Test Systems

System Setup

Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800

ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe
ASUS P5W DH Deluxe

2GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4

ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256MB
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB
ATI Radeon X1600 XT 256MB
Sapphire Radeon X1900 GT 256MB
ATI Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB
ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB
Catalyst 6.9

EVGA e-GeForce 7900 GTO
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT
XFX GeForce 7900 GS 480M Xtreme
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS
Driver version ForceWare 91.47

250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache

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. 1.07
Quake 4 1.2
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Lock On: Modern Air Combat
Call of Duty 2 1.3

Notes

Again keep in mind that we’re testing the NVIDIA cards with the image quality setting at “High Quality” mode rather than the driver default setting of “Quality”. We’ve noted that the HQ setting significantly reduces the amount of texture shimmering in games such as Battlefield 2. This change does negatively impact NVIDIA’s performance, but it’s a tweak many NVIDIA users seem to be doing with their own cards so we’re doing it too. We’re also including XFX’s factory overclocked GeForce 7900 GS card, to represent the factory OC’ed 7900 GS cards. It’s not necessarily the highest OC’ed 7900 GS, but it provides a nice reference point to compare against.