Aquamark3: Accurate Benchmarking for Old and New (DirectX9) Apps?

Test Setup

We replaced our previous test system based on an Athlon XP 2700+ and nForce2 with a faster system. We now use a Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz CPU (FSB800) running on a ASUS P4P800-Deluxe with an Intel i865PE chipset. The DDR400 CL-2 memory comes from Kingston.

Since we noticed big differences in image quality in the NVIDIA drivers, we tested several versions for the DirectX 9 cards. We used the v44.03 from Mai 2003, the actual released driver v45.23 and the new v51.75 beta version that was sent to the press by NVIDIA for the use with DirectX9 benchmark tests. For ATI we used the actual released Catalyst v3.7 as well as Catalyst v3.4 from Mai.