GPU Shoot-Out – Part II – Setting New Benches
Let’s begin with this round of testing. We are using Catalyst 8-9 and Forceware 177.83 – only final certified drivers are used for our regular testing all through this first part of this review and all through our series. Identical 250GB hard drives are set up with the latest version of Vista32-SP1; each with identical programs, updates and patches – the only difference are the video cards. We used a Gigabyte P35 Crossfire MB – 1.0 PCIe spec and CF 16x + 4x for this Part Two as in our previous article. The testing hardware is detailed in the following chart:
Test Configuration
Test Configuration – Hardware
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 (reference 3.33 GHz, Overclocked to 3.99Ghz ).
- Gigabyte P35-DS3P (Intel P35 chipset, latest BIOS).
- 4 GB DDR2-800 RAM (4×1 GB, dual-channel).
- Nvidia GeForce GTX280 (896 MB, nVidia reference clocks) by BFGTech
- ATi Radeon 4750 (512 MB, reference clocks) by Sapphire
- ATi Radeon 4750X2 (2 GB, reference clocks) by VisionTek
- Onboard RealTek audio
- 2 – Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 Hard Drives [setup identically, except for the graphics cards]
Test Configuration – Software
- ATi Catalyst 8.9, highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver; Catalyst AI set to “advanced”
- nVidia Geforce 178.13, high quality driver setting, all optimizations off, LOD clamp enabled.
- Windows Vista 32-bit SP31; very latest updates
- DirectX August 2008.
- All games patched to their latest versions.
Test Configuration – Settings
- as noted, vsync off in the driver to “application decide” and never in game.
- AA only enabled in-game; all settings at maximum16xAF applied in game or in CP [except as noted]
- All results show average, minimum and maximum framerates
- Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
- Vista32, all DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths
