Mass Effect 2: Galactic battle Geforce versus Radeon

[AzN]

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...lactic-battle-Geforce-versus-Radeon/Practice/

Good stuff. Seems like 5770 is having a hard time performing in the levels of 4870/4890 with AA at least as bandwidth is @ play. It closes the gap without AA though.

 

[crisium]

Nice to see slower video cards still prevailing. My setup does ME1 in-game max at 1920x1080, and I should be able to get away with it in ME2 as well. No AA because most UE3 games don't support that in game, but I can live without it.

Thank god for consoles allowing us not to have to constantly upgrade? Benchmarks like these make me wonder why anyone feels the need for higher than a 4870 / GTX 260. Oh right, Crysis.

 

[AzN]

You should be fine with 2xAA at least.

 

[v8envy]

Looks like an 8800GT is still playable at 19x12 with 1xAA. Amazing. Also amazing how badly it spanks a DDR5 240GT at those settings.

 

[Qbah]

Sweet, looks like my old HD4870 would easily handle that at 1920x1080. Maybe not AAx4 for excellent performance, but at AAx2 it would be still 30+ min

The GTX285 is keeping up with the HD5850 nicely, with AA. I don't think the no-AA results matter much for those cards, as you bough them to crank those details way up Nice to see how much of an impact on performance AA has though

And finally, the HD5770 - the 128bit bus, even with GDDR5, screams RUUUUUUUUN so loud, it's not funny. Even at lower resolutions the drop is noticeable... ouch.

 

[vj8usa]

Ah, interesting. I hope they do a CPU performance comparison too. In Mass Effect 1, my 4850 does fine with 4xAA at 1680x1050, but performance tanks hard in places with a lot of transparent textures if adaptive AA is on.

Anyone know if this review is done with adaptive AA?

 

[Daedalus685]

I have yet to manage to force AA on the impulse version as renaming the exe doesn't work... Oh well.. Eventually.

 

[Attic]

interested in how they obtained AA results on Radeons. Forcing AA through CCC doesn't work for me with ME2.

My 5770 is locked at 60fps with vysnc with details Maxed at 1920x1080. The game does eat up 70-90% on 4 cores of my Q6600 at 3ghz.

 

[evolucion8]

Mass Effect 1 also loved to put a nice load on all my four cores, is a game that is very CPU bound and will not challenge the GPU's enough to make a difference, heck the GTS 250 performs so close to the GTX 260+, the same thing happened with Mass Effect 1, but we know that the GTX 260+ is simply a much better card.

 

[Cuular]

interested in how they obtained AA results on Radeons. Forcing AA through CCC doesn't work for me with ME2.

My 5770 is locked at 60fps with vysnc with details Maxed at 1920x1080. The game does eat up 70-90% on 4 cores of my Q6600 at 3ghz.

There is an external control panel that is part of the game where you can turn on AA. I have the steam version, and I just right-click on the game in the "My Games" tab and select "Start Launcher". There is a way to do it with the regular retail version as well.

So it doesn't rely on CCC to force anything on.

 

[zerocool84]

The GTX285 is keeping up with the HD5850 nicely, with AA. I don't think the no-AA results matter much for those cards, as you bough them to crank those details way up Nice to see how much of an impact on performance AA has though

Yea keeping up with it at a much larger price.

 

[AzN]

Mass Effect 1 also loved to put a nice load on all my four cores, is a game that is very CPU bound and will not challenge the GPU's enough to make a difference, heck the GTS 250 performs so close to the GTX 260+, the same thing happened with Mass Effect 1, but we know that the GTX 260+ is simply a much better card.

250 GTS isn't really all that much slower than GTX260. Sure GTX260 might have more SP but those SP are clocked lower. GTS250 just have not so good as GTX260 AA performance. It matches GTX260 texturing capability as well SP instructions per second and isn't too far off. Only thing it lacks is bandwidth and ROP which is good for AA is where GTX260 really shines over GTS250.

Same thing could be said about 4890 and 5770. Same type of scenario except it's just bandwidth.

