**Nvidia vs AMD: A Look at Past Gaming Performance**

In this article, we'll take a look at how Nvidia and AMD approached high-end gaming performance back in 2009. We'll examine the performance of various graphics cards from both companies and see how they stacked up against each other.

**The Test Setups**

To test the performance of these graphics cards, I set up three different configurations:

1. A single Nvidia GeForce GTX 285

2. Two Nvidia GeForce GTX 260s in SLI (Scalable Link Interface)

3. Two AMD HD 4870s in CrossFire

**Crysis: A Struggle for All**

The first game we tested was Crysis, which proved to be a struggle for all three setups. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 was the only card that consistently stayed above 60 frames per second, while the two GTX 260s and the two HD 4870s struggled with frame drops.

**Half-Life 2: A Different Story**

The next game we tested was Half-Life 2, which all three setups handled well. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 performed a bit better than the other two configurations, but they were all still below 60 frames per second.

**Fear: More Consistent Performance**

In the final game we tested, Fear, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 consistently stayed below 60 frames per second, while the two GTX 260s and the two HD 4870s had occasional frame spikes. These spikes were caused by the game saving at checkpoints, resulting in stutter.

**Conclusion: Nvidia's Strategy**

After examining the frame time graphs, it's clear that Nvidia had a good strategy for high-end gaming performance back in 2009. If you wanted higher performance, you could simply buy a single more powerful card, such as the GTX 285. This approach resulted in lower latency and better overall gaming experience.

**AMD's Approach**

On the other hand, AMD took a different approach. Their fastest graphics card was the HD 4870, which couldn't compete with the GTX 285. However, they offered a dual-GPU version of their high-end card, the HD 487X2, which was supposed to be their top-of-the-line offering.

Unfortunately, as we saw in our tests, this approach resulted in similar average frame rates but worse overall gaming experience due to higher latency and frame drops.

