Teaser of GTX460 1GB vs 2GB SLI Surround Review

[fuzioninfinity]

Thanks for the info, Paradigm. I just got finished reading through the benchmarks, very helpful and informative. Really wish I would have waited before I bought a 2nd 295. :doh Though I suppose I had no way of knowing you'd be making that post. :lol: Hopefully we will see some more powerful cards with additional VRAM to satisfy our power hungry surround setups in the future. :P

Time to start saving up again..

[Paradigm Shifter]

Review is still being fixed for wiki formatting, afaik.

ratfusion - check your PMs!

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Yeah, more VRAM is preferable to more GPUs. ;)

[mattsimis]

Any update on the full article? Being impatient I went and bought 2x 1GB versions (no 2GB retail here).

What I note in your benches is the 1GB card appears to be much faster at 5760x1200 without AA. Is the DDR speed on the 2GB that much lower that it hinders performance that much when the frame buffer isnt exceeded (on the 1GB)?

Id love to see 5040x1050 2x AA, that might squeeze into the 1GB card and give better performance and lower price than the 2GB. I only have 22" 1680x1050 monitors, if I had larger 2GB would be a no brainer, but then it gets muddled again vs the 1.2GB GTX470, which is virtually the same price as a 2GB 460.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Ibrin is in the process of getting it up on the wiki. He's been a bit busy I think. :)

Not quite sure what you're looking at to find the 1GB cards faster anywhere... at 5760x1200, the 1GB cards manage 34/41/44fps (min/avg/max) while the 2GB cards manage 41/50/61...?

The 1GB and 2GB cards are the same - same core, shader and VRAM clocks. Only difference is the 2GB cards have a higher VID, and run a bucketload hotter because of it. It's fascinating, actually. I can't get GPU1 to break 85*C with Kombustor (even at 99% GPU usage) but in Surround games (Just Cause 2, DiRT 2) I watch it (with Afterburner/G15 LCD) hit 96*C sometimes if I don't aim a portable AC unit at it. This is with fan at 100%.

Honestly, I wish nVidia would do a 2.5GB GTX470, or a 3GB GTX480. Even call them "Surround Editions"... because after seeing how games do with 2GB of VRAM, there is no way I'd step back to less than that for Surround. 1.25GB of VRAM is hardly more than a 1GB card... just not enough... and even 1.5GB is really a bit mean for Surround. Particularly at triple WUXGA resolutions. Triple WSXGA+ might be better, but I still think there are a fair number of games that'll choke with that due to VRAM limitations. Of course, I didn't have to worry about pricing being the same when I bought my 2GB cards: at that point, the 1GB 460s were about a tenner cheaper, and the GTX470s were a good £40 more. Now prices for the 1GBs and 470s have changed, the waters are muddied.

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I dunno why, but I can't get 5040x1050 working on my Surround setup. I presume it's drivers, but every time I set that res, it flickers for several tens of seconds, appears like it's gonna crash, then takes me back to 5760x1200.

[Gilly]

I think they are too near thermal thresholds to start adding more memory to the 470 and 480, OEM's wouldn't be pleased that they need to make new heatsinks. The 480 would (I guess) be over the power limit too...

[Paradigm Shifter]

No reason for that at all.

There are Quadro cards (and they NEED to stay within specs) with 6GB of VRAM and a sort of hybrid GTX480/470 GPU core (470 shader count, 480 memory bus). And it's not like GDDR5 really adds much in the way of power consumption. Failing the 'slap twice the chips on' route then double density chips could be used.

It's not impossible, it's just that if they released a 3GB card, it's going to seriously encroach on the Quadro territory. I think that's why they aren't appearing. Hopefully some enterprising company like EVGA will come out with double-RAM models, but it doesn't look promising if they haven't already. It's just weird - the 2GB GTX460 basically makes the GTX470 obsolete as far as Surround goes - more VRAM, only slightly less power as the shader arrangement has been optimised. Get some good cooling on the GTX460s (or enough space for them to breathe) and push them to 800MHz or slightly more (which is ridiculously easy) and you've got a GTX470 beater.

