Tom's Hardware Charts: 2009 Mainstream Graphics Update

New Tests With Graphics-Quality Slider Set At Low

In this set of results, we expand our graphics card charts with a supplementary comparison. This addition covers more mainstream graphics cards and compares how they fare when the graphics-quality slider is set a bit lower in a number of popular games.

The previous charts, which cover the latest and greatest GPUs with the graphics-quality settings set as high as possible, also get some new entries. With this update, our charts allow you to compare 68 different graphics chipsets, retail cards, and reference cards online.

You can now peruse precise performance results based on over 30 gaming benchmarks. The current basis for comparison will be updated monthly to include new graphics card reference models across all categories. In this new version, we cover additional benchmarks, results for when the graphics-quality slider is set at low and high in games, and more actual products.

In order to offer the best possible overview, we first measure performance for all graphics chips at standard clock rates. These charts are not, however, limited just to reference models from ATI and Nvidia. You can also compare results for off-the-shelf retail products, including standard offerings that match reference specs, plus cards with extra RAM, overclocked memory and GPUs, additional display connectivity, and other unique features.

This comprehensive approach lets us track the market more closely, because many vendors alter performance, cooling, and card designs in their commercial offerings.

Here are the links to our graphics charts, so you can investigate our findings or compare graphics cards to one another:

• Charts for High Settings
• Charts for Mainstream Settings

The benchmark suite that we're using draws from a broad palette of different games and 3D engines. Our goal is to create a workable mix of real-time strategy (RTS) games, simulations, role-playing games (RPGs), and 3D shooters, and to make sure we cover all of the most important 3D engines in our tests, including the Gamebryo, Source, and Unreal 3 engines. For OpenGL benchmarks, we were only able to find a new game from id Software after we had already completed our tests.