System setup and notes
Hardware
- GALAXY Glacier 6800, 8x AGP, 350/700
- GeForce 6800 GT 256MB, 8x AGP, 350/1000
- ATI Radeon X800 PRO 256MB, 8x AGP, 475/890
- ATI Radeon 9800 XT, 256MB, 8x AGP, 412/730
- AMD Athlon 64 Model 3800+, 2400MHz
- ASUS A8V Deluxe S939 VIA K8T800 Pro motherboard (1005 BIOS)
- Corsair XMS3200LL, 2 x 512MB, 2-3-2-6 @ DDR400
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- AMD reference cooler
- WD 160JB 160GB hard drive (PATA)
- Dell P991 19" flat-faced CRT monitor
Software
- Windows XP Professional w/SP1
- NVIDIA ForceWare 61.76
- ATI CATALYST 4.7
- VIA Hyperion v4.51 chipset drivers
- DirectX 9.0b Runtime
- 3DMark03 v340
- AquaMark3
- Far Cry
- Unreal Tournament 2003 Retail (patched up to 2225 - HEXUS custom benchmark)
- Painkiller - HEXUS Custom benchmark
- Call Of Duty - HEXUS Custom benchmark
- Doom 3 - Timedemo 1 - Ultra quality
Notes
No problems to report during installation or testing with this particular sample. However, it has to be noted that two previous samples arrived with defects, particularly garbled displays. GALAXY assures us that this issue is behind them and all current shipping cards are factory-certified to be perfect. I've decided to compare the Glacier 6800's performance to a couple of high-end cards, namely NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 GT 256MB and ATI's Radeon X800 PRO 256MB. I've also added in a Radeon 9800 XT 256MB, which is now considered to be a midrange card.
It will be interesting to see how the Glacier 6800 compares with cards both above and supposedly below its projected performance. It will also be interesting to see what kind of hindrance having only 128MB of onboard memory makes, if any. Benchmarks were carried out at 1024x768 and 1600x1200.
Hooray for non-default speeds!.
