Test Setup
We felt it best to include as many games as possible for our performance tests in order to get the best view of how these cards perform on both newer games and ones that have been around for a while. The games we used for our tests are Oblivion, Battlefield 2, Half-Life 2 Episode 1, Quake 4, Rise of Legends, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, and F.E.A.R. When possible, we ran the benchmarks at four resolutions, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200. F.E.A.R doesn't support 1280x1024, so we used 1280x960 instead, and Rise of Legends doesn't support resolutions lower than 1024x768.
Because some of these cards have only 128 MBs of memory, we ran tests at lower quality settings in each of the games for these cards, but we'll deal with these cards in the following "Lower Range Performance" section. We generally test with higher quality settings enabled because we find many gamers prefer to play games with graphics quality settings on high with "bells-and-whistles" like HDR effects, sacrificing their screen resolution to make up for the performance hit (especially given that a large number of gamers still use older monitors that can only display resolutions of up to 1280x1024 or 1600x1200). This isn't the case for all gamers, and many prefer higher resolutions and lower quality graphical settings; but for the purposes of this article we find this to be the best choice for testing.
Something to note is that many of these cards are clocked at the same reference speeds, so we will see several cards with identical numbers in our tests. Because we are dealing with so many cards, comparing performance between them all is somewhat daunting, but we hope to give the reader a good idea of how these cards rank in performance relative to each other for each of the games in the next sections.
This is the system we used for testing:
*Note that sound was disabled for testing. Testing was also performed in an open air environment rather than inside a case. This eliminated the need for a case fan, but it is not fully representative of how the various cards will run once placed inside a typical case. We will have a future article examining how the various silent cards perform inside a case, and depending on the case and cooling used overall temperatures may be lower or higher. As we stated in the introduction, we would advice some caution for those looking to build a fully silent computer. It is likely easier, cheaper, and more reliable to build a nearly-silent system by using a single low-RPM 120mm fan (perhaps with a voltage mod to further reduce fan speed) than to have an absolutely silent system that overheats under load.
We felt it best to include as many games as possible for our performance tests in order to get the best view of how these cards perform on both newer games and ones that have been around for a while. The games we used for our tests are Oblivion, Battlefield 2, Half-Life 2 Episode 1, Quake 4, Rise of Legends, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, and F.E.A.R. When possible, we ran the benchmarks at four resolutions, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200. F.E.A.R doesn't support 1280x1024, so we used 1280x960 instead, and Rise of Legends doesn't support resolutions lower than 1024x768.
Because some of these cards have only 128 MBs of memory, we ran tests at lower quality settings in each of the games for these cards, but we'll deal with these cards in the following "Lower Range Performance" section. We generally test with higher quality settings enabled because we find many gamers prefer to play games with graphics quality settings on high with "bells-and-whistles" like HDR effects, sacrificing their screen resolution to make up for the performance hit (especially given that a large number of gamers still use older monitors that can only display resolutions of up to 1280x1024 or 1600x1200). This isn't the case for all gamers, and many prefer higher resolutions and lower quality graphical settings; but for the purposes of this article we find this to be the best choice for testing.
Something to note is that many of these cards are clocked at the same reference speeds, so we will see several cards with identical numbers in our tests. Because we are dealing with so many cards, comparing performance between them all is somewhat daunting, but we hope to give the reader a good idea of how these cards rank in performance relative to each other for each of the games in the next sections.
This is the system we used for testing:
| Test Bed Components | |
| Motherboard: | NVIDIA nForce4 |
| Processor: | AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 2.6 GHz |
| Memory: | 2x1024MB OCZ 2-2-2-6 DDR-400 |
| Hard Drive: | Seagate 7200.7 120GB |
| Power Supply: | OCZ 600W PowerStream |
*Note that sound was disabled for testing. Testing was also performed in an open air environment rather than inside a case. This eliminated the need for a case fan, but it is not fully representative of how the various cards will run once placed inside a typical case. We will have a future article examining how the various silent cards perform inside a case, and depending on the case and cooling used overall temperatures may be lower or higher. As we stated in the introduction, we would advice some caution for those looking to build a fully silent computer. It is likely easier, cheaper, and more reliable to build a nearly-silent system by using a single low-RPM 120mm fan (perhaps with a voltage mod to further reduce fan speed) than to have an absolutely silent system that overheats under load.
