System setup and notes
Hardware
| Graphics cards | HIS Radeon HD 3870 X2 1024MiB | ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MiB | MSI NX8800GTS-T2D512E-OC | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MiB | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra 768MiB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current pricing, including VAT | £290 | £135 | £209 | £235 | £399 | |
| Shader Model | 4.1 | 4.0 | ||||
| Stream processors | 640 | 320 | 128 | 128 | 128 | |
| GPU clock speed (MHz) | 825 | 777 | 700 | 576 | 612 | |
| Shader clock speed (MHz) | 825 | 777 | 1674 | 1350 | 1512 | |
| Memory clock speed (MHz) | 1802 | 2250 | 2000 | 1800 | 2160 | |
| Memory bus width (Bits) | 256 | 384 | ||||
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 LGA775 (3.0GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, quad-core) | |||||
| Motherboard | MSI X48 Platinum (X48+ICH9R) | eVGA NF68 (nForce 680i SLI) | ||||
| Motherboard BIOS | P2B2 | P31 | ||||
| Mainboard software | Intel Inf 8.4.0.1016 | NVIDIA device driver 15.08 | ||||
| Memory | 4GiB (4 x 1GiB) DDR3-1066 | 4GiB (4 x 1GiB) DDR2-1066 | ||||
| Memory timings and speed | 7-7-7-20 2T @ 1,066MHz | 5-5-5-15 2T @ 1,066MHz | ||||
| PSU | Enermax Galaxy DXX 850W | Gigabyte ODIN GT 800W | ||||
| Monitor | Dell 30in 3007WFP - 2,560x1,600 | |||||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GiB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | |||||
| Graphics driver | CATALYST 8.1 beta | CATALYST 7.12 | NVIDIA ForceWare 169.25 | NVIDIA ForceWare 169.25 (169.01 for XP) | ||
| Operating system | Windows Vista Business, 64-bit, Windows XP SP2 32-bit (X2, GTX, and Ultra) | |||||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks | Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts v2.103: DX9 and DX10 Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.2 (demo_00010.dem, map Valley): OpenGL Lost Planet: Extreme Condition v1.004 built-in benchmark: DX10 Far Cry v1.33: DX9 Quake 4 v1.30 - HEXUS-recorded netdemo benchmark: OpenGL Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 - HEXUS-recorded benchmark: DX9 |
|---|
Notes
We're looking at the HIS Radeon in the context of other high-end cards. ATI's natural comparison is the single-GPU Radeon HD 3870 that has a slower engine but has faster GDDR4 memory.The NVIDIA trio is something old, something new. The GeForce 8800 GTS 512MiB, here represented by an overclocked MSI card, offers significant value for money at around the £200 mark.
We've further added the two standard-bearers for G80 - GeForce 8800 GTX and Ultra, both featuring 768MiB on-board frame buffer but lacking H.264 and VC-1 video-acceleration support.
Benchmarks were conducted at 1,680x1,050, 1,920x1,200, and 2,560x1,600 with decent image-quality settings to boot.
