GTX 460 performs worse in BFBC2 than my 4850

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jbz7890

Gawd
Joined
Sep 22, 2008
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Hi everyone,

I received a GTX 460 1 GB today and played some BFBC2, eager to see a large improvement in my frame rates. But that didn't happen.

With my 4850, I averaged about 40-50 fps at 1440x900 on high. With my GTX 460, my frame rates rarely went above 40. Oddly, my frame rates don't seem to change with the settings: 1024x768 on low will produce similar frame rates to 1440x900 with everything maxed. Also, gameplay is much choppier with my GTX 460, even when the frame rates are comparable.

Another thing I noticed is that whenever I load a map, the GTX 460 will move at a crawl -- about 3-5 FPS -- for ten seconds or so. The 4850 never did this.

The temps on my GTX 460 never go above 60C, and I tested it for about half an hour on Furmark, which it passed.

Here are the rest of my specs:

Core 2 Duo [email protected]
4GB Corsair DDR2 @ 890mhz
1 TB WD Caviar black (I used a 250GB Seagate with my 4850, if that's relevant)
Windows 7 Ultimate X64 (I used 32-bit XP with my 4850)
600W OCZ Gamexsteam PSU

Also, Crysis runs much better on my GTX 460 (about 50% higher frame rates), so I know the card can't be completely broken.

I'd appreciate any help, as I'm leaning toward returning a card that I would gladly keep if it performed as it should.
 
Had a similar issue where my old gtx 280 was smoother than the 460. Long story short, something unique to the GTX 460 causes massive DPC latency spikes on the LGA 775 platform. The issue is reportedly less pronounced on P45 and X48 boards but as a whole it makes the 460 a non-option for 775. No other nvidia card has these issues, so a 450, 465 or 470 would be fine.
 
spacing guild said:
sounds like a memory leak somewhere?
Click to expand...

The crawling at the beginning does sound like a memory problem. I know starcraft 2 does the same with 2 gigs of ram installed. The issue goes away with 4.

As for BC2 general performance. 775 isn't helping, and your processor is probably holding you back in that game. Fermi has issues with GPU usage and you're most likely getting less then 60%, and with you only having a dual core your performance is suffering. '

BC2 runs at 60fps at 1440x900(1080p on my plasma) with 4xAA 16xAF, and everything on, or high DX11. My GPU usage is only about 60% with the 263.09 drivers. Fermi owners have had good results with the Quadro 265.90 release, but they have issues on 460's for most. I actually get a performance boost by enabling HBAO because it causes a nice spike up in GPU usage.

Which drivers are you using? Check GPU usage in all of your games. Dead Rising 2 I get about 60%, but only after renaming the .exe to dirt2, it was about 25 before that. Starcraft 2 gets me anywhere from 20-60%, Hot Pursuit about 25%. They all run great, but new drivers expected from nVidia in about a week are SUPPOSED to fix GPU usage with all Fermi cards. Should get much better performance in everything.

The only game I get 99% GPU usage in is Crysis. 1440x900, 2xAA, 16xAF, DX10 high w/ Ultra shaders I average 49. I have an EVGA GTX 460 overclocked to 780/1560/1950, Athlon II [email protected] and 4 Gigs of DDR3.
 
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Since you have switched from win xp/4850 to win 7/460, BC2 is likely using directX 11 instead of 9. There is a small fps penalty for that, but in return you are getting more eye-candy. Although 3-5 fps doesn't sound right regardless.
 
not that it should be performing worse but upgrading to a gtx460 from a 4850 at just 1440x900 is a bit silly. with your dual core cpu, you will not be getting any better performance in cpu intensive games over what your 4850 could already give you.

for what its worth BC 2 ran like shit when I used a gtx470 in my system. DX11 was never smooth and I had to force DX10 just to get similar performance I was getting with my gtx260. so it seems for some people, the Fermi cards have issues with this game.
 
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i run a Crysis total conversion mod called MWLL which is more demanding that Crysis itself and i run it on all Very High settings at 1440x900 and it's as smooth as you want it to be....i dont sit and watch fps, i turned it on once in game to see what it showed and it seemed to be hovering around the 50's mostly, then i turned it off, i'll only look again if there an issue

also plays BFBC2 at all maxed out settings, 16xAA, 16xAF, smooth as can be

note i am doing this with a Phenom II 955 Quad @ 3.2Ghz (stock other than 2400Mhz NB clock) and 4Gb of DDR3 @ 1600Mhz

perhaps the rest of the system is making things hitch...
 
