Mass Effect 2: Galactic battle Geforce versus Radeon

[AzN]

Forget the benchmarks that use i7s running at 3.5 GHz and do not represent what you are getting at home...

Did you even listen to what I wrote? My X2 250 was holding my 5750 back! I got frame slowdowns inside the ship. Once I overclocked my CPU the performance was fine.

And I also mentioned that I play with 4x SSAA. That's Supersampling! Do you know how demanding that is?

On my system, the game cleary benefited more from improving the CPU...

Looking at these benchmarks, if you have a 22" LCD (1680 x 1050) and a 9600GT then ME2 will run just fine. Its not a demanding game at all... A 9600GT will give you smooth 40 frames per second.

I suppose you didn't even read the post above about my system running @ constant 60fps through vsync and occasion dips to 40ish fps. My system is far from i7 @ 3.5ghz.

You probably benefited by overclocking because your GPU wasn't fast enough so your CPU gave the little umph that needed to be more playable. Faster GPU would have made much bigger difference as shown by these benches.

You play 4xSSAA? I find that hard to believe. 4xSSAA is like blowing up the resolution 4x whatever your resolution you are playing at. So if you used 1680x1050 with 4xSSAA it's like playing 6720x4200 resolution which your 5750 probably isn't capable of even on a quake 3 engine. 5870 has a hard time playing SSAA with half life 2 engine that is much easier on GPU than a modified Unreal engine.

 

[Phil1977]

You probably benefited by overclocking because your GPU wasn't fast enough

Its the other way round. The GPU was getting bored. It just wasn't fed data fast enough. My Athlon II 250 at around 3.6 GHz is a much better CPU for ME1. Don't forget these games can use more cores now. So a 20% overclock on a dual core CPU and you just got yourself 40% more CPU power for mutithreaded games. On a quadcore, well times 4. This explains why overclocked i7s can be quite misleading. The gain is not just 20% or so. If the game is multithreaded the gain is much higher!

You play 4xSSAA? I find that hard to believe. 4xSSAA is like blowing up the resolution 4x whatever your resolution you are playing at.

That's right! You remember me from the the LCD gaming thread? I am the guy that uses a 18.5" LCD specifically for gaming because I get much better frames this way. It has a native resolution of 1366 x 768.

Check out my thread below. It talks about SSAA of the Radeon 5000 series. Unfortunatly not every game works with it. But many do.

BF2142 I can play at 8x, but I get slowdowns with explosions (SSAA also works on shaders!). ME1 however works just fine on 4x.

I also but a few screenshots in that thread. Do check it out. There are fps counters in each image. The 5000 series are very powerful cards. And in the older or less demanding titles SSAA is a real option!

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2045195

 

[AzN]

Its the other way round. The GPU was getting bored. It just wasn't fed data fast enough. My Athlon II 250 at around 3.6 GHz is a much better CPU for ME1. Don't forget these games can use more cores now. So a 20% overclock on a dual core CPU and you just got yourself 40% more CPU power for mutithreaded games. On a quadcore, well times 4. This explains why overclocked i7s can be quite misleading. The gain is not just 20% or so. If the game is multithreaded the gain is much higher!

Oh really? Your CPU is on the slow side @ stock for modern games which is true. Clocking 3.6ghz gave you some breathing room which I can agree with. However Mass effect isn't even quad optimized. Please do some proper research!

That's right! You remember me from the the LCD gaming thread? I am the guy that uses a 18.5" LCD specifically for gaming because I get much better frames this way. It has a native resolution of 1366 x 768.

Check out my thread below. It talks about SSAA of the Radeon 5000 series. Unfortunatly not every game works with it. But many do.

BF2142 I can play at 8x, but I get slowdowns with explosions (SSAA also works on shaders!). ME1 however works just fine on 4x.

I also but a few screenshots in that thread. Do check it out. There are fps counters in each image. The 5000 series are very powerful cards. And in the older or less demanding titles SSAA is a real option!

