6950 vs GTX 460 768MB - Why does Nvidia beat the Radeon in Civ5???

[Black96ws6]

Hi gang,

I was all set to pull the trigger on a 6950 to replace my current GTX 460 768MB (oc'd to 830Mhz), however, looking at Anandtech's Bench comparison, one of the two main games I play, Civ 5, shows the 460 BEATING the 6950?? How can that be?

I play 2 main games right now: Civilization 5 and Counterstrike: Source.

Here's the link. The 6950 beats the 768 in all games except one of the main ones I play! Keep in mind, my 768 is OC'd so add about 6 frames on top of what you see there for the stock one:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/293?vs=315

Is this just an anomaly or will I really not see any difference in Civ5?


Making this a sticky for a while, post #28 from AnandTech GPU Editor Ryan Smith on the topic of multi-threaded rendering deserves more exposure for the benefit of the community. Check it out.

Idontcare
Super Mod

 

[Lonyo]

It's something to do with drivers and the CPU and not the GPU entirely, but NV have managed to make Civ5 work better somehow through driver tweaks.
It used to be that both NV and AMD had "problems" in Civ5, but NV has managed to overcome them.


Civ 5 when the HD6950/70 were released:

You can see that various different AMD setups get the exact same average FPS, and most NV cards also get the same FPS as each other, but it's a lower level than AMD.
(AMD peaks at 50fps vs 42 for NV).


This is the same resolution but from the recent HD6790 review:

As you can see, NV has totally fixed most of their problem, and AMD have made smaller improvements. AMD just has bigger (unsolved?) problems in Civ 5 and it is just plan not that fast.


Luckily it's a slower paced game, so lower FPS doesn't really matter in it, and you wouldn't really notice anything different between the two cards even if one was much faster than the other.
But if they are the only two games you play (Civ 5 and CS:S) then there's no real point in upgrading since you won't really get a better experience in either game from a faster card, since CS:S should run super fast anyway, and Civ 5 is a slower paced game where lower FPS isn't an issue.

 

[formulav8]

Probably subpar driver tweaks for this game. And/Or nvidia arch is better suited for this game.

 

[Skurge]

Well after driver improvements the 6950 is now faster than the 460. What are the other games that the 460 is faster in?

 

[badb0y]

There was a driver bug for both nVidia and AMD cards, nVidia was able to figure it out and tweak their drivers to provide maximum performance and AMD only fixed it to a certain extent. Future driver revisions may yield better results (Mjolnir II maybe?).

 

[f1sherman]

these are old. 11.2 or 11.4 gave AMD some lost ground in CIV5... I think

 

[alcoholbob]

FPS benching a static game with virtually no unit object movement

 

[daveybrat]

For Civ5 and Counterstrike Source there is no reason to upgrade from a GTX 460 to a 6950. You'd be wasting your money.

 

[Silverforce11]

There is a bug in AMD drivers for radeons in Civ5, scrolling is very jerky for some reason and it drags down the fps score. I've played Civ5 for a few months, its a great game. Rather than scrolling i used the minimap click to reposition the camera, that was fine.

I agree with others here. The games you play, don't bother upgrading.

 

[RussianSensation]

For Civ5 and Counterstrike Source there is no reason to upgrade from a GTX 460 to a 6950. You'd be wasting your money.

Exactly.

 

[Arkadrel]

TWIMTBP ed, its optimised for nvidia (and probably diliberatly not to the competitors).

 

[Keysplayr]

TWIMTBP ed, its optimised for nvidia (and probably diliberatly not to the competitors).

Why would anyone optimize for their competitor?

 

[Genx87]

TWIMTBP ed, its optimised for nvidia (and probably diliberatly not to the competitors).

How does this explain Nvidia's performance at release?

 

[bryanW1995]

FPS benching a static game with virtually no unit object movement

this.

Civ5 is much more cpu-dependent. I get substantial improvements from oc'ing my cpu, and very little from the gpu. If you have choppy gameplay/cursor movement it's b/c you need to use a smaller map and/or faster cpu.

 

[Black96ws6]

Okay thanks all, maybe I'll hold off for a bit then and see what Keppler has to offer this year?

Although, I just picked up Aliens vs Predator, it's on sale on Steam right now for $4.99 + $1.87 for the DLC map packs...Less than $9 for everything!

So I may need to upgrade after all LoL

With that in mind, slight change of subject...worth it to get the 6950 for AVP or should I go with a GTX 560 Ti for better Civ5 gameplay?

Too many variables!! Argh!! :biggrin:

 

[A5]

this.

Civ5 is much more cpu-dependent. I get substantial improvements from oc'ing my cpu, and very little from the gpu. If you have choppy gameplay/cursor movement it's b/c you need to use a smaller map and/or faster cpu.

