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:

Processor AMD Athlon FX-51 2.2GHz
Motherboard MSI 9130
North bridge K8T800
South bridge VT8237
Chipset drivers 4-in-1 v.4.49
AGP 4.42
BIOS revision 1.0
Memory size 1GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type Infineon PC2700 registered ECC DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
Hard drive Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150
Audio VT8237/ALC201A
OS Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS updates Service Pack 1, DirectX 9.0b

We used ATI's CATALYST 3.8 drivers on the ATI cards, which is a full release driver that's been through Microsoft's WHQL certification. The NVIDIA 52.16 drivers are WHQL-certified and slated for public release today.

The test systems' Windows desktops were set at 1152x864 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.

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.