Testing setup and notes
Hardware
| Graphics cards | Inno3D iChiLL 8600GTS XStriker3 | ECS N8600GTS 256MX+ | Inno3D iChiLL 7900GS Arctic Cooling Silencer 6 | ASUS EAX1950PRO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Clock Speed (MHz) | 705 | 720 | 550 | 580 |
| Shader Clock Speed (MHz) | 1450 | 1450 | 550 | 580 |
| Memory Clock Speed (MHz) | 2100 | 2200 | 1500 | 1404 |
| Memory Bus Width (Bits) | 128 | 128 | 256 | 256 |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, 1066MHz FSB, LGA775) | |||
| Motherboard | EVGA NF68 (NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI) | ASUS PW5-DH Deluxe (Intel i975X) | ||
| BIOS revision | 691N0P20 | 1305 | ||
| Memory | 1GByte (2 x 512MByte) OCZ26671024ELDCGE-K PC5400 | |||
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-8 @ DDR2-667 | |||
| Disk drive(s) | 160GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 (3Gb/s mode) | |||
| Mainboard software | NVIDIA platform driver 9.53 | Intel Inf Update 8.0.1.1002 | ||
| Graphics driver | ForceWare 158.16 | ForceWare 93.71 | CATALYST 7.1 | |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional 32-bit, with SP2 | |||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks |
Far Cry v1.33 Quake 4 v1.30 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 |
|---|
Notes
We're comparing the performance of the Inno3D card against another pre-overclocked GeForce 8600 GTS, this time from ECS. We've also added in a couple of DX9 cards that provide decent value at around the £100 price point.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.
