GeForce G310 - NvidiaBloggo - All the latest Nvidia news! 2010

Conclusions - Part 3

The 3D Vision Surround technology is another new feature that will mark the debut of the GeForce GF100 solutions.

It’s evident how nVIDIA wants to try and give players technical elements that allow them to make their PC gaming different from the console, taking advantage of a better performance with tools that go beyond the simple scene details, but that aim to put more realism and encourage the game immersion. The results are actually interesting, even though the 3D gaming isn’t something that all gamers actually want or support.

Conclusions - Part 2

When thinking about the GeForce GF100 cards and their gaming approach, it’s evident how a bigger realism on 3D games will push cards to offer a more extensive tesselation technique usage. They’re also the base of the DirectX 11 APIs, that had already implemented a support in previous generations of ATI Radeon HD cards.

The geometric complexity, obtained thanks to the tesselation techniques and with a reduced performance impact, makes the 3D scenes more realistic and corresponding more to that reality that game developers always want to create.

An overview about the performance

The initial performance of the first card based on Fermi gave a small possibility of seeing the performances that the card can offer. The frequencies and specifications aren’t known yet, and the very small session consisted of the integrated benchmark on Far Cry 2.

The choice of using a title such as Far Cry 2 wasn’t casual: it’s one of the few titles where the ATI Radeon HD 5000 cards do not reach excellent performances with the anti-aliasing filter on. The values we’ll be giving next were supplied by nVIDIA, and the hardware system used by nVIDIA for the test included an Intel Core i7 960 CPU, 6 DDR3, triple-channel memories, hence results that can be easily achieved without too much hassle.

Far Cry 2 - Ultra Quality / AA 4x / DX10

Resolution: 1920 x 1200

- Average FPS: 84.02
- Minimum FPS: 65.1

The values are to be taken lightly, as there are no information about which drivers or game patches were used. But it’s good for reference, until we can get our hands in a real card.

In fact, the usage of two cards in SLI is not only a necessity in the case of the 3D Surround Gaming, but also highly recommended: the performances are very reduced when using three screens in parallel, while the 3D technology puts yet another strain on the frames per second generated by the card. Having two GPUS operating in SLI makes the impact of the 3 screens and the 3D technology a lot smaller, and allowing users to have a decent playability.

A technical note before passing to the next point: the surround technology allows users to have 3 different monitors connected to the system, but the 3D Vision Surround needs three identical monitors: managing a 3D signal means that the monitors should be able to manage a 120Hz refresh, and using the same monitors would help avoid timing problems.

In order to make the surround technology work, nVIDIA requires at least two cards connected through SLI technology. The compatibility reaches the GeForce GTX 200 cards, based thus on the GT200 GPU, besides those with Fermi architecture, of course.

The need for two cards is a practical one: each GTX 200 card (and the same goes for the Fermi cards) can manage only up to 2 simultaneous screens, despite the fact that the number of display connectors could be higher than that. The presence of two cards connected through SLI allows the cards to manage the 3 displays, and also benefits from two GPUs for all the 3D renderings.

It’s easy to make a comparison with the Eyefinity technology from ATI. Eyefinity allows the card to manage up to six different monitors at the same time. The current approach on the market, featured on the Radeon HD 5000 cards allows for three monitors put together horizontally, making it so the game recognizes the three screens as just one panel.

The strategy used by nVIDIA with the 3D Vision Surround is indeed similar to the Eyefinity technology, except it is limited to 3 screens, while in theory, Eyefinity can manage up to 6 (not on the current models, however). It’s also posssible to enable the surround mode without the 3D Vision mode, for those who don’t want to enable the 3D feature with a specific title, for example.

GPU Computing and a better image quality

One of the elements that nVIDIA has been spending time and resources on is the usage of the GPU potential in order to control other elements besides the graphics in a game. PhysX is the name of the engine currently dedicated to Physics acceleration, but not only for the latest games: the possibility of using a bigger potential besides what can be given by the CPU also implicates in new possibilities for GPU usage.

