BFG 7600 GT OC and ATI X1800GTO

Gameplay Evaluations - How We Tested:

Please be aware that the way we test our video cards is not a like-for-like comparison, and it is not meant to be. We decided to concentrate on finding the "Best Playable" settings - this means that we're finding the best possible gaming experience delivered on each different configuration. There are no timedemos used in our evaluations - we're focusing on the real-world gaming experience, which is, ultimately what should determine your next video card purchase.

Rather than focusing on reporting the minimum and average frame rates for every configuration, we have decided to move the focus to resolution and settings. Thus, we are displaying our "Best Playable" resolutions and settings in a table that should be easier to understand than our previous format. If you take the logic that the higher the resolution and in game details, the faster the video card, you will not go far wrong.

We have also included a table of frame rates below the best-playable settings tables. These frame rates are recorded at the video card's best playable settings and should not be considered as an 'apples to apples' frame rate comparison, as they are far from that. Many readers have asked us to include frame rates, and we feel that this is the best compromise for the time being. We will look at improving this in future reviews and your feedback is more than welcome in the discussion thread.

NVIDIA System Setup

• BFG Tech GeForce 7600 GT OC 256MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 580/1450MHz;
  
• Leadtek PX6800 GS Extreme 256MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 485/1100MHz.

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ (operating at 2200MHz, 11x200MHz); ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16); 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS3200XL Pro (operating in dual channel at 200MHz with 2.0-3-3-7 1T timings); Western Digital Raptor 74GB, 10000RPM SATA 150 Hard disk drive; OCZ PowerStream 520W Power Supply; Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 standalone version 6.82 WHQL; NVIDIA Forceware version 84.21 WHQL.

ATI System Setup

• ATI Radeon X1800GTO 256MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 500/990MHz;
  
• ATI Radeon X850XT 256MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 520/1080MHz.

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ (operating at 2200MHz, 11x200MHz); ASUS A8R32-MVP (ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200); 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS3200XL Pro (operating in dual channel at 200MHz with 2.0-3-3-7 1T timings); Western Digital Raptor 74GB, 10000RPM SATA 150 Hard disk drive; OCZ PowerStream 520W Power Supply; Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; ATI Catalyst 6.3 WHQL driver.


We left all driver settings at their defaults unless otherwise specified, v-sync was disabled at all times.

We use the following abbreviations on our best-playable settings tables:

• QA AA - Quality Adaptive antialiasing (ATI Radeon X1000 series);
  
• PA AA - Performance Adaptive antialiasing (ATI Radeon X1000 series);
  
• HQ AF - High Quality Anisotropic Filtering (ATI Radeon X1000 series).
  
• TSS AA - Transparency SuperSampled antialiasing (NVIDIA GeForce 7 series);
  
• TMS AA - Transparency MultiSampled antialiasing (NVIDIA GeForce 7 series);
  
• HQ Driver - High Quality Driver Settings to remove noticeable texture shimmering in certain titles (NVIDIA);

We used the latest publicly available NVIDIA driver and the latest publicly available ATI driver, which we modified to support the X1800 GTO.