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• AMD Athlon XP3200+ 'Barton' Processor, 2200MHz, 512KB L2 cache, 11 x 200MHz, Socket A
• Asus A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 motherboard, nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset, Socket A, 1003 BIOS
• 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3200 memory, CL2, 6-2-2, DDR400
• ASUS GeForce FX 5900 V9950
• MSI GeForce FX 5900-TD128 (MS-8929)
• Hercules ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
• Sapphire Atlantis ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
• GeForce FX 5600 Ultra rev2
• Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148 w SP1
• ATI CATALYST 3.4
• NVIDIA Detonator FX 44.03 reference drivers
• NVIDIA nForce 2.41 platform drivers
• DirectX 9.0 Runtime
• 3DMark 2001SE v330
• UT2003 Retail (Build 2225)
• Comanche 4 Demo
• Serious Sam 2 Demo
• Quake3 v1.30
• Codecreatures Benchmark Pro
I've kept the MSI numbers around, just to show you how boringly similar two identically clocked boards from different manufacturers on the same drivers perform. I'm determined to put someone to sleep with one of my reviews, it's all a ploy to succeed in that endeavour.
The AMD XP3200+ powers the whole lot, Corsair's TwinX keeps the info flowing and ASUS get to do motherboard duty too. Will their graphics cards magically go faster on their own motherboards? The graphs will tell us all.
Again, Intellisample was set to Quality throughout, only the individual AA and AF sliders were fiddled with.
Here's a shot of the driver to show you what I mean. It's the same as the MSI review, so I'll cheat and use that image from our image server.
There's only 1 midrange board in most of the graphs (Excel was still biting my ass in a couple of the UT2003 set), to make way for the ASUS numbers, but for the most part you can ignore it, unless you're looking to see what kind of performance jump you can expect during any upgrade from a current midrange performer. A valid viewpoint, but not one I'll really focus on in the commentary, instead I'll focus on comparison with ATI's beastly boards and the other FX 5900 from MSI.
On to the graphs. You know the drill by now, 1024x768, 1024x768 with 4xAA and 8xAF, then the same settings at 1600x1200 just to torture the poor hardware. Finally the performance drop graph will let me waffle on a little while longer to round things up.
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