Performance in synthetic tests

Testbed configuration:

• Intel Core2 Extreme QX9650 (3000 MHz) CPU
• Zotac 790i Ultra motherboard on NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra
• 2GB DDR3 SDRAM Corsair 2000MHz (CAS (tCL)=5, RAS to CAS delay (tRCD)=5, Row Precharge (tRP)=5, tRAS=15)
• WD Caviar SE WD1600JD 160GB SATA hard drive
• Tagan TG900-BZ 900W PSU
• Windows Vista 32bit SP1, DirectX 10.1
• Dell 3007WFP 30-inch monitor
• ATI CATALYST 8.5; NVIDIA Forceware 175.16 (9xxx series) and 177.34 (GTX 280)
• VSync disabled

Our synthetic benchmarks:

• D3D RightMark Beta 4 (1050) - Visit http://3d.rightmark.org for more information.
• D3D RightMark Pixel Shading 2 and D3D RightMark Pixel Shading 3 - Available here.
• RightMark3D 2.0 - Available here

RightMark3D 2.0 requires MS Visual Studio 2005 runtime as well as the latest update of DirectX runtime.

Graphics cards tested with synthetic benchmarks:

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 (GFGTX280)
• NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 (GF9800GX2)
• NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX (GF9800GTX)
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra (GF8800U)
• RADEON HD 3870 X2 (HD3870X2)
• RADEON HD 3870 (HD3870)

We selected them to compare with GeForce GTX 280 for the following reasons: GeForce 9800 GX2 is the fastest dual-GPU card of the previous generation; GeForce 9800 GTX is a single-GPU card, the old GeForce 8800 Ultra will help us see the difference in bandwidth and evaluate the effect of the architectural improvements. RADEON HD 3870 and HD 3870 X2 are presently the fastest single- and dual-GPU cards from AMD.