GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs 8600 GTS Crysis Image Quality Comparison Linus Tech Tips
GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs 8600 GTS Crysis Image Quality Comparison Linus Tech Tips
2011-03-15
so my video today is one that you guys
seem to quite enjoy from the GTX 560 TI
launched so I've got a gtx 550 ti and I
am running crisis in DirectX 10 mode and
what I'm going to be doing is I'm going
to be comparing the playable settings
and the image quality that I can get on
a gtx 550 ti versus what that kind of a
price would have bought you a few years
ago which is a geforce 8600 GT s or 8600
GT so I'm going to go to my image
quality compare save game and I'm going
to load this up and show you guys what I
was able to achieve with thee oh no you
know what
ah yes no first I'll show you the
settings that I have everything at let's
do that okay so system settings I was
able to with the 550 ti and this is
really impressive especially considering
that this card is designed for 1680 by
1050 I was able to get things going in
1920 by 1080 so that is full HD
resolution anti-aliasing is not an
option with a card of this level at that
kind of resolution in crisis but that is
to be expected and before anyone asks
yes I recommend higher resolution with
no AAA before I would recommend lower
resolution with a AAA AAA is basically
just fake resolution and you're better
off to have real resolution I was also
able to run the game mostly on high
settings so I had almost everything on
high remember this is a 1 gig card so
textures are not going to be a real big
issue for it which is really nice to see
on a card of again this price point I
did turn motion blur off and I think I
also adjusted one other thing the
objects quality is on very high so that
is the settings that I'm running at so
I'm going to compare that against the
8600 GT s so here's my initial image
quality comparison loading game so you
can see all the shadows are very soft we
can see very clearly into the distance
on the screen I'm actually here I'm
going to lift up my camera show you guys
what I mean so here's an example of the
shadows being detailed and soft versus
being really hard and ugly
as well as I can see you've got some
smoke effects going on there basically
the game is running at almost max
setting so this is all pretty high
there's some more shadows for you
I'm going to put the camera down for a
second here and just sort of run through
the gameplay I want you guys to make
note of the fraps counter up in the top
right corner I hope you can see that you
know what I'm going to adjust you up
just a little bit so I can be sure that
you can see that frogs counter so right
now we're at 40 or so fps so I'm just
going to run forward you can see the
water looks great I'm going to blow up a
barrel so it drops down to 31 FPS
minimum when I blow up that barrel 31
FPS minimum when I do the second one all
the foliage is nice and detailed draw
distances are great so I can see all the
way up to that mountain with no
difficulty whatsoever just going to go
into a speed mode here hop over to the
truck and I'm just going to do a little
gameplay sequence with you guys so that
you can also get a feel for what the
lowest frame rate will be during our
gameplay sequence so my objective when
I'm running a game is not to run at
30fps
but to have my lowest dips to be 30fps
or higher that's usually what I'm trying
to achieve so here I'm just gonna go up
this little hill and my Jeep here you
can see we're still running at about 35
fps and now we're headed into a combat
scenario here where hopefully I won't
die I'm running on easy just so that
there's not much risk of that because
the point of this demo isn't how good is
Linus at video games the point is how
good is the video card we're talking
about at video games
so the frag grenades where did they go
ah yes frag grenades okay so let's go
let's wait for that truck to show up
we're still running it we're only at
about 40 FPS with no characters on the
screen and at about 30 FPS with lots of
characters running around all over the
screen so we're at 33 right now we're in
the foliage we're gonna kill this guy
and then
fully that stupid jeeps gonna come there
it is okay so now we're gonna try and
blow up that Jeep boom okay so yeah you
can see it actually didn't go oh no I
didn't get it shoot there we go so 26 at
the absolute lowest when we're blowing
up a jeep and it's right in front of us
and still very playable at that kind of
a frame rate so now let's go back and
run the 8600 GT s in place of the gtx
550 ti so before i show you guys what
we're able to achieve with the 8600 GT s
why don't I show you how it runs at the
same image quality settings so looking
around you can see that you know
obviously we've got the same high
quality shadows we've got the same long
view distance we've got the same
particle effects all of that good stuff
but if you check the FPS counter up in
the corner I can barely even hit that
you can see it's running around 11
frames per second and drops down as low
as 7 frames per second which look I'm
having trouble even hitting a barrel
like this 6 FPS which is a completely
unplayable experience you have a very
difficult time controlling your
character everything feels very laggy
you can see it's basically like I could
I could draw up by hand the game and
then make a flipbook out of it and it
would probably be faster than trying to
play it like this so it definitely
delivers a better gameplay experience to
run a higher end card if you're going to
try and run at full HD resolution with
high details in a game like Crysis so
let's let's show what we can achieve
with the 8600 GT s in terms of image
quality to make a more fair comparison
alright so with my 8600 GT s let's do a
quick image quality comparison here
which honestly there's going to be no
comparison I mean check out the quality
of the water it basically looks like a
big grey blob mass the textures are
absolutely terrible very very low
resolution ah pretty much
the settings that I had to run on okay
I'll show you the settings really quick
our options system settings graphics I
was able to stay at full HD resolution
that is 1920 by 1080 but I have to run
pretty much
well no not pretty much I have to run
everything on low and I had to turn
motion blur off to get similar framerate
performance to what I was achieving with
the gtx 550 so you can see like this
barrel has absolutely no definition to
it whatsoever it's just don't see once i
zoom in it's ok but look at the start
contrast I mean look the bottom of this
piece it's not even the same color at
all and that's what how much of a
difference you get in terms of the
distance you are from objects and what
quality they are at this low of a detail
setting so you can look at the car the
car actually gets like bits added to it
as you get closer so that it doesn't
have to render as much from further away
okay so here's what I'm going to do I'm
going to go and I'm going to do a
similar run-through I want you guys to
pay special attention to the FPS counter
up there on the top so this is usually
one of my first quick tests you know so
I blow up some barrels see how that goes
see what kind of performance we get
everything looks pretty good so far so
let's throw on our speed here so we see
the lowest dip we've seen so far is 34
fps remember my objective when tuning in
these settings was to achieve the
highest graphical settings and in this
case I've gone with resolution versus
more details because that makes it more
of an apples to apples comparison in
terms of the GPU processing power of
these two cards I mean look at this
though look at the grass appearing as
I'm driving along the draw distances are
so so close the beach just looks like a
big white mass the water just looks like
a big grey like big pile of mud mass
rocks are just kind of randomly
appearing as I get closer here watch
this rock BAM rock
so yeah I'm trying to get as as high
quality and image as I can while not
getting below
you can see we dip down to about 27 FPS
there but while not getting too much
below 30 frames per second all and I
died okay I'll be back in moment okay
there and back to the same spot again so
yeah like I was saying as high in image
quality settings as possible or as high
image quality settings as possible
without dipping below 30fps or at least
not too far below 30fps so I'm going to
wait for that truck to show up and we'll
do the the explosion that acts as the
finale of my little run-through here but
I mean the same thing just draw distance
is a big one texture quality is another
big one I mean that barrel before really
drove the point home I think here comes
a grenade so boom explosion and Britt
dips us down to about 30 fps and I'm
dead but that was pretty much all I
wanted to say so there's the 8600 GT s
super super clocked on my test bench
thank you for checking out this little
comparison between the gtx 550 ti and
its several year old counterpart so if
you were thinking about upgrading from
an older DirectX 10 level GPU to a newer
DirectX 11 one hopefully this video
gives you some idea of the image quality
that you're missing don't forget to
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