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): GIGABYTE X48-DQ6 (Supplied by GIGABYTE) Memory: 2 X 1GB Kingston PC6400 DDR-2 3-3-3-10 (KHX6400D2ULK2/2G) (Supplied by Kingston) Hard Disk(s): Seagate 250GB 7200RPM SATA-2 7200.10 (Supplied by Seagate) Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows Vista Drivers: Catalyst 8.2, Forceware 174.11 (9600GT Win XP), Forceware 171.16 (9600GT Win Vista)
We’ve compared the ECS 9600GT against the Galaxy 9600GT which is slightly lower on the core and a fair bit lower on the shader clock. The Galaxy memory clock does come in a little higher though.
We’re also going to be having a look at it against the stock clocked HD 3870 from ASUS.
3DMark06 is the very latest version of the “Gamers Benchmark” from FutureMark. The newest version of 3DMark expands on the tests in 3DMark05 by adding graphical effects using Shader Model 3.0 and HDR (High Dynamic Range lighting) which will push even the best DX9 graphics cards to the extremes.
3DMark06 also focuses on not just the GPU but the CPU using the AGEIA PhysX software physics library to effectively test single and Dual Core processors.
Our first benchmark shows the ECS offering coming out ahead of the Galaxy one, though just trailing behind the stock clocked HD 3870.
