Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3GHz (333MHz x 9)

Cooling: Corsair Nautilus500 (Supplied by Corsair) with Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (Supplied by Arctic Cooling)

Motherboard(s): GIGABYTE X48-DQ6 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)

Memory: 2 X 1GB Kingston PC6400 DDR-2 3-3-3-10 (KHX6400D2ULK2/2G) (Supplied by Kingston)

Hard Disk(s): Seagate 250GB 7200RPM SATA-2 7200.10 (Supplied by Seagate)

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows Vista

Drivers: Catalyst 8.7 and Catalyst 8.8

This month, to keep everything moving nice and fast, we've dropped the HD 3650 as there are new mid-range ATI cards just around the corner. What we'll also do is test the new driver on the HD 4870 X2 and HD 4870 in Crossfire, but will leave that for a separate article if there are improvements present, since we don't actually have the release notes at the time of writing or initial testing.

Today, however, we will check out the new drivers on the HD 4870, HD 4850 and HD 3870. We will of course also compare them against last month's drivers, the Catalyst 8.7. Let's not delay any longer and just get stuck into the results.

3DMark06

Version and / or Patch Used: Build 110

Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com

Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/

Buy It Here

3DMark06 is the very latest version of the "Gamers Benchmark" from FutureMark. The newest version of 3DMark expands on the tests in 3DMark05 by adding graphical effects using Shader Model 3.0 and HDR (High Dynamic Range lighting) which will push even the best DX9 graphics cards to the extremes.

3DMark06 also focuses on not just the GPU but the CPU using the AGEIA PhysX software physics library to effectively test single and Dual Core processors.

Across the board we can see that there really is no change in performance at all resolutions with all cards.