System setup and notes
Hardware
| Graphics card(s) | ECS N8800GTS-320MX 320MiB (513/1584) | Foxconn GeForce 8800 GTS O.C. 320MiB (575/1800) | ASUS EN8800GTS/HTDP/640M 640MiB (513/1584) | Foxconn FV-N88XMAD2-OD 768MiB (575/1800) | Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX 512MiB (650/2000) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775) | ||||
| Motherboard | EVGA nForce 680i SLI | ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe (975X+ICH7R) | |||
| Memory | 2GiB (2 x 1024) Corsair PC8500 EPP | 2GiB (2 x 1024) Patriot XLBK | |||
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-12 2T @ 800MHz (PC6400) | ||||
| PSU | FSP Epsilon 600W | ||||
| Monitor | Dell 2405FPW - 1920x1200 | ||||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | ||||
| Mainboard software | NVIDIA platform driver 9.53 | Intel Inf 8.0.1.1002 | |||
| Graphics driver | ForceWare 97.02 | CATALYST 6.10 | |||
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, w/ SP2, 32-bit | ||||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks |
Far Cry v1.33 Quake 4 v1.30 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 |
|---|
Notes
No problems to report during installation and testing.We've got three GeForce 8800 GTS cards in this performance line-up but none operate at default frequencies. Complicating matters further, two have 320MiB framebuffers and one a 640MiB. We've included the also-reviewed Foxconn GeForce 8800 GTS O.C 320MiB model , which ships with 575/1200/1800 clocks for core, shaders and memory, respectively. It's more expensive - retailing at around £225 - but the performance comparison will be an interesting one, with core and memory clocks largely differentiating the cards' performance.
There's also an ASUS GeForce 8800 GTS 640MiB card that ships with identical clocks to the ECS 320MiB version. Rounding things off is a default-clocked GeForce 8800 GTX from Foxconn and AMD's current fastest, long-in-the-tooth DX9 Radeon X1950 XTX, represented by a Sapphire retail card.
Let's see how it all pans out in our high-resolution benchmarks.
