Setup

Test Systems

Core2 2.66 GHz
Core2 2.93 GHz EE
Intel D975XBX Motherboard
2 x 1 GB DDR2-800 (4-4-4-12)

AMD Athlon64 FX-62
AMD Atlon64 X2 5000+
MSI K9A Platinum
2x1024mb DDR2-800 (4-4-4-12)

2x X1900 Crossfire Editions
74 GB WD Raptor
Enermax 600w Noisetaker CPU
Sony 710A DVD writer
80 GB Samsung Sata Drive
Cooler master Nautilus Cooler

AMD Dual Core Optimizer
Windows XP Pro +SP2
ATI Catalyst 6.6
Intel Chipset v8.x
PCmark 2005
Sisoft Sandra 2007
Sonic MyDVD v6.1
FEAR
Photoshop CS2
ATI Avivo Converter
Windows Media Player 10

 

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 drivers were installed. The only updates applied were SP2 and .NET Framework 1.1(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 ATI 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.