Page 12

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 we used.

Mainboards

NVIDIA NFORCE 590 SLI Intel Edition mainboard (reference)
NVIDIA NFORCE 590 SLI AMD edition mainboard (Foxconn C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H)
NVIDIA NFORCE 680i SLI Intel eVGA mainboard

Processors

AMD64 Athlon FX-62
Core 2 Duo X6800 clocked at 2.4 Ghz (E6600 MP9) and then overclocked in many options

Graphics Card
GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB (SLi)

Memory

2048 MB (2x1024MB) DDR2 CAS5 1142 MHz Dominator Corsair

Power Supply Unit

Enermax Galaxy 1000W

Monitor

2x Dell 2405FPW - up-to 1920x1200

OS related Software

Windows XP Professional SP2
DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime February update
NVIDIA ForceWare 91.33
NVIDIA nForce 680 platform driver 9.37

Software benchmark suite

PCMark 2004
SiSoft Sandra
MPEG Encoding
DiVX Encoding
WMV Encoding
Virus Check
File Encoding/Decoding
Everest
AquaMark 3
Doom 3
Ghost Recon: AW
F.e.a.r.
Serious Sam 2