Charlie at Semiaccurate says: Physics hardware makes Kepler/GK104 fast

[Crap Daddy]

It doesn't makes sense as physX is not used in any benchmark that I know of when an NV card is benched against an AMD card. And anyway there's only ONE physX game usually benched, Batman AC. So what are the other games where this Kepler shines? Obviously, games that don't use PhysX but supposedly favor NV. Which are...?

 

[BD231]

Anything we've heard on kelper thusfar is pure bullsh t. There's no way nVidia screws this up with the performance they have in Fermi as the market is not even pressed for more performance right now. Seems like AMD is trying to pull an Intel in the graphics market with aggressive release patterns so it's not like nVidia is going to magically catch them in one process generation unless they come up with a gem.

From a performance standpoint they're absolutely fine right now so I don't get all the fuss. Fermi is a very polished product and I'm absolutely sure they'll build on it with Kelper. Unless you're the impatient type what more could you ask for?

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

I wonder if one of the games where it smokes a 7970 is BF3? Throw out all the other benchmarks then IMO. If buyers can get a card for $300 that smokes the 7970 in BF3 then this is a game changer. It wouldn't surprise me either since BF3 favors nvidia cards. That's a big reason why I didn't even consider 79XX series. It's subpar performance in BF3.

 

[sontin]

I think your mis understanding things, compaired to a 580, with PhsyX running on the 580, the new card in games that uses PhsyX would beat it silly. Its going to have much stronger physX than the 580, by crazy amounts.

Do you know what the gpu is doing? It's calculate all the stuff. To be faster with "PhysX" means to calculate not only faster but a lot more too. And this is only possible, if GK104 has much more compute performance.

BTW Charlie writes that the 256bit interface can't statisfy the compute units fast enough. So how could such a card much faster with PhysX? D:

 

[Arkadrel]

I wonder if one of the games where it smokes a 7970 is BF3? Throw out all the other benchmarks then IMO. If buyers can get a card for $300 that smokes the 7970 in BF3 then this is a game changer. It wouldn't surprise me either since BF3 favors nvidia cards. That's a big reason why I didn't even consider 79XX series. It's subpar performance in BF3.

1900x1200, DX11, ULTRA, 4xMSAAAA, 16xAF, [FONT=verdana,geneva]HBAO on.[/FONT]

The overclock is @1125 mhz core (something like every 7970 can do) (no voltage mod).
If you overclocked it to 1300mhz core, it d probably beat the 590.


However your right about BF3 under ULTRA favoring Nvidia.
Check out the 6970 vs 580, normally theres a 5-14% differnce between them in games.

In this game its almost a 30% differnce (because of settings). I cant remember what it is, but something kills the Radeon performance like mad, turn it off and theyd be much more equal.
Of course in this bench, its turned on, so its run at settings that favor nvidia.

That said, look at its performance, I wouldnt call that subpar.

 

[96Firebird]

The overclock is @1125 mhz core (something like every 7970 can do) (no voltage mod). If you overclocked it to 1300mhz core, it d probably beat the 590.

🙄

 

[Arkadrel]

Do you know what the gpu is doing? It's calculate all the stuff. To be faster with "PhysX" means to calculate not only faster but a lot more too. And this is only possible, if GK104 has much more compute performance.

BTW Charlie writes that the 256bit interface can't statisfy the compute units fast enough. So how could such a card much faster with PhysX? D:

Because the same things that effect this new card, also effects old cards...

If you turn on PhysX with a 580 performance goes down ALOT.
If you turn on physX with this new card, peroformance doesnt go down alot.

^ that is what charlie is saying.


Basically hes saying that its faster than the 580, ONLY because physX slows down the 580 alot.
In games without physX on, it wont be faster than a 580.

 

[Crap Daddy]

In this game its almost a 30% differnce (because of settings). I cant remember what it is, but something kills the Radeon performance like mad, turn it off and theyd be much more equal.
Of course in this bench, its turned on, so its run at settings that favor nvidia.

It's the MSAA. 4X is part of the UTRA preset whish means maxing out the settings.

 

[blackened23]

🙄

1125mhz, note the comparison to GTX 590

[H] had some 1260mhz benchmarks, and the 7970 is faster than the 590 in many of those tests. Of course, the GTX 590 is not a great product anyway since it is completely neutered (in terms of clockspeeds) - it is slower than GTX 570 SLI. This is why I never have cared for single card dual GPU, because they're full of performance compromises.

 

[Crap Daddy]

PhysX by Nvidia has nothing to do whatsoever with 95% of the games out there. But Charlie says that only in some games GK104 bombs. So where the logic behind this chip being faster only when physX is turned on (you now you can enable/disable physX)?