If you fire up the benchmark that AT uses, you'll see it's a map full of units doing their little unit animations. I agree that it's kind of a silly game to benchmark on high-end hardware since it's playable at 15 or 20 fps, but the benchmark isn't quite as simple as you think.

 

[notty22]

I'm not sure if we know the rest of your computer and resolution, but if you want to upgrade from the gtx 460~768, you should probably move up to the 6950 / gtx 570 level of power. The 560 is a good bump over what you have, and if you had bought the 560 originally you would not now need to upgrade. You don't want to repeat that and if have to upgrade so fast. Which is why you need to move up a certain level to make it 'worthwhile'.
But no rule fits all the time. Especially when you get game engine specific.
The 6950 1gb or 2gb if you watch the prices can be had 50-60 dollars cheaper than the gtx 570.

 

[Avalon]

Yeah, not really sure, but I echo the sentiment that you don't need an upgrade for those two games.

 

[Keysplayr]

dp

 

[Keysplayr]

n/m

 

[Keysplayr]

n/m

 

[tviceman]

Why wouldn't anyone cripple for their competitor?

This again?

 

[Skurge]

Why don't you see how AVP runs for you before you decide to upgrade?

 

[bryanW1995]

If you fire up the benchmark that AT uses, you'll see it's a map full of units doing their little unit animations. I agree that it's kind of a silly game to benchmark on high-end hardware since it's playable at 15 or 20 fps, but the benchmark isn't quite as simple as you think.

I'll have to try that out. My issues with the game have been when my i7 @ 4.0 just wasn't enough. When that first happened I dropped it down to stock (2.67) and it was even worse, then got gradually better as I increased the clocks. The difference is that have the onscreen animations run at 15-20-25 fps doesn't bother you, at least in my case I'm usually zoomed out far enough that the animations are pretty tough to see, anyway. When the cpu gets overwhelmed it can seem to take ages to open up one of the myriad windows in the game and take 30-60 seconds or more IBT, to the point that on a large map with 12+ civs I have many times just rage quit right in the middle of (to me) the most exciting part of the game. I finally had to cap myself at standard map/epic speed or large map/standard speed if I wanted to finish the game without this happening. I haven't played in a month or so but I hear that the newest patch has helped a lot with these late-game issues (and possibly helped nvidia to improve their fps as well), maybe I'll fire it up in the next couple of days.

 

[busydude]

As posted by Ryan Smith in an other thread:

Hey all, your friendly neighborhood GPU editor here;

So I was reading the forums and this thread caught my eye. I always have an open door policy, so please feel free to email me; you don't need to yell on the forums to get my attention.

Anyhow, for Civilization V:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4135/nvidias-geforce-gtx-560-ti-upsetting-the-250-market/9
It's basically this in a nutshell. I'm not too sure what I can say that wasn't already in the article, but I'll see what I can do.

If you look at the old results, you'll notice that for single-GPU results, AMD and NV results tended to cluster together. The AMD cards would do around 32-36fps at 1920, while the NV cards would do 38-42fps or so. Obviously if we were truly CPU limited by the game, then everything would be about the same. Instead even slower NVIDIA cards do a bit better here. At the same time if we were GPU limited (even if the difference came down to specific architectural quirks), then we would see at least some scaling with faster GPUs, which we haven't seen.

There is a 3rd option however, and it's something that doesn't come up too much: being CPU limited by the driver. If AMD and NVIDIA are doing setup in a different manner (and they are), then you could see different results when you're CPU bound in the driver setup process. Furthermore setup can be an expensive process due to a number of reasons, so being setup limited doesn't necessarily point towards any one factor right away. Pre-tessellation vertices are probably the textbook example here, but this is probably not the case. Whatever the case, if we are driver limited, then with previous drivers it looks like AMD had more CPU overhead than NVIDIA, explaining the higher results for NVIDIA cards.

This all changed with Release 265 obviously, and now NVIDIA is much less CPU limited. Ultimately I am not sure what NVIDIA did to their drivers because they aren't willing to talk about it and let AMD see their hand. However from the data I have it's clear that something was going on with this game that created a driver bottleneck. In turn whatever that bottleneck is, NVIDIA has finally found it (keep in mind Civ 5 was released 4 months ago) and moved the bottleneck back to the GPU. If AMD has a similar bottleneck, then there's no reason to believe that they can't find it and pick up similar gains.

-Thanks
Ryan Smith

PS Keep in mind that virtually every DX11 title released up through the end of 2010 would have been developed solely against AMD cards, at least at first. AMD was sampling Juniper (5700 series) to developers in the early summer of 2009. Similar NVIDIA hardware wasn't available until a couple of months into 2010, around when the first consumer products launched.