The Myths Of Graphics Card Performance: Debunked, Part 1

[smeezekitty]

The human eye is actually capable of processing quite a bit more than 30fps. That is just the minimum speed in order to detect smooth framerate. I personally can tell the difference between 60 and 75fps (back when I used a CRT). It also largely depends on the person.http://whisper.ausgamers.com/wiki/index.php/How_many_FPS_human_eye_can_see

25-30 is about the minimum acceptable framerate. Personally movie theaters drive me nuts with the 24 Hz flicker
Obviously 40+ is better

I think flickering is probably the reason you could tell 60 vs 75

 

[Patrick Tobin]

@Adroid - At 4K resolution 3GB becomes necessary but I fully agree with no real need for 4GB at any point.

 

[mechan]

Great article. One minor point, a 10db increase is 10 times louder not twice, which would we 3db. Thus the GTX 690 is more than 2 1/2 times louder than the titan under typical load

Not exactly correct ... human perception of sound is that an increase in 10 dB SPL is 2x louder... see here: http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/2004-About-dB/. You're refering to "power" dB, which are a different story from dB SPL, and still human perception adds that factor!

 

[K2N hater]

Very nice article. Thanks.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

i would like to say something about vram usage. Toms, measure the same scenario and settings against different cards and you will get different vram usage results. I have hit the 3gb mark on my 7970 in hitman absolution on my 7970, and up to 2700mb in crysis 2. when i had my gtx660's in sli on identical settings the amount of vram used in crysis 2 in the exact same part of the game and settings was more like 1500mb. Seems different cards/drivers will put different amounts of data in memory, and the game/driver may clear unused data out if it has less memory/different driver etc.

 

[Morrowind542]

@AdroidI dare you to play Skyrim with a 4K texture mod at a reasonable resolution without more than 2 GB of VRAM. Playing at 1600x900 with a 2K texture overhaul, I'm running out of VRAM on my 660Ti.

 

[rd350]

So windows 7 is better for gaming on a say card with 1GB of Memory??

 

[smeezekitty]

So windows 7 is better for gaming on a say card with 1GB of Memory??

Basically

 

[syl3r]

Interesting read. looking forward to part 2

 

[eldragon0]

I'd really appreciate it if you redid the overclocking section. It's kind of disgraceful. An average card will clock 10-15% over the stock speeds (Memory AND Core). The 290x was a horrible example as it downs clocks when it hits its thermal limit (which it readily does) and you lowered the base clock causing performance drops. Furthermore OCing dual cards (690 7990) is known to cause performance issues due to the way the cards are set up and issues with both cards not maintaining the correct clock speeds.

 

[Ponyface]

what did you guys score on the audio and visual test?

 

[kallek29]

I would like to know more about the claim that " Windows 8 can gobble as much as 25% of your graphics memory". I can't find it mentioned later in the article except for where it says that Windows 8 takes around 300 MB of VRAM on page 5. I have 640 MB VRAM and just recently installed Windows 8. Does that mean that Windows 8 takes half of the VRAM on my card? I thought that the VRAM was freed up when starting a game. What happens if you have a card with only 320 mb memory?

 

[Jaroslav Jandek]

I would like to know more about the claim that " Windows 8 can gobble as much as 25% of your graphics memory". I can't find it mentioned later in the article except for where it says that Windows 8 takes around 300 MB of VRAM on page 5. I have 640 MB VRAM and just recently installed Windows 8. Does that mean that Windows 8 takes half of the VRAM on my card?

DWM uses 90MB of VRAM @ 1280x800 and ~120MB @ 1920x1080 in Windows 8.1. I have not tested 2160p myself, so I cannot confirm the tester's numbers.

I thought that the VRAM was freed up when starting a game. What happens if you have a card with only 320 mb memory?

What happens in a full-screen exclusive mode is that DWM is disabled (eg. does not consume CPU nor GPU cycles) but keeps the allocated memory. You are fine with any VRAM (Windows runs "fine" even on 128 MB GPUs)...

DWM in W8 is much faster than in W7 - especially for DirectX based apps (WPF, Modern UI, ...). Also, it is the Windows Display Driver Model that controls memory allocation for DWM and it has a very important capability that's called Memory Virtualization - so what happens when you run out of VRAM is the system uses RAM, which is much slower than VRAM in most cases and when even the RAM is full, your disk drive is used for data storage, which is extremely slow compared to VRAM and RAM.
Also, when you play a game and start running out of VRAM, the memory allocated by DWM and applications are paged out to secondary memory (RAM or disk) => there is minimal slow down concerning games.

FYI: many current applications use media acceleration - like Internet Explorer that can eat up over 100MB of VRAM or most video players... So if you want to keep your VRAM clean, close them when gaming.

 

[panzerknacker]

'Using a wireless or wired network connection (just try pinging your router if you don’t believe us; you should see ping times of less than 1 ms). 'IMO this statement is false. I just pinged my router thru WiFi and the response is between 0 and 14 ms. Absolutely NOT 0 ms like when I connect wired.Maybe this is just my particular setup giving some lag, but it does show that using WiFi *CAN* be the cause of lag.I am about 5 meters and a wall away from the router and I *DO* notice lag while gaming compared to wired.

 

[venemaa]

I'm really proud of this article! Great Job!

