How We Tested

Each card was tested on an AMD-based system: AMD Athlon 64 3500+, BioStar 6100-M9 motherboard, 1GB RAM and 80GB Seagate SATA HDD running Windows XP Professional SP2 and all the latest drivers.

Each card was run through a series of three benchmarks - 3DMark05, 3DMark06 and F.E.A.R. - at 1024x768 attached to a standard 17" LCD screen. Each card was then plugged into a Sony Bravia KLV-V40A10 LCD TV using the HDMI input to get an indication of image quality, then using the RGB input for comparison.

The KLV-V40A10 has a native resolution of 1366x768. The synthetic 3DMark tests were re-run at the closest resolution to this native resolution - 1360x768 - to get an indication of graphics performance when attached to the TV. F.E.A.R. doesn't support this resolution, so the game test wasn't re-run.