Test System Setup and Methodology

When it comes to testing graphics cards, you have to take a look at what the board was designed to do. This usually falls into two categories; gaming or CAD. Since we're talking about a performance gaming card here, we'll be looking primarily at how it performs in both synthetic and real-world gaming tests.

To accommodate these goals, we're going to run a series of tests that consist of the following utilities and programs:

Futuremark 3DMark05

Futuremark 3DMark06

Quake III Arena

Quake 4

Unreal Tournament 2004 (full version)

Doom 3

Far Cry

All utilities and games have been patched to their most recent versions with the exception of Quake III Arena. I still use the original released version since anything after the first couple of patches forces the loss of the use of the standard Demo files. Color depth for all tests will be conducted at 32-bit so we can see those true colors in all their glory.

The test system will be running Windows XP Professional with DirectX 9.0c and SP2 installed as well as all critical updates in place. I am using the latest motherboard drivers as well as Catalyst 6.3 .

Test System Setup

DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 Processor (Supplied by Newegg.com)

2x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 "Redline" Memory (Supplied by Mushkin)

Thermaltake PurePower 600-watt PSU (Supplied by Thermaltake)

Princeton LCD19D 19" LCD Digital Monitor

Western Digital 80GB SATA Hard Drive