Review: Stuart "Veridian3" Davidson
Editor/Design: Allan "Zardon" Campbell

 

Test System:

Intel Pentium 4 2.4c @ 3.0ghz (250fsb)
Abit AI7
2x256mb CL 2.5 Twinmos PC3200
Sony CD300E DVD/CD writer
IBM Deskstar 120GXP 40Gb
AOC 19” Monitor
Point Of View Geforce FX 5900 XT 128mb
Sapphire Radeon 9600 XT 128mb

Windows XP, SP1a
DirectX 9.0b
Catalyst 4.1
Detonator 53.03
Intel Chipset Drivers/Via Hyperion 4.49
3d Mark 2001SE
3d Mark 2003 build 340
Unreal Tournament 2003
Aquamark3
Need For Speed Underground
Max Payne 2: The Fall Of Max Payne
Call of Duty
FarCry Demo

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 install the chipset drivers were installed. The only updates applied were SP1a and Direct X 9.0b. Following a reboot the Detonator/Catalyst drivers were installed. Next the benchmarking tools were installed and finally the hard drive was de-fragmented.
For all tests the drivers were set to best image quality.

Good Benchmarking Practice:
Where possible each benchmark was performed 3 times and the middle result for each resolution/setting is shown in the tables which follow. After changing any Anti-Aliasing (AA) or Anisotropic Filtering (AF) setting and before a benchmark was run the system was rebooted. All games/applications had their latest patches applied.