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Our hardware platform has remained unchanged from previous video card reviews. To recap, here are the specifications again:

• Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester @ 2.25 GHz (250*9)
• DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR motherboard
• 2*512 MB OCZ PC4200 EL Platinum Edition @ 250 MHz, 2.5-3-3-8-1T
• Western Digital 1200JD SATA hard drive
• OCZ ModStream 520W power supply

The list of brave competitors is as follows:

• XFX GeForce 7800 GT 256 MB PCIe (400/1000 MHz)
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT 256 MB PCIe x2 (SLI, 400/1000 MHz)
• NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256 MB PCIe (430/1200 MHz)
• NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT 256 MB PCIe @ Ultra speeds (400/1100 MHz)
• ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition 256 MB PCIe (540/1180 MHz)

All previous NVIDIA cards were tested with ForceWare 77.62 drivers, with the exception of the new XFX contenders, which were tested with version 77.73. These drivers, as discussed, seem to be 77.72 drivers with 7800 GT definitions. Some quick preliminary testing revealed that there seems to be no performance difference between 77.72 and 77.73 drivers on all other GeForce 6800/7800 cards. NVIDIA informed us that there are no performance differences between 77.62 and 77.72 drivers merely bug fixes. As a result of this, performance between 77.62, 77.72, and 77.73 drivers remains identical, and therefore we are confident that our results are fair and comparable with one another. Other drivers used include nForce version 6.53 and Catalyst version 5.6 for the ATI Radeon X850 XT PE.

Finally, here is a listing of tests we performed:

• 3DMark 2005 Professional (Fill rate, vertex shader, pixel shader)
• Aquamark 3
• Doom 3
• Far Cry
• Halo
• Half-Life 2 (Video Stress Test)
• Jedi Knight 2
• Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory (Shader model v1.1)
• Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory (Shader model v3.0)
• Unreal Tournament 2004

Testing methodologies and settings used were discussed in detail before every chart in our GeForce 7800 GTX Preview. Rest assured, nothing has changed.