AMD Radeon HD 6770M with 512MB performance?

[kitsunestudios]

Sometimes one of the main things is, how many years will it run new games smoothly?

Well, I can play 2012 games on my 21" 6770m at slightly higher quality settings and slightly higher framerates than I could play 2006 games on my 17" X1600.

Based on past performance, I expect that any games coming out in the next year will play smoothly (25+ fps) at high quality levels. Games in the next 2 years should play smoothly at medium quality levels. After 3 years, they'll only play acceptably at the lowest quality levels, and you'll start to run up against minimum system requirements.

That's a very loose guideline though, and depends greatly on the kinds of games you play, and the company making them.

 

[prism]

I have been getting around 40fps on Skyrim with native resolution AA set at 2 and water reflections. I have tried a couple of performance mods from nexus but nothing really made a big difference. I get the impression that the bottleneck is with the VRAM limited to 512mb. I am seriously considering getting the game for my PS3 which should perform significantly better.
My setup is a 21.5" 6770m.

 

[Killa Aaron]

I have been getting around 40fps on Skyrim with native resolution AA set at 2 and water reflections. I have tried a couple of performance mods from nexus but nothing really made a big difference. I get the impression that the bottleneck is with the VRAM limited to 512mb. I am seriously considering getting the game for my PS3 which should perform significantly better.
My setup is a 21.5" 6770m.

Trust me it doenst run better than the PC version, every time Bethesda does a PS3 port it comes out horribly, Fallout New Vegas is a great example.

 

[mixel]

I have been getting around 40fps on Skyrim with native resolution AA set at 2 and water reflections. I have tried a couple of performance mods from nexus but nothing really made a big difference. I get the impression that the bottleneck is with the VRAM limited to 512mb. I am seriously considering getting the game for my PS3 which should perform significantly better.
My setup is a 21.5" 6770m.

The PS3 version runs at 720P, doesn't go any higher than 30FPS and uses FXAA (which I actually like, but a lot of people don't). As Aaron said, the performance is much better on your iMac already - especially if you consider loading times and so on. The PS3 version is also closer to middle settings than high or ultra levels. If you were to drop your res to 720, ramp down some detail and redraw settings to equal the PS3s I'd bet you get >60fps.

 

[prism]

The PS3 version runs at 720P, doesn't go any higher than 30FPS and uses FXAA (which I actually like, but a lot of people don't). As Aaron said, the performance is much better on your iMac already - especially if you consider loading times and so on. The PS3 version is also closer to middle settings than high or ultra levels. If you were to drop your res to 720, ramp down some detail and redraw settings to equal the PS3s I'd bet you get >60fps.

So is FXAA a sort of substitute to plain AA? Which one would give me a better performance to better image ratio?
Also interesting about the 720p usage for the PS3, I had heard of that but was under the impression that consoles had more firepower to run the game smoothly, at high settings.

 

[MagicThief83]

I have been getting around 40fps on Skyrim with native resolution AA set at 2 and water reflections. I have tried a couple of performance mods from nexus but nothing really made a big difference. I get the impression that the bottleneck is with the VRAM limited to 512mb. I am seriously considering getting the game for my PS3 which should perform significantly better.
My setup is a 21.5" 6770m.

i highly doubt Skyrim would run better on a PS3 than your iMac. i remember reading somehwere when Skyrim was first released, that it ran horribly at times on the PS3 version and that the game was least optimized for that console. A PC will undoubtedly run console games much better.

 

[mixel]

So is FXAA a sort of substitute to plain AA? Which one would give me a better performance to better image ratio?
Also interesting about the 720p usage for the PS3, I had heard of that but was under the impression that consoles had more firepower to run the game smoothly, at high settings.

Yup, you can turn AA off and switch to FXAA and you'll get a significant performance boost. Problem with FXAA is is can blur textures slightly, but it does a really good job on objects with transparency like trees etc. I can't really tell the difference in Skyrim TBH. I tend to use FXAA just to boost performance.

