NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 Unleashed
Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
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The latest version of Futuremark's synthetic 3D gaming benchmark, 3DMark Vantage, is specifically bound to Windows Vista-based systems because it uses some advanced visual technologies that are only available with DirectX 10, which y isn't available on previous versions of Windows. 3DMark Vantage isn't simply a port of 3DMark06 to DirectX 10 though. With this latest version of the benchmark, Futuremark has incorporated two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, in addition to support for the latest PC hardware. We tested the graphics cards here with 3DMark Vantage's Extreme preset option, which uses a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200, with 4X anti-aliasing and 16X anisotropic filtering. |
As the graph above show, results generated with 3DMark Vantage's Extreme preset testing option produce much more diverse results than the again 3DMark06. According the 3DMark Vantage, the GeForce GTX 280 is easily the most powerful graphics card we tested. The GeForce GTX 260 also surpassed all other singe-GPU powered cards, but it wasn't quite on the level of the dual-GPU powered GeForce 9800 GX2. Vantage also shows the excellent multi-GPU scaling offered by the NVIDIA powered cards - the quad-SLI and two- and three-way SLI GeForce GTX 280 setups simply crush the competition. Please note, however, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 CrossFireX configuration had scaling issues with the Catalyst 8.5 drivers. Future driver revisions should help its score here significantly.
3DMark Vantage's individual GPU tests also demonstrate the excellent performance of the GeForce GTX 280 and 260. Once again, both cards were clearly superior to any other single-GPU powered configuration and the GTX 280 was faster than all of the dual-GPU setups as well. Standard SLI and 3-Way SLI with the ASUS and EVGA cards we tested also showed excellent scaling here, producing results that were leaps and bounds ahead of anything else.
