We are using 3DMark 05 and Aquamark3 to compare the 7600 GT with an ATI Radeon X1600XT, marketed as ATI’s contender in the budget gamer market. Now, Futuremark’s 3DMark has come under a lot of fire in recent years due to companies “tweaking” driver versions specifically for 3DMark, or for Futuremark themselves fiddling with the way drivers behave. There are also some people who feel that it is a non-real-world representation, and refuse to include it in their reviews. While I do see their logic and respect their position, I still think the program has its place, and that when not used to simply try to get the highest score possible, it is an excellent technology and capability demonstrator. For our test system we used:
Test Platform
- Motherboard – Asus A8N nForce4 SLI
- Processor – Athlon 64 X2 3800+
- Memory – Corsair TWINX 2GB DDR400
- Soundcard – Soundblaster X-fi Platinum
- Operating System – Windows XP SP2
- Nvidia drivers – ForceWare 84.15
- ATI drivers – Catalyst 6.7
*all drivers and benchmark settings were left to default
Cutting to the chase, here were the final results:
| Card | 3DMark 05 | Aquamark3 |
| EVGA GeForce 7600GT | 13075 | 73160 |
| PowerColor X1600XT | 7092 | 48486 |
