System setup and notes
Hardware
| Graphics cards | XFX GeForce GTX 260 XXX 896MiB | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 896MiB | BFG GeForce GTX 280 1024MiB | ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GX2 1024MiB | BFG GeForce 9800 GTX | Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 | Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 | Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 X2 1024MiB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current pricing, including VAT | £283 | £249 | £422 | £299 (hard to find) | £179 | £179 | £125 | £229 |
| Shader Model | 4.0 | 4.1 | ||||||
| Stream processors | 192 | 192 | 240 | 256 | 128 | 800 | 800 | 640 |
| GPU clock speed (MHz) | 640 | 576 | 615 | 600 | 675 | 750 | 625 | 825 |
| Shader clock speed (MHz) | 1,363 | 1,242 | 1,350 | 1,500 | 1,688 | 750 | 625 | 825 |
| Memory clock speed (MHz) | 2,300 | 2,000 | 2,214 | 2,000 | 2,200 | 3,600 | 2,000 | 1,802 |
| Memory bus width (Bits) | 448 | 448 | 512 | 512 (2x 256) | 256 | 256 | 256 | 512 (2x 256) |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 LGA775 (3.0GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, quad-core) | |||||||
| Motherboard | eVGA NF68 (nForce 680i SLI) | MSI X48 Platinum (X48+ICH9R) | ||||||
| Motherboard BIOS | P31 | P2B2 | ||||||
| Mainboard software | NVIDIA device driver 15.08 | Intel Inf 8.4.0.1016 | ||||||
| Memory | 4GiB (2x 2GiB) DDR2-1066 | 4GiB (2x 2GiB) DDR3-1066 | ||||||
| Memory timings and speed | 5-5-5-15 2T @ 1066MHz | 7-7-7-20 2T @ 1066MHz | ||||||
| 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 177.34 | NVIDIA ForceWare 177.34 | NVIDIA ForceWare 177.34 | NVIDIA ForceWare 174.53/74 (Crysis) | NVIDIA ForceWare 174.74 | CATALYST 8.6 press | CATALYST 8.6 press | CATALYST 8.5 |
| Operating system | Windows Vista Business, 64-bit | |||||||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks | Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts v2.103: DX9 - very
high quality Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.2 (demo_00010.dem, map Valley): OpenGL - vhq Lost Planet: Extreme Condition v1.004 built-in benchmark: DX10 - high quality Crysis v1.2.1 custom-recorded benchmark: DX10 - high quality |
|---|
Notes
Benchmarks were conducted at 1,680x1050, 1,920x1,200 and 2,560x1,600
with decent image-quality settings as well.
We've omitted the 2,560x1600 results for Crysis and Lost Planet:
Extreme Condition running in high-quality modes because they produced
what we consider to be non-playable frame-rates.
What's the point of showing you an average frame-rate of 7fps? But we believe that the majority of GPUs in this eight-way comparison should be able to run those games with their high-quality settings.
The GeForce 9800 GTX+ hasn't been included for the simple
reason that it's not officially available yet.
All drivers are either WHQL or released within the last two months.
