ATI Radeon HD 4890 vs. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on April 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Mirror’s Edge: Do we have a winner?
And now we get to the final test. Something truly different: Mirror’s Edge.
This is an EA game. Ben had to leave before we got to this part of the test, he does have a wife and kid after all, so I went at this one alone.
I’d never played Mirror’s Edge. I’d seen the videos, it looked interesting. You play as a girl, Faith, a runner. You run across rooftops, through buildings, it’s all very parkour-like. You’re often being pursued by “blues”, police offers, as you run through the game. I won’t give away any plot details here but this game, I liked.
The GPU accelerated PhysX impacted things like how glass shatters and the presence of destructible cloth. We posted a video of what the game looks like with NVIDIA GPU accelerated PhysX enabled late last year:
"Here is the side by side video showing better what DICE has added to Mirror's Edge for the PC with PhysX. Please note that the makers of the video (not us) slowed down the game during some effects to better show them off. The slow downs are not performance related issues. Also, the video is best viewed in full screen mode (the button in the bottom right corner)."
In Derek’s blog about the game he said the following:
“We still want to really get our hands on the game to see if it feels worth it, but from this video, we can at least say that there is more positive visual impact in Mirror's Edge than any major title that has used PhysX to date. NVIDIA is really trying to get developers to build something compelling out of PhysX, and Mirror's Edge has potential. We are anxious to see if the follow through is there.”
Well, we have had our hands on the game and I’ve played it quite a bit. I started with PhysX enabled. I was looking for the SSD-effect. I wanted to play with it on then take it away and see if I missed it. I played through the first couple of chapters with PhysX enabled, fell in lust with the game and then turned off PhysX.
I missed it.
I actually missed it. What did it for me was the way the glass shattered. When I was being pursued by blues and they were firing at me as I ran through a hallway full of windows, the hardware accelerated PhysX version was more believable. I felt more like I was in a movie than in a video game. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t hyper realistic, but the effect was noticeable.
I replayed a couple of chapters and then played some new ones with PhysX disabled now before turning it back on and repeating the test.
The impact of GPU accelerated PhysX was noticeable. EA had done it right.
The Verdict?
So am I sold? Would I gladly choose a slower NVIDIA part because of PhysX support? Of course not.
The reason why I enjoyed GPU accelerated PhysX in Mirror’s Edge was because it’s a good game to begin with. The implementation is subtle, but it augments an already visually interesting title. It makes the gameplay experience slightly more engrossing.
It’s a nice bonus if I already own a NVIDIA GPU, it’s not a reason for buying one.
The fact of the matter is that Mirror’s Edge should be the bare minimum requirement for GPU accelerated PhysX in games. The game has to be good to begin with and the effects should be the cherry on top. Crappy titles and gimmicky physics aren’t going to convince anyone. Aggressive marketing on top of that is merely going to push people like us to call GPU accelerated PhysX out for what it is. I can’t even call the overall implementations I’ve seen in games half baked, the oven isn’t even preheated yet. Mirror’s Edge so far is an outlier. You can pick a string of cheese off of a casserole and like it, but without some serious time in the oven it’s not going to be a good meal.
Then there’s the OpenCL argument. NVIDIA won’t port PhysX to OpenCL, at least not anytime soon. But Havok is being ported to OpenCL, that means by the end of this year all games that use OpenCL Havok can use GPU accelerated physics on any OpenCL compliant video card (NVIDIA, ATI and Intel when Larrabee comes out).
While I do believe that NVIDIA and EA were on to something with the implementation of PhysX in Mirror’s Edge, I do not believe NVIDIA is strong enough to drive the entire market on its own. Cross platform APIs like OpenCL will be the future of GPU accelerated physics, they have to be, simply because NVIDIA isn’t the only game in town. The majority of PhysX titles aren’t accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs, I would suspect that it won’t take too long for OpenCL accelerated Havok titles to equal that number once it’s ready.
Until we get a standard for GPU accelerated physics that all GPU vendors can use or until NVIDIA can somehow convince every major game developer to include compelling features that will only be accelerated on NVIDIA hardware, hardware PhysX will be nothing more than fancy lettering on a cake.
You wanted us to look at PhysX in a review of an ATI GPU, and there you have it.
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SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
LOL - antoher hidden red rooster bias uncovered...Umm... look, when there's a new ati card, there's no talking about crunching down on former ati cards - OK ? That just is NOT allowed.
" No mention of the death of the HD 4850X2 as the HD4890 trashes the power consumption, price, availability, speed and OC-ability "
Dude, not allowed !
PS- Don't mention how this card is going to smash the "4870" "profit" "flagship" - gee now just don't talk about it - don't mention it - look, there's no rooster crying in fps gaming, ok ?
Torquer350 - Friday, April 3, 2009 - link
Props to ATi for delivering a very compelling product. I admit I've always been an Nvidia fan, and I'll generally forgive them a single generational performance loss to ATi, but I've recommended ATi products recently to friends due to their resurgent desirability.That being said, am I the only one who detects a subtle but distinct underlying disdain for Nvidia? So they tried to market the hell out of you - so what? They are trying to sell cards here. Why the surprise that sales and marketing people are trying to do exactly what they're paid to do? Congrats for being smart enough to see it for what it is, but jeers for making an issue of it as if its some kind of new tactic. Has AMD/ATi never done the same?
CUDA and PhysX are compelling, but I agree not a good reason to overcome a significant gap between Nvidia and ATi at a comparable price point. You clearly agree, but it seems like what little praise you offer is begrudging in the extreme.
