Posted: August 7th, 2002
Written by: Justin "The Sheriff" Woods

Benchmarking Intro

First, I see a lot of hype associated with having the fastest benchmarks regardless of any attention being given to what this card was really designed for, which is high resolution, anti-aliased gaming and graphics. While this is useful, and trust me I was extremely excited to see very high numbers with the card running at the stock core and memory timings, I don't think the person spending 400 bucks on this card is going to play anything at a resolution lower than 1280x1024x32. I certainly wouldn't. Therefore, I decided not to benchmark the card at a lower resolutions, (except Q3 Bench for giggles), all benchmarking was done with Quincuxx ™ or higher FSAA (Full Screen Anti-Aliasing). Second, I also decided to forgo installing a brand new copy of Windows 2000. It seems to me that the average PC enthusiast, even you crazy modders would rather get right to fraggin' than wait for Windows to install, then the service packs, not to mention the 20 gigs of games and their required patches, savegames, and anything else you need to get anything done with any efficiency. That isn't how you play or work, so that isn't the way I benchmarked this card. Consider that this is a review of the Gainward card, not the chipset, though that is vital. , in my opinion, "real world" performance testing isn't done on an empty hard drive or a freshly installed OS devoid of applications and virus protection and a huge registry. It is done on a PC which gets a lot of use, is filled with 2 gigs of Mp3s, 20 gigs of games (the reason you buy this card anyway), and all the applications you need on a daily basis. You may disagree, but I think you'll turn to the dark side when you see the numbers, (Hey, where did all you hardcore tweakers go, I got cool stuff coming up, come back…) Third, though I could have tested the card on a much faster system, I chose not to. Nobody I know, except a few people have had the need or cash to buy a Pentium 4 running at 2.53 Ghz. There simply isn't a need (shudder to think) for all that horsepower when today's games are being released on 2 year-old spruced-up game engines. I mean, don't get me wrong, when I can afford it, I will own the fastest system in town. I just feel it does more justice to you as a reader, and to the card to use a semi-average PC setup, what does this mean? It means I am using a PC that is dead in the middle of the current offerings, (with a few exceptions). OK, now that I got that out, lets get down to brass tacks, and put this card through its paces. I think you will be impressed with the numbers this card pulls.

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