Test System Setup

Processor(s): AMD Athlon X2 3800+

Motherboard(s): ASUS A8N32-SLI (Supplied by ASUS)

Memory: 2 X 1GB Corsair PC3500LL PRO DDR (Supplied by Corsair Micro)

Hard Disk(s): WD Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA (Supplied by Western Digital)

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2

Why we would have loved to use a higher-end processor, this is all we had access to and it is obvious in some benchmarks that you really do need an expensive processor to help overcome that processor limitation which is shown its face more and more.

We have run our normal benchmarks that give us an excellent run down across the board. We have our standard synthetic tests which consist of 3DMark03, 05 and 06. From there we have some Direct3D benchmarks with Far Cry being on the end of the older scale, Half Life 2 being a bit more recent and F.E.A.R. which seems to be one of the most intensives games available. We finish the line up off with Doom 3 and Quake 4 which both utilize OpenGL technology. The line up gives us a good idea of how the cards will perform in a number of different environments.

To help remove those pesky CPU limitations we get aggressive with the AA and AF in four different programs. AA has been bumped up to 8X and AF to 16X along with the test resolution being set at 1600 x 1200.

Finally we overclock the processor as CPU limited applications find quite good increases from small CPU overclocks. It gives us a good indication of how a faster processor will help our cause for 3DMark and gaming domination.

We have compared the graphics cards against the 7800GTX 256MB cards from BFG Tech by itself and in SLI mode. While you may wonder why we would compare against the 256MB version (as opposed to the 512MB 7800GTX) the answer is easy, it's that hard to get the 512MB cards that its not a realistic product - it was only released to slow down and annoy ATI, which it did. The 7900GTX 512MB is really replacing the 7800GTX 256MB.

3DMark03

Version and / or Patch Used: Build 360

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

Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark03/

Buy It Here

By combining full DX8 and partial DX9 support with completely new tests and graphics over the previous version, 3DMark03 continues the legacy of being the industry standard 3D benchmark.

Please Note: Due to recent events with the 3DMark03 series, we are adding results purely for those who are still in favor of 3DMark03. These results should not be taken too seriously and are only added for interest sakes.

We can clearly see that the latest generation nVidia card offers a significant performance increase at both resolutions. The single 7900GTX sits about half way between the single and SLI 7800GTX.