With the release of Microsoft’s Vista Operating System it might be wondered why I used Windows XP with SP2 for the testing. While the cards work wonderfully in Vista, the fact remains that NVIDIA’s Vista drivers are not up to par with Windows XP as of yet. Further, there are no DirectX 10 games that I could benchmark. Therefore, until games come out with the new features it makes little sense to run benchmarks in Vista. Once DirectX 10 games come out we will change our platform again to reflect Vista, and SM 4.0, as it’s likely that ATI and NVIDIA will only have SM4.0 cards from this point forward.

Test System

AMD Athlon FX-62 CPU
2GB of Corsair XMS2 6400 CL4 DDR2 memory
2 74GB Western Digital Raptor 10000 RPM SATA HDDs in RAID 0
EVGA 8600GT running 576MHz core/ 1.5GHz memory running 158.16 Forceware XP drivers
XFX 8600GT running 620MHz core/1.6GHz memory running 158.16 Forceware XP drivers
ASUS 16x DVD-ROM
Ultra X-Finity 600W PSU
Windows XP with SP2
DirectX 9.0c

Test Software

FEAR 1280x960 no AA no AF, 4x AA 16x AF Performance demo max settings except no Soft Shadows

Quake4 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 2048x1536, no AA no AF, 4x AA 16x AF, Custom Timedemo HQ settings

Oblivion 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1920x1200, 2048x1536 no AA no AF, HDR Enabled Max settings. Custom Walkthrough of Anvil using FRAPs

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 2048x1536 no AA no AF, 4x AA 16x AF, Custom walkthrough of Prologue using FRAPs

Need For Speed Carbon 1280x1024, 1600x1200 no AA no AF 4x AA 16x AF, Custom Sprint race walkthrough

Tomb Raider Legend 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 2048x1536 no AA no AF, 4x AA 16x AF Custom walkthrough of first level

COD2 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1920x1200, 2048x1536 no AA no AF, 4x AA 16x AF Custom Timedemo

FEAR 1280x960, 1600x1200, 2048x1536 no AA no AF, 4x AA 16x AF, Performance demo max settings except Soft Shadows disabled

3Dmark06 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1920x1200, 2048x1536 no AA no AF, Default run

3Dmark05 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1920x1200, 2048x1536, no AA no AF, Default run