Benchmark: Aliens vs. Predator
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Review: HEXUS.net/qawcl | Where2buy: amazon.co.uk |
The standalone Aliens vs. Predator benchmark uses DX11 features such as hardware tessellation and advanced shadow sampling to draw and animate everyone's favourite xenomorph.
The reviewed card's scores are shown in green and the equivalent Gigabyte Radeon's in red. OK, the first question you're probably asking is how this overclocked GTX 680 is a smidge slower than a stock-clocked card and, perhaps more pertinently, why is it also a tiny bit slower than a GTX 670 OC?
We ran the test multiple times and also plugged the GTX 680 and GTX 670 TOP back in; the numbers came out to within one per cent of what's reported here. Analysing further, the somewhat substandard Gigabyte OC performance can be explained by the GPU Boost speed. You see, this particular sample boosts to 1,137MHz in this title, just as the quoted GPU Boost figures allude to. However, the reference GTX 680 matches its GPU Boost frequency - from a lower base clock - and the ASUS GTX 670 TOP, although hamstrung by a slightly weaker architecture, GPU Boosts to a whopping 1,214MHz. It's this ultra-aggressive GPU Boosting that puts a GTX 670 ahead of this GTX 680 OC.
Whatever the ins-and-outs of GPU Boost on single-GPU Kepler cards, the also-overclocked Radeon HD 7970 beats them all.
