Test System
- 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition.
- ABIT NI8-SLI motherboard using nForce 7.77 Forceware drivers
- GIGABYTE 7800GT video card running 81.84 Forceware drivers
- ASUS 16x DVD-ROM
- 2 34GB WD Raptors 10,000RPM SATA RAID 0
- 1GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 667MHz memory
Test Software
- HL2 Anandtech Canal and Coast timedemos
- Doom 3 1.3 patch Timedemo 1
- Far Cry 1024x768 no AA no AF, 4x AA 8x AF 1280x1024
- Final Fantasy XI the benchmark 2
- Gunmetal Benchmark 2
- Serious Sam The Second Encounter Little Trouble Demo
- 3DMark05
- 3DMark03
- Aquamark3
- Halo
The setup of the cards went very simply and without incident both in the single and SLI mode configurations. The motherboard just needs a slight tweak of the SLI selector switch in order for it to detect both cards in SLI. The SLI Bridge connects to the SLI finger of each card for communication, and in the case of using an Asus motherboard very easy to use as the Asus SLI Bridge is made of a flexible band that offers great flexibility. We used the latest drivers from NVIDIA and a fresh installation of the OS prior to testing. The tests were run three times and then balanced before final scoring.
Overclocking was very attainable and stable operation was achieved running the card core clock at 503MHz and the memory clock at 1.15GHz, which is pretty damn good for a card right out of the box with no modifications of any kind. The card normally runs at a core clock of 450MHz and the memory at 1050MHz. I am sure that the insane enthusiasts who love to mod out their cards can probably get some much nicer results that our standard ones, and with better cooling and a few electrical modifications, I can see this card really kicking ass. The card showed no signs of instability in our shown overclocking results and no artifacts while running the normal battery of tests. All in all a really enthusiasts based card is to be found here. We did try higher setting, but stability was unstable any higher than shown.
