Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3GHz (333MHz x 9)

Cooling: Corsair Nautilus500 (Supplied by Corsair) with Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (Supplied by Arctic Cooling)

Motherboard(s): ASUS Blitz Extreme (Supplied by ASUS)

Memory: 2 X 1GB Corsair XMS3 DDR-3 1066MHz 7-7-7-21 (Supplied by Corsair)

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

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows Vista

Drivers: Catalyst 8.1 and Forceware 169.06

Since the card arrived to us quite late we didn't get a chance to test as many cards as we had hoped to, but on hand we do have the standard HD 3870 from ASUS along with the 8800GT 512MB and 8800GTS 512MB from NVIDIA.

We have the standard line-up of benchmarks in both Windows XP and Windows Vista which cover DX9, DX10, synthetic and real world tests.

Let's not delay any longer and just get into the results to see how the X2 goes!

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.

We can see in the less intensive 3DMark05 that all the cards sit quite close together at the lower res; it isn't until you start going up that the cards being to separate themselves with the X2 coming out clearly ahead.