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PowerColor X600 XT PCI-Express 128MB
Test Setup
Note: Specifically for this review and for my upcoming Leadtek 6600 GT 128MB review, Newegg was nice enough to loan us a Sapphire X700 Pro 128MB to benchmark and compare with our other cards. Thanks for your help Newegg. Due to the release of Doom 3 and the Half-Life 2, we have revised the list of games that we benchmark with. To test the performance of the different cards, we will be using five popular games: Far Cry, Splinter Cell, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and Counter-Strike: Source. These games vary greatly in their use of shader effects, so our testing should give you a pretty good idea of the performance you can expect in many of the latest games! The system we are using for benchmarking consists of an ABIT AA8-DuraMax motherboard which utilizes the Intel 925x chipset. An Intel Pentium 4 3.4e with 800 MHz FSB and Hyper-Threading technology is used along with 1 GB of Corsair PC2-5400 Pro memory (4-4-4-12 timings). Every component of the system is at stock or default speeds set by the manufacturer. Windows XP was installed onto a freshly formatted Seagate Barracuda 160 GB SATA hard drive connected via on-chip SATA. All the latest Windows Updates were downloaded and installed. The latest video drivers at the time of testing were installed - Catalyst 4.12 drivers for the ATI cards, Forceware 66.93 drivers for the NVIDIA cards. In the video card control panel V-SYNC was disabled and the cards were set to "quality" over "performance." For the ATI cards that means the "Texture Preference" and "Mipmap Detail Level" were both set to "High Quality" while Anti Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering were custom for each test. For NVIDIA cards, the "Image Settings" slider was set to "High Quality." For the 6600 GT, this automatically disables the Trilinear optimizations. Everything else was left to the default settings. Through our testing, we want the cards to display their best image quality as fast as they possibly can. This usually requires a few basic tweaks to the card's settings through the graphics control panel. However, we do not want to go too in depth and start tweaking variables that the average user wouldn't even touch. Our benchmarking results display how well each card performs when displaying the best image quality possible. Because some cards may support optimizations even at the highest quality settings, we compare the quality of the images each card produces on the "Image Quality" page. To ensure the best possible results, we benchmark each game three times for each test and average the results. In most cases, we play a recorded time-demo which prints the average FPS (frames per second). However, some games differ in the way they record and play demos. Additionally, not every game supports demo or time-demo playback. More information and details regarding how each game benchmark is carried out can be found on the respective benchmarking pages. Test Computer: ABIT AA8-DuraMax Intel Pentium 4 3.4e 1 GB Corsair TwinX PC2-5400 Pro (Dual Channels @ 4-4-4-12) (Donated by Corsair) Seagate Barracuda 160 GB SATA hard drive Thermaltake 480W Butterfly Power Supply (Donated by Thermaltake) Windows XP Professional SP2 w/ DirectX 9.0c and latest updates (Donated by Microsoft) When analyzing the performance graphs on the following pages, I will sometimes refer to settings that offer the best gaming experience. To me, a good gaming experience offers the right mixture of speed and image quality. Playing a game at 50 FPS with smooth edges and crisp textures would offer a better overall gaming experience than playing at 100 FPS with "jaggies' and noticeable texture filtering. Personally, I think 40-50 FPS allows for a smooth experience and my comments will stem from that belief. Your opinions may differ.
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: The Card & The Bundle Page 3: Test Setup Page 4: Benchmarks: Doom 3 Page 5: Benchmarks: Half-Life 2 Page 6: Benchmarks: Counter-Strike: Source Page 7: Benchmarks: Far Cry Page 8: Benchmarks: Splinter Cell Page 9: Image Quality Page 10: Overclocking & Conclusion 
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