System setup and notes
Our test rig was configured as follows.
Hardware
| System | Asus EAX1650XT 256MiB | Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro 256MiB | NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MiB | NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 256MiB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, 1066MHz FSB LGA775) | |||
| Motherboard | ASUS PW5-DH Deluxe (Intel i975X) | NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition Reference | ||
| Memory | 1GByte (2 x 512) OCZ26671024ELDCGE-K PC5400 | |||
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-8 2T @ 667MHz (PC5300) | |||
| Graphics card(s) | Asus EAX1650XT 256MiB (574/1350) Asus EAX1650XT 256MiB (574/1350) in CrossFire Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro 256MiB (580/1400) | NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MiB (560/1400) NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 256MiB (450/1320) |
||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | |||
| 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 | ForceWare 91.47 (91.31 for 7600 GT) | ||
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, w/ SP2, 32-bit | |||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks |
Far Cry v1.33 Quake 4 v1.04 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 |
|---|
Notes
The Asus's pricing puts it in between a number of different alternatives. For around £25 more, you could get an ATi Radeon X1950 PRO-based card, or for less than a tenner extra an adapter based on Nvidia's GeForce 7900GS. At the lower end, Nvidia's GeForce 7600GT undercuts it by around £10. So we put all of these cards up against the Asus EAX1650XT, both in single-card and CrossFire modes.Choices, choices. Let's see if our performance graphs can shed some informative light on what to buy.
