Testing: Setup

In order to complete a thorough review of the FOXCONN GeForce 8800 GTS, it is imperative that the audience understand how each test was conducted and what factors influenced the results. Please not that benchmarks and test scores are always relative to the conditions and hardware present at the time of testing.

It should be noted that after testing with the GeForce 7900 GT using ForceWare driver v93.71, I utilized Driver Cleaner Pro to remove all trace of the driver prior to loading ForceWare v96.89 for the GeForce 8800 GTS.

Test System

• Motherboard: Abit AB9-Pro P965/ICH8R motherboard, BIOS v1.5
• Processor: Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo (Conroe) Processor operating at 2.4GHz
• HSF: Thermalright SI-128 CPU Cooler
• Memory: 2GB (1GB x2 modules) DDR2-800 Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4 RAM
• Video Card #1: XFX GeForce 7900 GT 470/1700 MHz with Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 5 Rev 3 (ForceWare v93.71)
• Video Card #2: FOXCONN GeForce 8800 GTS 500/1600 MHz (ForceWare v96.89)
• Power Supply Unit: Antec TP3-650 Rev. A2 TruePower Trio 650W PSU
• Hard Disk 1: Western Digital WD360GD 10,000 RPM SATA
• Optical Drive: Toshiba SH-S162L DVD R/W
• Enclosure: NZXT Adamas Aluminum Mid-Tower ATX Case
• Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP-2 with all updates as of 11/07/06
• Display: Dell E1905FP 19" Digital (DVI) LCD, 1280x1024 pixels Maximum Resolution

Benchmarks

• 3DMark06 SM 2.0 Test (4x Anti Aliasing & 16x Anisotropic Filtering)
• 3DMark06 HDR/SM 3.0 Test (Optimal Anisotropic Filtering)
• Company of Heroes v1.02 Performance Test (Maximum Settings: Shadow Quality High, AA Enabled, Texture Detail Ultra)
• F.E.A.R. v 1.08 Performance Test (Maximum Settings: 4x Anti Aliasing & 16x Anisotropic Filtering)
• Doom 3 v1.3: Timedemo Demo1 Benchmark (Ultra Quality Settings: 4x Anti Aliasing)
• Prey Demo: HOC/Guru3D Benchmark (Maximum Settings: 4x Anti Aliasing & 16x Anisotropic Filtering)

Testing Methodology

I will be testing and comparing the FOXCONN GeForce 8800 GTS against the XFX GeForce 7900 GT. Obviously, I would love to compare the new top-dog against the ATI X1950 XTX and the NVIDIA GeForce 7950GX2, but I don't own either of these cards, and you probably don't either. The FOXCONN GeForce 8800 GTS is now the second best video card available as of 11/08/06, and will demonstrate its power in all of the benchmarks mentioned above.

The synthetic benchmark tests in 3DMark06 will not be configured to run the default tests, primarily because doing so will factor in a battery of CPU tests into the final score. Since everything is relative and subjective in reviews, I choose to concentrate my efforts on benchmarking the video cards, and not skew results with my high-end processor. Every test was conducted at both 1024x768 and 1280x1024 resolutions, which are the two most widely used screen resolutions for 17" and 19" displays respectively. Each test shall be run after a system restart, and then the first test for each benchmark will be ignored. This process proved extremely important in the Doom 3 benchmark, as the first run served to cache the demo; subsequent tests performed twice as well as the first. Each test will be run in succession three times, except for F.E.A.R. and Company of Heroes (CoH) which were tested five times each.

Since all of these benchmarks represent different gaming engine technology and graphic rendering processes, I feel that this battery of tests will provide a diverse range of tests for you to gauge performance. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing there are no DirectX 10 games available, so DirectX 9 versions were used for all tests. But who really expects to have the DirectX 10 games available before DirectX 10 video cards were ever released? Moving on...

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