System setup and notes
Hardware
| System | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX Test System |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775) |
| Motherboard | eVGA nForce 680i SLI |
| Memory | Corsair TWIN2X2048-9136C5D |
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-12 1T @ 800MHz |
| Graphics card(s) | XFX GeForce
8800 GTX 768MiB NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX (650/880) 512MiB ATI Radeon X1950 XTX (650/1000) |
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate ST3160812AS |
| Mainboard software | NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition 9.53 |
| Graphics driver | NVIDIA
ForceWare 96.94 (8800 GTX) NVIDIA ForceWare 91.47 WHQL (7900 GTX) ATI CATALYST 6.10 WHQL (X1950 XTX) |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, w/ SP2, 32-bit |
| Display | Dell 3007WFP, 2560x1600, 30" LCD monitor |
| PSU | Tagan TG420-U22, 420W |
Software
The XFX GeForce 8800 GTX runs at reference clocks. We did test it against our reference sample, but found the results were identical. So the following results mirror those found in our technical evaluation.We used the old three game suite (one with a new demo though) to see how performance was with 8800 GTX, along with a quadruplet of new titles that put some serious strain on a modern GPU under D3D9. Three of those will form the basis of our next suite.
| 3D Benchmarks |
Far Cry Quake 4 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Oblivion Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Half Life 2: Episode 1 Company of Heroes |
|---|
Notes
* Far Cry was patched to version v1.33 and uses a custom in-house demo* Quake 4 was patched to 1.3 and uses a custom netdemo
* SC:CT was patched to 1.05 and uses the supplied Lighthouse demo
* Oblivion was patched to v1.1 and uses an in-house walkthrough of an outdoor section nearby the Black Road
* Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is unpatched and uses a custom in-house demo
* Half Life 2: EP1 was as Steam decreed on the 3rd November and taken offline for testing using a custom in-house demo
* Company of Heroes was patched to 1.2 and used the built-in performance test (although it's a little optimistic about in-game performance we find).
We tested at 1600x1200, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 (odd choices in terms of megapixel distribution, but mostly popular LCD panel sizes for the high-end gamer in recent years).
