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Hardware and Software Used
Now we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.

Mainboard

Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI motherboard, nForce4 SLI, Socket 939

Processor

AMD Athlon 64 FX-57+, Socket 939

Memory

2048 MB (2x1024MB) DDR1 - PC-3200 2-3-3-6

Monitor

Dell 3007WFP - up-to 2560x1600

OS related Software

Windows XP Professional SP2
DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime March update
NVIDIA ForceWare 91.33
NVIDIA ForceWare 91.47 WHQL
NVIDIA nForce platform driver

Software benchmark suite

3DMark05
3DMark06
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warrior
F.e.a.r.
Prey
Call of Duty 2
Serious Sam 2

Explaining FPS

Now what you need to observe in the coming pages is designed around a simple principle - the numbers versus the screen resolution, the higher the better for both. 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 tests. 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 can only manage <30 FPS then the game is barely playable. With 30 FPS up-to roughly 40 FPS you'll be very able to play the game with perhaps a tiny stutter at certain graphically intensive parts.

When a graphics card is doing 60 FPS on average or higher then you can rest assured that the game will likely play extremely smoothly at every point in the game.

You are always aiming for the highest possible FPS, versus the highest resolution, versus the highest image quality.