivers for either company. Release one driver and make it work, not that I don't expect drivers like any piece of software to have bugs but when they get worse and worse as time goes on, you're doing something seriously fucked and wrong. These Crossfire problems have been stated many times in many forums, it shouldn't be Brent and Kyle's job to make the Catalyst team get off their asses and do something.
And I'm not asking Brent or Kyle to be the responsible part to make the catalyst team to do their job, it is inexcusable how poorly the drivers are working. However if you are doing a HARDWARE review and not a SOFTWARE review, this information is pertinent.
I used to be an ATI fan up to the 9800 PRO but the 7000 series & beyond won over to the nVidia camp....I'm no fanboy. If you make a better product, I'll jump ship to your brand....
oh yeah...and nVidia seems to run cooler and last longer too...every 1 of my ATI cards died from too much heat & stress....
The review statistics were evidence enough of the 460's raping the 5850's, but that doesn't mean that's the end of the story... Getting drastically different results from different drivers is extremely significant to a COMPREHENSIVE review. I read the [H] reviews because they are typically very detailed and informative. Even if they didn't test the older driver versions, it should have been stated that the CFX setup was very limited by driver issues and not the cards themselves. Many people don't buy 2 cards at one time, instead opting to get one at a time. This is extremely relevant to those people, because between the last review and this one I'm sure a multitude of people jumped over the 460's (they are a wonderful card no doubt), however a lot has changed since then and the 5850 is now closer to where its performance should be about. That alone is a huge reason to include that information into a review.
And I'm not asking Brent or Kyle to be the responsible part to make the catalyst team to do their job, it is inexcusable how poorly the drivers are working. However if you are doing a HARDWARE review and not a SOFTWARE review, this information is pertinent.
Why not compare 470 SLI vs 5850 crossfire, now those 2 cards are at the same price range. I will agree with the rest of the people, I would be piss if a pair of 460 still keeps up with a pair of 5850 and i own 5850's. Everyone complaining about the OC, being higher on the 460, think about it this way, thats how the card comes from factory. Now if you but a 5850 OC from the factory the performance/price ratio becomes worst. Now imagine how the price/performance ratio would have been if they would have use a vanilla 460 1 gb that cost 230, and have them OC it to what the galaxy was. I want to see 470 SLI vs 5850 CFx.
GPU usage doesn't mean anything, it's a useless number.
You will never actually get 100% GPU usage unless the game is perfectly tuned for a specific architecture.
and I assume
it's a useless number that may as well be pulled out of someone's ass.
There's a difference between memory usage, memory controller load and GPU usage. You can track each one individually. Other games such as Metro 2033 have no problem maxing out the GPU usage. GPU usage actually does mean something. It's how much of the GPU clock is being used. Even if you're shader limited, it will still be able to use more GPU cycles.
What? I didn't talk about memory usage or memory controller load at all. There is dedicated hardware in a GPU. What part is GPU usage measuring? For example, in DX9 and 10 games, 100% GPU load is impossible because the tessellation engines will always be idle. The simple fact is that there will be bottlenecks for some games, making GPU usage a pointless number.
"how much of the GPU clock is being used" also doesn't make any sense. How do you "use" a clock? Not to mention, WHICH clock? Core clock? Shader clock?
And no, if you are shader limited you won't be able to use more "GPU cycles". If you could, you wouldn't be shader limited, now would you?
But even if it wasn't a pointless number (which it is), who gives a shit? If the drivers can't properly utilize the card, the card might as well just be slow.
If GPU usage couldn't go up when tessellation isn't in use then games that don't even have tessellation wouldn't be able to use 99% usage according to you, right? I guess that's why you can use 99% in BC2 on an i7 or by cranking up the AA...
You really have no idea what you're talking about. Unless you think you know more than Nvidia devs do about their own product.
BC2 is DX11, for one. But that just further emphasizes how useless that number is. If it is game/context dependent, then it isn't actually measuring "GPU usage", but rather what the driver guesses the GPU is capable of for the given context.
Still didn't answer the point of why does it even matter?
Also, I can promise you this, Nvidia's engineers aren't using that number to test tweaks to the driver. That number is there for you to get all excited about, not because it actually means anything. Companies do that sort of shit all the time. Case in point: Windows Performance Index. Or a 3D Mark score. Useless numbers.
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. GPU usage is not even remotely comparable to WIndows Performance Index. It's not put there for anyone to get excited about by the marketing department. Educate yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_time
You can't even keep a consistent story either. If tessellation isn't being used, how would the GPU be using 99% according to one of your many made up stories? BC2 runs in dx9,10 and 11. The results are the same. GPU-Z doesn't measure GPU usage for a given game, it's the actual processor cycles being physically used.
I hear alot of people complaining about ATI driver issues, and how ATI driver is inferior to Nvidia. but why people still buy ATI with top dollar? this sounds very contradictory. we all know that software is as important as hardware. Nokia today admitted this after years of losing to iphone.
The answer should be obvious - ATI's driver isn't inferior to Nvidia's
This bullshit comment I can't let slide. Your not serious are you. Nvidia has always had better drivers. There were times where they had mishaps some were epic even, however in general through game scaling, support, and in general, there has ALWAYS been a consensus that nvidia's drivers are superior. Only somebody truly blinded would state and believe what you said. So again I have to ask are you serious?
then back to my previous question: why people buy ATI card with top dollar if their drivers are inferior?
then back to my previous question: why people buy ATI card with top dollar if their drivers are inferior?
I hear alot of people complaining about ATI driver issues, and how ATI driver is inferior to Nvidia. but why people still buy ATI with top dollar? this sounds very contradictory. we all know that software is as important as hardware. Nokia today admitted this after years of losing to iphone.
Also am I supposed to second guess every driver update coming out from AMD from now on. Questions like, hey these are the new Cats how do they perform on xyz game are going to be the normal? No Thank you!
These Crossfire problems have been stated many times in many forums, it shouldn't be Brent and Kyle's job to make the Catalyst team get off their asses and do something.
I can tell you this I do know people that still uses catalyst 10.5a because they work better. thats drivers from May/June. I don't recall having issues using "lastest" stable drivers from nvidia or being forced to rollback to 4 months old drivers.
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=180561&view=findpost&p=1117006My GTX 470 runs at 405/837/810MHz clocks if I use 120Hz mode on desktop with my Samsung 2233RZ. Setting any other refreshrate, 110Hz / 100Hz / 60Hz immediately makes the card idle at 50/67/101MHz.
Previous drivers did not do this, but I had random black screen bug on desktop while idling with 257.21 / 258.96 while 197.75 worked ok (never tried 197.45). Hopefully this beta fixes at least this much, but I'd love to have 120Hz desktop using idle clocks and not those low power 3d clocks.
Do you have any info about this ManuelG