System Setup and Notes
Hardware
MotherboardsAlbatron PX915G Pro motherboard
Processor
Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition (3.4GHz, dual-channel memory), LGA 775
Graphics Cards
MSI NX6600-VTD128E Diamond, 128MB
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT, 128MB
ATI Radeon X700 PRO, 256MB
Memory
1GB (2 x 512MB) Corsair XDDR-I PC-3200 - 2-2-2-6
Hard Disks
1 x 36.6GB Western Digital Raptor SATA
Software
Windows XP Professional w/ SP2NVIDIA ForceWare 66.93
ATI CATALYST 4.11
DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime
Xpand Rally Demo - HEXUS Custom Benchmark
Unreal Tournament 2004 Retail (patched up to 3323 - HEXUS custom timedemo)
Sims 2 - HEXUS Custom Benchmark
DOOM 3 - Custom Timedemo - High quality
Far Cry (patched to v1.3) - Custom Timedemo
Half-Life 2 - HEXUS Custom Timedemo
Notes
We'll be putting these boards to the test through a series of benchmarks at three resolutions - 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200, first at their default settings and then with 4x anti-aliasing and 8x anisotropic filtering to really stress the cards.
The NX6600 is going to be put up against a couple of cards, in the form of NVIDIA's GeForce 6600GT, and ATI's Radeon X700 PRO. Sadly, we don't have a 'vanilla' 6600 available for testing, as it would have been interesting to examine just where this board fits performance-wise between its two class mates. While both the 6600GT and NX6600 are 128MB boards, the X700 PRO used here is a 256MB variant, running at clock speeds of 425MHz on the core and 430MHz DDR RAM (860MHz effective).
