Now let's get to the fun part - performance results! Here is the system we used for testing:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 (Reviewed here)
Memory: 2 GB OCZ PC2 6400 SOE Urban Elite 3-4-4-15 (Reviewed here)
Audio: Disabled
Hard Drive: WD Raptor 36GB 10K RPM SATA
OS: Windows XP Professional 32 bit, SP2, DirectX 9.0c (August 2006 Release)
nvidia Driver: ForceWare 93.71
ATI Driver: Catalyst 6.11

Thanks, as always, to Thermaltake for providing us with the power supply for all our testing. We're using their modular ToughPower 750W now, and it hasn't skipped a beat.

Our benchmarking is real simple: Try to show the average framerate in the latest games, using as high video quality as possible. We aren't going to tell you what is the best framerate to aim for (although I'd suggest to look for 60 fps). From these results, you can decide what resolution to use as well.

The game's built-in benchmarking utility was used to test performance. CPU was set to "Medium"

1280x1024 seems to be the sweet spot for this price range, when full filtering is enabled. Foxconn's 7950 GT almost manages a full 1600x1200 res, and with some tweaking, that res will certainly be playable.

Next Page: (Half Life 2)

Page 1: Introduction Page 2: The Specs Page 3: The Test; F.E.A.R. Page 4: Half Life 2 Page 5: Quake 4 Page 6: Oblivion; 3D Mark 06 Page 7: Warranty; Conclusion