Testing:

For all of our testing and benchmarks we used the Catalyst 11.11 drivers. We did all of our testing on a system with a freshly installed version of Windows 7 Ultimate x64. All of the system drivers were the latest version and nothing unnecessary was running in the background.



The following components were used inside the test system:

» AMD Phenom 2 965 Black Edition
» 16 GB Crucial Ballistix DDR3 2000
» MSI 990FXA-GD80
» WD Silicon Edge 128 GB SSD
» WD 300 GB Raptor
» Lite-On DVD Burner
» Corsair H50 Cooler



For comparison purposes, the following cards were tested on the test system described above:

» Sapphire Radeon HD 6670
» Diamond Radeon HD 6770 XOC
» Gigabyte Geforce GTX 560 OC Edition
» EVGA GeForce GTX 560 SC
» Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic
» ASUS Radeon HD 6870 Direct CU

And here is a list of all the games, benchmarks, and tests to be considered in this review:

» Batman: Arkham Asylum
» Metro 2033
» Aliens vs Predator
» Left 4 Dead 2
» S.T.A.L.K.E.R. COP (Call of Pripyat)
» Battlefield Bad Company 2
» Futuremark 3DMark11
» Unigene Heaven
» Thermal Testing
» Power Consumption