Test system

Intel Pentium D 945 3.40Ghz
ASRock 775Dual-VSTA
2Gb DDR 400Mhz (2,5-4-4-9)
Hitachi Deskstar HD (160 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA-II)
NEC DVD-RW ND-3520AW
Tagan TG420-U01 PSU
Philips 170S2 LCD
F.E.A.R.
Half Life 2 – Ep1
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
Tomb Raider Legend
Oblivion
PowerDVD 7

Graphics card used in the comparison: PCI-E PowerColor X1950Pro 256Mb Extreme (600Mhz/700Mhz)
Driver set used: We used the latest official 6.12 Catalyst drivers released in December.

For testing purposes the operating system was installed from scratch. The file system used was NTFS and the drive was defragmented prior to all tests. Windows was fully updated (security updates) and the games/applications were running with both CPU cores enabled.

Both cards were tested in the same setup, as the motherboard we used supports both bus standards. As such, the only difference between the test systems were the cards themselves.

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. As with all reviews on Driver Heaven we aim to give you the benchmark figures you need, which means for every given card we run the benchmarks at the resolution the card is aimed at – with eye candy maxed.