Mainstream Gaming Rig

Not everybody can afford a Core 2 Duo X6800, not to mention a quad core processor. The E6300 running at 1,86Ghz on the other hand is a very popular chip thanks to its low price and excellent overclocking potential. Because of that we decided to start our testing on an E6700 system downclocked to the speed of the E6300. We used a 1Gb stick of DDR2 memory running at 667Mhz. Since it is fairly unlikely that somebody with such a system would game at 1920x1200, we decided to limit ourselves to 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 for the duration of these tests. The full system specifications are as follows:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 @ 1.86Ghz
Motherboard: Asus P5N-E SLI
Audio: Onboard audio chip – Realtek High Definition Audio
Memory: 1 GB OCZ Gold DDR2 memory running at 667Mhz
Drivers: 97.92 ForceWare driver set
Operating systems used: Windows XP SP2 Professional fully updated
Software used: Call of Duty 2, Half Life 2: Episode 1, Jade Empire, Oblivion

The test system was built from scratch, a format of the hard drive was performed (NTFS) and then Windows XP was installed (SP2). Following the completion of the installation, the Nvidia drivers were installed. All updates were applied, including .NET Framework 2.0 (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 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 applications had their latest patches applied and all hardware features the latest BIOS/Firmware.