XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme
Our Test System & 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 |
Operating System - 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 v6.8 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. |
As you'd expect looking at its specifications, the GeForce 7950 GT falls in between the 7900 GTX and 7900 GT in the default 3DMark06 benchmark. When compared to ATI's offerings it was about as fast as the 256MB Radeon X1900 XT, despite having double the amount of frame buffer memory at it's disposal.
The rankings don't change slightly if we focus on the individual shader model 2.0 test results. In this test, the new GeForce 7950 GT clearly outpaces the 256MB Radeon X1900 XT. In comparison to the other members in the GeForce 7 series though, its position doesn't change.
3DMark06's shader model 3.0 / HDR test results explain how the 256MB Radeon X1900 XT was able to outscore the GeForce 7950 GT. In this test, the 256MB Radeon X1900 XT finished with a score about 100 points higher than the GeForce 7950 GT.