 

[mak360]

1900x1200, DX11, ULTRA, 4xMSAAAA, 16xAF, [FONT=verdana,geneva]HBAO on.[/FONT]

The overclock is @1125 mhz core (something like every 7970 can do) (no voltage mod).
If you overclocked it to 1300mhz core, it d probably beat the 590.


However your right about BF3 under ULTRA favoring Nvidia.
Check out the 6970 vs 580, normally theres a 5-14% differnce between them in games.

In this game its almost a 30% differnce (because of settings). I cant remember what it is, but something kills the Radeon performance like mad, turn it off and theyd be much more equal.
Of course in this bench, its turned on, so its run at settings that favor nvidia.

That said, look at its performance, I wouldnt call that subpar.

Erm, don`t mind him, he just likes to joke around with people lol

 

[blackened23]

I wonder if one of the games where it smokes a 7970 is BF3? Throw out all the other benchmarks then IMO. If buyers can get a card for $300 that smokes the 7970 in BF3 then this is a game changer. It wouldn't surprise me either since BF3 favors nvidia cards. That's a big reason why I didn't even consider 79XX series. It's subpar performance in BF3.

Very, very interesting, especially with the subpar performance bit. I guess if the 7970 is subpar, the overclocked GTX 580 below is absolutely horrendous.

BF3 does not use any type of nvidia physx so judging from Charlies article, GK104 will be slower than the 6970 in this game.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Would have been awesome if you snipped the bold bit out - Oh well

Dude it's a $300 mid range part that's gonna give the 7970 all it can handle and then some.
Wait until the Kraken (high end Kepler) is released. It's going to destroy the 7970. It's really unfortunate that some spent $550-$600 for the 7970. Oh well I tried to warn them.

 

[blackened23]

PhysX by Nvidia has nothing to do whatsoever with 95% of the games out there. But Charlie says that only in some games GK104 bombs. So where the logic behind this chip being faster only when physX is turned on (you now you can enable/disable physX)?

From Charlie:

The problem for Nvidia is that once you venture outside of that narrow list of tailored programs, performance is likely to fall off a cliff, with peaky performance the likes of which haven’t been seen in a long time. On some games, GK104 will handily trounce a 7970, on others, it will probably lose to a Pitcairn. Does this mean it won’t actually do what is promised? No, it will. Is this a problem? Depends on how far review sites dare to step outside of the ‘recommenced’ list of games to benchmark in the reviewers guide.
Ethically, this could go either way, and in a vacuum, we would be more than willing to say that the cards are capable of very high performance. The problem is that the numbers that Nvidia will likely show off at the launch are not in a vacuum, nor are they very real, even considering the above caveats. Nvidia is going out of their way to have patches coded for games that tend to be used as benchmarks by popular sites.

The tailored programs he links are all PHYSX games. So Kepler will perform great in Batman: AC, other games it will perform at pitcairn level?

 

[blackened23]

Dude it's a $300 mid range part that's gonna give the 7970 all it can handle and then some.
Wait until the Kraken (high end Kepler) is released. It's going to destroy the 7970. It's really unfortunate that some spent $550-$600 for the 7970. Oh well I tried to warn them.

😀 If you're waiting for the high end kepler it will not be out until the end of the year or 2013 according to reports. It was reported on techeye, a few days ago (who dropped the hardware aegia news on kepler before even Charlie did)

So what does the high end Kepler mean anyway? Even with 7970 in non physx games and faster in physx games? Shrug. Doesn't sound that exiting

 

[mak360]

PhysX by Nvidia has nothing to do whatsoever with 95% of the games out there. But Charlie says that only in some games GK104 bombs. So where the logic behind this chip being faster only when physX is turned on (you now you can enable/disable physX)?

If you read the links within his article, you will see what he is getting at (hint: what nvidia did and may do again)

I found the hexus 2009 one quite good, it was a nVidia employee talking to an AMD employee about dx11, physX and playing dirty games etc.

 

[Crap Daddy]

He says "on some games... trounce a 7970". Does it sound to you like "in a game", because Batman AC is the only game used in any reviews that has physX as and ingame setting.

 

[mak360]

Dude it's a $300 mid range part that's gonna give the 7970 all it can handle and then some.
Wait until the Kraken (high end Kepler) is released. It's going to destroy the 7970. It's really unfortunate that some spent $550-$600 for the 7970. Oh well I tried to warn them.

sure, whatever makes you sleep at night 🙂

 

[Stingercjc]

Dude it's a $300 mid range part that's gonna give the 7970 all it can handle and then some.
Wait until the Kraken (high end Kepler) is released. It's going to destroy the 7970. It's really unfortunate that some spent $550-$600 for the 7970. Oh well I tried to warn them.

