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 7 Ultimate 64-Bit Final OEM, Windows Vista SP2 64-Bit

Drivers: ForceWare 190.38, Catalyst 9.6

Today we'll be using the same GIGABYTE GTX 285 2GB card we used in our other Windows 7 article. As for the ATI offering, we'll be using the Sapphire HD 4890 2GB Vapor-X card we looked at recently.

Now, while I may have confused you in my introduction as to what exactly is going on here, hopefully when you look at the graphs you will have a better understanding. Speaking of which, our graphs have had to go through a bit of a change. Because we're working with positive and negative numbers, we've had to make it so our graphs can display that.

Before we get into it, though, let me give you a quick idea of how exactly it works. If the GIGABYTE GTX 285 2GB scores 10 FPS in Windows Vista and 11 FPS in Windows 7, its score is reflected as +10%, not 10 and 11 FPS. Now, if the HD 4890 2GB Vapor-X from Sapphire doesn't offer 7 FPS in Windows Vista, but 8 FPS in Windows 7, its score is 14.28%. While the overall FPS isn't as good for the HD 4890, the Catalyst driver suite performs better making its driver overall better. Now, if both cards perform the same or less than .1%, the results will be shown as 0. While a number is seen, a bar won't be. So please make note that the left is the NVIDIA driver while the right is the ATI one.

So, hopefully with everything understood we can get stuck into the results to see exactly what we have going on here.

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.

In our first test we can see that there's very little performance difference when it comes to 3DMark Vantage and having a look at both drivers.