System setup and notes
Musings
Readers will be interested to know that NVIDIA has quietly dropped the asking price of its 216-core GeForce GTX 260 over the past few weeks. Today, the card can be ordered from the likes of Scan.co.uk for around £200, and we'll therefore be pitting it against a direct competitor - AMD's Radeon HD 4870 1GB, available for a touch over £200.
The question is, for a user seeking to spend £200 on a graphics card, do NVIDIA's new drivers create a discernible performance difference that'll sway our HEXUS.bang4buck rating? We'll be pitting them against one another and we'll throw in GeForce GTX 260 results when using ForceWare 177.79 for good measure.
Hardware
| Graphics cards | AMD Radeon HD 4870 (1GB) | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (896MB, 216 cores, ForceWare 180.48) | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (896MB, 216 cores, ForceWare 177.79) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current pricing, including VAT | £211 | £193 | £193 |
| Shader model | 4.1 | 4.0 | 4.0 |
| Stream processors | 800 | 216 | 216 |
| GPU(s) clock speed (MHz) | 750 | 576 | 576 |
| Shader clock speed (MHz) | 750 | 1,242 | 1,242 |
| Memory clock speed, effective (MHz) | 3,600 | 1,998 | 1,998 |
| Memory bus width (Bits) | 256 | 448 | 448 |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 LGA775 (3.0GHz, 12MB L2 cache, quad-core) | ||
| Motherboard | MSI X48 Platinum (X48+ICH9R) | EVGA CK-132 NF79 (nForce 790i Ultra SLI) | |
| Motherboard BIOS | v2.3 (07/07/2008) | P06 |
|
| Mainboard software | Intel Inf 9.0.0.1008 | nForce
15.17 |
|
| Memory | 4GB (2x 2GB) Corsair XMS3 DMX DDR3-1333 | ||
| Memory timings and speed | 9-9-9-24 1T @ 1,333MHz | ||
| PSU | Cooler Master Real Power Pro 1,000W | GIGABYTE Odin GT 800W | |
| Monitor | Dell 30in 3007WFP - 2,560x1,600 | ||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 500GB - 32MB cache - SATAII (ST3500320AS) | ||
| Graphics driver | Catalyst 8.11 | ForceWare 180.48 | ForceWare 177.79 |
| Operating system | Windows Vista Business SP1, 64-bit | ||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks | 3DMark Vantage b1.0.2 - default performance test Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts v2.301: DX10 - ultra quality Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.5 (demo_00010.dem, map Valley): OpenGL - vhq GRID v1.2 - custom-recorded benchmark - ultra quality Call Of Duty 4 v1.7.568 custom HEX benchmark: DX10 - highest quality |
|---|
Notes
Real-world gaming benchmarks were run at 1,680x1,050, 1,920x1,200 and 2,560x1,600, although the highest resolution wasn't run with Race Driver: GRID due to substantial slowdowns in the game, leading to inconsistent and unrepeatable results via our FRAPS-recording method. We've also added in decent amounts of image quality, too.