Nvidia has definitely acted in bad form in a number of ways throughout this very lengthy generation of hardware. However, you guys are journalists and in my opinion should make a more concerted effort to leave the vitriol and sensationalism at the door, regardless of who it is that is being reviewed. That kind of emotional reaction, personal opinion, irritation, etc is better served for your blog posts than a review article.
Love the site, keep up the good work. Nobodys perfect.
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
Yeah thanks for noticing, too. It been going on a long time. Notice how now, suddenly when ati doesn't have 2560 sewn up - it doesn't matter anymore ... LOLOf course the "brilliiantly unbiased" reviewers will claim they did a poll on monitor resolution useage, and therefore sudenyl came to their conclusion about $2,000.00 monitor users, when they tiddled and taddled for years about 10 bucks between framerates and nvidia ati - and chose ati for the 10 bucks difference.
Yep, 10 bucks matters, but $1,700.00 difference for a monitor doesn't matter until they take a poll. Now they didn't say it, but they will - wait it's coming...
Just like I kept pointing out when they raved about ati taking the 30" resolution and not much if anything else, that declaring it the winner wasn't right. Now of course, when ati isn't winning the 30 rez - yes, well, they finally caught on. No bias here ! Nothing to notice, pure professionalism, and hatred of cuda and physx for it's lack of ability to run on ati cards is fully justified, and should offer NO advantage to nvidia when making a purchase decision ! LOL
OMG ! they're like GONERZ man.
Dried - Friday, April 3, 2009 - link
Best review so far. And nice cards BTW, they are both worth it, but i like the 4890 betterFunny thing is that GTX 275 > GTX 280.
But my guess is that GTX 280 benefits more from overclocking.
Arbie - Friday, April 3, 2009 - link
Because of my PC's location I am concerned with idle power, and purchase based on that if other specs and price are even comparable. Peak power doesn't matter as long as it's within the capability of my 800W PSU.I bought an ATI HD4850 last year because it idled significantly lower than the 4870, and it would run everything in sight. A great card. The Nvidia GTX 260 and 280 had even better performance vs idle power ratios but were way too expensive at the time.
So I think Nvidia takes the laurels now with the GTX 275. 30W less (!) than the HD 4890 at idle, with essentially the same performance. If I were shopping now it would be a VERY easy choice.
I really hope ATI can get their idle power down too. They need to pay more attention to throttling back or downpowering circuits that aren't needed in 2D modes.
helldrell666 - Friday, April 3, 2009 - link
Use the radeon bios editor to edit the 2d profile and then downclock your gpu frequencies.OCedHrt - Friday, April 3, 2009 - link
The power consumption on the 4890 really interests me. While it uses more than 275 at idle, it uses less under load. Also, it is a significant drop from the 4870 which is a slower card.bobvodka - Friday, April 3, 2009 - link
So, on the charge of drivers; I've gone from recently having a GT8800GTX 512Meg to a HD4870X2 2gig and if anything I've seen stability improvements between the two. Or to put it another way NV drivers were bluescreening my Vista install when I was doing nothing more than using my TV card and it was crashing in a DirectDraw DLL. Nice.Not to say AMD hasn't had issues; trying to use hardware acceleration with any bluray play back resulted in a bluescreen due to the gpu going into an infinite loop. Nice. Fortunately, unlike the DDraw error above, I could at least turn off hardware acceleration (and honestly, with an i7 it's not like I needed it).
So, stability wise it's a wash.
As for the memory usage complaints about CCC;
Unless it is running it is NOT taking up physical memory. Like many things in the windows world it might load something into the background but this is quickly paged out and doesn't live in ram. Even if it does living in ram for a short period of time being inactive it will be paged out as soon as memory presure requires it. The simple fact is unused ram is wasted ram; this is why I'm glad Vista uses 10gig of my 12 for cache when it isn't needed for anything else, it speeds up the system.
Cuda.. well, the idea is nice and I like the idea but as mentioned in the article unless you have cross vendor support it isn't as useful as it could be. OpenCL and, for games, DX11's compute shaders are going to make life intresting for both Cuda and AMD's option. I will say this much; I suspect you'll get better performance from NV, AMD and indeed Larrabee when it appears by going 'to the metal' with them but as with many things in the software world you have to trade something for speed.
Now, PhysX.. well, this one is even more fun (and I guess it effects Cuda as well to a degree). Right now, with Vista, you can't run more than one vendor's gfx card in your system at once due to how WDDM1.0 works; so it's AMD or NV and that's your choice. With Win7 however the rules change slight and you'll be able to run, with WDDM1.1 drivers, cards from both vendors at once. Right away this paints an intresting landscape for those intrested; if you want an AMD card but also want some PhysX hardware power than you'll be able to slide in a 'cheap' NV series card to use for that reason (or indeed if you have an old series 8 laying about use that if the driver supports it).
Of course, with Havoc going OpenCL and being free for games which retail for <$10 (iirc) this is probably going to be much of a muchness in the end, but it's an intresting idea at least.
SiliconDoc - Monday, April 6, 2009 - link
Except you can run 2 nvidia cards, one for gaming, the other for physx.... so red fanboys are sol."Right now, with Vista, you can't run more than one vendor's gfx card in your system at once due to how WDDM1.0 works; so it's AMD or NV and that's your choice. "
WRONG, it's TWO nvidia or just ONE ati. Hello - you knew it - but you didn't say it that way - makes ati look bad, and we just cannot have that here....
Rhino2 - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
The hell are you talking about? Crossfire works in vista just fine.