Hey guys,
Before I start playing my favourite game, which is 3dmark, I thought I'd have a go at a bit of a GPU review with an MSI GTX480 and some game benches with some focus on the effects of CPU, ram and uncore scaling.
Introduction
There are a thousand reviews out there on the net showcasing the performance of graphics cards which tend to follow a fairly similar methodology, which is fair enough considering the gaming audience. I thought I would differentiate a little. In addition to reviewing the performance of the GTX480 across a range of game benchmarks, I want to see the effect a high CPU overclock has on performance. Since a lot of us here are overclockers, I intend to run some benchmarks with no less than an i7 980x processor running at 5ghz. My reasoning behind this is simple: To show what the GTX480 can do with a minimized CPU bottleneck, show if games can benefit from added CPU performance and hopefully give an indication of how the card will perform with future higher performing processor architectures and platforms.
So let's begin
The card and packaging
The MSI GTX480 is based on the Nvidia reference design. It features a 480sp GF100 core manufactured with TSMC's 40nm process with upwards of 3 billion transistors. It comes with a 384bit memory bus width with a 1.5gb GDDR5 frame buffer. Clocks are a fairly conservative 700/1400mhz to help keep TDP in check.
Moving on to the MSI package itself: It comes with the usual accessories that you would expect from a performance graphics card. It comes with DVI to VGA and DVI to HDMI adapters, 6 pin to 8pin PCI-E adapter, a twin Molex to 6pin PCI-E adapter, user manual and driver CD. Included on the CD is the cherry on top, which is the Afterburner overclocking utility that sets the MSI card apart.
The MSI Afterburner utility is used to overclock the GTX480. Coded by Unwinder, the creator of Rivatuner upon which it is based, Afterburner has become the most popular utility to overclock cards and adjust voltages. It offers a simple user interface, monitoring, fan control and the ability to save profiles. It really is an excellent utility offering ease of use, simplicity and reliability. Kudos to MSI for allowing not just their own cards to be used and abused with it, but tacitly those from other vendors as well.
I am glad it does not come with costly extras such as a free game or 3dmark licence. It keeps the cost down, helping the cost/performance ratio and delivers the best price on what matters most. The card itself.
The full specifications are available at the MSI website.
Test setup and methodology
Intel Core i7 980x Processor with stock air and cascade cooling built by Kayl
MSI BigBang Xpower motherboard. BIOS v1.2
MSI N480GTX-M2D15 Graphics Card using ForceWare 258.69
3x2gb Corsair Dominator GT 2000mhz 8-9-8-24 rev. 7.1 (Powerchip IC's)
Corsair HX1000 Power Supply
Dell 2405FPW @ 1920x1200
Windows 7 32bit
I used four different sets of settings for the following benchmarks. They are:
A: No overclock on either the CPU or GPU
B: No overclock on the CPU, but overclock on the GPU
C: Overclock on the CPU, but no overclock on the GPU
D: Overclock on both the CPU and GPU
Here is a screen grab of the four performance states. They are the CPU and platform at stock settings and overclocked, as well as the GTX480 at stock settings and overclocked. No AA or AF was used in any of the tests. I chose the overclocked settings primarily because they are nice round numbers. Both CPU and GPU are capable of higher clocks, but I wanted some grounding in reality. Higher clocks are really the domain of the 3dmarkers.
CPU/platform stock and overclocked
Stock and overclocked GTX480
The results are the average of three runs at each of the four performance states.
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