EVGA e-GeForce 7950 GT KO SLI
Our Test Systems and 3DMark06
HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEMS: We tested the NVIDIA based cards used in this article on an Asus A8N32-SLI nForce 4 SLIX16 chipset based motherboard. The ATI powered cards, however, were tested on an A8R32-MVP motherboard based on the CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset. Both systems used the same AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 dual-core processor and 2GB of low-latency Corsair XMS RAM. The first thing we did when configuring these test systems was enter each BIOS and loaded their "High Performance Defaults." The hard drives were then formatted, and Windows XP Pro SP2 was installed. When the installation was complete, we installed the latest chipset drivers available, installed all of the other drivers necessary for the rest of our components, and removed Windows Messenger from the system. Auto-Updating and System Restore were also disabled, the hard drive was defragmented, and a 1024MB permanent page file was created on the same partition as the Windows installation. Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance," installed all of the benchmarking software, and ran the tests.
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Processor - Motherboard - Video Cards - Memory - Audio - Hard Drive -
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Hardware Used: AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 (2.6GHzx2) Asus A8N32-SLI nForce4 SLIX16 chipset Asus A8R32-MVP ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 XFX GeForce 7950 GT GeForce 7950 GT GeForce 7900 GS GeForce 7900 GT GeForce 7900 GTX GeForce 7950 GX2 Radeon X1950 XTX Radeon X1900 XTX 512MB Radeon X1900 XT 256MB 2048MB Corsair XMS PC3200 RAM CAS 2 Integrated on board Western Digital "Raptor" 74GB - 10,000RPM - SATA |
OS - Chipset Drivers - DirectX - Video Drivers - Synthetic (DX) - DirectX - DirectX - DirectX - OpenGL - |
Relevant Software: Windows XP Professional SP2 nForce Drivers v6.86 DirectX 9.0c (August Redist.) NVIDIA Forceware v91.45 ATI Catalyst v6.11 Benchmarks Used: 3DMark06 v1.0.2 FarCry v1.33* F.E.A.R. v1.07 Half Life 2: Episode 1* Prey* * - Custom Test (HH Exclusive demo) |
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;) 3DMark06 |
Futuremark recently launched a brand-new version of their 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 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. |
In both singe- can dual-card SLI modes, the e-GeForce 7950 GT KO falls in line right where you'd expect, just ahead of a standard GeForce 7950 GT and just behind the 7900 GTX. The Radeon X1950 XTX in single-card and CrossFire modes outpaces the e-GeForce 7950 GT KO, but the X1950 Pro fell way behind in 3DMark06.
The same trend holds true in the individual Shader Model 2.0 and Shader Model 3.0 tests. The 7900 GTX's similar GPU and memory configuration, albeit with higher clock frequencies, give it an edge in performance. The Radeon X1950 Pro's 36 shader pipes aren't enough to catch the 7950 GT KO, however.