 

[smeezekitty]

'Using a wireless or wired network connection (just try pinging your router if you don’t believe us; you should see ping times of less than 1 ms). 'IMO this statement is false. I just pinged my router thru WiFi and the response is between 0 and 14 ms. Absolutely NOT 0 ms like when I connect wired.Maybe this is just my particular setup giving some lag, but it does show that using WiFi *CAN* be the cause of lag.I am about 5 meters and a wall away from the router and I *DO* notice lag while gaming compared to wired.

14mS is really high. How is your signal?
Any interference?
I get between < 1mS and 2 mS

 

[NeatOman]

AA and V-Sync use a lot of VRAM, if you don't mind a little screen tearing (not nearly as much with just v-sync off surprisingly) then force enable Triple Buffering, it will cut VRAM use in half if not more.. it will also reduce prepossessing lag. I accidentally got a 7850 with 1GB of ram, but instead of returning it i played around for fun and i found out with doing that i was fine and i didn't want to spend a week or two with out my desktop as i needed it.Bioshock Infinite on High @2560x1440 gets 30 - 40 fps in the built in test with noticeable shutter from v-sync and 30 - 45 fps with v-sync off and VRAM @ 980 (or full) with a lot of tearing. But with Triple Buffer forced on i get NO shutter and a little bit of screen tearing (not really noticeable IMO) and 45-60fps (at 50-60 about 90% of the time). The only setting i changed on "high" was AA because at that resolution AAx8 is a very small benefit from AAx2.

 

[rdc85]

.....14mS is really high. How is your signal?
Any interference?.....

That the problems with wireless connection, it prone of interference.... even if u got 1 ~ 2 ms... some times it can be time out if there interference like phone call, etc.. (it not always but it can be interfered)....

so I'm don't agree with the statement that using wireless and wired connection is same quality

 

[smeezekitty]

.....14mS is really high. How is your signal?
Any interference?.....

That the problems with wireless connection, it prone of interference.... even if u got 1 ~ 2 ms... some times it can be time out if there interference like phone call, etc.. (it not always but it can be interfered)....

so I'm don't agree with the statement that using wireless and wired connection is same quality

I agree its not the same quality. But where I live there are really no other 2.4 Ghz signals around
so it isn't such a problem

 

[StitchExperiment626]

A web site tested at 4K a GTX 680 3GB (of memory this is the important part) in games testing run and on one specific game it fell flat on its face for many seconds as a black screen. A 290X with 4GB of memory was playable and used up almost all of the 4GB as further software revealed. So at least one game on ultra is in the here and now using 4GB @ 4KI tried to find the web site to quote the game and reference but I can't find/remember it.

 

[StitchExperiment626]

A web site tested at 4K a GTX 680 3GB (of memory this is the important part) in games testing run and on one specific game it fell flat on its face for many seconds as a black screen. A 290X with 4GB of memory was playable and used up almost all of the 4GB as further software revealed. So at least one game on ultra is in the here and now using 4GB @ 4KI tried to find the web site to quote the game and reference but I can't find/remember it.

 

[StitchExperiment626]

FOUND ITFar Cry 3A detailed look at the FRAPS logs shows where the game actually stutters and freezes for a couple of seconds on the EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB Superclocked card, which totally ruins your gaming experience. The AMD Radeon R9 290X did not have nearly as severe a drop due to the fact that it has 4GB of memory versus 3GB on the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. The frame buffer is filling up on the GeForce GTX 780 Ti with Ultra image quality settings at 4K resolutions.legitreviews.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-780-ti-vs-amd-radeon-r9-290x-at-4k-ultra-hd_130055/6#POtPmlJOgUbgh5c4.99

 

[drozd_01]

I'd like to see some summaries of the different warranties, and also build quality or longevity, of cards from different manufacturers.

 

[panzerknacker]

'Using a wireless or wired network connection (just try pinging your router if you don’t believe us; you should see ping times of less than 1 ms). 'IMO this statement is false. I just pinged my router thru WiFi and the response is between 0 and 14 ms. Absolutely NOT 0 ms like when I connect wired.Maybe this is just my particular setup giving some lag, but it does show that using WiFi *CAN* be the cause of lag.I am about 5 meters and a wall away from the router and I *DO* notice lag while gaming compared to wired.

14mS is really high. How is your signal?
Any interference?
I get between < 1mS and 2 mS

My signal strength is Excellent all the time. Don't know about interference but can't think of anything that could cause major problems, just the average living room here.

When I do cmd > ping 'router ip' and repeat this a few times I will definately get a few results more than 10ms.

 

[etonbears]

A couple of comments.1. Sound pressure level in Decibel is an objective measure of sound production, whereas "loudness" is a psychoacoustic, and extremely subjective measure of how an individual perceives to changes in sound pressure level. It does not follow the simple rule you state. Sound pressure doubles in a little over 6 dB, with attendant perceived loudness doubling ( depending on the individual and listening circumstances ) at > 6 dB, usually no more than 10 dB. 2. GPU memory can be used for many other application purposes than simply to hold rendering data like textures. There is an increasing trend to move function from the CPU to the GPU to avoid PCIe traffic, and the more memory available, the more function ( and attendant data ) can be moved to the GPU. This CAN certainly speed up the operation of real-time applications.