MSI GeForce 8800 GTX (NX8800GTX-T2D768E)

For testing the MSI 8800 GTX, we used an Athlon 64 X2 4600+ processor on a DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR motherboard. We also used 2GB of Corsair DDR (TWINX2048-4400) and a 120GB Maxtor SATA hard drive. The MSI 8800 GTX was compared to an NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2, NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT, ATI Radeon X1950 Pro and an ATI Radeon X1900 XTX.

HotHardware Test System AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Powered

Performance Comparisons with 3DMark06 v1.0.2 Details: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/

3DMark06

Futuremark recently launched a brand new version of its popular benchmark, 3DMark06. The new version of the benchmark is updated in a number of ways and now includes not only Shader Model 2.0 tests but also Shader Model 3.0 and HDR tests as well. Some of the assets from 3DMark05 have been re-used, but the scenes are now rendered with much more geometric detail, and the shader complexity is vastly increased as well. Max shader length in 3DMark05 was 96 instructions, while 3DMark06 ups the number of instructions to 512. 3DMark06 also employs much more lighting, and there is extensive use of soft shadows. With 3DMark06, Futuremark has also updated how the final score is tabulated. In this latest version of the benchmark, SM 2.0 and HDR / SM3.0 tests are weighted, and the CPU score is factored into the final tally as well.

As expected, the MSI 8800 GTX makes quick work of the competition. What we are most interested in with these tests is how much the MSI 8800 GTX outperforms the 7950 GX2 and even the X1900 XTX to a lesser extent. It's nice to see the single-GPU MSI 8800 GTX beat the dual-GPU 7950 GX2 by a respectable margin in all three metrics.