Test Systems

System Setup

AMD Athlon 64 FX-62

ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe

2GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4

ATI Radeon X1900 XTX/Radeon X1900 CrossFire
Catalyst 6.6

GeForce 7900 GTX SLI
Driver version ForceWare 91.31

BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 Quad
1x BFG GeForce 7950 GX2
Driver version ForceWare 91.37

Alienware Aurora ALX Quad SLI System
2xGeForce 7900 GX2
Driver version ForceWare 87.25

Western Digital Raptor 75GB

Windows XP Professional SP2

DirectX 9.0c

Benchmarks

Half-Life 2 Lost Coast
Far Cry 1.33 (1.4 patch for ATI cards)
F.E.A.R. 1.05
Quake 4 1.2
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Battlefield 2 1.3

Notes

We’re combining quite a mixture of configurations this time around, due in large part to the variation in ForceWare drivers. NVIDIA’s latest driver for the GeForce 7900 GX2 is ForceWare 87.25, so we’re forced to test with a slightly older driver, but those are the breaks. We then used ForceWare 91.37 for the GeForce 7950 GX2 cards, as that’s the only available driver at the moment that enables Quad support for the 7950. Finally, the 7900 GTX setup is tested with ForceWare 91.31, NVIDIA’s latest WHQL driver. The Alienware ALX system is running with a Foxconn nForce 590-SLI motherboard, 2GB CAS4 RAM, and an FX-62 CPU by the way.

Also keep in mind that the 4xAA GeForce 7950 GX2 numbers are with a single card, whereas the 8xSLI-AA numbers are taken with a pair of GeForce 7950 GX2 boards running Quad SLI.