NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti vs 8800 GTX Crysis Image Quality & Benchmark Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,619 words · ~8 min read
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so I've got what might appear to be kind of a random card on my test bench it's
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not actually an EVGA 8800 it's an assus
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8800 GTX with an EVGA Ultra Cooler on it
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and there is a very good reason I have this here now it's been about 3 years
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since the launch of the 8800 GT and 3
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years is according to NVIDIA's internal research anyway about the average
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upgrade cycle time for a gamer so I want
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to have a look at what gamers who bought
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the original direct X10 gpus so that's a
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full direct X Generation ago that is the
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8800 GTX 8800 GTS 8800 Ultra and really
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the 8800 GT they all fall into kind of a a performance range that's within about
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20 to 30% of each other what do they get
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by upgrading to what is now by all
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appearances the direct X11 bang for the
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buck GPU to have the GTX 560 t I so
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here's another interesting point to kind of look at the steam Hardware survey
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actually reveals that 72% of gamers are still on Direct
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X10 so you can imagine that NVIDIA is really hoping that a lot of those guys
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who upgraded to direct X10 you know two to three years ago and are getting to
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the end of the life cycle of their card are going to upgrade to one of these so
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let's have a look at what the benefit is of upgrading to a GTX 56t I from an
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older generation card such as this one
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so I'm loading my save game called image quality compare and I just want to talk
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a little bit about what things we are
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going to be observing here so first of all I want you guys to check out the
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frame rate in the top right corner so it's up around
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oh so this is my image quality compare
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save game I want you to notice a few things about it uh first of all we are
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running on all medium details this is with the 8800 GTX you can see the frame
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rate up in the corner is around 50 frames per second now some people would
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probably argue that this is like uh too high in the human eye can only see 30
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FPS blah blah blah but personally I do
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find I notice a difference at higher than 50 FPS honestly my ideal is around
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60 plus although 50 is very very playable but I will actually show you
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guys why so I'm going to do still screenshots for you to compare and you can flip
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YouTube into 1080p to to really look at it closely but the stuff you're going to
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want to focus on actually I'm going to go here back to the beginning is uh
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things like uh anti-aliasing so if you look
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closely at uh parts of the image like
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the trees you're going to notice that with the with the lower image quality
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settings you're going to have more more jaggies on leaves uh or on things like
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the tree trunks you can see there they're quite Jagged especially while
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you're moving the effect is um is very
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noticeable um anyway I'm going to sort of demonstrate why I don't believe that
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30fps when you're in a still scene is
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enough because you check check this out okay so as soon as I do something like
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run around and blow up a barrel boom it dips so for me I want the frame rate to
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never dip below 30 FPS because when
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there's explosions going on and you're moving fast around the map and there's
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lots of enemy characters being drawn that's exactly the time when you need
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all of the performance that you can get and if your frame rate dips at that
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critical time you're going to miss a shot or you're going to accidentally
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drive off a cliff or or what whatever
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whatever can happen while you're not able to properly see what exactly you're
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doing so here you can see I'm driving and uh oh wow it looks like I managed to
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cut off the frame rate counter in the top there yeah so I've got fraps running
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in the top corner and it's around 40 FPS
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so anyway yes this is all medium details with the 8800 GTX you know what crisis
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looks great crisis looks great on an 8800 GTX and I'm going to show you guys
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in a minute how much even more better it can look with a GTX 560 TI
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okay guys I've got my GTX 560 TI on the
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test bench now this is a an Intel Core
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i7 2600k processor overclocked to 4.7
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GHz so we shouldn't be seeing too much in terms of CPU bottlenecking now I'm at
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that very same scene right when I first load my image quality compare save point
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and you can see we're up around 115 frames per second now there is no image
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quality difference for running at 115 frames per second versus running at 50
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frames per second nothing notada not at
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all now motion might be a little bit more fluid especially if you're running
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on a 120 HZ monitor like the one I have here remember anything above 60 frames
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per second is not going to really help you out when you're running on a 60 HZ
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monitor because it can only display 60 frames per second how whereas a 120 HZ
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monitor is capable of more so here I'm
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just going to show you guys like what happens to the frame rate when we blow
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up a barrel instead of Dipping down to you know the 35 to 40 range we're
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dipping down to the 95 range so you won't even feel a dip so what do you do
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as soon as you start being able to run a game at insane frame rates well you turn
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up the details so I'm going to turn everything up to high and we're going to
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do our image quality comparison I'll show you guys the screenshots at the end
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of the video and we'll see even on an old this is an old title old direct X10
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title how much of a difference a video card upgrade can make for you if you
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haven't done one in a few
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years so I'm loading that very same save game and one thing you guys are probably
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going to notice right off the bat is that up here my frame rate is a little
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bit lower than it was when I was running on the 8800 GTX so the reason is that
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I've turned the details way way up and what I've also noticed about the 560 TI
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is that when things get hairy it doesn't dip down nearly to the same degree that
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the 8800 GTX does so you can see that textures are much much better uh Shadows
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are softer a lot more Dynamic a lot more realistic looking we've got like you
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know God Rays going through the uh through the the light that passes
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through the trees just way more processing effects the water looks
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better um and even when you know oh I
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walked too close whoops okay well let's try that one more
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time even when I you know start blowing things up explosions look more
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realistic and the the frame rate really doesn't dip down below 35 or so frames
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per second which is acceptable even when the action gets
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intense so I'm actually just going to go for my little uh my little cruise down
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the road here and I just want to demonstrate that even when things get
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hairy that my frame rate is going to stay
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satisfactory now 35 frames per second I
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would consider more than acceptable for single player but for a multiplayer game
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yeah I would probably I would probably compromise some of that image quality
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for a higher frame rate just to make sure that it's being drawn on my screen
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before the other guy but in the case of single player really I candy is a big
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part of the experience so here let's go find some some dudes to kill and then uh
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you guys can watch the frame rate and please don't watch my terrible gaming
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skills because yes I'm playing on easy and yes I'm still not doing that well
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what are you going to do and now I died so thank you for
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checking out my video on what kind of image quality increases you can get if
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you take your old direct X10 class video
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card and upgrade it to the new GTX 560 TI with direct X11 and really more than
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anything else a lot more horsepower so that's how much different it can be even
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with an older direct X10 game image quality screenshot comparison coming
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actually here's one other interesting tidbit my power consumption was only
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about wow about 5% higher at its peak
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with the GTX 560 versus the 8800 GTX so
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that's just phenomenal you get that much more performance that much better image
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quality without any additional power budget when you upgrade to a GTX 560 TI
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bye