System setup and notes
Hardware
| Graphics cards | ZOTAC GeForce 8800 GTS 512MiB AMP! Edition | MSI NX8800GTS-T2D512E-OC 512MiB | ZOTAC GeForce 8800 GT 512MiB AMP! Edition | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MiB | Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 512MiB | HIS Radeon HD 3870 X2 1,024MiB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current pricing, including VAT | £229 | £202 | £199 | £235 | £135 | £290 |
| Shader Model | 4.0 | 4.1 | ||||
| Stream processors | 128 | 112 | 128 | 320 | 640 | |
| GPU clock speed (MHz) | 678 | 678 | 700 | 576 | 777 | 825 |
| Shader clock speed (MHz) | 1,728 | 1,728 | 1,674 | 1,350 | 777 | 825 |
| Memory clock speed (MHz) | 1,944 | 1,944 | 1,900 | 1,800 | 2,252 | 1,800 |
| Memory bus width (Bits) | 256 | 384 | 256 | |||
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 LGA775 (3.0GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, quad-core) | |||||
| Motherboard | eVGA NF68 (nForce 680i SLI) | ASUS P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP (Bearlake X38) | ||||
| Motherboard BIOS | P31 | 0504 | ||||
| Mainboard software | NVIDIA device driver 15.08 | Intel Inf 8.4.0.1016 | ||||
| Memory | 4GiB (4 x 1GiB) DDR2-1066 | 4GiB (4 x 1GiB) DDR3-1066 | ||||
| Memory timings and speed | 5-5-5-15 2T @ 1,066MHz | 7-7-7-20 2T @ 1,066MHz | ||||
| PSU | Gigabyte ODIN GT 800W | Enermax Galaxy DXX 850W | ||||
| Monitor | Dell 30in 3007WFP - 2,560x1,600 | |||||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GiB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | |||||
| Graphics driver | NVIDIA ForceWare 169.25 | NVIDIA ForceWare 169.04 | NVIDIA ForceWare 169.25 | CATALYST 7.12 | CATALYST 8.2 BETA | |
| Operating system | Windows Vista Business, 64-bit | |||||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks | Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts v2.103: DX9 and DX10 Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.2 (demo_00010.dem, map Valley) Lost Planet: Extreme Condition v1.004 built-in benchmark: DX10 |
|---|
Notes
We've run our three games with the in-game settings fixed at high/very high and at suitably card-taxing resolutions, with antialiasing/anisotropic filtering applied. We'll note any testing anomalies during benchmark commentary, of course.Operating at exactly the same speed and being based on the reference design, we've only included the benchmark numbers for the ZOTAC AMP! Edition: the MSI's will fall within the standard deviation of the ZOTAC's numbers.
ZOTAC also retails a massively overclocked GeForce 8800 GT 512 that should provide decent competition. We've also added in a stock-clocked GeForce 8800 GTX 768MiB and ATI's two fastest GPUs: the Radeon HD 3870 and Radeon HD 3870 X2.
Our transition to Microsoft Vista Business 64-bit hasn't been without its share of problems. The most pressing issue relates to obtaining reproducible numbers on a consistent basis. We have seen that Vista performance is inherently more variable than that of Windows XP, such that the deviation between sets of runs on the same card has been as high as 15 per cent. Running practically countless iterations has helped eliminate the majority of the variance.
On we go.
