Surprising result of the GTX 460 with a Core 2 Duo

[Jesus_Panella]

Recently I decided to do a test to see how well the GTX 460 1 GB would perform on the already aging Core 2 Duo E8200, temporarily replacing the GTS 450. I was surprised when I ran the synthetic 3DMark 11 test.

The 3DMark 11 test, with the GTS 450, got around 2000 points, using the latest nVidia drivers. With that, I could play Skyrim, although not very smoothly.

The 3DMark 11 test, with the GTX 460 1 GB on the same Core 2 Duo E8200, without any overclocking, got me 2800 points (exactly 2803 points), although I already suspected the reason why when I started playing Skyrim with that card and on this computer I noticed a wild change in performance compared to the GTS 450, making Skyrim run at the classic and capped 60 frames per second for most of the game, playing in high and with 8AA and 8Ant (although occasionally some lag occurred).

It is true that the processor and memory are starting to bottleneck the graphics, remembering that on the i5 2500k it got around 3300 points. However, the change from the GTS 450 to the GTX 460 is giving me impressive performance increases in all games of around 40% compared to the GTS 450 despite the fact that on said processor the graphics are limited.

[Sylver]

It is tangible proof that, as some veteran sages rightly claimed, the bottleneck has become more psychological than real in recent times.
I have wracked my brains over this for a long time, but it is true that one should not take it so literally.
Most of the time we take into account theoretical values and draw conclusions before doing any practical tests, and that is where the real key lies.

Best regards

[Fassou]

When you want to compare two graphics, try several games (engines optimized for nVIDIA and others that are not), because 3DMark gives points for things that many games do not take advantage of.

Or use reviews on the net, it will be for lack of analysis to be able to read ;D

Salu2! Gamers!

[fjavi]

@Sylver:

It is tangible proof that, as some veteran sages rightly claimed, the bottleneck has become more psychological than real in recent times.
I've been racking my brains over this for a long time, but it's true that you shouldn't take it so literally.
Most of the time we take theoretical values into account and draw conclusions before doing any practical tests, and that's where the real key lies.

Regards

I believe there are games that don't run well and it's not a matter of bottleneck, it's that they require more than two cores, other games that don't require 4 cores will run the same or even better on the dual, because of having a higher frequency.

What is true is that the 460 is a much better graphics card than the 450, that's why it's normal to notice a good improvement, the c2d or C2Q are still valid processors, for many things even games, although if you put a 670 or something like that in them they won't run well, but a 460 can get decent performance out of them.

regards

[amd125]

I think the same, I had an E2180 with OC at 3.000 and it worked great with an ATi 4770, until GTA came out and two cores were not enough. But for games that don't use more than two, they are still decent processors. That's why I have a Q6600 ;D because for what I do and play, it's more than enough with the Ati 5850 to move 1280*1024 :troll:

In fact, I still miss my old AMD 939 3800*2 because it worked great in its time, and I have a 939 computer here with a Single Core that I will put a Dual in sooner or later ;D and I will use it in case the main one fails. For office work, they are still good micros.

[Sylver]

The performance with one, two or four cores has always been present, beyond the bottlenecks. In the era of core duo along with the newly launched quads, the best performance in the dual core at high frequency was imposed over the quads, since most games did not take good advantage of the four cores and the two gave a higher performance in general. Of course, the graphics were also a bit less evolved, but this debate already existed. Now in the new platforms, this is only heard in relation to updates on the low end.

In any case, regarding the strict issue of the bottleneck, it is as I said something quite subjective, and the best way to ensure its existence is by testing hardware and games firsthand, although the reviews and specifications show negative values.

[fjavi]

@amd125:

I agree, I had an E2180 with OC to 3.000 and it worked very well with an ATi 4770, until GTA came out and two cores were not enough. But for games that don't use more than two, they are still decent processors. That's why I have a Q6600 ;D because for what I do and play, it's more than enough with the Ati 5850 to move 1280*1024 :troll:

In fact, I still miss my old AMD 939 3800*2 because it worked great in its time, and I have a 939 system with a Single Core that I will put a Dual in sooner or later ;D and I will use it in case my main one crashes. For office work, they are still good micros.

It was with GTA4 where I started to see important differences in performance with an E6700 and a Q6600, the Q6600 maintained much better minimums, the E6700 put it at 3700 or 3800 but still saw drops to 20 fps or less.

But that 6700 still moves other games, for example burnout Paradise, although it's with a 260 and the C2Q could do well with a 470, it depends a bit on the graphics you want to put in, but these CPUs still don't bottleneck graphics like the 560, 470, 6970, although obviously in an SB or Ivy they go better more stable, but they are small differences, if you put a 7970 or a 770, the differences will be much bigger.

I put burnout Paradise because these days I've been testing it with that CPU that my nephew has and there are quite a few games that go well, but there are others that you can tell ask for more cores and in a C2Q they go much better.

With GTA4 I had the same equipment and only changing the CPU, same drivers, the only thing is that the dual put it at a higher frequency than the quad, but there were areas where it worked well but in others it had very pronounced drops and didn't recover.

regards

[Sylver]

The thing about GTA4 is curious, because after patching it properly (it didn't run well on my PC1 with the 2500K and crossfire), I tried it on my PC2 (Athlon64 x2 5600+) with a 5850 Xtreme and the result was as surprising as being able to play it with everything maxed out, at stock frequency on all components. Certainly, some lag appeared, especially in areas with more traffic or more shadows, so I lowered the quality a bit in a couple of places (very little) and it became totally fluid. A real surprise for an old dual core.

Regards

[fjavi]

@Sylver:

The thing with GTA4 is curious, because after patching it properly (it didn't run well on my PC1 with the 2500K and crossfire), I tried it on my PC2 (Athlon64 x2 5600+) with a 5850 Xtreme and the result was as surprising as that I could play it with everything at maximum, at stock frequency on all components. Certainly, some lag appeared, especially in areas with more traffic or more shadows, so I lowered the quality a bit in a couple of places (very little) and it became totally fluid. A real surprise for an old dual core.

Regards

It's that I think that starting with patch 1.0.3 in GTA4 they increased the graphics options, before you could only put it on high, with that patch they added reflections and shadows more night shadows very high, it's also a game that didn't have good profiles or SLI or CF, that's why a monogpu can go up to better.

besides you could make a better SLI profile but with the last patch they messed it up, they capped the vsync between 54 and 57 fps and if you put that SLi profile and forced vsync from the driver it took a long time to load the game, that is, with the patches they fixed some things and messed up others.

regards

[Jesus_Panella]

Hello again.

I just did a performance measurement and percentage of performance in a game like Skyrim, to see how much CPU and GPU is utilized. In other words, to verify how much bottleneck that processor produces to the GTX 460. According to the GPU-meter, it was indicating that the GPU, which is the graphics card, in the areas of more load, such as in the open fields full of trees and fog or rain, reached a performance above 80%, and in some cases reached 90%.

Keep in mind that this game, with the Core 2 Duo and that card, plays Skyrim at 1440 x 900 resolution, high details, and uses 8 AA and 8 AF.

With the GTS 450, games like Skyrim, at that resolution and at that level of detail, although playable (it does not go below 30 frames per second at any time), but said graphics card goes to the limit.

Now, when passing the 3DMark11, the GTX 460 on the Core 2 Duo was performing at 100% in the four game tests.