Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3GHz (333MHz x 9)

Cooling: Corsair Nautilus500 (Supplied by Corsair) with Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (Supplied by Arctic Cooling)

Motherboard(s): ASUS Blitz Extreme (Supplied by ASUS)

Memory: 2 X 1GB Corsair XMS3 DDR-3 1066MHz 7-7-7-21 (Supplied by Corsair)

Hard Disk(s): Hitachi 80GB 7200RPM SATA-2

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows Vista

Drivers: Catalyst 7.11, Forceware 169.06 (8800GTS 512MB)

Since this is the first stock clocked HD 3850 we have been greeted with we thought we would check it out against the overclocked HD 3850 from GECUBE along with the stock clocked 8800GT for good measure.

Using the standard line-up of synthetic and real world benchmarks we will venture across both Windows XP and Windows Vista to see what exactly the card can do for us here today.

3DMark05

Version and / or Patch Used: Build 130

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

Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark05/

Buy It Here

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.

Straight away we can see the stock clocked card effects are only seen at the higher resolution. Lower resolution performance is pretty on par with the overclocked GECUBE offering.