Performance comparisons were made using identical hardware in all cases. Our CPU was an Athlon 64 FX55, and the video system was an immensely powerful X1900XTX crossfire setup. Drives used were a WD Raptor 10,000rpm 74GB system drive and a Pioneer DVR-111 DVD Writer. We used Mushkin XP4000 Redline memory, and in all cases this was set to 2-3-3-8 1T settings. For comparison against the AT8 32X we pitted its RD480 predecessor, the AT8 Crossfire Edition and its Asus equivalent, the A8R32-MVP Deluxe. As mentioned the RD480 board features a single 16x PEG slot that is split into two 8x slots in Crossfire mode. We did not include an Nforce 4 based board because someone interested in running two Radeon cards is restricted to either Intel or ATi chipset motherboards at this time.
Half Life 2 Half Life 2 is one of the finest games ever created, and one of the few sequels to live up to its own hype. Its source engine is also one of the most demanding on graphics hardware, particularly when running the free Lost Coast HDR-enabled demo.
Quake 4 Quake 4 may not be the most original of titles, but it is certainly one of the best looking thanks to ID's superb Doom3 engine. It is one of the most intensive games around.
3DMark 2006 3DMark 2006 is the latest benchmarking demo from Futuremark, and this time there is a lot to like. It taxes the HDR and DX9 hardware to its limits and also takes into account CPU performance.
Sandra Memory Bandwidth Sisoft Sandra is a suite that most hardware enthusiasts will have installed on their machines. Whilst caution should be used when analysing results from synthetic benchmarks such as this, they can point out strengths and weaknesses when comparing similar hardware
Overall performance between the two chipsets is not large except when the going gets really tough, for example with the 3DMark 2006 test. This is probably the only test that manages to saturate the 8x lanes of the RD480, which is why we see such nice gains from the Xpress 3200 in this test. The Abit and Asus RD580 boards perform almost identically, with them trading the lead depending on the test.
