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Mobo Test System
- EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI Motherboard
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
- 2GB Crucial Tracer DDR3-1600MHz running 1333MHz
- GeForce 8800GTS 320MB running 169.25 Forceware
- 2 74GB WD Raptor HDDs in RAID 0 mode
- Rosewill 950W SLI Certified PSU
Tests
- Sysmark 2007 Preview
- PCMark05
- SpecViewPerf 10
- CPUBench
- Crystalmark 2004
- 3DMark05/06
- Sisoft Sandra XI Processor Arithmetic test
- PiFast
- Windows Vista Business 32-bit
Video Test System
- Motherboard:EVGA 790i SLI Ultra
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
- 2GB Crucial Tracer DDR3-1600MHz running 1333MHz
- EVGA 9800GX2 running 174.53 Forceware drivers
- 2 74GB WD Raptor HDDs in RAID 0 mode
- Rosewill 950W SLI Certified PSU
- Windows Vista Business 32-bit
Tests
- QuakeWars Custom FRAPs walkthrough 1280x1024, 1680x1050 resolution no AA no AF
- Unreal Tournament 3 FRAPs play of Heat Ray map 8 bots, max settings, 1280x1024, 1680x1050 no AA no AF
- Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare DX9 1280x1024, 1680x1050, Custom FRAPS walkthrough, no AA no AF
- Bioshock DX10, Custom FRAPS walkthrough, 1280x1024, 1680x1050 no AA, no AF
- Lost Planet DX10 Timedemo, 1280x1024, 1680x1050 no AA no AF
- Crysis DX10 Custom FRAPs walkthrough Patch 1.2 1280x1024, 1680x1050 resolution, no AA no AF
- 3dmark05/06 1280x1024, 1680x1050 no AA no AF
- PCMark05 1024x768
We use a certain set of parts within a reasonable variance to try and maintain a solid platform for comparisons so we used our default CPU the e6750 Dual Core for our standard comparison tests and switched to the e8500 for the overclocking part of the review as it is a much more overclocker friendly CPU than the e6750. We also used our standard Crucial Ballistix 1333MHz DDR3 memory in all our standard tests and again used the faster Crucial DDR3 2000MHz memory in our overclocking.
Synthetic tests like 3dMark 05/06 are very CPU and memory limited and will not show their best scores unless using a new Quad-Core CPU that utilizes a 1600MHz system and memory BUS. Reality to us dictates that most users will have a CPU in the e6750 range than that of the new 9700 Extreme CPU, which costs a pretty penny. Also we mainly test at two resolutions when it comes to our VGA reviews, 1280X1024 and 1680X1050 with the features set to high as most people own 22” or below size monitors.
Currently we are in the middle of acquiring a 24" and 30" set of monitors so we can begin testing at higher resolutions such as 1920X1200 and 2560X1600, but for this round we are still using what we call the common mans resolutions. The cost of a 30" monitor is still very high and I highly doubt that many users own one at their home, 24" ones are starting to come into their own and that will be the next sweet spot and hence or reasoning behind a 24" test monitor. Getting an apples to apples test between the AA and AF setting of an NVIDIA card and an ATI card is a bit of bender as they both offer different ways to set the features.
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