Custom Cooled Video Card Shootout: ASUS & MSI
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Hardware Used: Asus P5K3 Deluxe ASUS ROG ENGTX260 Matrix Integrated Audio |
Relevant Software: Windows Vista Ultimate SP2 (32-bit) NVIDIA Forceware v191.07 |
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3DMark06 is the tried and tested veteran member of the 3DMark franchise. Although it has been superceded by 3DMark Vantage, it still provides relevent benchmark results. 3DMark06 ups the number of shaders to 512 and also employs lighting and there is extensive use of soft shadows. Note that in this 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. |
In our first benchmark, 3DMark06, we get our first taste of how these cards perform. The MSI R4890 Cyclone SOC take a large lead, beating out both ASUS Matrix cards. This is a somewhat surprising result as the GTX 285 is generally a faster chip than the Radeon 4890, until you consider the Cyclone SOC's massive overclock and the Matrix GTX285's modest factory OC.
The shader 2.0 and 3.0/HDR test results give us a better breakdown of how performance differed between the cards. We can see that all three cards have similar shader 2.0 performance, but differ greatly in shader 3.0/HDR performance.
