X-bit labs

A Lil’ Bit: A Little Faster ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 – MSI R3870X2-T2D1G OC Review (page 6)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 04/30/2008 | 11:04 PM ]

Testbed and Methods

To test the gaming performance of MSI R3870X2-T2D1G OC we put together the following testbed:

• Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor (3.0GHz, FSB 1333MHz x 9);  
• DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G (ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset) for ATI Radeon graphics cards;
• Asus P5N32-E SLI mainboard (Nvidia nForce 680i SLI chipset) for Nvidia GeForce graphics cards;
• Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 (2x1GB, 1066MHz, 5-5-5-15, 2T);
• Maxtor MaXLine III 7B250S0 HDD (250GB, Serial ATA-150, 16MB buffer);
• Enermax Galaxy DXX EGX1000EWL 1000W power supply;
• Dell 3007WFP monitor (30", 2560x1600@60Hz max display resolution);
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit;
• ATI Catalyst 8.3 for ATI Radeon;
• Nvidia ForceWare 169.25 for Nvidia GeForce.

According to our testing methodology, the drivers were set up to provide the highest possible quality of texture filtering and to minimize the effect of software optimizations used by default by both: AMD/ATI and Nvidia. Also, to ensure maximum image quality, we enabled transparent texture filtering - Adaptive Anti-Aliasing/Multi-sampling for ATI Catalyst and Antialiasing – Transparency: Multisampling for Nvidia ForceWare. As a result, our ATI and Nvidia driver settings looked as follows:

ATI Catalyst:

• Catalyst A.I.: Standard
• Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality
• High Quality AF: On
• Wait for vertical refresh: Always Off
• Enable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: On/Quality
• Method: Multi-sampling
• Temporal Anti-Aliasing: Off
• Other settings: default

Nvidia ForceWare:

• Texture filtering - Quality: High quality
• Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization: Off
• Texture filtering – Anisotropic sample optimization: Off
• Vertical sync: Force off
• Antialiasing - Gamma correction: On
• Antialiasing - Transparency: Multisampling
• Other settings: default

For our tests we used the following games and synthetic benchmarks:

First-Person 3D Shooters

• Battlefield 2142
• Bioshock
• Call of Juarez
• Call of Duty 4
• Crysis
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
• Half-Life 2: Episode Two
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

Third-Person 3D Shooters

• Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
• Tomb Raider: Legend

RPG

• Hellgate: London
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Strategies

• Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
• World in Conflict

Synthetic Benchmarks

• Futuremark 3DMark05
• Futuremark 3DMark06

We selected the highest possible level of detail in each game using standard tools provided by the game itself from the gaming menu. The games configuration files weren’t modified in any way. The only exception was Enemy Territory: Quake Wars game where we disabled the built-in fps rate limitation locked at 30fps.

Games supporting DirectX 10 were tested in this particular mode. With a few exceptions, the tests were performed in the following resolutions: 1280x1024/960, 1600x1200 and 1920x1200. If the game didn’t support 16:10 display format, we set the last resolution to 1920x1440. We decided to postpone testing in 2560x1600 until we upgrade our testbeds and release the article on ATI CrossFireX and Nvidia Triple SLI.

We used “eye candy” mode everywhere, where it was possible without disabling the HDR/Shader Model 3.0/Shader Model 4.0. Namely, we ran the tests with enabled anisotropic filtering 16x as well as MSAA 4x antialiasing. We enabled them from the game’s menu. If this was not possible, we forced them using the appropriate driver settings of ATI Catalyst and Nvidia ForceWare drivers.

Performance was measured with the games’ own tools and the original demos were recorded if possible. Otherwise, the performance was measured manually with Fraps utility version 2.9.1. We measured not only the average speed, but also the minimum speed of the cards where possible.

Besides MSI R3870X2-T2D1G OC we have also included the results for the following graphics accelerators:

• ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 (2xRV670, 825/2500/1800MHz, 640sp, 32tmu, 32rop, 2x256-bit, 2x512MB GDDR3)
• ATI Radeon HD 3870 (RV670, 775/2250MHz, 320sp, 16tmu, 16rop, 256-bit, 512MB GDDR4)
• Gainward Bliss 8800 GTS 1024MB GS (G92, 730/1825/2100MHz, 128sp, 32tmu, 16rop, 256-bit, 1024MB GDDR3)
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB (G92, 650/1620/1940MHz, 128sp, 32tmu, 16rop, 256-bit, 512MB GDDR3)

We decided to also include the results of Gainward Bliss 8800 GTS 1024MB, which performs similar to Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX. Note though that the price of Gainward soution equipped with 1GB of memory starts at $349, so it is actually a direct competitor to MSI R3870X2-T2D1G OC from the pricing standpoint.