nVidia GeForce GTX 260 - Test Setup

Once again, I'm ignoring GPGPU performance for the time being and I'm going to concentrate on what is still most important - gaming! When more GPU accelerated software becomes available we'll come back to take another look at this hardware.

All our testing uses a variety of manual run throughs and automated timedemos but regardless of which test method is used we run through multiple times and ensure results are consistent. The average of our consistent runs is then reported to you. The test setup is as follows:

Common System Components

* Intel Core 2 Quad QX9770
* Asus P5E3
* 2GB Corsair TWIN3X2048-1333C9 DDR3
* 150GB Western Digital Raptor
* Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit

Drivers
* GTX260: Forceware 177.34
* Other nVidia cards: Forceware 175.16
* ATI: Catalyst 8.4

Cards Tested
* nVidia GeForce GTX 260
* nVidia GeForce GTX 280
* nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX
* HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870
* ATI HD 3870
* ATI HD 3870

Games Tested
* Crysis
* Race Driver: GRID
* Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
* Call of Duty 4
* Counter-Strike: Source