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/elder-scrolls-v/1212293p1.html - has some good examples. FXAA is comparable to 8xAA but is much easier on the system.

The PS3 only has 512MB total, shared between the system and GPU, so any processing power it has is held back even more by that. Particularly in open world games where it has to keep loading everything into memory. On the PC version you can download the high res texture pack and have 2X the texture resolution on your iMac.

 

[AcesHigh87]

i highly doubt Skyrim would run better on a PS3 than your iMac. i remember reading somehwere when Skyrim was first released, that it ran horribly at times on the PS3 version and that the game was least optimized for that console. A PC will undoubtedly run console games much better.

This

I’ve never seen the PS3 version myself but generally the order goes:

PC -> 360 Port -> PS3 port

which would mean the PS3 version is a port of a port, thus making a ****** game. I can also say that I’ve seen the 360 version of the game (which is likely to be better than the PS3) and it’s way worse than Skyrim on my iMac. The environment doesn’t have the same detail, it’s resolution is poor, it’s frame-rate is poor and it’s load times are absolutely abysmal (takes at least 20 seconds longer per load screen)

 

[prism]

Yup, you can turn AA off and switch to FXAA and you'll get a significant performance boost. Problem with FXAA is is can blur textures slightly, but it does a really good job on objects with transparency like trees etc. I can't really tell the difference in Skyrim TBH. I tend to use FXAA just to boost performance.

Hmmm, followed your advice but didn't notice any performance gains, FPS still average around 40.
Also, I read somewhere that FRAPS running in background takes a hit on FPS, is this true?

 

[mixel]

Hmmm, followed your advice but didn't notice any performance gains, FPS still average around 40.
Also, I read somewhere that FRAPS running in background takes a hit on FPS, is this true?

I've not noticed it hurting FPS, i always run FRAPS. It hits the FPS hard when you're recording but not when it's just monitoring the fps as far as I know.

Have you tried it at 1600x900? (or lower?) hows your FPS then?

 

[prism]

I've not noticed it hurting FPS, i always run FRAPS. It hits the FPS hard when you're recording but not when it's just monitoring the fps as far as I know.

Have you tried it at 1600x900? (or lower?) hows your FPS then?

It goes through the roof at lower than native rez but, unfortunately, the image degradation is rather significant. I must say that I prefer native rez (1920x1080) with all else on medium to low settings rather than low rez with everything else cranked up. Did you specify 1600x900 for a particular reason?

 

[mixel]

It goes through the roof at lower than native rez but, unfortunately, the image degradation is rather significant. I must say that I prefer native rez (1920x1080) with all else on medium to low settings rather than low rez with everything else cranked up. Did you specify 1600x900 for a particular reason?

I was just thinking of a decent enough 16:9 resolution. I'm the exact opposite in terms of what I like, I'd take lower res but smooth over higher res but less detail. 1440x810ish is as low as I'd go given a choice though. Obviously the higher the better.

1280x720, 1440x810, 1600x900 are usually the options (or thereabouts) so it's likely the highest you can go in the default options without using the native 1920x1080?

 

[prism]

I was just thinking of a decent enough 16:9 resolution. I'm the exact opposite in terms of what I like, I'd take lower res but smooth over higher res but less detail. 1440x810ish is as low as I'd go given a choice though. Obviously the higher the better.

1280x720, 1440x810, 1600x900 are usually the options (or thereabouts) so it's likely the highest you can go in the default options without using the native 1920x1080?

I am really curious to find out how much better the GT 650m will be when it is released with the iMac refresh compared to the current 6770. Any idea?

 

[forty2j]

I am really curious to find out how much better the GT 650m will be when it is released with the iMac refresh compared to the current 6770. Any idea?

I looked up these benchmarks before. Not going to reconfirm them but I seem to recall that the 650M outperforms the 6770m by about 50-80%. Mostly because the 6770m wasn't a good card; the 6970m beats the 650M by about 15-20%.