Introduction
Its been a while since I wrote a review and thats because I have been concentrating on completing two reviews at the same time. This along with an increased work load has meant that I have been off these pages for far too long. But enough of the chit chat, lets move along to the battle at hand.
The Asus 5870 VS. the Asus GTX 295
This is a battle that has been brewing on the net for the last month or so, and I thought that I should do a shootout to find out for myself which is the better of the two cards. So will the new Asus 5870 manage to dethrone Nvidia's numero uno, or does the GTX 295 have enough left in it to keep the Nvidia flag flying?
But before I get deeper into this, I would like to thank Asus, India for their immense help with getting the necessary hardware for this shootout.
I would like to start with a few pictures of the new 5870 and then we will head off towards a couple of benchmarks and a couple of games. As all of you may know by now, most of the current crop of 5870's have followed ATI's referance design, with the exception of the new Sapphire Vapor edition. The only real difference between the cards seem to be the outer sticker AND Asus's special bios, which seems to be making the rounds of the internet. This bios helps you to over volt the core, thus giving you the ability to reach a higher core clock. We will take a look at the overclocking potential later during the review as well. Well enough of the chatter, lets take a look at this absolutely tasty looking piece of hardware.
Make no mistake, this is one big card and you will need a decent sized mid tower to get one of these going.
Without wasting anymore time lets get on to the next part of the review, the test setup.
[BREAK=Test Setup]
Test Setup
The test setup for today consists of the following.
Phenom II x4 965 - running at 3.6 Ghz
MSI GD 70 DDR III motherboard
OCZ AMD Platinum 1333 - 6-6-6-18 1T
OCZ Modxterme 700W PSU
Asus 5870 and Asus GTX 295 - Stock cooling and stock clocks
And lots and lots of air cooling goodness....
Without further ado, lets get on with the benching.
[BREAK=3D Mark 06]
3D Mark '06
Lets start with our now basic requirement of any graphics card review. The 3D Mark 06 test.
As we can see from the charts above, the 5870 seems to have the 295's number at the performance level, but as we turn towards the 1680 x 1050 mode, we see the power of 2GB of memory coming into play. The GTX 295 takes a very slight lead and we cannot really draw any real conclusion from this test. 3D Mark 06 is also more CPU dependent, so we will call this one a tie.
[BREAK=3D Mark Vantage]
3D Mark Vantage
Now onto 3D Mark Vantage. Here we see the full effect of the 2GB that the 295 carries and it manages to beat the 5870 by close to 30% on the high performance preset. One of the main reason could be the disparity in the amount of memory and the dual graphics cores. This round clearly goes to the Asus GTX 295.
[BREAK=Unigine Heaven]
Unigine Heaven
And so onto our last benchmark for today, the new DX 11 Unigine Heaven benchmark, We have run this at DX10 to keep the results realistic.
Here is the real show stopper for the 5870. At lower resolutions the 5870 does not seem to be able to catch up with the GTX 295, but when we turned the resolution up and ran the benchmark at 1440 x 900, 16x Anisotropy and 8x AA, the 5870 was head, neck, shoulders and legs above the 295. We ran rhe test three times to make sure of the results, but this is what it finally came down to. This rounds clear winner is the 5870.
Now lets get on with our game benchmarks, as thats what most of you would be waiting for.
[BREAK=Crysis]
Crysis
So onto the first of our three gaming benchmarks for today. Lets start with the all time favorite, Crysis.
With lower resolution, but all the eye candy on, we can see a clear lead by the GTX 295, which is also carried forward to the higher resolution testing. The GTX 295 manages around 18% more performance here, and clearly is the winner in this round of tests.
[BREAK=Far Cry 2]
Far Cry 2
For the next benchmark we took one of the prettiest games around and put both our cards to the test. Let the graphs do the talking.
Far Cry2 is another win for the green camp and the GTX 295 takes the honors again.
[BREAK=Batman Arkham Asylum]
Batman Arkham Asylum
And finally to our last gaming benchmark for the day, one for this years favorite hits, Batman AA.
And finally a win for the red camp, with the 5870 trouncing the GTX 295 on both settings by around 50% and more.
[BREAK=Overclocking]
Overclocking
We started with the core at 850 and the memory at 1200, which is your basic stock settings. With ATI auto tune we could get the card upto 920/1250 on stock voltage. But the real fun began when we dialed in the voltage using Asus smart doctor. Running at 1.3v, we managed to get the card to run at 1000 Mhz on the core and 1250 on the memory. Turning on the voltage did not help with the memory clocks too much, but from previous testing we have seen barely any noticable difference with higher memory clocks, so we didn't bother too much on that. For some reason, GPU-Z would not show the new clocks set, but the score will give you a clearer picture.
[BREAK=Conclusion]
Conclusion
Well, for all practical purposes, the GTX 295 comes out as the leader in this contest. But dont forget that the 5870 is a single GPU card as compared to the dual GPU setup that the 295 GTX employees. To put it simply, the 5870 uses much less power and runs a lot cooler as compared to the GTX 295 and thats its trump card.
The 5970 has already shown what two of these cards can do together, but we will look at that some other day. For now, if you are impressed with the GTX 295's performance, or you are getting it cheaper than retail, close your eyes and go for it. Its not a bad card at all and still manages to keep ahead of the 5870 in most benchmarks and games.
But the power consumption figures are a whole different ball game. The 5870 draws 19W at idle and 144W at full load compared to the GTX 295 which draws close to 55W at idle and 218W at full load.
So if DX 11 is important to you and the fact that you are spending a lot less in energy consumption makes you feel better, then the 5870 is the obvious choice. On the other hand, with very few DX 11 titles currently available, a second hand GTX 295 should be a very good card to get you over the next year or so.
Till next time.....
