Test System.

Our “in house” test systems for this outing are mostly courteous of Intel EU and Supermicro although primarily workstation platforms they can turn the head of many gamers with their raw performance.  We set to work a platform that some end users may consider on pushing as an upgrade path firstly before taking the leap over to newer multimedia cards once all the fuss and pricing settles down.

Hardware Suppliers for the Review

Intel EU for the supply of the 3.2GHz Intel® Core™i7 CPU shown within the Test System.   Supermicro for the C7X58 mainboard. Crucial Memory  for the DDR3 Non-ECC Memory, thank you for pulling out the stops here.  Western Digital for the VelociRaptor Hard Disc.    Foxconn 9800GTX+ Cards in SLI Mode and the Sapphire 4870 TOXIC (which has to be said has been our favourite within this review) in Crossfire mode we have to thank both companies for providing the cards at such very short notice.   Finally Akasa for a majority peripherals required for this review.

With the support and help of all the companies involved.   It gives you the reader a new choice on upgrade paths that many of you look for here with the performance ratio’s each system has to provide. 

Systems Integrators, OEM’s and VAR’s should contact all companies directly for pricing and availability of all components. Members of the public should contact their respective suppliers requesting the parts directly.

Each set of tests has been applied on the clean system hard drives shown above to ensure that no residue drivers were left installed with all updates/patches applied.   A test/render has been completed many times over different periods of the system uptime.   Results that have been shown within this review are from the benchmarks first run.   Not an average of 3 runs as some places seem to think is right.   The results speak very clearly for themselves as a picture paints a thousand words; so there is no need for a running commentary of the results gained from each system.

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - Pictures
Page 3 - System Set-Up
Page 4 - Mainboard Baseline Results
Page 5 - PCMARK 2005 ADVANCED
Page 6 - Foxconn 9800GTX+ Single Card
Page 7 - Foxconn 9800GTX+ SLI
Page 8 - Sapphire 4870 TOXIC
Page 9 - Sapphire 4870 TOXIC CrossfireX™
Page 10 - SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 2GB
Page 11 - Conclusions