System setup and notes
Hardware
| System | ATI Radeon X1950 Pro/1900 GT | NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775, dual core) | |
| Motherboard | ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe | NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Reference |
| Memory | 1GiB (2 x 512MiB) OCZ PC5400 | |
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-8 @ 667MHz (PC5300) | |
| Graphics card(s) | Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro 256MiB (581/1400) ATI Radeon X1900 GT (575/1200) |
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 256MiB (450/1320) |
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GB 7200.9 SATA 3Gbps | |
| BIOS revision | 1305 | 2.053.42 |
| Mainboard software | Intel Inf Update 8.0.1.1002 | NVIDIA Platform Driver 9.37 |
| Graphics driver | CATALYST 6.10 Beta for '1950 Pro and CAT 6.8 for GT | NVIDIA Forceware 91.47 |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, w/ SP2, 32-bit | |
Software
| 3D Benchmarks |
Far Cry v1.33 Quake 4 v1.04 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory |
|---|
Notes
We're comparing the performance of the Sapphire X1950 Pro 256MiB card against a reference-clocked Radeon X1900 GT and, from the green camp and weighing in at around the same money, a default-clocked GeForce 7900 GS 256MiB.The trickle-down effect of technology now positions these powerful GPUs in the midrange sector, with retail examples available for around £130. That's why we've chosen to test them with our Intel Core 2 Duo midrange system; the kind that setup that any one of these three GPUs would be used in.
Gaming performance was evaluated at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. We ran 4xAA and 8xAF at the lower resolution and just 8xAF at 1600x1200. We feel that the settings are indicative of the kind of resolutions/quality a midrange graphics card should be able to provide, and the kind of monitors (TFTs, presumably) that folks would use with these kinds of systems.
The usual benchmarking bits apply too. We ran each benchmark a trio of times, discarding the outer results and reporting the middle one. If any of the three results looked erroneous, we threw all three away until we could collect three within a margin of statistical error. Any major attempts needed to get three reliable results we let you know about, of course. Apart from that, things are as noted on the graphs and in the graph commentary. Want to know more? Hit up the fantastic, awesome, entirely gorgeous HEXUS.community. You know it makes sense, etc, etc.
Reading the previous page informs you that the X1950 Pro will be faster than the X1900 GT. However, the real question is how it fares against the slightly cheaper NVIDIA 7900 GS?
