Test Systems and benchmarking comments

Asus Geforce 7800GTX 256mb – TOP
Reference Geforce 7800 GTX 256mb

AMD Athlon64 FX55 CPU
2x512mb DDR 3200 (2-2-2-5)
Samsung 80Gb 7200rpm 8mb Cache Sata Drive
Sony DWD22a DVDRW drive
Ultra Xconnect 500w PSU
ATI Reference Crossfire Motherboard
Geforce 7800GTX 256mb

Windows XP SP2
.Net FW 1.1 sp1
Forceware 81.84

HL2 – Lost Coast
FEAR Demo
CSS:VST
Doom3
Fable
BattleField 2
COD2 demo
Need for Speed Underground

The test system was built from scratch, a format of the hard drive was performed (NTFS) and then Windows XP was installed. Following the completion of the installation, the NV drivers were installed. The only updates applied were SP2 and .NET Framework 1.1(latest service pack). Next, the latest builds of the benchmarking tools were installed and finally, the hard drive was de-fragmented. For each test, the NV drivers were set to default quality/optimizations (unless otherwise stated).

Good Benchmarking Practice:
Where possible, each benchmark was performed 3 times and the median result for each resolution/setting is shown in the tables that will follow. All games/applications had their latest patches applied.