It is a possible that the issue due to gtx 460 running dx 11 , unlike ur other card, dx 11 will cause you to take a small hit on fps. You can still change the dx settings in the config file, to dx 10 and should help on ur fps.
 
nobody_here said:
i run a Crysis total conversion mod called MWLL which is more demanding that Crysis itself and i run it on all Very High settings at 1440x900 and it's as smooth as you want it to be....i dont sit and watch fps, i turned it on once in game to see what it showed and it seemed to be hovering around the 50's mostly, then i turned it off, i'll only look again if there an issue

also plays BFBC2 at all maxed out settings, 16xAA, 16xAF, smooth as can be

note i am doing this with a Phenom II 955 Quad @ 3.2Ghz (stock other than 2400Mhz NB clock) and 4Gb of DDR3 @ 1600Mhz

perhaps the rest of the system is making things hitch...
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Thats because as I said, the issue is due to a conflict between the OP's 775 system and the gtx 460. This is a well documented problem.

Here's the first thread a quick google search brought up.
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=508637&mpage=1
 
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R-Type said:
Thats because as I said, the issue is due to a conflict between the OP's 775 system and the gtx 460. This is a well documented problem.

Here's the first thread a quick google search brought up.
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=508637&mpage=1
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If that's the case, then good for the OP - but after that, BC2 wants a quad. Yes you can run it on a dual core, but I went from a e8400 to a q9550 and my min/avg/max jumped 20 ~ 40fps in most cases. That was with a 4850 cf at 1920x1080. Then to a i7 @ 4.2, they climbed even more - and with this GTX460 and this i7, I barely see below 80fps with 4xaa/max blah blah.
 
Yes, OP should hop on Sandy Bridge in two weeks and this thread will be a moot point.

Off topic, OP have you been playing Black Ops on west coast servers? Your handle looks really familiar...
 
so it sounds like the platform system is to blame for the less than stellar performance....i know with BFBC2 it eats quads....i know for a fact on my system when i exit the game it shows all four cores were working a good 80% or better each....
 
its a platform issue or maybe some type of Fermi issue running DX11. I know some people are not getting proper gpu usage in BC 2 with Fermi cards.

the game runs perfectly fine on my E8500 and gtx260 at 1920 on highest settings with HBAO off. I average 50 fps in most spots. in fact I am pegged at 60fps(vsync) in many parts of the game.
 
I am running BC2 with a E8400 at 3.7Ghz and a 6850 on High 1650x1050

I pull in about 50 to 70 FPS depending on the map and the level of action.

The crawling at the beginning of the map is normal. You may have been running lower settings perhaps when you had your 4850 or may have not noticed it.

Your biggest problem to great performance is your CPU. I noticed myself a 100% increase in peformance by going from 3Ghz to 3.7Ghz on my Duo. 3Ghz netted my a measly 30FPS. This game really works a CPU hard.

Download MSI Afterburner and monitor the load on your GPU. I would not be surprised if you are under 50% load, while your CPU is at 100% load on both cores.
 
My CPU cannot be entirely responsible for my low performance in BFBC2 because my 4850 ran it much better than my GTX 460. I've also run BFBC2 in a variety of settings (DX9,DX,10, and DX11; HBAO on and off; AA on and off) and performance is basically hte same.

Also I forgot to mention that although my frame rates in Crysis are high, the game stutters quite frequently.

Anyway, I'm going to try my GTX 460 in XP just for good measure.

As of now, R-Type's explanation sounds the most convincing. The only thing that puzzles me is since the GTX 460 game out in July, nVidia should have already fixed this problem with a driver update.
 
You would think, but its definitely there on the 260.99's. I tried for a couple weeks to solve the issue before just moving the card to my girl's PC
 
jbz7890 said:
My CPU cannot be entirely responsible for my low performance in BFBC2 because my 4850 ran it much better than my GTX 460. I've also run BFBC2 in a variety of settings (DX9,DX,10, and DX11; HBAO on and off; AA on and off) and performance is basically hte same.

Also I forgot to mention that although my frame rates in Crysis are high, the game stutters quite frequently.

Anyway, I'm going to try my GTX 460 in XP just for good measure.

As of now, R-Type's explanation sounds the most convincing. The only thing that puzzles me is since the GTX 460 game out in July, nVidia should have already fixed this problem with a driver update.
Click to expand...

Google "GTX 460 problems". You'll see a shitload of threads where people talk about low GPU usage, even with i7's at 4Ghz.

not that it should be performing worse but upgrading to a gtx460 from a 4850 at just 1440x900 is a bit silly. with your dual core cpu, you will not be getting any better performance in cpu intensive games over what your 4850 could already give you.

for what its worth BC 2 ran like shit when I used a gtx470 in my system. DX11 was never smooth and I had to force DX10 just to get similar performance I was getting with my gtx260. so it seems for some people, the Fermi cards have issues with this game.
Click to expand...

