NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS Refresh: Asus and XFX
Our Test Systems and 3DMark06
HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEMS: We tested all of the graphics cards used in this article on either an EVGA nForce 680i SLI motherboard (NVIDIA GPUs) or an Asus P5E3 Deluxe (ATI GPUs) powered by a Core 2 Extreme QX6850 quad-core processor and 2GB of low-latency Corsair RAM. The first thing we did when configuring the test systems was enter their respective BIOSes and set all values to their "optimized" or "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 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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Video Cards - Memory - Audio - Hard Drive - |
Hardware Used: |
OS - DirectX - Video Drivers - Synthetic (DX) - DirectX - DirectX - DirectX - DirectX - OpenGL - |
Relevant Software: Windows Vista Ultimate DirectX 10 NVIDIA Forceware v169.09 ATI Catalyst BETA v8.43 Benchmarks Used: 3DMark06 v1.0.2 Company of Heros - DX10 Crysis - DX10 Half Life 2: Episode 2* Enemy Territory: Quake Wars* * - Custom Test (HH Exclusive demo) |
Performance Comparisons with 3DMark06 v1.0.2
Details: www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06
3DMark06 3DMark06 is the most recent addition to the 3DMark franchise. This version differs from 3Dmark05 in a number of ways, and includes not only Shader Model 2.0 tests, but 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 that number 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.
We've broken up our benchmark results in this article into two sets of graphs - one with all of the single-GPU configurations and the other with all of the multi-GPU SLI and CrossFire configrations.
As you can see in the results above, according to 3DMark06, the new Asus and XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB cards clock in with the highest scores of the bunch, besting even the mighty GeForce 8800 GTX. Performance in these tests are determined more by fillrate and shader performance, than memory bandwidth, hence the 8800 GTS 512MB's ability to outpace the GTX here. Dual-GPU configurations are next...
The performance trend remains largely unchanged when running the cards in a dual-GPU configuration. Please note, however, that we linked the Asus EN8800GTS TOP and XFX GeForce 8800 GTS Alpha Dog together to run in SLI mode, hence the single result for the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB SLI in the graphs above and on the proceeding pages.
