Processor(s): Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3430MHz (381MHz FSB with 4:5 memory) Motherboard(s): DFI Infinity 975X (Supplied by Bronet) Memory: 2 X 1GB G.Skill HZ PC8000 @ 476MHz 4-4-4-12 (Supplied by Bronet) Hard Disk(s): Hitachi 80GB 7200RPM SATA 2 Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 Drivers: ATI Catalyst 6.8 and DX9c
v.s.
Old Test System Setup
Processor(s): AMD Athlon X2 3800+ @ 2600MHz (memory at 1:1) Motherboard(s): DFI Lanparty UT SLI DR Expert (Supplied by Bronet) Memory: 2 X 1GB G.Skill HV PC4000 @ 260MHz(Supplied by Bronet) Hard Disk(s): Hitachi 80GB 7200RPM SATA 2 Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 Drivers: ATI Catalyst 6.8 and DX9c
Normally when you’re placing products like these head to head, you would look into its performance using programs like SiSoft Sandra and PCMark. However, since this system is only used for our graphics card testing, we wanted to only put the emphasis on 3D performance when compared to the old test bed.
3DMark05 is now the second latest version in the popular 3DMark “Gamers Benchmark” series. It includes a complete set of DX9 benchmarks which tests Shader Model 2.0 and above.
For more information on the 3DMark05 benchmark, we recommend you read our preview here.
At the lower resolution we can see that the CPU is playing a more important role which gives us a large increase but when we move to the higher 1600 x 1200 resolution we are hitting more of a VGA limitation.
