HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEMS: We tested all of the graphics cards used in this article on an Asus Striker II Extreme motherboard powered by a Core 2 Extreme QX9770 quad-core processor and 4GB of Corsair RAM. The first thing we did when configuring these test system was enter the system BIOS and set all values to their "optimized" or "high performance" default settings. Then we manually configured the memory timings and disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The hard drive was then formatted, and Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 was installed. When the installation was complete we fully updated the OS, and installed the latest DX10 redist and various hotfixes, along with the necessary drivers and applications.
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HotHardware's Test Systems |
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Intel and NVIDIA Powered | |
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Hardware Used:
Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (3.2GHz)
Asus Striker II Extreme
(nForce 790i SLI Ultra chipset)
Radeon HD 4870 1GB
Radeon HD 4850 X2
Radeon HD 4970 X2
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216
GeForce GTX 280
GeForce GTX 295
Asus ENGTX295
4096MB Corsair DDR3-1333 C7
(4 X 1GB)
Integrated Audio
Integrated Network
Western Digital "Raptor" 150GB
(10,000RPM - SATA)
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Relevant Software:
Windows Vista Ultimate SP1
DirectX November 2008 Redist
NVIDIA Forceware v180.87
ATI Catalyst v8.12b
Benchmarks Used:
3DMark Vantage v1.0.1
Unreal Tournament 3 v1.3*
Crysis v1.21*
Left 4 Dead*
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.5*
FarCry 2
Fallout 3*
* - Custom Benchmark |
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Futuremark 3DMark Vantage |
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Synthetic DirectX Gaming | |
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3DMark Vantage
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The latest version of Futuremark's synthetic 3D gaming benchmark, 3DMark Vantage, is specifically bound to Windows Vista-based systems because it uses some advanced visual technologies that are only available with DirectX 10, which y isn't available on previous versions of Windows. 3DMark Vantage isn't simply a port of 3DMark06 to DirectX 10 though. With this latest version of the benchmark, Futuremark has incorporated two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, in addition to support for the latest PC hardware. We tested the graphics cards here with 3DMark Vantage's Extreme preset option, which uses a resolution of 1,920x1,200, with 4x anti-aliasing an 16x anisotropic filtering. |
According to 3DMark Vantage's "Extreme" test, the new GeForce GTX 295 is the clear victor, besting every other graphics card we tested by a significant margin. Both the overall and GPU scores put the GeForce GTX 295 well out in front of its nearest competition, the Radeon HD 4870 X2.
If we tunnel a little deeper and look at the individual game tests, we can see how the GeForce GTX 295 managed such a high overall score. In both GPU test 1 and test 2, the GeForce GTX 295 put up framerates significantly higher than any other card we tested.
