Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 at 3150MHz (350MHz FSB 1:1)

Motherboard(s): ASUS P5B Deluxe (Supplied by ASUS)

Memory: 2 X 1GB G.Skill HZ PC8000 @ 350MHz 4-4-4-12 (Supplied by Bronet)

Hard Disk(s): Hitachi 80GB 7200RPM SATA 2

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2

Drivers: nVidia ForceWare 97.92 and AMD Catalyst 7.1

Like we mentioned in our introduction, we will be comparing the Gainward 8800GTS Golden Sample against a standard clocked GeForce 8800GTS 640MB which in the case comes in the form of a model from Foxconn and also an ASUS Radeon X1950XTX, which is the current top of the line graphics card from AMD.

With its DX10 support and though nVidia clearly have an excellent start on the R600 (which is due to be released soon, sometime in Q1) all we need now are some DirectX 10 applications and games for our testing. There is no doubt that the highly anticipated Cyrsis is going to make sure that the 8800 series is going to get a good work out soon enough though but unfortunately we are limited to DX9 testing at the moment.

Let's move on and see how the slightly more expensive Golden Samples fairs.

3DMark05

Version and / or Patch Used: Build 130

Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com

Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark05/

Buy It Here

3DMark05 is now the second latest version in the popular 3DMark "Gamers Benchmark" series. It includes a complete set of DX9 benchmarks which tests Shader Model 2.0 and above.

For more information on the 3DMark05 benchmark, we recommend you read our preview here.

Straight off the mark we can see that across the board the Golden Sample is able to outperform the Radeon X1950XTX with ease but it clearly has a jump on the standard clocked GeForce 8800GTS as well.