Even if performance was the same you would be able to max most anything with AA. The IQ improvements would be worth it alone.
 
R-Type said:
You would think, but its definitely there on the 260.99's. I tried for a couple weeks to solve the issue before just moving the card to my girl's PC
Click to expand...

Do you think it's possible that nVidia may never be able to fix this problem? Also, have you found that any other drivers are better than the 260,99's?
 
No idea, but I didn't find any better drivers.

TomG, there is a 775 specific DPC issue that causes low performance and then there are simply games that aren't shader bound. The 460 has a significantly higher shader to compute ratio than the GF100 and 110 which means in games that aren't shader dependent you won't be able to max it out. Heres a thorough explanation from Anandtech.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3809/nvidias-geforce-gtx-460-the-200-king/2
 
jbz7890 said:
My CPU cannot be entirely responsible for my low performance in BFBC2 because my 4850 ran it much better than my GTX 460. I've also run BFBC2 in a variety of settings (DX9,DX,10, and DX11; HBAO on and off; AA on and off) and performance is basically hte same.

Also I forgot to mention that although my frame rates in Crysis are high, the game stutters quite frequently.

Anyway, I'm going to try my GTX 460 in XP just for good measure.

As of now, R-Type's explanation sounds the most convincing. The only thing that puzzles me is since the GTX 460 game out in July, nVidia should have already fixed this problem with a driver update.
Click to expand...


this perplexes me....how do you guys explain running 260.99's on Win7 x64 with a 460GTX running smoothly on BFBC2 on a different platform?
 
nobody_here said:
this perplexes me....how do you guys explain running 260.99's on Win7 x64 with a 460GTX running smoothly on BFBC2 on a different platform?
Click to expand...

The issue exists somewhere between the GTX 460 hardware, Nvidia's drivers, and the LGA 775 platform. When running on other platforms such as AMD or 1366/1156 there is no issue.

I have to assume the problem is tied to the latency of 775's off chip memory controller but have no real evidence. I just know it doesn't work for shit.:D
 
R-Type said:
The issue exists somewhere between the GTX 460 hardware, Nvidia's drivers, and the LGA 775 platform. When running on other platforms such as AMD or 1366/1156 there is no issue.

I have to assume the problem is tied to the latency of 775's off chip memory controller but have no real evidence. I just know it doesn't work for shit.:D
Click to expand...

ah ok, so its not the drivers specifically or the card, the issue does not manifest itself unless a socket 775 platform is used?
 
Exactly, and more specifically on 775 systems with Intel chipsets. People running the nvidia chipsets for the platform seem to be ok, but of course those chipsets have there own set of issues :p
 
R-Type said:
Exactly, and more specifically on 775 systems with Intel chipsets. People running the nvidia chipsets for the platform seem to be ok, but of course those chipsets have there own set of issues :p
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I'm using a motherboard with a P43 chipset, this explanation definitely seems plausible.

However, I used a DPC latency checker and found no significant latency spikes. In fact, my latency went above 500 microseconds only twice.

Anyway, I'm probably going to return my card tomorrow. I may buy the GTX465 for $130 or just hold off on a video card upgrade. Decisions, decisions...

Also, XP and Windows 7 yield roughly the same results.
 
1440x900 is a very low resolution and would never tax a 460 at all. Stick with your 4850.
 
Met-AL said:
1440x900 is a very low resolution and would never tax a 460 at all. Stick with your 4850.
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Try playing Crysis at 1440x900 on Enthusiast (no AA) with a 4850. Do the same with Bad Company 2, Stalker:CoP, Metro 2033, and any other game released this year.

Hell, even the GTX 460 will struggle at 1440x900 with many new games.
 
jbz7890 said:
Try playing Crysis at 1440x900 on Enthusiast (no AA) with a 4850. Do the same with Bad Company 2, Stalker:CoP, Metro 2033, and any other game released this year.