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2045195

No I don't remember you but you use such low resolution to play your games which most people on this board don't. 1366x768 4xSSAA is like playing 5464x3072 with no AA. Your 5750 is far from powerful to play modern games @ that resolution. Only thing that is feasible on your board with SSAA is 2xSSAA on older games and that would still be pushing it! You would have to turn down settings to medium to make it feasible.

You see the chart above with 5870 and SSAA? Look @ what happens every time 2xSSAA,4xSSAA,8xSSAA is added. Performance is cut into half for each SSAA setting that is because the resolution is being blown up 2x 4x than scaled back down to give that AA effect.

So if you got 100fps without AA you would be getting 25fps with 4xSSAA.

Guess what? My GTX260 can also do SSAA just not rotated grid like the 5x00 series which I've tried in my favorite BF2 game that is 5 years old. From 100 fps avg with 16XQAA that's 8xMSAA with 16 coverage samples to 30fps avg with 4xSSAA. Only thing that was feasible was 2xSSAA which looked far worse than 16xQ.

edit:
Here's Mass effect 1 with 4xSSAA 1360x768 with my system below

Now that's 14fps with more powerful CPU and GPU than yours.

 

[NoQuarter]

That's right! You remember me from the the LCD gaming thread? I am the guy that uses a 18.5" LCD specifically for gaming because I get much better frames this way. It has a native resolution of 1366 x 768.

Check out my thread below. It talks about SSAA of the Radeon 5000 series. Unfortunatly not every game works with it. But many do.

Wait, what.. why would you play at 1366x768 and use AA to emulate higher resolution instead of just playing at a higher resolution? The whole idea behind AA is that you render the scene at a much higher resolution, then interpolate the pixels back down to your output resolution, this removes the jaggies by finding the blended color for a single pixel that needs to represent 4 pixels. This still gives you the penalty of rendering at higher resolution but doesn't give you the true sharpness of the higher resolution, and is why AA is less necessary the higher resolution you go.

On a laptop where you have limited resources I'd rather have a native resoluion of 1366x768 to afford turning up effects, but when you have options I think 1680x1050 2X AA is going to be a sharper and still less demanding game than 1366x768 4x AA.

 

[Phil1977]

I chose to play at 1366 x 768 resolution. Its my choice. You don't have to like it or agree.

I had a 22" and you needed AA just as you do on a 24". Jaggies are always there no matter what resolution...

 

[toyota]

AzN, how did your framerate drop down that low? I just went to that same spot at 1360x768 with 4x SSAA and I am at 33fps. am I doing something wrong? btw my E8500 is at a 3.16 and gtx260 is at 666/1392/2200.

 

[Phil1977]

Sure you remember me!

I helped you out in this thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=29254204&postcount=68

Where you got confused between pixel pitch and resolution...

I wonder if I should bother, as you are doing the same thing now. You are not taking anything onboard and just keep saying the same things... You didn't even close that other thread where everyone was trying to be nice to you and help you understand the difference betweeb resolution and dot pitch...

Your CPU is on the slow side @ stock for modern games which is true. Clocking 3.6ghz gave you some breathing room which I can agree with.

Now you got it! Thats what being CPU limited means! Wheras you said my GPU is to slow...

However Mass effect isn't even quad optimized. Please do some proper research!

Did I ever say that ME is quad optimized? Please read again. I said that when you are dealing with a multi threaded game, any CPU overclock will be boosted by the more cores you have...

1366x768 4xSSAA is like playing 5464x3072 with no AA. Your 5750 is far from powerful to play modern games @ that resolution. Only thing that is feasible on your board with SSAA is 2xSSAA on older games and that would still be pushing it! You would have to turn down settings to medium to make it feasible.

Dude do you have my system? Are you seriously trying to tell me something about what is in front of me? Come on. Drop it.

You see the chart above with 5870 and SSAA?

Do you? 4x SSAA and you still get 60 frames at 2560x1600!!! Thats a insane resolution!

Guess what? My GTX260 can also do SSAA just not rotated grid like the 5x00 series which I've tried in my favorite BF2 game that is 5 years old.

Well get a 5750 and THEN you can bag my results. I can play BF2142 with 4x SSAA no problems.