**Final Thoughts**

In conclusion, while both Nvidia and AMD had their strengths and weaknesses back in 2009, Nvidia's approach resulted in better overall gaming performance and a more pleasant user experience.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday I'm gonna have a look at the performance difference between the flagship GTX 285 versus two GTX 260 s and SLI which I've got one of here now I can already hear you ask but darvid is it 2009 already and snarky comment aside I can't afford an RT X graphics card so I decided to do a video about something more interesting so let's just pretend it's 2009 what's wrong with me now a couple of months ago I did a video on an alienware a LX gaming PC from about 2009 which had the two gtx 260 s in it here's the second one hello even though the ads specifically stated that it had two gtx 280s in it so I was pretty infuriated when it came with the measly baby two sixties in it you can have a look at the video down below if you want to check it out I really enjoyed making that so then I jumped at the opportunity to buy a GTX 285 for less than five dollars which is about five hundred thousand dollars less than the equivalent of today's high-end graphics cards now before we have a look at the benchmarks I just want to do a quick breakdown of the system specs of the Alienware machine now it has an i7 920 in it which is a four core eight thread CPU which is clocked to two point six six gigahertz I didn't overclock it any further because there was kind of stability issues with the motherboard so I just kind of left it at stop and then it's got 16 gigs of ram in it and triple-channel I think there are six sticks and then it's got mechanical hard drives in it and then obviously because it's an alienware machine you're gonna have to take into account the fact that it's gonna have the 10% Alienware boost in performance now let's get into the real meat and potatoes of this video which is the performance of two smaller SL I'd graphics cards versus one big one back in 2009 or in 2018 just with legacy drivers now this is something that's fairly difficult to test because in some situations they might have the same average frame rate but that if a verge framerate might not accurately reflect a lot of micro stutter that SLR often introduces into games now micro stutter is the jerks and slowdowns and frame rate that you have in badly optimised games like player unknown battlegrounds so that's why I decided to go with something called frame time graphs but these are a little bit more difficult to interpret so I'll try and talk you through them as well as I can now let's have a look at these graphs now before I go any further I just want to apologize for how janky they are I had to make them in Excel I've never used Excel before I'm incompetent and get frustrated easily so this is the best I could do now the orange is the gtx to a five and the blue is the two gtx 260 s in sli and this grey line here is very important because that's the 60 frames per second threshold so anything below that is running over 60 frames per second and everything above that is dips below 60 frames per second so the higher the spikes are the bigger the frame drop is and as you can see here weirdly the GTX 285 actually doesn't do very well because it's got much bigger spikes and they're more regular than the two gtx 260 s but the thing is this was both matches that i played online so this might be due to network issues more than it is the actual game and that's why i think we should head over to Crysis and Crysis was a struggle both of these setups really struggled with it as you can see it's only the GTX 285 that goes below the 60 frames per second line the GTX 260 s really struggle and they have some quite big frame drops as you can see so here you can definitely see that there's more latency with the sli set up as opposed to the single GTX 285 and it is just generally had a higher frame rates when we go over to half-life 2 again which both setups around very well you can see that the orange is the GTX 285 which performed a little bit better and it didn't have any of these huge frame spikes which the GTX 260 s had but as you can see they're all way below the 60 frames per second threshold and the game was running at like 120 frames per second anyway but you could really feel the micro stutter in this title and I think one of the reasons that it's so obvious is because of the higher frame rate and now when moving over to the final game that I tested which was fear too you'll see that the orange being the GTX 285 was more consistently below the 60 frames-per-second line which is very good but you can see that both of the graphics got setups have these huge spikes every now and then and these spikes are actually when the game saves at checkpoints so it does result in stutter but it's not during a gunfight and it's not because of badly optimised graphics card engines stuff it's just because of the game-saving now after having looked at the frame time graphs I think it's quite clear that Nvidia had quite a good strategy when it came to higher end gaming performance back in 2009 because you know if you had more money to spend on a graphics card you could just buy a two eight five instead of something like a GTX 260 now obviously you could run three to eight fives in s life you were really crazy but that's not something that the average consumer would do now if you look at what AMD did back then with their graphics cards is the fastest graphics card they had was the HD for eight seven T which was fairly quick but it couldn't compete at all with the GTX 285 but it was also cheaper so their idea was if you wanted higher performance you could just buy two HD 487 TS and they even brought out single board dual GPU versions of the graphics cards it was in HD for 850 X 2 which was supposed to be their high-end graphics card now this kind of makes sense from a theoretical perspective but as you see with the tests in this video the problem with that is you might get similar average frame rates but the games do feel worse to play because a single powerful GPU is always gonna be more stable and have lower frame latencies and things like that which just makes it more pleasant to use and that brings me to the end of another fairly pointless video here on the channel if you liked the video do like and subscribe to the channel for more fairly pointless videos let me know how you feel about the frame time graphs I really like them and the fact that they're gaining popularity makes me happy but do let me know if you want more of an explanation how they work and what the information means and all of that good stuff and if you want content on the RT X graphics cards go somewhere