Hardware and Software Used

Hardware and Software Used

We now begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.

Mainboard

Gigabyte G1.Assassin 2 (X79 motherboard)

Processor

Core i7-3960X

Graphics Cards

GeForce GTX 580

Memory

4x4096MB DDR3 2133MHz CAS9 G.Skill RipJawsZ (1600 MHz at default and 2133 MHz overclocked).

Power Supply Unit

BFG 1200 EX Watt (DXX PCIe 2.0 model)

Monitor

Dell 3007WFP - up to 2560x1600

OS related Software

Windows 7 64-bit SP1 (latest patches & updates installed)
DirectX 9/10/11 latest End User Runtime
GeForce 263.09 WHQL

Software benchmark suite

SiSoft Sandra
Aida
3DMark06
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Handbrake
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
CineBENCH 11.5
FryRender
Far Cry 2
Crysis 2

A word about 'FPS'

What are we looking for in gaming performance wise? First off, obviously Guru3D tends to think that all games should be played at the best image quality (IQ) possible. There's a dilemma though, IQ often interferes with the performance of a graphics card. We measure this in FPS, the number of frames a graphics card can render per second, the higher it is, the more fluently your game will display itself.

A game's frames per second (FPS) is a measured average of a series of tests. That test is often a time demo, a recorded part of the game which is a 1:1 representation of the actual game and its gameplay experience. 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.

• So if a graphics card barely manages less than 30 FPS, then the game is not very playable, we want to avoid that at all cost.
• 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. Overall a very enjoyable experience. Match the best possible resolution to this result and you'll have the best possible rendering quality versus resolution, hey you want both of them to be as high as possible.
• 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, turn on every possible in-game IQ setting.
• Over 100 FPS? You have either a MONSTER graphics card or a very old game.

Before reading the charts, setting up your monitor's contrast & brightness levels is a very important thing to do. I realized recently that a lot of you guys have set up your monitor improperly. How do we know this? Because we receive a couple of emails every now and then telling us that a reader can't distinguish between the benchmark charts (colors) in our reviews. We realized, if that happens, your monitor is not properly set up.

This simple test pattern is evenly spaced from 0 to 255 brightness levels, with no profile embedded. If your monitor is correctly set up, you should be able to distinguish each step, and each step should be roughly visually distinct from its neighbors by the same amount. As well, the dark-end step differences should be about the same as the light-end step differences. Finally, the first step should be completely black.