ATI CrossFireX Preview – Triple CrossFire Benchmarking
The Test System
The test system was running Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit with all available Microsoft updates including the hotfixes required for enthusiast video cards to run correctly. The CrossFireX testing was done with CATALYST 8.3 beta drivers and CATALYST 8.1 drivers were used on all the other Radeon HD graphics cards. NVIDIA Forceware 174.12 drivers were used on all GeForce graphics cards. All results shown in the charts are averages of at least three runs from each game or application used.
The GPU-Z Shot:
The Video Cards:
- EVGA GeForce 9600 GT (740MHz/1950MHz)
- Palit GeForce 9600 GT (700MHz/2000MHz)
- XFX GeForce 9600 GT (625MHz/1800MHz)
- eVGA GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB (670MHz/1944MHz)
- XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (625MHz/1.8GHz)
- XFX GeForce 8800 GT 256MB (650MHz/1.6GHz)
- ATI Radeon HD X2 – 1GB (825MHz/1.800GHz GDDR3)
- ATI Radeon HD 3870 – 512MB (777MHz/1.126GHz GDDR4)
- Diamond Radeon HD 3850 – 512MB(669MHz/1.658GHz GDDR3)
- ATI Radeon HD 3850 – 256MB (669MHz/1.658GHz GDDR3)
- ATI Radeon HD 3650 – 256MB (722MHz/1.584GHz GDDR3)
- Sapphire Radeon HD 3450 – 256MB (600MHz/1.000GHz GDDR2)
All of the video cards were tested on the Intel X38 Express Test platform, which is loaded with the latest and greatest hardware. The Intel Core 2 Quad QX9650 ‘Yorkfield’ processor was used for testing as it proved to be the best desktop processor when it comes to game performance. The test system was also loaded with 4GB of memory and water cooled to ensure throttling of the processor or memory wouldn’t cause any issues.
| Intel Test Platform | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Component |
Brand/Model |
Live Pricing |
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|
Processor |
Intel Core 2 Quad QX9650 |
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|
Motherboard |
Gigabyte X38-DQ6
|
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|
Memory |
4GB OCZ Reaper PC2-6400
|
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|
Video Cards |
See Above |
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|
Hard Drive |
Western Digital SATA 250Gb |
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|
Cooling |
Corsair Nautilus 500 |
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|
Power Supply |
Corsair HX620W |
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|
Operating System |
Windows Vista Ultimate |
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Now that we know exactly what the test system is, we can move along to performance numbers.
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