Custom Cooled Video Card Shootout: ASUS & MSI
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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. |
The 3DMark Vantage Extreme test tells a very different story than 3DMark06. Here we see the Matrix GTX285 taking a lead over the other two cards. However the R4890 Cyclone SOC still performs very well. The Matrix GTX260, which lacks any factory overclocking, naturally comes in last. It's worth noting that modern NVIDIA chips have a natural advantage in 3DMark vantage thanks to their ability to help accelerate the second CPU test. This means most modern NVIDIA chips can achieve a score of ~100 on the second CPU test while all other chips will get less than 10. Since the overall score includes the CPU test results, ATI chips are at a slight disadvantage.