else because I can't help you with that because I don't have three million dollars lying around anyway until the next video bye byetoday I'm gonna have a look at the performance difference between the flagship GTX 285 versus two GTX 260 s and SLI which I've got one of here now I can already hear you ask but darvid is it 2009 already and snarky comment aside I can't afford an RT X graphics card so I decided to do a video about something more interesting so let's just pretend it's 2009 what's wrong with me now a couple of months ago I did a video on an alienware a LX gaming PC from about 2009 which had the two gtx 260 s in it here's the second one hello even though the ads specifically stated that it had two gtx 280s in it so I was pretty infuriated when it came with the measly baby two sixties in it you can have a look at the video down below if you want to check it out I really enjoyed making that so then I jumped at the opportunity to buy a GTX 285 for less than five dollars which is about five hundred thousand dollars less than the equivalent of today's high-end graphics cards now before we have a look at the benchmarks I just want to do a quick breakdown of the system specs of the Alienware machine now it has an i7 920 in it which is a four core eight thread CPU which is clocked to two point six six gigahertz I didn't overclock it any further because there was kind of stability issues with the motherboard so I just kind of left it at stop and then it's got 16 gigs of ram in it and triple-channel I think there are six sticks and then it's got mechanical hard drives in it and then obviously because it's an alienware machine you're gonna have to take into account the fact that it's gonna have the 10% Alienware boost in performance now let's get into the real meat and potatoes of this video which is the performance of two smaller SL I'd graphics cards versus one big one back in 2009 or in 2018 just with legacy drivers now this is something that's fairly difficult to test because in some situations they might have the same average frame rate but that if a verge framerate might not accurately reflect a lot of micro stutter that SLR often introduces into games now micro stutter is the jerks and slowdowns and frame rate that you have in badly optimised games like player unknown battlegrounds so that's why I decided to go with something called frame time graphs but these are a little bit more difficult to interpret so I'll try and talk you through them as well as I can now let's have a look at these graphs now before I go any further I just want to apologize for how janky they are I had to make them in Excel I've never used Excel before I'm incompetent and get frustrated easily so this is the best I could do now the orange is the gtx to a five and the blue is the two gtx 260 s in sli and this grey line here is very important because that's the 60 frames per second threshold so anything below that is running over 60 frames per second and everything above that is dips below 60 frames per second so the higher the spikes are the bigger the frame drop is and as you can see here weirdly the GTX 285 actually doesn't do very well because it's got much bigger spikes and they're more regular than the two gtx 260 s but the thing is this was both matches that i played online so this might be due to network issues more than it is the actual game and that's why i think we should head over to Crysis and Crysis was a struggle both of these setups really struggled with it as you can see it's only the GTX 285 that goes below the 60 frames per second line the GTX 260 s really struggle and they have some quite big frame drops as you can see so here you can definitely see that there's more latency with the sli set up as opposed to the single GTX 285 and it is just generally had a higher frame rates when we go over to half-life 2 again which both setups around very well you can see that the orange is the GTX 285 which performed a little bit better and it didn't have any of these huge frame spikes which the GTX 260 s had but as you can see they're all way below the 60 frames per second threshold and the game was running at like 120 frames per second anyway but you could really feel the micro stutter in this title and I think one of the reasons that it's so obvious is because of the higher frame rate and now when moving over to the final game that I tested which was fear too you'll see that the orange being the GTX 285 was more consistently below the 60 frames-per-second line which is very good but you can see that both of the graphics got setups have these huge spikes every now and then and these spikes are actually when the game saves at checkpoints so it does result in stutter but it's not during a gunfight and it's not because of badly optimised graphics card engines stuff it's just because of the game-saving now after having looked at the frame time graphs I think it's quite clear that Nvidia had quite a good strategy when it came to higher end gaming performance back in 2009 because you know if you had more money to spend on a graphics card you could just buy a two eight five instead of something like a GTX 260 now obviously you could run three to eight fives in s life you were really crazy but that's not something that the average consumer would do now if you look at what AMD did back then with their graphics cards is the fastest graphics card they had was the HD for eight seven T which was fairly quick but it couldn't compete at all with the GTX 285 but it was also cheaper so their idea was if you wanted higher performance you could just buy two HD 487 TS and they even brought out single board dual GPU versions of the graphics cards it was in HD for 850 X 2 which was supposed to be their high-end graphics card now this kind of makes sense from a theoretical perspective but as you see with the tests in this video the problem with that is you might get similar average frame rates but the games do feel worse to play because a single powerful GPU is always gonna be more stable and have lower frame latencies and things like that which just makes it more pleasant to use and that brings me to the end of another fairly pointless video here on the channel if you liked the video do like and subscribe to the channel for more fairly pointless videos let me know how you feel about the frame time graphs I really like them and the fact that they're gaining popularity makes me happy but do let me know if you want more of an explanation how they work and what the information means and all of that good stuff and if you want content on the RT X graphics cards go somewhere else because I can't help you with that because I don't have three million dollars lying around anyway until the next video bye bye