Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel i7 920 @ 3.8GHz (190MHz x 20)

Cooling: Noctua NH-U12P (Supplied by Noctua)

Motherboard(s): GIGABYTE EX58-UD5 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)

Memory: 3 X 2GB OCZ Technology PC-12800 DDR-3 8-8-8-24 (OCZ3G1600LV6GK)

Hard Disk(s): Western Digital 300GB Velicorapter (Supplied by Western Digital)

Operating System: Windows Vista SP1 64-Bit

Drivers: ForceWare 180.47

We're using our new test system which packs everything an enthusiast would want. Graphics card power has come in the form of a GIGABYTE GTX 280 that carries with it stock clocks. We're using our new benchmark line-up, albeit a cut down version. We'll also only be looking at Vista this time around. Let's now get stuck into our first benchmark.

3DMark Vantage

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.0.1

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

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

Buy It Here

3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware.

3DMark Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API from Microsoft.

Under Vantage we can see the overclock does very little for performance. Since by default the NVIDIA drivers turn GPU PhysX on, we thought we would disable to see if there is more of a difference when it's handed over to the CPU.

As suspected, here we can see a bit more of a boost between the two configurations when PhysX is disabled on the GPU.