Test System Setup

Processor(s): AMD Athlon X2 3800+ @ 2.6GHz (260 x 10 with 1:1 memory)

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 7,200RPM SATA 2

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2

Drivers: nVidia ForceWare 91.31, ATI Catalyst 6.6 and DX9c

Keeping with our re-vamped test bed system and since we are testing a higher-end graphics card today, we have decided instead of just simply doing a few overclocked tests, we will clock our AMD Athlon X2 3800+ to 2.6GHz (260MHz FSB x 10) and just leave it there for all our tests. This helps more as well when it comes to our SLI tests and CPU limitations. With Intel Conroe processors just around the corner let's hope that CPU limitations get knocked out of the ball park and really give all future graphics cards a chance to run free.

As we mentioned in the introduction we have also added in Serious Sam 2. While it isn't the most intensive game around as soon as you start enabling HDR at higher resolutions, it really begins to start making use of high-end graphics cards.

We mentioned that we do have two Palit GeForce 7900GT Sonic 512MB cards in our hands so we will be running them in SLI mode as well as one by itself. We have also thrown in a 256MB Radeon X1900GT that sits slightly cheaper then the 512MB 7900GT.

3DMark05

Version and / or Patch Used: Build 120

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 of the mark we can see the clear advantage that is seen in 3DMark05 when SLI mode is operation.

When comparing the single card to the Radeon X1900GT, we see that it is only ever so slightly slower. Let's see if this continues on throughout our benchmarking as 3DMark05 isn't the most intensive of programs these days.