Watercooled GeForce GTX 280 Showdown

Written by Harry Butler

November 25, 2008 | 08:30

Tags: #coolant #gt200 #gtx-280 #overclocked #overclocking #radiator #review #water #watercooled

Companies: #bfg-and-msi #nvidia

Far Cry 2

Publisher: Ubisoft

Far Cry 2 is the latest first person shooter from Ubisoft and it's one of the most hotly-anticipated games of this year. While it continues the Far Cry franchise that Crytek started in 2004, Far Cry 2 is built on its own in-house engine and has no association to anything Crytek has worked on or is working on now.

The game uses DirectX 10.1 to improve anti-aliasing performance and quality. The improvements are made by reading the multisampled depth buffer in a single pass - something that was only introduced officially with DirectX 10.1. However, Ubisoft has also made the enhancements available to Nvidia hardware as well through a DirectX 10 extension.

We used the game's built-in benchmarking tool to measure performance in DirectX 9.0 mode - this provided a pretty accurate rundown of how various graphics cards perform and it shows off a lot of the game's special effects. We set every option to its maximum setting and tested at 1,680 x 1,050, 1,920 x 1,200 and 2,560 x 1,600 with various anti-aliasing settings.

Anisotropic filtering is controlled by the game's quality settings and forcing AF from the driver control panel does not have any effect on visual quality or performance.

Watercooled GeForce GTX 280 Showdown Far Cry 2 - DirectX 9.0

Far Cry 2

1,680 x 1,050 0xAA, DirectX 9, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • BFG GeForce GTX 280 H2OC
  • MSI GeForce GTX 280 HydroGen
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
    • 69.0
    • 46.0
    • 42.9
    • 34.0
    • 42.3
    • 33.0
    • 40.9
    • 34.0
    • 40.9
    • 34.0
    • 39.7
    • 33.0
    • 38.7
    • 33.0
    • 37.4
    • 33.0
    • 33.4
    • 26.0
    • 30.3
    • 25.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

1,680 x 1,050 2xAA, DirectX 9, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • BFG GeForce GTX 280 H2OC
  • MSI GeForce GTX 280 HydroGen
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
    • 60.6
    • 44.0
    • 40.3
    • 33.0
    • 40.0
    • 32.0
    • 38.4
    • 33.0
    • 36.1
    • 31.0
    • 35.6
    • 31.0
    • 34.2
    • 29.0
    • 31.7
    • 24.0
    • 27.8
    • 23.0
    • 26.6
    • 22.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

1,680 x 1,050 4xAA, DirectX 9, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • BFG GeForce GTX 280 H2OC
  • MSI GeForce GTX 280 HydroGen
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
    • 60.0
    • 42.0
    • 37.8
    • 31.0
    • 37.5
    • 31.0
    • 35.8
    • 30.0
    • 32.8
    • 26.0
    • 32.8
    • 28.0
    • 29.3
    • 25.0
    • 23.9
    • 20.0
    • 23.5
    • 16.0
    • 23.0
    • 16.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

1,920 x 1,200 0xAA, DirectX 9, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • BFG GeForce GTX 280 H2OC
  • MSI GeForce GTX 280 HydroGen
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
    • 67.8
    • 46.0
    • 40.8
    • 33.0
    • 40.5
    • 33.0
    • 38.9
    • 33.0
    • 38.3
    • 33.0
    • 37.3
    • 31.0
    • 36.4
    • 31.0
    • 34.6
    • 29.0
    • 30.6
    • 26.0
    • 28.1
    • 23.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

1,920 x 1,200 2xAA, DirectX 9, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • BFG GeForce GTX 280 H2OC
  • MSI GeForce GTX 280 HydroGen
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
    • 61.8
    • 44.0
    • 37.9
    • 31.0
    • 37.4
    • 30.0
    • 36.0
    • 31.0
    • 34.1
    • 30.0
    • 33.2
    • 29.0
    • 30.7
    • 26.0
    • 26.6
    • 19.0
    • 24.3
    • 20.0
    • 22.9
    • 14.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

1,920 x 1,200 4xAA, DirectX 9, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • BFG GeForce GTX 280 H2OC
  • MSI GeForce GTX 280 HydroGen
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
    • 55.7
    • 43.0
    • 35.1
    • 30.0
    • 34.3
    • 28.0
    • 33.0
    • 28.0
    • 29.9
    • 25.0
    • 29.7
    • 23.0
    • 26.3
    • 22.0
    • 21.4
    • 17.0
    • 20.6
    • 14.0
    • 14.9
    • 11.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

2,560 x 1,600, 0xAA, DirectX 9, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • BFG GeForce GTX 280 H2OC
  • MSI GeForce GTX 280 HydroGen
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
    • 57.6
    • 43.0
    • 35.1
    • 29.0
    • 34.8
    • 29.0
    • 33.0
    • 29.0
    • 30.5
    • 27.0
    • 30.3
    • 26.0
    • 27.8
    • 23.0
    • 25.2
    • 20.0
    • 22.4
    • 19.0
    • 7.9
    • 2.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

2,560 x 1,600, 2xAA, DirectX 9, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • BFG GeForce GTX 280 H2OC
  • MSI GeForce GTX 280 HydroGen
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
  • Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
    • 48.6
    • 38.0
    • 31.5
    • 27.0
    • 31.3
    • 27.0
    • 29.1
    • 25.0
    • 26.5
    • 22.0
    • 25.9
    • 21.0
    • 18.6
    • 7.0
    • 15.7
    • 8.0
    • 9.8
    • 6.0
    • 2.5
    • 1.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Far Cry 2

2,560 x 1,600, 4xAA, DirectX 9, Ultra High Quality

  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • BFG GeForce GTX 280 H2OC
  • MSI GeForce GTX 280 HydroGen
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260+ 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
  • Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
    • 42.1
    • 34.0
    • 28.1
    • 22.0
    • 27.6
    • 22.0
    • 26.1
    • 21.0
    • 23.0
    • 18.0
    • 22.3
    • 17.0
    • 8.8
    • 3.0
    • 8.1
    • 3.0
    • 5.2
    • 2.0
    • 2.4
    • 1.0
0
10
20
30
40
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

The story is very much the same when we switch to Direct X 9.0c, with performance improvements hovering between three and five percent ahead of a stcok GTX 280 and the BFG GeForce GTX 280 H₂OC again demonstrating a slight lead over the MSI GeForce GTX 280 HydroGen.
Discuss this in the forums
YouTube logo
MSI MPG Velox 100R Chassis Review

October 14 2021 | 15:04