Overclocked Radeon HD 4870 X2 Shoot-Out: ASUS, MSI
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 Asus nForce 790i SLI Ultra based Striker II Extreme motherboard (NVIDIA GPUs) or an X48 based Asus P5E3 Premium (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 these test systems was enter their respective BIOSes and set all values to their "optimized" or "high 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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Asus Striker II Extreme Asus EAH4870X2 TOP Integrated Audio |
Relevant Software: Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 DirectX June 2008 Redist NVIDIA Forceware v178.24 |
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3DMark06 is a synthetic benchmark, designed to simulate DX9-class game titles. This version differs from the earlier 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. 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. |
So, here's a counterintuitive result. Because 3DMark06 is CPU bound while running its default test, the factory overclocked Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards can't really spread their wings and perform right on par with the reference card.
3DMark06's individual shader model 2.0 and 3.0 tests explain what's going on. The SM 2.0 test shows no improvement on the factory overclocked card due to the CPU limitation, but in the SM 3.0 test, they're able to finally pull ahead of the reference card.
