Test System

EQS AB1S-RS690MKM (AMD 690G / SB600)
Abit AN-M2HD (GeForce 7050/ nForce 630a)

AMD Athlon FX-62
Asetek Vapochill LS
2 x 1 GB Patriot PC2-8500 @ DDR2-800 4-4-4-12
WD Raptor 74 GB
Samsung 80Gb SATA Drive
Benq 16x DVD Writer
Enermax Galaxy 850w PSU
Windows Vista Ultimate
Forceware 158.42 (Vista)
Catalyst 7.6 (Vista)
Photoshop CS 3
Sisoft Sandra
PCMark05
Easy CD-DA Extractor 10
F.E.A.R.
PowerDVD 7.3

The test system was built from scratch, a format of the hard drive was performed (NTFS) and then Vista was installed. Following the completion of the installation, the Nvidia/AMD drivers were installed. All Windows updates were applied. Next, the latest builds of the benchmarking tools were installed and finally, the hard drive was de-fragmented. For each test, the Nvidia/AMD 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.