I have put up screenshots which show my GPU clock speed and also the FPS. Here is the link again: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2045195

It even includes a screenshot of HL2 Lost Coast (which has HDR as well)!

 

[MBrown]

ME2 seems to run better than ME1 on my setup

Q6600 @ 3GHz
4GB DDR2
55nm EVGA GTX260 core 216 superclocked. (don't remember the clocks of it but its factor OCed)
1680x1050
Max settings ingame

 

[NoQuarter]

I chose to play at 1366 x 768 resolution. Its my choice. You don't have to like it or agree.

I had a 22" and you needed AA just as you do on a 24". Jaggies are always there no matter what resolution...

Sorry I shoulda specified at comparative screen sizes, since jaggies are reduced by pixel density which is indicated by resolution vs screen size (or pixel pitch). Obv a 1366x768 18" will need less AA than a 1920x1080 30"

 

[Phil1977]

Sorry I shoulda specified at comparative screen sizes, since jaggies are reduced by pixel density which is indicated by resolution vs screen size (or pixel pitch). Obv a 1366x768 18" will need less AA than a 1920x1080 30"

Good point... When I had the 22" I used to push it back a bit. The 18" I just pull closer. So in the end the image feels the same size to me. The main benefit I am getting with the 18" is better performance and not having to buy a very high end video card to enjoy the latest games...

If I wasn't gaming (or was cashed up), hell I would have a cheap 23" Full HD screen for sure!

 

[NoQuarter]

Good point... When I had the 22" I used to push it back a bit. The 18" I just pull closer. So in the end the image feels the same size to me. The main benefit I am getting with the 18" is better performance and not having to buy a very high end video card to enjoy the latest games...

If I wasn't gaming (or was cashed up), hell I would have a cheap 23" Full HD screen for sure!

Yea, my buddy actually has a 1366x768 24" LCD that he replaced with a 1920x1080 24" LCD and used dual monitor for a while, the difference was tremendous because of the bad pixel pitch on the one. It's really hard to play MMO's or anything where legibility or UI scaling matter on his old one, for some reason I was thinking you bought something like his just to do AA but at 18" 1366x768 shouldn't be bad.

I'm perpetually broke myself, I always justified my lower res monitors by knowing I get better performance outta my card but I had to break down and buy a nice monitor to start working on an Eyefinity setup.

Which ties back into ME2 by the way, where the hell is the Eyefinity support!!

 

[toyota]

but IMO 18 inches is just too small for a desktop widescreen monitor. heck my 23 inch isnt quite as physically large as I would like.

 

[AzN]

Sure you remember me!

I helped you out in this thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=29254204&postcount=68

Where you got confused between pixel pitch and resolution...

No I still don't remember you even chiming in nor did I read your post.

I wonder if I should bother, as you are doing the same thing now. You are not taking anything onboard and just keep saying the same things... You didn't even close that other thread where everyone was trying to be nice to you and help you understand the difference betweeb resolution and dot pitch...

LOL. You didn't help me anything. I asked a simple question for some people to answer. I wasn't confused between pixel pitch or resolution. You just assumed I did. I was trying to get to the bottom of pixel pitch has with image quality and what does that thread have anything to do with this one? Nice of you to bring it up and go off topic. :/

Now you got it! Thats what being CPU limited means! Wheras you said my GPU is to slow...

Got what? You haven't explained anything besides you think you helped me in the other thread.

Did I ever say that ME is quad optimized? Please read again. I said that when you are dealing with a multi threaded game, any CPU overclock will be boosted by the more cores you have...

You sure did! You automatically assumed i7 was 4 times more processing power for this game.

So a 20% overclock on a dual core CPU and you just got yourself 40% more CPU power for mutithreaded games. On a quadcore, well times 4. This explains why overclocked i7s can be quite misleading. The gain is not just 20% or so. If the game is multithreaded the gain is much higher!

Kind of goofy math that you think 20% overclock on a dual core equals 40% more processing and quad equals 4 times that on a dual core optimized game when in fact it's exactly 20% more for both dual or quad core.

Dude do you have my system? Are you seriously trying to tell me something about what is in front of me? Come on. Drop it.

I don't but I know that your system is slower than mine.

