Test System

Palit Geforce 7900GT 512Mb
MSI Geforce 7900GT 256Mb
Connect3D X1900GT 256Mb

AMD Athlon64 FX-62
Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe
2Gb Corsair DDR2-8500 @ DDR2-800 (4-4-4-12)
WD Raptor 74Gb 10000rpm 8mb Cache Sata Drive
Sony DWD22a DVDRW drive
Enermax 600w Noisetaker PSU
AOC 19” CRT for 1600x1200 + 1280x960

Windows XP SP2
.Net FW 1.1 sp1
Catalyst 6.5 WHQL
Forceware 91.31 WHQL

F.E.A.R.
Quake4
Half Life 2 – Ep1
Oblivion
Tomb Raider Legend
GRAW
PowerDVD 7

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/Nvidia 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 ATI/Nvidia 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.