Need help convincing a friend

[Nick89]

My friend says his SLI pair of GTX460's are faster than my overclocked GTX480.

He's having some stuttering in BF3 and refuses to believe it is his cards.

My system plays BF3 on all ultra settings with no lag or stuttering. But he still says his pair of GTX460s are faster than my single 480.

His system has 4GB of ram I believe. I'm not sure if his 460s are the 1Gb versions or the 768mb versions.

I need some other opinions and voices for him to be brought to reason.

 

[sneekypeet]

His over clocked 460s can outrun a stock 480 in benches, sure. Issue is even if they are 1GB cards, that's it, 1GB. I would think your 480 is smoother due to more VRAM of the 480 along with the fact that all the shaders are there.

 

[laszlo]

I need some other opinions and voices for him to be brought to reason.

why you need to do this? even if your ego is hurt let him to believe he's right even if not if you think so

what u loose? is pointless to argue "my car is better than yours"

 

[acerace]

@laszlo Nice speed there.

 

[heky]

His 2 GTX460s are faster than your single GTX480! It just depends on the game played, but in most games theay are faster. Google for any GTX460 SLI reviews and you will see. The stuttering in BF3 can be a driver problem, which will get fixed in time.

Here is the proof that 2 GTX460s are faster than 1 GTX480:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_460_SLI/25.html

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

Lend him your 480

 

[qubit]

The 460's are indeed faster in a straight line, but the issue could well be lack of vram, as sneeky said.

I'll bet it runs smooth as butter when the resolution is dialed back a bit.

 

[Tatty_Two]

^^^ True dat, especially if they are the 768MB variety as I read somewhere that in BF3 @ 1200 x 1080 on highish detail levels some of the maps can draw upto 1300MB of VRam..... a deficiency of over 500MB of avialable VRam would cause significant slowdowns.

Edit: i have doubts that when taking scaling into consideration that the 768MB SLI'd 460's would match a GTX 480, especially with the smaller bus, only because the 1GB versions with the 256bit bus only just beat the 480 (by 8% in the TPU review)

 

[naoan]

This article maybe? http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516/11

 

[Arctucas]

Just some numbers:

One GTX480 vs. one GTX460 1GB, both at stock.

One GTX480 vs. SLI GTX460 1GB, both at stock.

 

[heky]

^^^ True dat, especially if they are the 768MB variety as I read somewhere that in BF3 @ 1200 x 1080 on highish detail levels some of the maps can draw upto 1300MB of VRam..... a deficiency of over 500MB of avialable VRam would cause significant slowdowns.

Edit: i have doubts that when taking scaling into consideration that the 768MB SLI'd 460's would match a GTX 480, especially with the smaller bus, only because the 1GB versions with the 256bit bus only just beat the 480 (by 8% in the TPU review)

Thats relative to all resolutions, but at 1920X1200 and higher, thats 13%. And that is at stock. And i think we all know the 460s can overclock way higher and easier than the 480.

Oh, and i have 1 GTX460 1GB, and have no stutternig issues whatsoever in BF3, on all high(not ultra) at 1080p i get around 900mb vram usage.

 

[JrRacinFan]

Another point to make in this is the other components used in your friends build. The stuttering could be caused by say old hdd's, not enough ram, and/or using an older chipset + cpu. The 460's can be faster in terms of raw performance but as I pointed out you do have overhead dependent on other components involved and ALSO if using 32bit or 64bit OS along with not enough ram.

EDIT:

From the OP:

BF3 Im pretty sure likes vram buffer.

 

[OrbitzXT]

Stuttering can be caused by having hyper threading enabled on the processor. It's been confirmed by many players, myself included having seen huge differences. After turning it off, I can play smoothly on Ultra with 2 GTX 285s. I've also heard people say turning V-Sync on can help with stuttering.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Thats relative to all resolutions, but at 1920X1200 and higher, thats 13%. And that is at stock. And i think we all know the 460s can overclock way higher and easier than the 480.

Oh, and i have 1 GTX460 1GB, and have no stutternig issues whatsoever in BF3, on all high(not ultra) at 1080p i get around 900mb vram usage.

Good point, but we don't know what res his friend plays at so it could possibly be less, my comment on the stuttering was in relation to a 768MB card so does not really relate to your 256bit 1GB card (the bus size also being relative to sli performance and of course the 768MB card has less).

obviously, if his friend has 1GB cards then my point goes outta the window pretty fast!

 

[LordJummy]

The two 460's are definitely "Faster" as in they have more total computing power, but there are obvious advantages to using a gtx 480 instead. The 480, as said before, has better memory bandwidth, more shaders on a single GPU, and more VRAM. The 480 will play more smoothly at higher resolutions due to these facts.

SO, your friend is right in that his cards are overall "faster", but your single card is better in many situations.

 

[phobias23]

i had gtx460 1gb sli for just a month and they were damn faster.
BUT 1st read Wizzards review right here on TPU about gtx460 SLI of 2 1gb version,
LOT faster than a gtx 480!!!!!
great temps,power, and performance,no offense your mate IS DAMN RIGHT
the stutering should be due to other matter no gpu.

 

[BlackOmega]

The two 460's are definitely "Faster" as in they have more total computing power, but there are obvious advantages to using a gtx 480 instead. The 480, as said before, has better memory bandwidth, more shaders on a single GPU, and more VRAM. The 480 will play more smoothly at higher resolutions due to these facts.

SO, your friend is right in that his cards are overall "faster", but your single card is better in many situations.

You need to read arctucas post and look at the numbers. In case you missed it here it is:

Just some numbers:

One GTX480 vs. SLI GTX460 1GB, both at stock.

As you can plainly see, 2 460's have more raw GPU power than a 480. Period, end of story.
I've run SLI or Crossfire getups since 2005 and I can honestly say that there isn't a single game that doesn't improve overall from a dual card setup. Sure there were some dual GPu cards that had microstutter issues, but that isn't an issue any more.


I think that the issues his friend is having is an overall lack of system RAM. BF3 can easily peg a 4GB system. Hell, Win 7 64bit draws 1.5GB or more at idle. That should be the first thing he addresses.
However, we don't have enough information. We need to know what the rest of his rig is. If he's running on a core2duo, well there's another problem right there. What if he's only running at 3.0Ghz on that core2duo? That'll bottleneck his whole system badly.

In reality, we need more info.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I think everyone knew that 1GB 460's with the 256bit bus in SLi were faster, the points earlier that were raised is that we don't know if they are 1GB cards, if they were 768MB cards with the narrower bus then whilst they would still be marginally faster than a 480, the decrease in memory @ only 768MB for high res might cause the stutter.

 

[wolf]

on your rig load up MSI afterburner, and the on screen display. get it to show vram useage, then while he's around load up BF3 and just show him that the game (when set high enough, and this doesn't need to be ultra) can easily eclipse 1024mb useage, let alone 768mb.

All you have to do is be able to talk into him the reasoning that his cards CAN be faster, but this depends on drivers, the game or benchmark tested, how much video memory the game wants etc. it is fairly simple and demonstratable that if all of the video memory is used, the game will be prone to stuttering, lag, fps spikes and dips. Call it what you want but it equates to a questionable gaming experience.

all this nerdy shit aside, in your shoes I'd say "sure man, your cards are faster" give him a thumbs up and just keep pounding through BF3 lag and stutter free. Also feel free to load up other games known to use more than 1gb memory, and challenge him to get a better frame rate.