System setup and notes
| System | AMD midrange graphics-card testing system | NVIDIA midrange graphics-card testing system |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | ||
| Motherboard | ASUS A8R32-MVP, RD580 + M1575 | ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe, nForce4 SLI X16 |
| Memory | 1GByte (2 x 512MByte) OCZ4001024V25DC-K PC3200 | |
| Memory timings and speed | 2.5-4-4-8 2T @ 400MHz (DDR400) | |
| Graphics card(s) | 2 x HIS X1600 XT IceQ Turbo DL-DVI DVI 256MiB GDDR3 regular mode in CrossFire* (587/1386) HIS X1600 XT IceQ Turbo DL-DVI DVI 256MiB GDDR3 (iTurbo mode, 600/1404) |
P.O.V GeForce 7600 GS Silent 256MiB GDDR2 (400/800) |
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GB 7200.9 SATA 3Gbps | |
| BIOS revision | 0404 | 11.03 |
| Mainboard software | 1.0.5.2a | 6.82 |
| Graphics driver | CATALYST 6.3 | ForceWare 84.21 | Operating System | Windows XP Pro SP2 32-bit | Monitor | Dell 2405FPW 24-inch 1920x1200 native res. |
Testing software
- Far Cry v1.33
- Quake 4 v1.04
- Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05
Notes
We used Far Cry, Quake 4 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory for our performance benchmarks, using resolutions and settings of 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 with 4xAA 8xAF and 0xAA 8xAF, respectively - the kind of image quality that most users looking to buy an X1600 XT (and/or CrossFired) setup would be thinking of running.We're comparing performance of the single and CrossFired cards to a single P.O.V GeForce 7600 GS 256MiB card that costs around £85 and can be thought of as a direct competitor, albeit a little cheaper, to the Radeon X1600 XT SKU. The second HIS X1600 XT card, needed for CrossFire support, will cost a further £95 or so, and our aim is to see the kind of benefits you accrue by leveraging multi-GPU technology, should you have a CrossFire-compatible board. We'll be adding results from SLI'd 7600GS and single ATI Radeon X1900 GT and NVIDIA 7900 GT 256MiB cards in due course.
Issues
*We had originally wanted to test the two HIS X1600 XT IceQ Turbo DL-DVI DVI 256MiB GDDR3 cards with their iTurbo setting active in CrossFire mode. However, when using the latest version of HIS' software, we found that the second card couldn't be overclocked with the iTurbo tool; the settings simply wouldn't stick. Manually overclocking it caused significant instability. We informed HIS of this occurrence and it's now working on a new, revised iTurbo iteration that supports card overclocking in a CrossFire environment.With that in mind, we tested the CrossFire HIS X1600 XT cards with reference 587/1386 speeds, which is just shy of the iTurbo's 600/1404 settings. The single card, though, was tested at 600/1404. Got all that? We hope so.
On to the benchmarks.
