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Hardware and Software Used
Now we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software and hardware we used.
Mainboard
ASUS A8R32 MVP Deluxe
, ATI Express 3200, Socket 939Processor
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 +, Socket 939 (review)
Graphics Cards
ASUS Radeon X1900 XT/Crossfire Mastercard (PCX), 512MB ATI Reference (review)
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX (PCX), 512MB ATI Reference (review)
ATI Radeon X1800 XL (PCX), 256 MB ATI Reference (review)
ATI Radeon X1800 XT (PCX), 512MB ATI Reference (review)
GeForce 7900 GT (PCX) 256 MB, NVIDIA Reference (review)
GeForce 7900 GTX (PCX) 512MB, NVIDIA Reference (review)
Monitor
2x Dell 2405FPW - up-to 1920x1200
Memory
2048 MB (2x1024MB) DDR1 - PC-3200 2-3-2-6 (review)
Power Supply Unit
Enermax Liberty
620W (review)Software
Windows XP Professional SP2
NVIDIA nForce4 Platform Driver 6.39
DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime
Catalyst 5.13
ForceWare 81.98
RivaTuner 2.0 (tweak utility)
Far Cry (Guru3D custom timedemo)
X3: The Reunion
F.e.a.r.
Splinter Cell 3 Chaos Theory (Guru3D custom timedemo)
Half-Life 2 (Guru3D custom timedemo)
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (Guru3D custom timedemo)
3DMark03
3DMark05
3DMark06
AquaMark 3
Doom 3
Quake 4
Serious Sam 2
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Frames per Second (FPS) Now what you need to observe is simple, the numbers versus the screen resolution. The higher the better. The numbers represent what we call FPS, this means Frames per second. A game's Frames per second is a measured average of a series of test. That test often is a timedemo, a recorded part of the game which is a 1:1 representation of the actual game(play). After forcing the same image quality settings this timedemo is then used for all graphics cards so that the actual measuring is as objective as can be for all graphics cards.If a card reaches >30 FPS then the card is barely able to play the game. With 30 FPS up-to roughly 40 FPS you'll be very able to play the game with perhaps a tiny stutter at certain, intensive on the graphics card, parts. When a graphics card is doing 60 FPS at average or higher then you can rest assured that the game will likely play extremely smooth at every point in the game. You are always aiming for the highest possible FPS versus the highest resolution versus the highest image quality. | |
| Frames per second | Gameplay |
| <30 FPS | very limited gameplay |
| 30-40 FPS | average yet playable |
| 40-60 FPS | good gameplay |
| >60 FPS | best possible gameplay |
