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Hardware and Software Used

Now we begin the benchmark portion (the performance analysis) of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.

Mainboard

nVIDIA nForce 680i SLI (eVGA) - read review

Processor

Core 2 Duo X6800 Extreme (Conroe) - read review

Graphics Cards

Various GeForce DX10 compatible graphics cards;

Radeon HD 2400 XT 256 MB
Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB (PowerColor)
Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB

Memory

2048 MB (2x1024MB) DDR2 CAS4 @ 1142 MHz Dominator Corsair

Power Supply Unit

Enermax Galaxy 1000 Watt DXX - read review

Monitor

Dell 3007WFP - up-to 2560x1600

OS related Software

Windows Vista Business Edition
DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime
DirectX 10 End User Runtime (Vista)
ATI Catalyst beta 8.38.9.1-rc2_48912
NVIDIA ForceWare 158.45
NVIDIA nForce 680i platform driver (latest available)

Software benchmark suite

3DMark05
3DMark06
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Battlefield 2
War Front: Turning Point
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
F.E.A.R.
Serious Sam 2
Call of Juarez DX10 demo benchmark

A word about "FPS"

What are we looking for in gaming performance wise? First off, obviously Guru3D tends to think that all games should be played at the best image quality (IQ) possible. There's a dilemma though, IQ often interferes with the performance of a graphics card. We measure this in FPS, the number of frames a graphics card can render per second, the higher it is the more fluently your game will display itself.

A game's frames per second (FPS) is a measured average of a series of tests. That test is often a timedemo, a recorded part of the game which is a 1:1 representation of the actual game and it's gameplay experience. 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.

• So if a graphics card barely manages less than 30 FPS then the game is not very playable, we want to avoid that at all cost.
• 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. Overall a very enjoyable experience. Match the best possible resolution to this result and you'll have the best possible rendering quality versus resolution, hey you want both of them to be as high as possible.
• 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, turn on every possible in-game IQ setting.
• Over 100 FPS? You have either a MONSTER of graphics card or a very old game.

Overclocking & Tweaking

As most of you with videocards know, you can apply a simple series of tricks to boost the overall performance a little. You can do this at two levels, namely tweaking by enabling registry or BIOS hacks, or very simple, tamper with Image Quality. And then there is overclocking, which will give you the best possible results by far.

What do we need?One of the best tools for overclocking NVIDIA and ATI videocards is our own Rivatuner that you can download here. If you own an ATI or NVIDIA graphics card then the manufacturer actually has very nice built in options for you that can be found in the display driver properties.

Where should we go ?
Overclocking: By increasing the frequency of the videocard's memory and GPU, we can make the videocard increase its calculation clock cycles per second. It sounds hard but it really can be done in less than a few minutes. I always tend to recommend to novice users and beginners not to increase the frequency any higher then 5% of the core and memory clock. Example: If your card runs at 500 MHz (which is pretty common these days) then I suggest you don't increase the frequency any higher than 25 to 50 MHz.

More advanced users push the frequency often way higher. Usually when your 3D graphics start to show artifacts such as white dots ("snow"), you should back down 10-15 MHz and leave it at that. Usually when you are overclocking too hard, it'll start to show artifacts, empty polygons or it will even freeze. Carefully find that limit and then back down at least 20 MHz from the moment you notice an artifact. Look carefully and observe well. I really wouldn't know why you need to overclock today tested cards anyway but we'll show it still ;)

All in all... do it at your own risk.

At this time overclocking was not ready through the means of Rivatuner, it's work in progress. However the Catalyst suite offer you overdrive with a limited set of overclocking available to you. We tested this on all cards and all cards achieved the maximum possible overclocked (as defined by ATI). These are the results:

With that being explained, in the future obviously we'll take a deeper look at overclocking with various vendor model cards. Let's go onwards to the conclusion shall we.