[mattsimis]

Not quite sure what you're looking at to find the 1GB cards faster anywhere... at 5760x1200, the 1GB cards manage 34/41/44fps (min/avg/max) while the 2GB cards manage 41/50/61...?
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Lol, looked at it again, dunno what I was thinking this morning!
I might get my 1GB models swapped over to 2GBs, friends and family in the market for 460's they wont care either way. Still though, 5040x1050 is like 30% less pixels than 5760x1200 (aka nearly 7Mp vs 5.3Mp), I still suspect at lower AA (which is all the card maybe fast enough for anyhow) the 1GB might be fine.

[Gilly]

No reason for that at all.

There are Quadro cards (and they NEED to stay within specs) with 6GB of VRAM and a sort of hybrid GTX480/470 GPU core (470 shader count, 480 memory bus). And it's not like GDDR5 really adds much in the way of power consumption. Failing the 'slap twice the chips on' route then double density chips could be used.

It's not impossible, it's just that if they released a 3GB card, it's going to seriously encroach on the Quadro territory. I think that's why they aren't appearing. Hopefully some enterprising company like EVGA will come out with double-RAM models, but it doesn't look promising if they haven't already. It's just weird - the 2GB GTX460 basically makes the GTX470 obsolete as far as Surround goes - more VRAM, only slightly less power as the shader arrangement has been optimised. Get some good cooling on the GTX460s (or enough space for them to breathe) and push them to 800MHz or slightly more (which is ridiculously easy) and you've got a GTX470 beater.

Sorry, just remember reading OEM's reactions to the GTX 480's TDP when it got increased, just weeks before it was released :)

[Paradigm Shifter]

Lol, looked at it again, dunno what I was thinking this morning!
I might get my 1GB models swapped over to 2GBs, friends and family in the market for 460's they wont care either way. Still though, 5040x1050 is like 30% less pixels than 5760x1200 (aka nearly 7Mp vs 5.3Mp), I still suspect at lower AA (which is all the card maybe fast enough for anyhow) the 1GB might be fine.

Hm, I'd say that in several games, the 1GB cards can do AA fine. It's really only games that I was expecting to completely chug in Surround with AA that actually do it. And at those points, they're frequently chugging without AA too. :)

I'd like to get 5040x1050 working as I'd try running Just Cause 2 there, but it's not too bad.

Also, bear in mind that in some games, there seem to be Surround related issues, and others have bezel correction woes that impact performance for no apparent reason. :(

Sorry, just remember reading OEM's reactions to the GTX 480's TDP when it got increased, just weeks before it was released :)

Yeah, nVidia didn't really do too well there. I hear mumblings of GTX470 being EOL'd... not sure what replaces it... perhaps a 384 shader core GTX460 or something? Or maybe they've reworked GF100 to GF100b with the improved shader arrangement of GF104. Dunno. :) But GDDR5 uses very little power really.

[Skid]

They have a GF106 now, although its more aimed at a budget parts, the GTX460 only uses 7/8s of the GF104 as well, but personally I think there next move will be to bolt two GF104s on a single board, at least in terms of high end parts.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Yeah, GF106 is the GTS450, or whatever they're calling it. I'm sure they'll have a dual-GPU board in the not-too-distant-future, presumably using the GF104 die of the GTX460. I'd imagine they'd either clock it lower, or disable another shader cluster to bring the TDP down below 300w. The GTX460 is 160w anyway, so it's not too much to take off. :)

[matrices]

These conclusions don't make much sense to me. If I run Shift in "hood view" I get consistent 60+ FPS on two GTX 470s using 4xAA at 6040x1200, except for the first 2-3 seconds of most tracks, where for some reason, at the start line, FPS tanks to 14-18 before jolting into gear. But in your results, the game doesn't even work at that res and AA.

Granted, the GTX 470 has 250+ MB more vRAM, but that is still a stark difference.

[Paradigm Shifter]

That shows the impact of lack of VRAM. Every other game I tested that exceeded the VRAM quantities displayed the exact same problem.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Review proper is up. From now on, use the discussion thread to talk about it in detail.

Thread locked. :)