System setup and notes
System setup and notes
Hardware
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| Processor(s) | AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2.00GHz, dual-core, 2 x 512KiB L2, S939 |
| Mainboard(s) | ASUS A8R32-MVP, RD580+M1575 (ATI) ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe, nForce4 SLI X16 (NVIDIA) |
| Memory | 1GByte (2 x 512MByte) OCZ4001024V25DC-K PC3200 |
| Memory Timings | 2.5-4-4-8 2T @ 400MHz |
| BIOS Version | 0404 - (A8R32-MVP) 1103 (A8N32-SLI) |
| Disk Drive | 160GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 (3Gb/s) |
| Graphics Card(s) | Sapphire Radeon X1600 Pro HDMI 256MiB (500/792) - x16 PCIe HIS X1600Pro IceQ Turbo DL-DVI DVI 128MiB GDDR3 (587/1386) x16 PCIe Point of View GeForce 7600GS Silent 256MiB (400/800) - x16 PCIe |
| Graphics Driver | ATI Catalyst 6.3 NVIDIA ForceWare 84.21 |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, SP2, 32-bit |
| Core Logic Driver(s) | 1..0.5.2a 9.32 |
Software
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Notes
We've also included an HIS Radeon X1600 Pro 128MiB card for comparison numbers. However, the IceQ Turbo Edition is pre-overclocked to XT levels, which entails 587MHz core and 1386MHz memory speeds. Compare that with the stock-clocked Sapphire card, sporting a 500MHz core and 792MHz memory. It's lacking in GPU horsepower, sure, but, we reckon, it's memory bandwidth, or lack of, that will keep the Sapphire's results markedly lower than the XT-clocked HIS. Of course, Sapphire's doing nothing wrong: it's following ATI's specs.We've run our gaming benchmarks with high-detail settings and at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. The lower resolution is tested with 4x antialiasing and 8x anisotropic filtering. At 1600x1200 we run with no AA but with the same 8x AF. We reckon both sets are indicative of the kind of settings that users would expect to use with £80-100 cards. Our system setup also reflects the level of components we'd expect to find in a midrange PC.