That's all speculation at this point and you know it. There's no solid proof the 300 dollar card from Nvidia will give the 7970 all it can handle. Just because often wrong Charlie says it will does not make it true.

I think the 7970 is overpriced at the moment. If it was 100 dollars cheaper I'd change my tune. Regardless, I'm not going to go around "warning" people of spending their own money. What they do with it is their business, not yours, and not mine.

There's always something better on the horizon. Be it Kepler, Kraken, or the 8XXX series. So what? Right now the 7970 is the performance king and if people want to pay for it so be it.

 

[MrK6]

1900x1200, DX11, ULTRA, 4xMSAAAA, 16xAF, [FONT=verdana,geneva]HBAO on.[/FONT]

The overclock is @1125 mhz core (something like every 7970 can do) (no voltage mod).
If you overclocked it to 1300mhz core, it d probably beat the 590.


However your right about BF3 under ULTRA favoring Nvidia.
Check out the 6970 vs 580, normally theres a 5-14% differnce between them in games.

In this game its almost a 30% differnce (because of settings). I cant remember what it is, but something kills the Radeon performance like mad, turn it off and theyd be much more equal.
Of course in this bench, its turned on, so its run at settings that favor nvidia.

That said, look at its performance, I wouldnt call that subpar.

The difference is due to the in-game MSAA not working properly on AMD cards. If you force anti-aliasing in the AMD control panel and not through the game, the performance is fantastic and would actually destroy that GTX 590. Even at a light overclock of 1125/1600 I can play at ~75-80FPS average in multiplayer, 2560x1600 and Ultra settings with 4x MSAA override through CCC.

 

[Stuka87]

I wonder if one of the games where it smokes a 7970 is BF3? Throw out all the other benchmarks then IMO. If buyers can get a card for $300 that smokes the 7970 in BF3 then this is a game changer. It wouldn't surprise me either since BF3 favors nvidia cards. That's a big reason why I didn't even consider 79XX series. It's subpar performance in BF3.

Being that BF3 has zero support for PhysX, I highly doubt its one of the titles. Now if you go to Batman, then I can see nVidia doing very well there.

Now if BF3 was coded for this feature to start with I can see it doing well as there is a lot of physics going around. But there is no way BF3 was coded for a feature that most likely was not even working in a lab at the time.

Outside of PhysX games, I doubt this feature will work for any currently shipping game, and it would most likely take some big engine changes to make it work.

 

[Crap Daddy]

Anyway we are speculating around speculations of a guy named Charlie. The more I try to understand what he says the more I see he's clueless.

I don't believe Jen Hsun is on a diet of magic mushrooms lately so he thinks he can manipulate all the reviewers to support Kepler since it will perform exceptionally well in 5% of the games out there.

Given the performance increase of Tahiti over the 580 (10-20% across the board stock vs. stock) I think even blindfolded NV engineers cannot come up with a new chip that will be slower than that, or worse, slower than a Fermi.

So there is no logic and it never happened before to launch a new arch/chip whatever that will perform worse than the previous gen at the same price. ( a 300$ card that will be on par with Pitcairn which proly will be in line with gtx570/AMD6970)

 

[96Firebird]

1125mhz, note the comparison to GTX 590

[H] had some 1260mhz benchmarks, and the 7970 is faster than the 590 in many of those tests. Of course, the GTX 590 is not a great product anyway since it is completely neutered (in terms of clockspeeds) - it is slower than GTX 570 SLI. This is why I never have cared for single card dual GPU, because they're full of performance compromises.

I was more rolling my eyes at "The overclock is @1125 mhz core (something like every 7970 can do)" part. If "like every" 7970 could do it, AMD would have clocked the 7970 higher.

 

[mak360]

He says "on some games... trounce a 7970". Does it sound to you like "in a game", because Batman AC is the only game used in any reviews that has physX as and ingame setting.

whats the difference? when we know there isn't many anyway, that still dont stop one (nvidia) crippling the other (AMD). we have seen this happen in many cases, especially in nvidia`s case, so who is to say it wont happen more now (more so when nvidia loses a round or is just late).

PS if Charlie is speaking of one game, where nVidia beats it silly, then expect prices to stay where they are now. its a mid end part anyway, what do you expect. 🙂

 

[MrK6]

I was more rolling my eyes at "The overclock is @1125 mhz core (something like every 7970 can do)" part. If "like every" 7970 could do it, AMD would have clocked the 7970 higher.

Only if it fit their TDP target, which it didn't. Again, even at stock clocks, the 7970 is substantially faster as long as one forces MSAA to override the in-game MSAA.