Technical Specifications

Before we move on to the actual benchmark results of our today’s testing participants, we have to sum up their technical specifications side by side for a more illustrative comparison. It will help us interpret the test results adequately.

Testbed and Methods

We tested our professional graphics cards in a workstation based on the today’s fastest quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor working at 3.2GHz. Our testbed also used an Intel X38 Express based mainboard and 4GB of DDr3 SDRAM.

All tests were performed in 64bit Windows XP Professional. Unfortunately, we couldn’t complete the tests in a more contemporary Windows Vista because some CAD/CAM applications are not completely compatible with it.

As we promised, we also included the results of a top single-chip gaming graphics accelerator – Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX. It is based on G92 GPU with 128 shader processors and is equipped with 512MB of memory. This card worked at its standard frequencies: 600MHz for the chip and 2000MHz for the memory.

So, we ended up using the following equipment to put together our test platforms:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (LGA775, 3.2GHz, 1600MHz FSB, 12MB L2, Penryn).
• Mainboard:  ASUS P5E3 Deluxe (LGA775, Intel X38, DDR3).
• Memory:  4096MB DDR3-1600 SDRAM (Corsair Dominator TW3X4G1800C8DF G, 2 x 2048MB, 8-8-8-24);
• Graphics cards:
  • ATI FireGL V8600;
  • ATI FireGL V7600;
  • ATI FireGL V5600;
  • ATI FireGL V3600;
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX;
  • NVIDIA Quadro FX 570;
  • NVIDIA Quadro FX 1700;
  • NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700.
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD.
• PSU: SilverStone SST-ST85ZF (850W).
• Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 245B.
• OS: Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2.
• Drivers:
  • AMD FireGL Driver Version 8.453.1 for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition;
  • NVIDIA Quadro Professional Driver Version 175.51;
  • NVIDIA Forceware Graphics Driver Version 175.16;
  • NVIDIA MAXtreme 2008 D3D Version 10.00.03.

The cards were tested in 1920x1200 resolution with Vsync disabled, unless stated otherwise.