Our testing methods
As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. Tests were run at least twice, and the results were averaged.

Our test system was configured like so:

 System
Processor Athlon XP 'Thoroughbred' 2600+ 2.083GHz
Front-side bus333MHz (166MHz DDR)
MotherboardAsus A7N8X Deluxe
ChipsetNVIDIA nForce2
North bridgenForce2 SPP
South bridgenForce2 MCP-T
Chipset drivers2.03
Memory size512MB (2 DIMMs)
Memory typeCorsair XMS3200 PC2700 DDR SDRAM (333MHz)
SoundnForce2 APU
StorageMaxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X 7200RPM ATA/100 hard drive
OSMicrosoft Windows XP Professional
OS updatesService Pack 1, DirectX 9.0

The test system's Windows desktop was set at 1024x768 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.

We used Catalyst revision 7.84 drivers for the Radeon 9800 Pro, and ATI cards and Catalyst 3.1 (7.83) drivers for the 9700 Pro. We used NVIDIA's Detonator 42.68 drivers for the NVIDIA cards, which aren't yet publicly available (wink, wink), but include optimizations for 3DMark03.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.