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Hardware and Software Used
Here we begin with the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.

Mainboard

Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI motherboard, nForce4 SLI, Socket 939

Processor

AMD Athlon 64 FX-57+, Socket 939

Graphics Cards

GeForce 7600 GT (PCX) 256 MB
GeForce 7900 GT (PCX) 256 MB
GeForce 7900 GTX (PCX) 512 MB
Radeon X1600 XT 256 MB
Radeon X1800 XL 256 MB
Radeon X1900 XTX 512 MB
 

Memory

2048 MB (2x1024MB) DDR1 - PC-3200 2-3-3-6

Software

Windows XP Professional SP2
NVIDIA nForce4 Platform Driver 6.39
DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime
ForceWare 84.17
Catalyst 6.2
RivaTuner 2.0 (tweak utility)

Serious Sam 2 (Guru3D custom timedemo)
Far Cry  (Guru3D custom timedemo)
Splinter Cell (Guru3D custom timedemo)
Splinter Cell 3 (Guru3D custom timedemo)
Half-Life 2

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 tests. 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 can only manage <30 FPS then the game is barely playable. With 30 FPS up-to roughly 40 FPS you'll be very able to play the game with perhaps a tiny stutter at certain graphically intensive parts.

When a graphics card is doing 60 FPS on average or higher then you can rest assured that the game will likely play extremely smoothly at every point in the game.

You are always aiming for the highest possible FPS, versus the highest resolution, versus the highest image quality.