CPU:	AMD Athlon64 3500+ (Winchester) CPU
Memory:	2 x 512MB Corsair DDR400 Memory Module
Motherboard:	Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI
Optical/Hard Drives:	Western Digital 7200RMB 80GB SATA, Generic DVD-ROM
Monitor:	LG 19" Monitor
Operating System:	Windows XP Professional SP2
Motherboard Drivers:	nVidia nForce 6.31 (beta)
VGA Drivers:	nVidia Forceware 71.84, ATI Catalyst 5.2

Our Corsair memory works very well at DDR400 speeds with SPD values of 2.0-2-2-5 which is what was used to benchmark all cards and applications. The new Forceware 71.84 drivers have profiles for each of the games we tested and before benching a game, their profile was selected from the control panel. For comparison, we chose the reference nVidia 6800Ultra cards in single and SLI modes, the ASUS 6800GT card in single mode as well as the HIS x850XT graphics card. The following games were used for benchmarking at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 resolutions with no AA/AF, 2X AA and 8X AF as well as 4X AA and 16X AF modes.

Doom 3:	Built-in timedemo 1 ran twice and averaged results
Far Cry:	HardwareOC Archive and Volcano demoes from Far Cry Benchmaking Utility
Half Life 2:	Guru3D demo05 and Demo06 from Half Life 2 Benchmarking Utility
UT 2004:	Custom demo based on the Ice Tomb Map
Chronicels of Riddick	Timedemo the intro sequence

While the games mentioned above are the same that we always use, we have now switched to using the most demanding demos from our experience- ones that put more pressure on the GPU than the CPU and that show a reasonable drop in performance with resolution and image quality enhancements. Do keep in mind that there may only be certain parts of the above mentioned games that stress your video card as per the demos we’ve used and in general you might get better frame rates. If you would like for us to add any additional benchmarking software, please email us at suggestions@