Test Notes:

Before we get onto our test setup, it's worth outlining some of the issues we've had during this test period, which resulted in our testing on Nvidia hardware being completed with two different drivers.

However, rather than re-running all of the tests on every configuration with the new driver, further delaying the publication of this article, we decided to run a selection of tests in each of the games internally. This was to check the performance differences between the two drivers and, in the games that we haven't re-tested with the newer driver, there were no discernible differences in performance.

Initially our testing on the GeForce 8800-series cards (minus the GeForce 8800 GT) started using the Forceware 163.75 beta driver, which was released on 10th October. We stuck to this driver for the GeForce 8800 GTX, GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB and GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB testing in three of the seven games we ended up evaluating; these were BioShock, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

Nvidia recommended running Forceware 169.01 for Crysis, so we upgraded that driver to run tests on that game. During our testing, we also found that there were small performance advances in World in Conflict, Team Fortress 2 and Company of Heroes. Forceware 169.01 was also the driver we used for testing the GeForce 8800 GT in both single card and SLI configurations. Despite this, some of the tests that we completed using this driver on a GeForce 8800 GT SLI configuration were a little anomalous.

Nvidia Test System:

• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 512MB -- operating at 600/1500/1800MHz using Forceware 169.01
  
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 512MB SLI -- operating at 600/1500/1800MHz using Forceware 169.01
  
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB -- operating at 575/1350/1800MHz using Forceware 163.75 & 169.01
  
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB SLI -- operating at 575/1350/1800MHz using Forceware 163.75 & 169.01
  
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB -- operating at 513/1200/1600MHz using Forceware 163.75 & 169.01
  
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB SLI -- operating at 513/1200/1600MHz using Forceware 163.75 & 169.01
  
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB -- operating at 513/1200/1600MHz using Forceware 163.75 & 169.01
  
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB SLI -- operating at 513/1200/1600MHz using Forceware 163.75 & 169.01

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (operating at 3.00GHz -- 9x333MHz); Asus Striker Extreme motherboard (nForce 680i SLI); 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS2-8500C5 (operating in dual channel at DDR2-800 with 4-4-4-12-1T timings); Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 200GB SATA hard drive; Enermax Galaxy DXX 1000W PSU; Windows Vista Ultimate x86; Nvidia nForce standalone drivers version 15.01 WHQL.

ATI Test System:

• ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB -- operating at 742/1650MHz using Catalyst 7.10 WHQL
  
• ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB CrossFire -- operating at 742/1650MHz using Catalyst 7.10 WHQL
  
• ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro 512MB -- operating at 600/1600MHz using Catalyst 7.10 WHQL

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (operating at 3.00GHz -- 9x333MHz); Asus Maximus Formula motherboard (Intel X38 Express); 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS2-8500C5 (operating in dual channel at DDR2-800 with 4-4-4-12-1T timings); Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 200GB SATA hard drive; Enermax Galaxy DXX 1000W PSU; Windows Vista Ultimate x86; Intel inf 8.3.0 WHQL.

Games Tested:

We used the following versions of the games listed to evaluate the performance of these video cards:

• World in Conflict, version 1.001 with DirectX 10
  
• BioShock, version 1.0 with DirectX 10
  
• Crysis Single Player Demo, with DirectX 10
  
• Team Fortress 2, October 26th Steam Update with DirectX 9.0
  
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, version 1.1.0
  
• Company of Heroes, version 1.7.1 with DirectX 10
  
• Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, version 1.004 with DirectX 10

A note about games we tried to include:

Over the course of our testing we attempted to add Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Call of Juarez to our suite, but they unfortunately had to be omitted. Episode Two was dropped after the Steam update on October 26th as, combined with Team Fortress 2, we lost around 450 individual results and in order to get this review out in a timely fashion, we could not return to retest everything we'd lost.

Call of Juarez on the other hand, we couldn't get to run on either of our test systems. This was thanks to the incredibly invasive StarForce copy protection found on the disc. We have a box of around 200 copies of the OEM version of the game in the bit-tech offices and we couldn't for the life of us get the game running - we were constantly greeted with "incorrect disc" errors, even despite changing DVD drives three times.

Hopefully in the future, we'll get a DRM-free version of Call of Juarez that we can install on our systems without issues. Invasive copy protection methods like this get in the way of legitimate users attempting to play the game they've purchased legally - the fact I've got around 200 legal copies of the game and couldn't get it running was quite simply laughable.