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Hardware and Software Used
Here we begin with the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.
Mainboard
FoxConn NFORCE 590 SLI, Socket AM2
Processor
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62+, Socket AM2
Graphics Cards
Radeon X1950 XTX
GeForce 7300 GT (PCX) 256 MB
GeForce 7900 GT (PCX) 256 MB
GeForce 7900 GTX (PCX) 512 MB
GeForce 7950 GX2 (PCX) 1024 MB
Memory
2048 MB (2x1024MB) DDR2 - PC-6400
Software
Windows XP Professional SP2
NVIDIA nForce4 Platform Driver 6.39
DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime
Catalyst 6.8 Beta
ForceWare 91.33
RivaTuner 2.0 (tweak utility)
Serious Sam 2 (Guru3D custom timedemo)
Far Cry (Guru3D custom timedemo)
Prey (Guru3D custom timedemo)
Ghost recon: Graw
X3: The reunion
Call of Duty 2
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 Episode One (Guru3D custom timedemo)
3DMark03
3DMark05
3Dmark06
AquaMark 3
Doom 3
Quake 4 (Guru3D custom timedemo)
F.e.a.r
Halo: Combat Evolved
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Frames per Second (FPS) Now what you need to observe is simple, the numbers versus the screen resolution. The higher the better. The numbers represent what we call FPS, this means Frames per second. A game's Frames per second is a measured average of a series of test. That test often is a timedemo, a recorded part of the game which is a 1:1 representation of the actual game(play). After forcing the same image quality settings this timedemo is then used for all graphics cards so that the actual measuring is as objective as can be for all graphics cards.If a card reaches >30 FPS then the card is barely able to play the game. With 30 FPS up-to roughly 40 FPS you'll be very able to play the game with perhaps a tiny stutter at certain, intensive on the graphics card, parts. When a graphics card is doing 60 FPS at average or higher then you can rest assured that the game will likely play extremely smooth at every point in the game. You are always aiming for the highest possible FPS versus the highest resolution versus the highest image quality. | |
| Frames per second | Gameplay |
| <30 FPS | very limited gameplay |
| 30-40 FPS | average yet playable |
| 40-60 FPS | good gameplay |
| >60 FPS | best possible gameplay |
