Why would the new GTX 460 not outperform the old 8800 GT

graphics cardperformance

I just purchased an Asus ENGTX460 DirectCU TOP/2DI/1GD5 to replace my Asus EN8800GT TOP/G/HTDP/512M.

For reference, here is a comparison chart of the approximate cards on Tom's Hardware.

I ran the Crysis GPU benchmark with results of:

  • 8800GT = approximately 32FPS
  • GTX460 = approximately 32FPS – no increase in performance.

The Crysis settings for both tests were exactly the same for each test. And the test were run 3 times on each card.

Any ideas why the results would be nearly identical? Would this be a case where my older system is limiting any further FPS increase regardless of the video card I use?

My current system specs:

  • Motherboard: Asus A8N SLI Premium
  • Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+
  • Memory: 4 gigs Corsair DDR-400 (XMS-3200C2)
  • HDD: Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache
  • OS: Win XP x86
  • All drivers are up to date. System is kept extremely clean and updated.

Thanks for any input/insight you can provide.

Best Answer

You most certainly have a performance bottleneck in your CPU. The X2 4400+ is over 5 years old now which, along with your older motherboard (which only supports PCIe 1.0, the 460 is designed for PCIe 2.0), is severely limiting any gains from your brand new video card.

This next part is a little hazy as I've heard conflicting arguments, so hopefully someone who understands this better will chime in. It seems you're using a 32-bit OS when you have over 4GB of RAM. x86 (or 32-bit) can't properly utilize memory over 3GB so this may also be limiting your performance.