Test System

2x512mb of Corsair DDR400 @ 2-3-2-6
2x1024mb OCZ DDR466 @ 3-3-2-8

Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe
AMD FX-60 (2.6ghz dual core)
80gb 7200rpm Sata Drive with 8mb of cache.
NEC Dual Layer DVD writer
535w Enermax AIO PSU
ATI Radeon X1800XL AIW 256mb (Media/system benches)
HIS X1900XT Crossfire (Games)

Windows XP Pro +SP2
DirectX 9.0c (Feb 2006)
Catalyst 6.2

PCmark 2005
Sisoft Sandra
Sonic MyDVD v6.1
FEAR
Photoshop CS2
ATI Avivo Converter
Windows Media Player 10
Quake 4
PowerDVD 6

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 ATI drivers were installed. The only updates applied were SP2 and .NET Framework 1.1(latest service pack) and the latest Media Player version and Patches. Next, the latest builds of the benchmarking tools were installed and finally, the hard drive was de-fragmented. For each test, the ATI 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 applications had their latest patches applied.