XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB & 8800 GTX XXX Editions
Our Test Systems and 3DMark06
HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEMS: We tested all of the graphics cards used in this article on an EVGA nForce 680i SLI based motherboard powered by a Core 2 Extreme X6800 dual-core processor and 2GB of low-latency Corsair RAM. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the BIOS and set all values to their 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 XP Pro with SP2 and the October DX9 update was installed. When the installation was complete, we then 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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Motherboard - Video Cards - Memory - Audio - Hard Drive -
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Hardware Used: Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz) EVGA nForce 680i SLI nForce 680i SLI chipset XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XXX XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320M XXX GeForce 8800 GTS 320M GeForce 8800 GTX GeForce 8800 GTS GeForce 7950 GX2 GeForce 7900 GTX Radeon X1950 XTX (CF Master) 2048MB Corsair PC2-6400C3 2 X 1GB Integrated on board Western Digital "Raptor" 74GB - 10,000RPM - SATA |
OS - Chipset Drivers - DirectX - Video Drivers - Synthetic (DX) - DirectX - DirectX - DirectX - DirectX - OpenGL - OpenGL - |
Relevant Software: Windows XP Pro SP2 nForce Drivers v9.53 DirectX 9.0c (December Redist.) NVIDIA Forceware v97.92 ATI Catalyst v6.12 Benchmarks Used: 3DMark06 v1.0.2 Need For Speed: Carbon v1.2* FarCry v1.4* F.E.A.R. v1.08 Half Life 2: Episode 1* Prey v1.2* Quake 4 v1.3* * - Custom Test (HH Exclusive demo) |
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| Performance Comparisons with 3DMark06 v1.0.2 | |
| Details: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/ |
;) 3DMark06 |
3DMark06 is the latest addition to the 3DMark franchise. This version differs from 3Dmark05 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. |
According to 3DMark06, the XFX GTX and 320MB GTS are marginally faster then their stock counterparts. Also note that we've included numbers from a reference 320MB 8800 GTS to illustrate how a card clocked at NVIDIA's recommended frequencies performs in comparison to the original GeForce 8 series cards.
If we drill down and look at the individual shader model 2.0 and shader model 3.0 / HDR test results, you can see why XFX's cards perform better than the reference models. Their higher clock speeds give them advantages in compute performance and memory bandwidth, which result is slightly better performance in both tests.