Its been a while since I wrote a review and thats because I have been concentrating on completing two reviews at the same time. This along with an increased work load has meant that I have been off these pages for far too long. But enough of the chit chat, lets move along to the battle at hand.
The Asus 5870 VS. the Asus GTX 295
This is a battle that has been brewing on the net for the last month or so, and I thought that I should do a shootout to find out for myself which is the better of the two cards. So will the new Asus 5870 manage to dethrone Nvidia's numero uno, or does the GTX 295 have enough left in it to keep the Nvidia flag flying?
But before I get deeper into this, I would like to thank Asus, India for their immense help with getting the necessary hardware for this shootout.
I would like to start with a few pictures of the new 5870 and then we will head off towards a couple of benchmarks and a couple of games. As all of you may know by now, most of the current crop of 5870's have followed ATI's referance design, with the exception of the new Sapphire Vapor edition. The only real difference between the cards seem to be the outer sticker AND Asus's special bios, which seems to be making the rounds of the internet. This bios helps you to over volt the core, thus giving you the ability to reach a higher core clock. We will take a look at the overclocking potential later during the review as well. Well enough of the chatter, lets take a look at this absolutely tasty looking piece of hardware.
Make no mistake, this is one big card and you will need a decent sized mid tower to get one of these going.
Without wasting anymore time lets get on to the next part of the review, the test setup.
[BREAK=Test Setup]
Test Setup
The test setup for today consists of the following.
Phenom II x4 965 - running at 3.6 Ghz
MSI GD 70 DDR III motherboard
OCZ AMD Platinum 1333 - 6-6-6-18 1T
OCZ Modxterme 700W PSU
Asus 5870 and Asus GTX 295 - Stock cooling and stock clocks
And lots and lots of air cooling goodness....
Without further ado, lets get on with the benching.
[BREAK=3D Mark 06]
3D Mark '06
Lets start with our now basic requirement of any graphics card review. The 3D Mark 06 test.
As we can see from the charts above, the 5870 seems to have the 295's number at the performance level, but as we turn towards the 1680 x 1050 mode, we see the power of 2GB of memory coming into play. The GTX 295 takes a very slight lead and we cannot really draw any real conclusion from this test. 3D Mark 06 is also more CPU dependent, so we will call this one a tie.
[BREAK=3D Mark Vantage]
3D Mark Vantage
Now onto 3D Mark Vantage. Here we see the full effect of the 2GB that the 295 carries and it manages to beat the 5870 by close to 30% on the high performance preset. One of the main reason could be the disparity in the amount of memory and the dual graphics cores. This round clearly goes to the Asus GTX 295.
[BREAK=Unigine Heaven]
Unigine Heaven
And so onto our last benchmark for today, the new DX 11 Unigine Heaven benchmark, We have run this at DX10 to keep the results realistic.
Here is the real show stopper for the 5870. At lower resolutions the 5870 does not seem to be able to catch up with the GTX 295, but when we turned the resolution up and ran the benchmark at 1440 x 900, 16x Anisotropy and 8x AA, the 5870 was head, neck, shoulders and legs above the 295. We ran rhe test three times to make sure of the results, but this is what it finally came down to. This rounds clear winner is the 5870.
Now lets get on with our game benchmarks, as thats what most of you would be waiting for.
[BREAK=Crysis]
Crysis
So onto the first of our three gaming benchmarks for today. Lets start with the all time favorite, Crysis.
With lower resolution, but all the eye candy on, we can see a clear lead by the GTX 295, which is also carried forward to the higher resolution testing. The GTX 295 manages around 18% more performance here, and clearly is the winner in this round of tests.
[BREAK=Far Cry 2]
Far Cry 2
For the next benchmark we took one of the prettiest games around and put both our cards to the test. Let the graphs do the talking.
Far Cry2 is another win for the green camp and the GTX 295 takes the honors again.
[BREAK=Batman Arkham Asylum]
Batman Arkham Asylum
And finally to our last gaming benchmark for the day, one for this years favorite hits, Batman AA.
And finally a win for the red camp, with the 5870 trouncing the GTX 295 on both settings by around 50% and more.
[BREAK=Overclocking]
Overclocking
We started with the core at 850 and the memory at 1200, which is your basic stock settings. With ATI auto tune we could get the card upto 920/1250 on stock voltage. But the real fun began when we dialed in the voltage using Asus smart doctor. Running at 1.3v, we managed to get the card to run at 1000 Mhz on the core and 1250 on the memory. Turning on the voltage did not help with the memory clocks too much, but from previous testing we have seen barely any noticable difference with higher memory clocks, so we didn't bother too much on that. For some reason, GPU-Z would not show the new clocks set, but the score will give you a clearer picture.
[BREAK=Conclusion]
Conclusion
Well, for all practical purposes, the GTX 295 comes out as the leader in this contest. But dont forget that the 5870 is a single GPU card as compared to the dual GPU setup that the 295 GTX employees. To put it simply, the 5870 uses much less power and runs a lot cooler as compared to the GTX 295 and thats its trump card.
The 5970 has already shown what two of these cards can do together, but we will look at that some other day. For now, if you are impressed with the GTX 295's performance, or you are getting it cheaper than retail, close your eyes and go for it. Its not a bad card at all and still manages to keep ahead of the 5870 in most benchmarks and games.
But the power consumption figures are a whole different ball game. The 5870 draws 19W at idle and 144W at full load compared to the GTX 295 which draws close to 55W at idle and 218W at full load.
So if DX 11 is important to you and the fact that you are spending a lot less in energy consumption makes you feel better, then the 5870 is the obvious choice. On the other hand, with very few DX 11 titles currently available, a second hand GTX 295 should be a very good card to get you over the next year or so.
Till next time.....
