Test System

Intel Core2 QX9770
Intel Core2 QX9650
Intel Core2 QX6850
Intel Core2 QX6700
Asus Maximus Extreme
Asus Maximus Formula
2x Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 256Mb
OCZ DDR3-1800 7-7-7-20-1T
Supertalent DDR2 1066 4-5-4-15-1T
Akasa 1000w PSU
LG GBW-H10N Blu-Ray Writer
Xbox 360 HD-DVD Drive
Arctic Cooling MX-2 Paste
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Windows Vista Ultimate
Catalyst 7.11
DirectX 9.0c/DirextX10
CPU-Z 1.41
Sisoft Sandra
Photoshop CS3
PCMark Vantage
Lost Planet
World in Conflict
PowerDVD 7.3
Easy CD-DA Converter
ConvertXtoDVD

The test system was built from scratch, a format of the hard drive was performed (NTFS) and then Windows Vista was installed. Following the completion of the installation, the chipset, video and sound drivers were installed. All windows updates were then installed as were the latest builds of the benchmarking tools. Finally, the hard drive was de-fragmented. For each test, the video drivers were set to default quality/optimizations (unless otherwise stated).

Good Benchmarking Practice:

Where possible, each benchmark was performed 3 times and the median result for each resolution/setting is shown in the tables that will follow. All applications had their latest patches applied and all hardware features the latest BIOS/Firmware.