I had a hard time running STALKER with the 9800GX2 and had to not use it in the tests. Time constraints force the testing of a new video card to be limited sometimes. You’ll notice that the scores for the 3870X2 are slightly different from the last review this is for two reasons. First the drivers have been upgraded to Catalyst 8.3s. Second reason is UT3 and QuakeWars have framerate caps which limit their FPS in benchmarking which required retesting the cards to give a fair comparison between the two without anti-aliasing.

Test System

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
• 2GB Crucial Tracer DDR3-1600MHz running 1333MHz
• XFX 9800GX2 running 174.53 Forceware drivers
• 2 74GB WD Raptor HDDs in RAID 0 mode
• Rosewill 950W SLI Certified PSU
• Windows Vista Business 32-bit

Tests

• QuakeWars Custom FRAPs walkthrough 1280x1024, 1680x1050 resolution no AA no AF
• Unreal Tournament 3 FRAPs play of Heat Ray map 8 bots, max settings, 1280x1024, 1680x1050 no AA no AF
• Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare DX9 1280x1024, 1680x1050, Custom FRAPS walkthrough, no AA no AF
• Bioshock DX10, Custom FRAPS walkthrough, 1280x1024, 1680x1050 no AA, no AF
• Lost Planet DX10 Timedemo, 1280x1024, 1680x1050 no AA no AF
• Crysis DX10 Custom FRAPs walkthrough Patch 1.2 1280x1024, 1680x1050 resolution, no AA no AF
• 3dmark05/06 1280x1024, 1680x1050 no AA no AF
• PCMark05 1024x768