System setup and notes
Hardware
| Graphics cards | Sapphire HD 3870 512MiB ATOMIC | ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MiB | MSI NX8800GTS-T2D512E-OC | ZOTAC GeForce 8800 GT 512MiB AMP! Edition |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current pricing, including VAT | £165 | £139 | £209 | £189 |
| Shader Model | 4.1 | 4.0 | ||
| Stream processors | 320 | 128 | 112 | |
| GPU clock speed (MHz) | 825 | 777 | 730 | 700 |
| Shader clock speed (MHz) | 825 | 777 | 1817 | 1674 |
| Memory clock speed (MHz) | 2400 | 2252 | 1944 | 2000 |
| Memory bus width (Bits) | 256 | |||
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 LGA775 (3.0GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, quad-core) | |||
| Motherboard | MSI X48 Platinum (X48+ICH9R) | eVGA NF68 (nForce 680i SLI) | ||
| Motherboard BIOS | P2B2 | P31 | ||
| Mainboard software | Intel Inf 8.4.0.1016 | NVIDIA device driver 15.08 | ||
| Memory | 4GiB (4 x 1GiB) DDR3-1066 | 4GiB (4 x 1GiB) DDR2-1066 | ||
| Memory timings and speed | 7-7-7-20 2T @ 1066MHz | 5-5-5-15 2T @ 1066MHz | ||
| PSU | Enermax Galaxy DXX 850W | Gigabyte ODIN GT 800W | ||
| Monitor | Dell 30in 3007WFP - 2,560x1,600 | |||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GiB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | |||
| Graphics driver | CATALYST 7.12 | NVIDIA ForceWare 169.25 | NVIDIA ForceWare 169.04 | |
| Operating system | Windows Vista Business, 64-bit | |||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks | Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts v2.103: DX9 and DX10 Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.2 (demo_00010.dem, map Valley) Lost Planet: Extreme Condition v1.004 built-in benchmark: DX10 |
|---|
Notes
It's an ATI vs. NVIDIA shootout at the £140-£200 Corral. Our ATI testing platform has been upgraded to take Intel's X48 chipset into account. As such, the NVIDIA platform will be updated to nForce 790i SLI as soon as that's released.Please note that all cards bar the reference ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MiB are overclocked - significantly in some cases. We're looking at retail examples that can be purchased right now, ensuring that the comparison is valid. The price differences will be taken into account in the HEXUS.bang4buck graph on page eight.
We've also added a second Sapphire ATOMIC card for some CrossFire fun. Do you receive double the performance? Let's find out.
