Testing (continued):

PassMark Performance Test v6.1:

Performance Test v6.1 provides a whole suite of benchmarks that can be used to analyze the performance of all system components. We will focus on the gaming portion of the suite, which is refered to as the "3D Graphics Mark" test. Higher numbers are better for this unitless value.


Following the trend established by the 3DMark series, here we see that the scores are close and that the ASUS card holds the slight edge. Nothing too surprising here.

F.E.A.R. Extraction Point:

With the synthetic benchmarks out of the way, it is time to analyze some real world gaming performance. This game was analyzed using Fraps 2.9.4, a utility that allows you to monitor in-game performance of any 3D game, and I configured it to record the minimum, maximum, and average frame rate values over 180 second periods where game play was repeated as closely as possible on each card.


F.E.A.R. Extraction Point was run at 1280x960 and with the settings on high. As the chart above reveals, the two cards performed similarly, with the ASUS card holding a slight edge in terms of maximum and minimum values. But, of most interest to me is that the average frame rate value is over 18 fps better on the Sapphire card.

Company of Heroes - Opposing Fronts:

"Company of Heroes - Opposing Fronts" features a built in performance test and it was executed on both cards. The chart below shows the minimum, maximum, and average frame rate values achieved with the game set to run at 1280x1024, high settings, and DirectX 10 mode enabled.


Once again, the results are very close and both cards should offer fairly smooth game play at these settings. Overclocking the GPU on the Sapphire card allows it to take the lead in all three categories shown above, but it really wouldn't change anything so much that the user would notice.