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3DMark 2005

3DMark 2005 is one of two synthetic tests in our series of benchmarks. It is an extremely heavy user and abuser of the latest Direct3D technologies. The scores 3DMark gives are really only useful when comparing theoretical performance between two cards - they may or may not necessarily be representative of "real-world" performance.

Here were compare fill rate, pixel shader performance, and vertex shader performance:

Gigabyte can stand strong beside their claims that the 3D1 performs better than an X850, at least in 3DMark 2005. In the fill rate test, the 3D1 bests the X850 by 200 points in single-texturing, though falls behind about 550 points in multi-texturing. Shader performance is another matter: The 3D1 screams past the competition in the pixel shader tests, beating the X850 by 34 FPS, and by 2 FPS and 8 FPS in the complex and simple vertex shader tests, respectively. The 6800 GT and 6600 GT take 3rd and 4th place in all tests.

Aquamark

Aquamark is the second synthetic benchmark in our series of benchmarks. We ran two sets of benchmarks at resolutions of 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200, with one set utilizing trilinear filtering and the other 4x anti-aliasing/8x anisotropic filtering.

The 3D1 manages to keep hot on the X850's trail in the non-AA/AF benchmarks, keeping up with it at all resolutions. When AA/AF are enabled, it falls behind the X850 an average of 5 FPS. The rest of the competition lags behind, with the single 6600 GT taking last place at almost half the performance.