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Updated Video Card Testing Methodology
DX9, OpenGL, and Synthetics
Tacked on the non-Vista games are synthetic results. I waffle on disliking these; without games they're meaningless, but alongside real-world results, they complete a picture. There's no way we can benchmark every game, naturally, so 3DMark sums up the games that we don't bench. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 Episode 2, in addition to padding Gordon's deity-caliber resume, showcases the ubiquitous Source Engine's features (there are more than thirty titles that use the Source Engine). Source has been tweaked heavily since 2005, and this expansion includes the film effects, lighting, motion blur, and facial modeling that've been added to the original platform. I put together a custom timedemo that at some point uses every single one of these features, and has outdoor and indoor action. Detail settings are maxed out, and the timedemo is run thrice, averaged, with and without 4xAA. Quake Wars Enemy Territory: Quake Wars uses the most recent version of the Id Tech 4 engine, and is the only game to-date to use MegaTexture rendering. Therefore, it's the most strenuous OpenGL title. If a video card can handle Quake Wars, everything else will be a cinch. That said, the requirements aren't very steep, and only the slightest cards will have difficulty with this game. I benchmark it with a custom timedemo, all outdoors with lots of action, close-up explosions, and vehicles. Details are set a "high" with soft shadows turned off for three runs, averaged, with and without 4xAA. 3DMark Vantage 3DMark is very, very popular, and that's the easy reason to include it, but again, it closes the gap between benchmarking five games and fifty nicely. This new version of 3D mark exploits features of the DX10 API in addition to DX9 and OpenGL in ways that are more tailored to current and future games. 3DMark '06 OK, 3DMark '06 is just straight-up popular. It's not particularly relevant, but it takes me ten minutes to run it, so I don't mind keeping up with these particular Joneses. PCMark Vantage PCMark Vantage isn't a video card benchmark per se, but it has a generic Vista gaming score and, more importantly, a video playback score that represents a combination of HD and SD movie playback. For video card reviews, I only list the two relevant scores. Vista Experience Index Now, for a while, I assumed that this included utility was completely useless. Any video card worth its salt should be able to score perfectly--until Microsoft raises the high score beyond 5.9, that's the highest any and almost every video card can get. But then, that in itself means something: any card that can't score 5.9 in gaming must absolutely be avoided. As a relative benchmark, it's meaningless, but it is a litmus for suck. Performance Notes Any caveats explained here. And I'll point it out if a video card can't beat the Vista Experience low bar.
Page 1: Introduction, The Card & Bundle
Page 2: Specifications and Setup Page 3: DirectX 10 Titles Page 4: DX9, OpenGL, and Synthetics Page 5: Video, Power, and Overclocking Page 6: Conclusion 
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