System Setup and Notes
To analyse the comparative performance of the ASUS EAX1800XT TOP, which currently stands as the fastest shipping ATI graphics product ever released to date, it was compared to an example of the XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB DDR3 XXX Edition. We reviewed that board back in November 2005 and concluded, "Awesomely fast graphics with little to touch it. And for the well-heeled enthusiasts, those are the only words they need to hear to reach for their credit cards."To give those two graphics cards a nice playground to slap each other around in, we tested in something worthy of the rendering power. Here are all the details.
Hardware
| HEXUS Test System | |
|---|---|
| Platform | Asus A8R-MVP Radeon Xpress 200 Crossfire |
| Processor | AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 (review) 2800MHz (14 x 200), 1MiB L2 per core |
| Memory | Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2PT 2 x 1GiB, 3-3-3-8, 1T, 200MHz |
| Disks | 300GB Maxtor 6L300S0 SATA |
| Graphics | ASUS EAX1800XT TOP XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB DDR3 XXX Edition |
| Display | Dell 2405FPW |
The FX-60 is overclocked a notch from the standard 2600MHz.
Software
| Software |
|---|
|
Notes
Driver defaults were used for image quality optimisations throughout, and stock clocks were used for all cards. If in-game controls could be used for both antialiasing and anisotropic texture filtering, they were, otherwise the driver was used to force the required levels (if applicable and the game allowed it without rendering errors). Tested resolutions were 1280x1024, 1600x1200 and 1920x1200Tests were run a minimum of three times at each setting, and the median value reported. In the case of manual 'run-through' testing with FRAPS, three consecutive runs that produced repeatable results, after further analysis, were used. If values weren't part of a repeatable set, they were discarded and obtained again.
If you have any questions about our testing methods, please feel free to ask at any time in the HEXUS.community.
