Test System

Visiontek Radeon HD 2600XT 1GB Quad
BFG 8600 GTS OC 512Mb
Asus P5K3 Deluxe
Intel QX6850 (3.0Ghz – 1333fsb)
Enermax Galaxy 850w
Benq 16x DVD Writer
LG GBW-H10N Blu-Ray Writer
Xbox 360 HD-DVD Drive
Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1 Soundcard
Arctic Cooling MX-2 Paste
Arctic Cooling Freezer
Windows Vista Ultimate
Forceware 169.04
Catalyst 7.10
DirectX 9.0c/DirextX10
Lost Planet
DiRT
Bioshock
Quake Wars
World in Conflict
Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Unreal Tournament 3
Tiger Woods 08
Call of Duty 4
PowerDVD Ultra

The test system was built from scratch, a format of the hard drive was performed (NTFS) and then Windows Vista was installed. Following the completion of the installation, the video drivers were installed. All windows updates were then installed as were the latest builds of the benchmarking tools. Finally, the hard drive was de-fragmented. For each test, the video 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 and all hardware features the latest BIOS/Firmware.