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): 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 SP1

Drivers: Forceware 175.16 (9 Series) 177.34 (GTX 280)

While the XFX GTX 280 does come in 30MHz lower on the core compared to the ZOTAC offering, it does carry with it a significantly higher 200MHz DDR memory clock.

Let's find out if that makes up for the reduced core speed.

3DMark06

Version and / or Patch Used: Build 110

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

Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/

Buy It Here

3DMark06 is the worldwide standard in advanced 3D game performance benchmarking. A fundamental tool for every company in the PC industry as well as PC users and gamers, 3DMark06 uses advanced real-time 3D game workloads to measure PC performance using a suite of DirectX 9 3D graphics tests, CPU tests, and 3D feature tests.

3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today.

We can see the XFX sits slightly above the ZOTAC and manages to outperform all the other cards here today by a slight margin as well.