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Leo V - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
...I can buy a high-end 7800GT substantially cheaper, buy a quiet Zalman 80mm low-rpm GPU cooler and run it undervolted at 7V. (In fact, I have done exactly that.) It will be cheaper, run WAY cooler, and be quieter, because I can get rid of a case fan that I would need with a "silent" card anyway.The idea of running a 50-100watt GPU with a silent cooler is dubious -- you still need a fan somewhere in your system, and the best place is closest to the hottest parts. Those parts are naturally the CPU and GPU.
Instead of "silent" (but not really) high-end cards, give us cards with heatpipes + large, slow quiet fans that can be undervolted.
Most importantly, ATI and NVIDIA please stop making 100watt monsters and follow Intel's and AMD's lead in improving power efficiency.
yyrkoon - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Sorry, I cant say I would agree that a fan would be quieter than a passive solution, I dont care if you could run it at 1V, and did :)Leo V - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
e.g. substantially cheaper than the holy grail "silent" version of the 7800GT.
And Kudos to the companies for the inventive products and to Anandtech for covering them.
hkBst - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
I've been waiting for a review of the passively cooled 7900GT from MSI for a while and I was expecting it to be in here. How can it not be?Look here: http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/vga/vga/pro...">http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/vga/vga/pro...
DerekWilson - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
We sent multiple requests for cards out to 16 different graphics card manufacturers. I'd say we did pretty well with more than half of those responding.We also requested that each manufacturer send us all their passively cooled cards. If something was left out it was either because the manufacturer decided not to send it, or we weren't able to get ahold of it before our submission deadline. We tested a lot of cards and have been working on this for quite some time, so silent cards that have come out recently or were not widely available until recently will not have been included.
JarredWalton - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Also, the MSI 7900GT Silent card is only available in Europe, and we did mention this in the review.haris - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Any chance you could retest the cards using a mid range system. It seems kind of silly to test an FX-55 with a $50-100 video card.nullpointerus - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Yet Another Silly Performance Retest Request (YAMPRR)Testing an FX-55 with a $50-100 video card is not silly; testing graphics cards' performance relative to each other requires removing all other factors including the CPU and RAM. Not everyone has a "mid-range" system, and those who do not have a "mid-range" system do not want the results skewed just to make your life easier. If you want specific performance advice for your particular system and games, why do you not join and post in the forums?
ss284 - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Well considering the majority of people who are looking for midrange graphics cards have a midrange system, his request is a perfectly good one. Unless Anandtech enjoys targeting the minority of its readers it should be doing more applicable performance testing. Then again, the FX-55 isnt exactly a cutting edge processor anymore. Just scale everything back 10% and you will have a rough estimate of what performance would be like on a mid range system.nullpointerus - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Yet Another Defense of a YAMPRR (YADY). *yawn*Well considering the majority of people who are looking for midrange graphics cards have a midrange system, his request is a perfectly good one.
No, it's a silly one. The point of the article is to compare graphics cards, not to make life easier for a certain group of people. People who follow this esoteric stuff religiously tend to distill the information into a more practical form. And as I said, the information he wanted is readily available in the forums. A couple of mouse clicks and a bit of typing is better than ignorantly saying the video card article is silly for not providing framerates similar to some mythical ideal of a mid-range system.
Unless Anandtech enjoys targeting the minority of its readers it should be doing more applicable performance testing.
How about you go where the information is normally provided instead of trying to turn all the front page articles into your personal system upgrade newsfeeds?
Could we just skip ahead to where everyone chimes in with their own ideas of what a mid-range system is. Does it use AMD or Intel? Single or multi-core? How much RAM? Which timings? Which system boards? Which components are overclocked?
I'll make a deal with you: get together a mid-range system that everyone will agree on, and then I will agree with you that we should conflate graphics cards testing with mid-range system testing. You see, ridding the comments section of silly YAMPRR and YADY posts will not benefit anyone if we still have to deal with all the senseless bickering about little details such as chipset revisions, features, and all the other inane griping I have seen posted when Anandtech picks out a CPU, overclocking, or RAM configuration as representative of X-range systems.