HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEMS: We tested all of the graphics cards used in this article on an MSI P6N Diamond motherboard powered by a Core 2 Duo E6550 processor and 2GB of low-latency Corsair RAM. The first thing we did when configuring our test system was to enter into the BIOS 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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HotHardware's Test System |
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Viewing the Ultimate Vista | |
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Processor -
Motherboard -
Video Cards -
Memory -
Audio -
Hard Drive -
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HARDWARE USED:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550
MSI P6N Diamond
nForce680i SLI Chipset
Diamond Radeon HD 3650 1GB
Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB
Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 512MB
Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GTS
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
2GB Corsair Dominator DDR2
2x1GB, 4-4-4-12 (1T)
Integrated Creative X-Fi
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
750GB - 7200rpm - SATAII
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OS -
Direct X -
Video Drivers -
Synthetic (DX) -
DirectX 9 -
DirectX 10 -
OpenGL -
DirectX 10 -
DirectX 10 -
DirectX 10 -
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RELEVANT SOFTWARE:
Windows Vista Ultimate
DirectX 10
NVIDIA Forceware v169.25
ATI Catalyst v8.3
BENCHMARKS USED:
3DMark06 v1.1.0
Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Company of Heroes
ET: Quake Wars 1.4
Crysis Single-Player Demo
Bioshock 1.1
PT Boats: Knights of the Sea
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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. 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. |
Diamond's HD 3650 finds itself with the short end of the stick in the 3DMark06 testing with by far the lowest scores of any of the cards used for this review. The real crux here is that Diamond's version of the card comes with double the memory buffer than Sapphire's model, yet the slower DDR2 memory speeds employed cause it to lose any advantage whatsoever. Instead, it winds up being nearly 30% slower as shown in the overall results graph.
