On to the test setup. This is as follows,

For this, I used a clean install and the latest BIOS for the motherboard, which is F8. Forceware 165.01, everything stock timings and speeds. I tested with 3 benchmarks. Futuremark’s 3D Marks 2003, 2005 and 2006. I also tested with 3 games. Flat Out 2, Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142. All up to date, using the latest patches.

 

All the games are tested on 2 settings. The first is application controlled settings, with everything set to max. The second is Anisotropic filtering 16x and Antialiasing at 16Qx. Also setting the Antialiasing Transparency to supersampling to and High Quality for the Texture filtering for both sets of gaming benchmarks.

 

The synthetic benchmarks were run on application controlled settings and all the drivers settings at default.

 

For Flat Out 2 on application controlled this means, max everything, as you can see from the picture below.

 

 

Results are as follows,

 

This makes the game look excellent, and also really playable. I like the results so far. A max of 100 FPS on 8x AA and 8x AF. I have included a screenshot.

 

 

It’s a lovely game, and a nice break from the more serious BF2142 and BF2 games. It looks amazing on the GTS, a game that could have been bundled as a show off title.

 

Now, can it handle 16x16?

 

 

Sure it can. though the FPS drop by half. You can see here the power of the GPU, as the results are closer together. Still 100% playable. Here is another ingame screenshot.

 

This is an extremely impressive shot. I took this on the replay of a game. This is using the game engine.

 

 

 

Next up,  Battlefield 2.