Test Systems

Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800

ASUS P5W DH Deluxe (975X)
ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe

2GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C3

BFG GeForce 7950 GX2
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT 256MB
NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT 512MB
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB
ForceWare 91.47

ATI Radeon X1950 XTX
Catalyst 6.8

ATI Radeon X1900 XTX
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB
ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256MB
ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB
Catalyst 6.9

Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2

DirectX 9.0c

Western Digital Raptor 74GB

Benchmarks

Dark Messiah Demo

Notes

As always, we’re running the GeForce cards in “high quality” image mode, rather than the driver control panel’s default of “quality” mode. We’re running in high quality mode to cut down on the amount of texture shimmering seen under the default quality mode. Note that this does negatively impact performance slightly. We’re testing the X1950 XTX with a custom version of Catalyst 6.8 that properly supports the X1950 XTX GPU, as Catalyst 6.9 doesn’t support the card. ATI won’t offer official support for the X1950 XTX until Catalyst 6.10 is released next month.