Test Bench
Asus A7N8X-Deluxe: AMD Athlon 1700+ (12.5x166=2075MHz), 2x512MB Corsair PC4000 (3-3-3-6), HIS Excalibur 9600 Dual DVI, Seagate Barracuda 120GB, Windows XP SP1, ATI Catalyst 4.3 driver

Comparison hardware:
Albatron GeForce FX5600 Turbo (nVidia Detonator 56.64)

Test Software:
Unreal Tournament 2003
NHL 2004 Demo
Max Payne 2
Splinter Cell
Call of Duty

While testing all drivers were left at default settings, except for the AA/AF levels as required.

Unreal Tournament 2003

We used the [H]ard|OCP Unreal Tournament 2003 benchmarking scripts for testing. Tests were run at 0AA/0AF, 2AA/8AF, and 4AA/8AF for direct comparison. Tests were also run at the max AA/AF setting for each of the video cards to show performance when max image quality is enabled.

As you can see from the numbers the Albatron FX5600 Turbo seems to beat the HIS 9600 by quite a margin in most of the tests here. Once AA/AF were turned on the gap became closer, but the FX5600 was still ahead on the tests.

NHL 2004

We got the latest demo of NHL 2004 from EA and allowed the computer to play one period of Anaheim vs. New Jersey. Fraps was used to average out the frame rates.

Graphics in NHL 2004 seem to be pretty good. I was impressed at the quality of the crowd for the most part, with all of them having a fairly unique face and clothing. Performance wise, the table has turned slightly with the HIS 9600 on top this time. All the action seemed smooth, even at 1280x1024.

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