System setup and testing notes
Hardware
| System | HIS Radeon X1650 XT IceQ Turbo 256MiB | Sapphire Radeon X1650 Pro 256MiB | Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro 256MiB | NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MiB | NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 256MiB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, 1066MHz FSB LGA775) | ||||
| Motherboard | ASUS PW5-DH Deluxe (Intel i975X) | NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition Reference | |||
| Memory | 1GByte (2 x 512) OCZ26671024ELDCGE-K PC5400 | ||||
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-8 2T @ 667MHz (PC5300) | ||||
| Graphics card(s) | HIS Radeon X1650 XT IceQ 256MiB (628/1458) Sapphire Radeon X1650 Pro 256MiB (594/1386) Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro 256MiB (580/1400) | NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MiB (560/1400) NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 256MiB (450/1320) |
|||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | ||||
| BIOS revision | 1305 | 2.053.42 | |||
| Mainboard software | Intel Inf Update 8.0.1.1002 | NVIDIA platform driver 9.37 | |||
| Graphics driver | CATALYST 6.10 (6.8 for X1650 Pro) | ForceWare 91.47 (91.31 for 7600 GT) | |||
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, w/ SP2, 32-bit | ||||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks |
Far Cry v1.33 Quake 4 v1.04 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 |
|---|
Notes
We're comparing the performance of this £117 card against NVIDIA's similarly priced GeForce 7600 GT. We've also added in numbers from Radeon X1950 Pro and GeForce 7900 GS, with retail cards based upon them offering significantly more processing power and a fatter memory bus for increased bandwidth. Lastly, to see how Radeon X1650 XT is related to Radeon X1650 Pro in name only, we've added the latter's numbers. Its significantly weaker pixel-pushing and shading architecture should be found wanting in this company.As always, we ran each benchmark a trio of times and then calculated the arithmetic mean. If any of the three results looked erroneous, we threw all three away until we could collect three within a margin of statistical error. We report any major attempts needed to get three reliable results, of course. Apart from that, things are as noted on the graphs and in the graph commentary. Want to know more? Head for the HEXUS.community.
