Testing

Testing graphics cards is done by putting the GPU through a series of synthetic and real world gaming benchmarks. Some of the benchmarks were run at varying resolutions and with varied levels of Anti Aliasing(AA) and Anistropic Filtering (AF). All of these tests are run through three times before taking the average of these scores.

The tests and their settings they were run at were as follows:

3Dmark0X

1. All 3Dmark tests were run at default settings.

Half Life 2

1. All settings at maximum with no AA or AF.
2. All settings at max with 6xAA and 16xAF. Both at 1280*1024.

X3 Reunion

1. Settings at "default".
2. Full detail with 4xAA and 16xAF at 1280*1024 (the card wouldn't allow our usual 6xAA).

FEAR

1. Both main settings at maximum.
2. Both settings at max with resolution at 1600*1200.

Lost Planet

1. All settings at full, no AA or AF, HDR at "low", 1280*720.
2. All settings at full, 16xAA, 16xAF, HDR at "high", 1280*720
3. Same as 2, 1600*1200.

The PC used for testing this GPU was our new x38 setup:

The drivers used were the latest - at the time of testing - from the nVidia site: 167.31.

In the results section, this card will be compared to itself under an overclocked state.

Overclocking

Using ATItool I was able to overclock the Gainward card from it's stock of 625mhz on the core and 900mhz on the memory to 725 and 1025. This is a pretty good overclock for a card already quite a bit above the referance frequencies. However, it is only our 2nd best overclocking 8600GT as the Vvikoo rendition managed to reach 725/1050. The Gainward will have to settle for the silver medal there.