System setup and notes
We tested our X1300 XTs against what we see as its competitor from the green team, the GeForce 7300 GT. We used two Socket 939 platforms for benchmarking, one for the ATI hardware, the other for the NVIDIA hardware. See the specs below.
| NVIDIA platform | ATI platform | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Athlon 64 Socket 939 (2.2GHz, 512KiB L2 cache, single-core) | |||
| Motherboard | Asus A8N-VM CSM (NVIDIA GeForce 6150 + nForce 430) | ECS RS482M (ATI RS482+SB400) | ||
| Memory | 2 x 256MiB Corsair VS512MBKIT400 PC3200 2.5-3-3-8 1T @ DDR-400 |
|||
| Graphics cards | GeForce 7300 GT 256MB DDR-2 128-bit (350/666) | MSI GeForce 7300 GS 256MB DDR-2 64-bit (550/810) | Sapphire X1300 XT 256MB GDDR3 128-bit (573.75/1386) | GeCube X1300XT 256MB GDDR3 128-bit (560.25/1386) |
| Graphics BIOS | 5.73.22.25 | 5.72.22.34 | 009.012.008.002 | 009.012.014.002 |
| Driver | ForceWare 91.31 | ForceWare 84.21 | 8.282-060802a-035179C-ATI | |
| Hard drive | 160GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 (3Gb/s mode) | |||
| Monitor | AG Neovo E-17A 17in TFT | |||
| OS | Windows XP Professional SP2 | |||
Hardware befitting cards of this caliber, don't you think? No point testing them on an FX-62; how many FX-62 owners are going to use a mid to low end graphics card?
Test software
Our familiar trio of game tests return.
- Far Cry v1.33
- Quake 4 v1.4
- Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
We used resolutions of 1024x768 and 1280x1024, no AF or AA. For Splinter Cell, HDR and non-HDR iterations of our tests were run.
They're waiting for you, reader... in the test chamber!