Hell, even the GTX 460 will struggle at 1440x900 with many new games.
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no it wouldnt.. there is not a single game you could not max at 1440x900 with a gtx460. hell I play all my games at 1920x1080 with an even slower gtx260 and there is never more than two or three settings that I have to reduce. also the key here is using common sense as there is usually just a setting or two that tanks performance and that alone is not worth getting a new gpu for. for example dont run DOF or advanced shadows in some games as they add nothing worthwhile yet kill your fps. in Clear Sky leave sun shadows on medium and pick up 10-15 fps. use your brain and you dont have to have a $500 gpu to play games on nearly max settings.
 
cannondale06 said:
no it wouldnt.. there is not a single game you could not max at 1440x900 with a gtx460. hell I play all my games at 1920x1080 with an even slower gtx260 and there is never more than two or three settings that I have to reduce. also the key here is using common sense as there is usually just a setting or two that tanks performance and that alone is not worth getting a new gpu for. for example dont run DOF or advanced shadows in some games as they add nothing worthwhile yet kill your fps. in Clear Sky leave sun shadows on medium and pick up 10-15 fps. use your brain and you dont have to have a $500 gpu to play games on nearly max settings.
Click to expand...

"Maxing" a game means putting every setting at the maximum. It doesn't mean putting most settings at the maximum and putting a few others on medium or low. Again, the GTX 460 cannot max Crysis or Metro 2033 at 1440x900 and maintain a solid frame rate. Besides, even if the GTX 460 is overkill for 1440x900, it still should perform faster at 1440x900 than the 4850.

Anyway, I tried the 265.90 drivers and didn't see any improvement in BFBC2. I'll try a few other games. At this point, however, I think I'm going to end up returning this card.
 
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jbz7890 said:
"Maxing" a game means putting every setting at the maximum. It doesn't mean putting most settings at the maximum and putting a few others on medium or low. Again, the GTX 460 cannot max Crysis or Metro 2033 at 1440x900 and maintain a solid frame rate. Besides, even if the GTX 460 is overkill for 1440x900, it still should preform faster at 1440x900 than the 4850.

Anyway, I tried the 265.90 drivers and didn't see any improvement in BFBC2. I'll try a few other games. At this point, however, I think I'm going to end up returning this card.
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so does max mean using 32x AA also? again its about using common sense and leaving off the settings that add nothing to the appearance of the game while killing the framerate. just like back when FEAR came out nobody ran soft shadows becuase it killed the framerate while not doing anything better looking. nobody in their right mind would run Metro 2033 with DOF on. without it yes the gtx460 can run the rest of the settings on highest possible. and I hate to break it to you but even my gtx260 can run Crysis just fine on DX10 very high settings at 1440x900. hell I have run a DX9 modified config at 1920x1080 that looks better than very high.
 
Frame rates in TF2 are very low too: about 60 on average and 20-30 in heavy combat. My GPU usage is only at about 20-30% while playing. Something is definitely wrong.
 
I can run crysis at all Very High settings (highest) and 8x AA...maybe more AA...havent tried, because at those settings on 1440x900 its a complete joy to play......

And my gpu was maxed out btw....it wasn't sitting there waiting for something to do, load was 100%....

And you guys should look at some recent benchmarks that compare resolutions on the same card/system/settings.....there's not as huge a difference as some make out....i think the resulting percentage on the 460gtx 1gb was like 6%......so 12% if you go from 1440 to 1680 to 1920.....not game changing
 
I don't know.... let me go run it on my system. I am guessing all on high and at 1440x900?
 
Ok, went and played a "offline practice" bot match game, 16 bots.

Here is a cell phone picture of my task manager and Afterburner taken during a time when all 16 players were battling it out in one area. Lots and lots of action, worst case scenario of that match. 67FPS

IMG_20101226_235704.jpg


When the action would simmer, my frame rate would shoot up, along with the GPU usage level. Notice how high it was before the action started? That also coincided with frame rates pushing 200 FPS. But as soon as the action hit... my CPU became bogged down, the frame rate dropped to 67FPS, and my GPU work load dropped.

E8400 6MB Cache 3.7Ghz
HD6950 1GB at 900/1200
4GB DDR800
Vista 64 Ultimate

Game settings where 1440x900 with everything turned up as high as possible with the exception of AA, which I have at zero and I use morphological AA in the driver control panel.
 
I have a hard time believing the lowest frame rate you hit during multi player was 67fps with your dual core cpu. pretty much any benchmarks I have seen show that a cpu like yours would not even average near 60 fps. heck even at 1024x768 my framerate is exactly the same as it is at 1920x1080 with around 45-50 fps average just in single player.
 
cannondale06 said:
I have a hard time believing the lowest frame rate you hit during multi player was 67fps with your dual core cpu. pretty much any benchmarks I have seen show that a cpu like yours would not even average near 60 fps. heck even at 1024x768 my framerate is exactly the same as it is at 1920x1080 with around 45-50 fps average just in single player.
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I think he's talking about TF2.

I've also noticed that my Vram usage is very low. In BFBC2 with everything maxed, only 400 megabytes were used.
 
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