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• The Left 4 Dead benchmark doesn’t allow us to capture minimum frame rates, but we can still see a lot of useful performance information here. The old Source engine might have been updated for L4D, but it’s still not very demanding. That's a good thing, given the fast-paced visuals in this title. All of the cards offer playable performance at 1920x1200, and even the GeForce GTS 250 solutions are playable at 2650x1600, which is a higher resolution than what most users will likely choose. With 4x anti-aliasing (AA) and 16x anisotropic filtering (AF) added, will we see the results dramatically change? Frame rates have lowered a bit across the board to be sure, but strangely enough, it’s the higher resolution results that haven’t changed much. Now the GeForce GTX 260 cards are the only ones fast enough to handle 2560x1600, the GeForce GTS 250 cards are handling 1920x1200, and the GeForce 9600 GT cards struggle with 1680x1050.

• Test HardwareProcessorsIntel Core i7-920 Extreme (Bloomfield) 2.66 GHz, LGA 1366, 4.8 GT/s QPI, 8 MB L3, Power-savings enabledIntel Core i7-870 (Lynnfield) 2.93 GHz, LGA 1156, 8 MB L3, Power-savings enabledIntel Core i5-750 (Lynnfield) 2.66 GHz, LGA 1156, 8 MB L3, Power-savings enabledIntel Core 2 Quad Q9550S (Yorkfield) 2.83 GHz, LGA 775, 1,333 MHz FSB, 12 MB L2, Power-savings enabledAMD Phenom II X4 965 BE (Deneb) 3.4 GHz, Socket AM3, 4 GT/s HyperTransport, 6 MB L3, Power-savings enabledMotherboardsAsus P6T (LGA 1366) X58/ICH10R, BIOS 0707Gigabyte P55-UD6 (LGA 1156) P55, BIOS F3Intel DX48BT2 (LGA 775) X48/ICH10R, BIOS 1902Asus M4A79T Deluxe (AM3) 790FX/SB750, BIOS 1103MemoryCorsair 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) DDR3-1600 7-7-7-20 @ DDR3-1333Corsair 6 GB (3 x 2 GB) DDR3-1600 7-7-7-20 @ DDR3-1333Hard DriveIntel SSDSA2M160G2GC 160 GB SATA 3 Gb/sGraphicsSapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB x2BFG GeForce GTX 285 OCFU Edition 1GB x2Power Supply Cooler Master UCP 1100WSystem Software And DriversOperating SystemWindows 7 x64 RTMDirectX DirectX 11Platform DriverIntel INF Chipset Update Utility 9.1.1.1015Graphics DriverCatalyst 9.8GeForce 190.62 A few notes about our setup here: Most notably, we've shifted from Windows Vista to Windows 7 for testing. Let us know what you think about this in the comments section, but it was pretty clear that Vista was never a favorite, so we're hoping Windows 7 is a more popular environment in which to test. We can confirm that all of the games benchmarked here work in Windows 7. FS X did have occasional hiccups when loading a map, but restarting the app fixed the problem every time. It should also be noted that the GeForce GTX 285 OCFU Edition cards are clocked too aggressively for an SLI configuration; we had to manually turn the fan speed up in Nvidia's System Tools utility in order to keep them stable through testing. To be fair, we also had trouble with the Radeon HD 4870 X2s in CrossFire on Asus' P6T, where the top card doesn't get enough fresh air due to spacing issues. All power-saving options were left enabled so that Turbo Boost, EIST, and Cool'n'Quiet would function as intended in a production environment.  Benchmark ConfigurationBenchmarkSetttingsS.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky High Quality Settings, No AA / No AF, vsync off, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, DirectX 10 / DirectX 10.1 High Quality Settings, 4x AA / No AF, vsync off, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, DirectX 10 / DirectX 10.1 Resident Evil 5 Fixed Benchmark, No AA / No AF, vsync off, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, DirectX 10 Fixed Benchmark, 4x AA / No AF, vsync off, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, DirectX 10 Far Cry 2 Ultra High Quality Settings, No AA / No AF, vsync off, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, Steam Version, DirectX 10 Ultra High Quality Settings, 4x AA / No AF, vsync off, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, Steam Version, DirectX 10 Left 4 Dead High Quality Settings, No AA / No AF, vsync off, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, Tomshardware Demo, Steam Version High Quality Settings, 4x AA / 8x AF, vsync off, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, Tomshardware Demo, Steam Version Grand Theft Auto 4 Very High Quality Settings, No AA / Max AF, vsync off, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, In-Game Benchmark Crysis Very High Quality Settings, No AA / No AF, vsync off, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, DirectX 10, Patch 1.2.1, 64-bit executable Very High Quality Settings, 4x AA / No AF, vsync off, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, DirectX 10, Patch 1.2.1, 64-bit executable Flight Simulator X Ultra High Quality Settings, No AA / Trilinear Filtering, 20 fps target, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, DirectX 10 Ultra High Quality Settings, AA Enabled / AF Enabled, 20 fps target, 1680x1050 / 2560x1600, DirectX 10

• These Left 4 Dead results are close, but the Phenom II X3 710 seems to have a slight lead over its competitors, likely due to an optimal balance between threading and raw clock rate. Grand Theft Auto IV shows better results with more than two CPU cores, but the Phenom II X3 and Athlon II X4 are locked in a dead heat.