Do you? 4x SSAA and you still get 60 frames at 2560x1600!!! Thats a insane resolution!

That's on a 5 years old engine that gets 200fps without AA. It's no mass effect that need lot more GPU power.

Well get a 5750 and THEN you can bag my results. I can play BF2142 with 4x SSAA no problems.

Perhaps bf2142 because it's an updated bf2 engine as it doesn't require all that much to run the game. I can 4xSSAA with BF2 @ 1680x1050 and get about 50fps.

I have put up screenshots which show my GPU clock speed and also the FPS. Here is the link again: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2045195

It even includes a screenshot of HL2 Lost Coast (which has HDR as well)!

Oh yes I've seen it but look at the screen shot you replied to. HL2 is relatively lax on GPU. Mass effect in other hand isn't. It requires 2-3x more GPU power if not more.

 

[AzN]

Toyota can you delete that picture or shrink it?

Also were you using 4x4 SSAA? That's what I used.

 

[evolucion8]

Oh really? Your CPU is on the slow side @ stock for modern games which is true. Clocking 3.6ghz gave you some breathing room which I can agree with. However Mass effect isn't even quad optimized. Please do some proper research!

I have to disagree with you a bit, while I can't find an article that can prove or disaprove what you state here, the game put a nice load across all four cores in my CPU, a load between 24% and 48%, which is quite interesting, but probably you are true, may it uses only two threads and switch the load between cores.

 

[toyota]

Toyota can you delete that picture or shrink it?

Also were you using 4x4 SSAA? That's what I used.

yes I was using 4x SSAA.

 

[AzN]

I have to disagree with you a bit, while I can't find an article that can prove or disaprove what you state here, the game put a nice load across all four cores in my CPU, a load between 24% and 48%, which is quite interesting, but probably you are true, may it uses only two threads and switch the load between cores.

That is hardly quad optimized. I have single core game that runs between both cores @ 60% and 40%. That doesn't mean it's dual core optimized.

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,645004/PCGH-Performance-Review-Mass-Effect/Mass-Effect/Test/

Core 2 6850 vs Core 2 QX6850. 1 fps difference in mass effect. Now that 1 fps differences comes from cache. QX6850 having 2 sets of 4 meg cache between 2 dual cores while 6850 only 4meg cache between 1 dual core.

 

[AzN]

yes I was using 4x SSAA.

Yeah I think I have this mixed up. I used 4x4 SSAA thinking it's 4xSSAA but I think it's not. 4x4 is probably 16xSSAA? I'm not too sure how they rate this.

 

[Daedalus685]

So a 20% overclock on a dual core CPU and you just got yourself 40% more CPU power for mutithreaded games. On a quadcore, well times 4. This explains why overclocked i7s can be quite misleading. The gain is not just 20% or so. If the game is multithreaded the gain is much higher!

Gonna have to stop ya right there skip...

If you over clock the CPU by 20%, you increase power (assuming it scales perfectly) by 20%... You don't get to multiply that in turn by the number of cores.. 20% is 20% no matter how you look at it. Sure, a 20% over clock on a dual core is a larger increase in computing power than a 20% over clock on a single core... but it is still 20%.


EDIT: Evidently not originally spoken by AZN...

 

[evolucion8]

That is hardly quad optimized. I have single core game that runs between both cores @ 60% and 40%. That doesn't mean it's dual core optimized.

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,645004/PCGH-Performance-Review-Mass-Effect/Mass-Effect/Test/

Core 2 6850 vs Core 2 QX6850. 1 fps difference in mass effect. Now that 1 fps differences comes from cache. QX6850 having 2 sets of 4 meg cache between 2 dual cores while 6850 only 4meg cache between 1 dual core.

Mass Effect is the only game that I played that put a load across all cores, I haven't played GTA4 since I don't like it. Most other games usually only puts a similar load to only one core, or may be two cores, Need for Speed Shift also uses the four cores considerably but less than Mass Effect 1.

 

[AzN]

Gonna have to stop ya right there skip...

