The test bed machine used was: 

• AMD Athlon 64 S939 3800+ @ 2.4ghz

• Gigabyte K8N-SLI

• 2x1GB PC3200 Kingston Value RAM @ 200mhz @ 3-3-3-8-1T

• Seagate 320GB 7200.10 SATAII

• LiteOn 16x DVD + - RW

• Enlight 350W PSU

At the time of testing, I was running a 350W power supply, and every time I booted the computer, I got “Windows has underclocked your card to prevent damage due to insufficient power”.

Pulling an impressive 25332 marks in 3DMark01 the card never dipped below 100 FPS. The WC is double that, but keep in mind that’s with a dual core processor with two graphics cards running in parallel. I think my card is doing ok.

3DMark05 tells a much similar story. Not a record breaker, but enough to keep up a consistent 50 FPS second on the GPU, the machine ground to a snails pace of 1-5 FPS on the CPU tests.

All this information is well and good. However, real world tests separate the show from the go.

Counter Strike Source is one of the most widely played games on the Internet for several reasons. Since its based on the Source engine it scales incredibly well, it will play on the lowest of low machines quite well as well as have lots of eye candy that can be enabled for high end machines. Of course its addictive nature also helps its popularity.

In the Video Stress Test in the main menu of CSS the 7950GT managed a staggering 146.77 FPS at max settings, 1280x1024 resolution with full shadowing and 6x AA and 16x AF.

FEAR is one of the most graphically demanding games available on the market. How does it fair on my system totally maxed out. Highest available settings on all options at 1280x960. Well, the results speak for themselves. There were no visible slow downs for the duration of the test. The smoke and dust hung in the air believably with bullet trails drawn accurately.

Conclusion

At the time of testing these were all the benchmarks I had access to. I believe, at its current pricing point of $599 (Harvey Norman Computers Superstore Bendigo) it is a tried and true investment to increase your gaming quality.

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