Test System

2x512mb of Corsair DDR2-1066 @ 5-5-5-15
2x512mb OCZ DDR2-800 @ 5-5-5-10

Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (3.46Ghz)
Asus P5WD2-E Premium
NEC Dual Layer DVD writer
535w Enermax AIO PSU
MSI Geforce 7900GT 256mb

Windows XP Pro +SP2
DirectX 9.0c (Feb 2006)
Forceware 84.43

PCmark 2005
Sisoft Sandra
Sonic MyDVD v6.1
FEAR
Photoshop CS2
ATI Avivo Converter
Quake 4
PowerDVD 6

The test system was built from scratch, a format of the hard drive was performed (NTFS) and then Windows XP was installed. Following the completion of the installation, the Nvidia drivers were installed. The only updates applied were SP2 and .NET Framework 1.1(latest service pack). Next, the latest builds of the benchmarking tools were installed and finally, the hard drive was de-fragmented. For each test, the Nvidia drivers were set to default quality/optimizations (unless otherwise stated).

Good Benchmarking Practice:

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