3D Mark Vantage
Performance Benchmark – 1280×1024
“3DMark Vantage is a gamers’ benchmark for the DX10 platform. Its primary purpose is to help gamers evaluate their system performance for gaming use, and through online services relate the tested system to other available hardware. This should provide true value to gamers by enabling them to make better purchasing decisions, and to compete against each other in system performance. There are three guiding principles to follow in determining the benchmark test mix, architecture, content and scoring. 3DMark Vantage focuses on the two areas most critical to gaming performance: the CPU and the GPU.” – Guru3D.com
That’s the official word. Those of us in the benching world also know that 3dmark Vantage is heavily influenced by CPU architecture and speed, it takes considerable CPU power to get the data to the GPU so that the GPU can make the pretty pictures. Some benchmarks are more CPU based than others, and Vantage is on the CPU dependant end of things. This is at least partially intentional, as they included a CPU test.
The second thing is that the “CPU” test can use PhysX, making it rather less of a CPU test. To combat this, I have run with PhysX enabled as well as disabled, you’ll see the massive difference in CPU scores!
First, with everything at default PhysX is enabled:
Next, PhysX has been disabled, note the much lower CPU score, and lower overall score as well despite the GPU test FPS being higher!
3D Mark 11
Performance Benchmark – 1280×720
“3DMark 11 is the latest version of what probably is the most popular graphics card benchmark. Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.” – Guru3D.com
3DMark11 is less CPU dependant, but still influenced. PhysX isn’t used here, there are portions of the benchmark that do use the GPU to calculate physics, but rather than paying Nvidia to use PhysX Futuremark elected to use DirectCompute instead. This also makes the benchmark more accurate when it comes to comparing AMD and Nvidia cards, as AMD cards cannot run PhysX for licensing reasons.
Lost Planet 2
Default settings
“The Lost Planet 2 benchmark comes with two tests:
Test A:
The primary purpose of Test A is to give an indication of typical game play performance of the PC running Lost Planet 2. (i.e. if you can run Mode A smoothly, the game will be playable at a similar condition). In this test, the character’s motion is randomized to give a slightly different outcome each time.
Test B:
The primary purpose of Test B is to push the PC to its limits and to evaluate the maximum performance of the PC. It utilizes many functions of Direct X11 resulting in a very performance-orientated, very demanding benchmark mode.”
Unfortunately Lost Planet 2 does not support taking screenshots, but this Gigabyte GTX560 managed 53.1FPS average in Test A, and 46FPS in Test B. Very playable frame rates, despite the card only costing $200 and the game being very demanding indeed.
Unigine Heaven (DX11)
Default benchmark, 1280×1024 16x AA 8x AF
“Unigine Corp announced its release of the first DirectX 11 benchmark “Heaven” that is based on its proprietary Unigine engine. The company has already made a name among the overclockers and gaming enthusiasts for uncovering the realm of true GPU capabilities with previously released “Sanctuary” and “Tropics” demos. Their benchmarking capabilities are coupled with striking visual integrity of the refined graphic art.” – Guru3D.com
There are two versions to this benchmark, the normal one and the HWBot edition. The HWBot edition has anti-cheating features and doesn’t let you change settings either. I’m using it to compare this GTX560 to the AMD 6870 and 6950 later on, but using the normal version for the screenshots and comparison graphs. This is why I talk about different scores in those two sections.
The nice thing about the Heaven benchmark is that it is only marginally effected by CPU clock speed and architecture, making it an excellent benchmark for comparing raw GPU power.
A score of 989 is quite good! As you can see, it stomps the GTX460, which has similar features but an older core design and lower clocks. In a bit we’ll overclock this card and see how it compares to the more expensive GTX560Ti cards as well as the much more expensive GTX570.