 

[Phil1977]

I found the first ME to be very CPU intenese...

My stock Athlon II 250 3.0 GHz dual core was holding it back...

More and more games these days like you to have a quadcore...

ME1 allowed me to use Supersampling simply by enabling it in CCC. I highly recommend this as the game is not very demanding on the video card and there is lots of power left to do 4x SSAA..

 

[Wag]

Why no GTX 295?

 

[blanketyblank]

if they are going to test sli and crossfire then there are a lot more cards they have to run including 5970, 4850x2, and 4870x2. Personally I'd have liked to see crossfired 5770 or at the very least some overclocking tests. I'm wondering if OCing the memory would have improved their scores more than OCing the clock.
Oh well I'm happy as long as my minimum is over 30 anyways and OCing should be able to do that at least.

 

[AzN]

I found the first ME to be very CPU intenese...

My stock Athlon II 250 3.0 GHz dual core was holding it back...

More and more games these days like you to have a quadcore...

ME1 allowed me to use Supersampling simply by enabling it in CCC. I highly recommend this as the game is not very demanding on the video card and there is lots of power left to do 4x SSAA..

Look at the chart and dare you say it's not GPU intensive? You get nearly 2x the performance from 5770 to 5870 @1920x1200 4xaa. That is pretty much linear GPU scaling.

 

[Borealis7]

its a console port! if it should work smoothly on 3 year old hardware anything can run it today!

 

[evolucion8]

Look at the chart and dare you say it's not GPU intensive? You get nearly 2x the performance from 5770 to 5870 @1920x1200 4xaa. That is pretty much linear GPU scaling.

Well, a very GPU intensive game usually doesn't scale vey well with faster GPU's, look at Crysis, the HD 5850 is barely faster than the HD 4890. Unreal 3 engine scales nicely with different GPU's, but is very CPU intensive, and does 60fps or 155fps make a difference? A game that scales at such high fps means that the game will be more CPU bound first than GPU bound.

 

[AzN]

Well, a very GPU intensive game usually doesn't scale vey well with faster GPU's, look at Crysis, the HD 5850 is barely faster than the HD 4890. Unreal 3 engine scales nicely with different GPU's, but is very CPU intensive,

I see what you are saying but your analogy can also be used to describe this game as GPU intensive. If this game was CPU intensive you wouldn't gain much with faster GPU.

and does 60fps or 155fps make a difference? A game that scales at such high fps means that the game will be more CPU bound first than GPU bound.

No but 36fps to 66fps does. A game that scales at such low frame rates between the GPU and showing linear scaling between the GPU means it's more GPU bound first than CPU bound.

 

[Lonbjerg]

its a console port! If it should work smoothly on 3 year old hardware anything can run it today!

qft...

 

[Daedalus685]

There is an external control panel that is part of the game where you can turn on AA. I have the steam version, and I just right-click on the game in the "My Games" tab and select "Start Launcher". There is a way to do it with the regular retail version as well.

So it doesn't rely on CCC to force anything on.

Which control panel are you referring to? The game configuration utility has no options for AA, only AF.

 

[dguy6789]

its a console port! if it should work smoothly on 3 year old hardware anything can run it today!

This. We're not really going to see any new games where performance requirements skyrocket above what most games currently require until newer consoles come out. Virtually every game is designed around the same lowest common denominator which is the PS3/Xbox 360.

 

[Daedalus685]

To complete my previous issues.. ATI released a hotfix today that allows AA to be forced through the control panel. I will try it when I get home.

 

[AzN]

So far in the beginning of the game I'm pegged @ constant 60fps vsync locked @ 1080p 4xAA. Some instances of 40's here and there.

I don't know why I just can't get into mass effect 2. It seems so slow paced that lose my attention. I had the same problem with the first mass effect.

 

[Phil1977]

Look at the chart and dare you say it's not GPU intensive? You get nearly 2x the performance from 5770 to 5870 @1920x1200 4xaa. That is pretty much linear GPU scaling.

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.