Digital-Daily : Video : vgapcie_roundup_q306

Print version

A Roundup of 45 PCI-E video cards, Q'3 2006

Author: Andrey Kuzin Date: 04.08.2006

- Contents -Test prerequisitesSynthetics - PCMark, 3DMark, GLExpressHalf Life 2, Far Cry, Comanche HALO, DOOM 3. Final words

Two years have passed since the start of first PCI-Express x16 video cards at Computex 2004. At that moment, merely six models were available to users - see our review PCI-E VGA Roundup 2004, but a year after there were already 23 solutions like these - see the review PCI-E VGA Roundup 2005 Q2. Today, one more year afterwards, we are reviewing twice as more PCI-Express x16 video cards.

Our today's tests were not run for the purpose of direct recommendations on selection and purchase of a video card. By now, the two leaders of the 3D market have already released the third generation of PCI-E graphic chips for al the three segments, and the number of "canonical", i.e. reference solutions alone have approached to 50. The assortment of whatever unheard-of suffixes - GS, GTO, XL, XTX - has been expanded essentially, and even not every specialist will immediately recall what follows what in the lines of both companies, and which performance level matches to which performance level.

The purpose of the presented graph is to give an approximate idea of the general situation, on the positioning of a topical video card of yours in the general line of all the existing PCI-E solutions. And of course the other goal is to help you make up your mind as to the necessity and expediency of whatever upgrade, thus to of you "trade bad for worse" as a result of another hasty "fork-out".

A few key notes prior to reviewing the graphs

Of the whole variety of "non-traditional" solutions, we took only SUS GeForce 7800 GTX Top 256 MB as a truly "overclocked" version of GeForce 7800 GTX. It's not frequent these days when manufacturers please us with official overclocking of cards for the top-end sector, and we were really amazed when this card was released.

Currently, there is no such a universal chipset which would offer simultaneous support for both SLI and CrossFire. The reason is solely related to marketing, and until these artificial barriers are abandoned, we won't present a direct test of these technologies on the graphs. To be more precise, the CrossFire mode on our test configuration based on the motherboard ASUS P5WD2-E Premium (i975X) is there, and we were even able to read the results for the upper combination of CrossFire, but ATI CrossFire master cards are still unavailable in wide retail either in Taiwan or Moscow. Therefore, the urgency for this solution is almost zero.

The latest topical flagship, NVIDIA's "sandwich" card 7950GX2, at first persistently refused to run, but update with the motherboard's BIOS of most recent version 0601 did save the situation. The card is not a simple one, and before making up your mind to buy it, you'd better study the compatibility page for motherboard on NVIDIA's web site.

The video card S3 Chrome S27 wouldn't run on our test setup. We did not include the card to the list of cards to be tested until the causes are found out, but admit it, it would be really interesting to look at its ranking among other solutions. Let's hope that by the next roundup this issue will be settled.

We used rather aggressive setting just in order to produce more relevant results for video cards of the top-end sector. Under soft settings, we are unlikely to see any difference between today's hi-end and mid-end solutions. So, you don't have to draw your attention to the complete unfitness of inexpensive video cards for games - these are merely tests and no more than that. Having lowered the bar of resolutions, effects, antialiasing and anisotropic filtering, we can get by even with these resolutions.

We do welcome sound criticism of this material on our forum and would be willing to listen your suggestions and ideas with appreciation.

Test setup

A full-featured test of today's top-end video cards, let alone the CrossFire mode and the doubled GeForce 7950GX2 requires a most top-level powerful CPU of all the available. To start with, we had to conduct a curious experiment for detect such a specimen.

Of course, with the start of mass sales of most recent desktop CPUs based on the Conroe core - Intel Core 2 Extreme and Intel Core 2 Duo - the leadership will certainly be with absolutely different chips rather than those which took part in our tests. However, if we don't escape from the reality, for now let's target what is there and is really available.

Clearly, the major competition hostilities in the line by Intel are expected to go on between P4 3.73 Extreme Edition and P4 670 Prescott 3.8 GHz (support for two cores is still poorly implemented in the gaming sector of applications). Nevertheless, we included the 2-core P4 D820 (2.8 GHz, SmithField core) into the tests. And of course, to observe the so-called "justice" we took the "folk" CPU Celeron D 331 2.66 GHz.

Here are the detailed specifications of all the four CPUs used:

Processor	Logo	HT	EM64T	L2 cache	FSB	2 cores	Price
P4 3.73 GHz Extreme Edition		+	+	2 MB	1066 MHz	-	$1078
P4 670 Prescott 3.8 GHz		+	+	2 MB	800 MHz	-	$640
P4 D820 SmithField 2.8 GHz		-	+	2x1 MB	800 MHz	+	$160
Celeron D 331 2.66 MHz		-	+	256 K	533 MHz	-	$57

These are brief specifications of the video cards to take part in today's tests:

Next

	Content:
	Test prerequisites Synthetics - PCMark, 3DMark, GLExpress Half Life 2, Far Cry, Comanche HALO, DOOM 3. Final words

Top Stories:

	MoBo: ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution and MSI P45D3 Platinum ASUS Rampage Formula (Intel X48) XFX GTX 280 XXX and MSI HD 4870: not only overclocking Jetway HA03 Ultra (AMD 790X) ECS GF8200A (NVIDIA GeForce 8200) with integrated graphics MSI P45 Platinum and ASUS P5Q Deluxe (Intel P45) ECS P45T-A (Intel P45)				VGA Card: Radeon HD4870 CrossFire vs. GeForce GTX 280: quantity vs. quality ASUS EAH3850 X2: a metal-framed exclusive Radeon HD4870 - a new king in the top-middle class NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 – fast and hot Gainward BLISS 9600GSO 768 Mb: does much video memory make much sense? Tests of flagship video cards in 1680x1050, 1920x1200, and 2048x1536 ASUS HD4850 - first tests of the latest GPU AMD RV770				CPU & Memory: CPU Intel Atom 230 (Diamondville) Chaintech Apogee GT DDR3 1600 CPU Intel E7200 (Wolfdale) Memory (RAM): spring 2008 Memory (RAM): early 2008 AMD Spider: Phenom processors, 7-Series chipsets, etc. Intel QX9650 (Penryn): first tests