If you over clock the CPU by 20%, you increase power (assuming it scales perfectly) by 20%... You don't get to multiply that in turn by the number of cores.. 20% is 20% no matter how you look at it. Sure, a 20% over clock on a dual core is a larger increase in computing power than a 20% over clock on a single core... but it is still 20%.

Um it was on bold for a reason. I was quoting Phil1977.

 

[Daedalus685]

Um it was on bold for a reason. I was quoting Phil1977.

Sigh... We have a quote function you know

Sorry...

Though since someone actually thought that way, not you I realize, It is important to point out how silly it is again.

 

[Phil1977]

Sigh... We have a quote function you know

Sorry...

Though since someone actually thought that way, not you I realize, It is important to point out how silly it is again.

Thats basically what I was trying to say. If you are playing a multithreaded game and have a multicore porcessor you will benefit greatly from overclocking your CPU.

 

[AzN]

That's not exactly what you said. You said dual core CPU will get you 40% more CPU power on a game like mass effect when you overclock 20%. So basically you came up with a conclusion that i7 having 4 cores will benefit 80% by 20% overclocking.

Your 3ghz x2 processor is on the slow side indeed for modern gaming but it's more slower with SSAA with a mainstream GPU although it's at lower resolution. Try the game with no CPU overclocking and no SSAA and you will see that you are getting much better results.

Although the i7 was running at 3.5ghz on dual core optimized game with this review it was still getting linear results with faster GPU. When AA was applied you see the performance plummet particularly these mainstream cards with 60% of the bandwidth. That's GPU not CPU my friend. So yeah mass effect is GPU limited not CPU lmited that's currently available on the market.

 

[Phil1977]

No I still don't remember you even chiming in nor did I read your post.

LOL. You didn't help me anything. I asked a simple question for some people to answer. I wasn't confused between pixel pitch or resolution. You just assumed I did. I was trying to get to the bottom of pixel pitch has with image quality and what does that thread have anything to do with this one? Nice of you to bring it up and go off topic. :/

You pulled the race card because you felt attacked. Remember that? And I jumped in and defused the situation and was trying to help you understand the issue.

Got what? You haven't explained anything besides you think you helped me in the other thread.

You told me to get a faster video card! When I was CPU bound... Here is what you said.

Faster GPU would have made much bigger difference as shown by these benches

.

You sure did! You automatically assumed i7 was 4 times more processing power for this game.

Hmm where in this sentence do I talk about ME1... That's right! I didn't! I was talking about multi threaded games!

Kind of goofy math that you think 20% over clock on a dual core equals 40% more processing and quad equals 4 times that on a dual core optimized game when in fact it's exactly 20% more for both dual or quad core.

Yes both get a relative gain of 20% of whatever base performance they offer. But surely you get the point I am trying to make. The absolute performance increase will obviously be higher the more cores you have...

If you run multi threaded software, then ocing a dual core is more fruitful than ocing a single core. And ocing a quad core is more fruitful than ocing a dual core.

And in this review they take a CPU with 8! threads and over clock it heavily! No wonder you see amazing scaling even on the top cards. But all you saw where the charts and without thinking you run around and recommend to people to upgrade their video cards...

I don't but I know that your system is slower than mine.

Thats why you are getting only 13 FPS on the screen shot Maybe something else is poorly configured with your machine.

That's on a 5 years old engine that gets 200fps without AA. It's no mass effect that need lot more GPU power. Perhaps bf2142 because it's an updated bf2 engine as it doesn't require all that much to run the game. I can 4xSSAA with BF2 @ 1680x1050 and get about 50fps.

Oh yes I've seen it but look at the screen shot you replied to. HL2 is relatively lax on GPU. Mass effect in other hand isn't. It requires 2-3x more GPU power if not more.

Why are you still debating this? I have shown you screen shots of multiple games! So has toyota. 4x SSAA is a real option, if you like it or not.

I mean do see why I am so frustrated with you?

I have done all the testing. I have put up screen shots. I have put up a thread talking about SSAA and how amazing the IQ is.

And then you come along and say:

You play 4xSSAA? I find that hard to believe.

And you wonder why people in the other thread got fed up with you... This is has nothing to do with race. You are just ignorant.