Real-time calculations of smoke, textures and movements is one example, and nVIDIA intends to keep on pushing the accelerator on these elements, highlighting the fact that thanks to PhysX, the games can reach a playability and enjoyability level that other cards cannot offer. During this year, new titles will be launched and new implementations will be available.

In-Game Tests

Devil May Cry (maximum quality, AA 4x - DirectX 10) - Values expressed in FPS

- 1920 x 1200 - 43
- 1680 x 1050 - 51
- 1280 x 1024 - 60

FarCry 2 (High quality, AA 4x, DirectX 10)

- 1920 x 1200 - 26
- 1680 x 1050 - 31
- 1280 x 1024 - 38

Crysis Warhead (Airfield scene, AA 4x, AF 16, DirectX 10)

- 1920 x 1200 - 9
- 1680 x 1050 - 16
- 1280 x 1024 - 20

The performance values show an overall idea of where the GeForce GT 240 is placed on the market. The new nVIDIA card, although it brings higher values than the standard, places itself always on the lower range for the graphic cards. It is, after all, an economic proposal from nVidia, that can’t surely match the same performance as the top cards.

GTA IV

The last title used on the testing sessions was GTA IV. The game allows the user to choose not only the texture quality, but also the rendering and the view distance. These three elements, together with the resolution, are heavy on the memory usage, and they can be a good measurement on how much is or isn’t used. And they also show, in the gaming options, the exact number of MB used for each of the options. A good tool to use. By simply maximizing the view distance, for example, there’s a high increase of memory usage. Putting the texture quality to high, the memory requirements go beyond the 1GB mark, which could mean a big difference in the extra GB that the solution we are reviewing has.

But let’s see the frames per second found when testing.

Medium textures - high rendering - view distance: 50


Gigabyte GeForce GTX285 2GB

- 2560×1600 - 47
- 1920×1200 - 56

GeForce GTX 285 1GB Overclocked

- 2560×1600 - 47
- 1920×1200 - 56

Medium texture - high rendering - visual distance: 100

Gigabyte GeForce GTX285 2GB

- 2560×1600 - 45
- 1920×1200 - 55

GeForce GTX 285 1GB Overclocked

- 2560×1600 - 45
- 1920×1200 - 55

As we can see, there’s absolutely no difference in performances up until when the extra GB is needed in order to play with high textures and the maximum view distance. In this case, we haven’t performed the testing as it would have been impossible to compare with the 1GB Overclocked version of the GTX285. Only in that scenario, when a user wants to set this game to the maximum view distance and the maximum texture quality, we can see a real difference for the second GB on the Gigabyte solution.

Devil May Cry - Scene 1 - AA 4x (DirectX 10)

Gigabyte GeForce GTX285 2GB

- 2560×1600 - 96
- 1920×1200 - 145

GeForce GTX 285 1GB Overclocked

- 2560×1600 - 95
- 1920×1200 - 143

Devil May Cry - Scene 2 - AA 4x (DirectX 10)

Gigabyte GeForce GTX285 2GB

- 2560×1600 - 66
- 1920×1200 - 102

GeForce GTX 285 1GB Overclocked

- 2560×1600 - 66
- 1920×1200 - 96

Devil May Cry - Scene 3 - AA 4x (DirectX 10)

Gigabyte GeForce GTX285 2GB

- 2560×1600 - 117
- 1920×1200 - 175

GeForce GTX 285 1GB Overclocked

- 2560×1600 - 117
- 1920×1200 - 175

Devil May Cry - scene 4 - AA 4x (DirectX 10)

Gigabyte GeForce GTX285 2GB

- 2560×1600 - 71
- 1920×1200 - 99

GeForce GTX 285 1GB Overclocked

- 2560×1600 - 71
- 1920×1200 - 99

Similarly to the previous games, also Devil May Cry cannot go past the first GB on the card, despite the high resolutions and the anti-aliasing 4x.