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 systems were configured like so:

System Biostar iDEQ 200P MSI K8T Neo
Processor AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 2.0GHz
North bridge nForce3 150 K8T800
South bridge VT8237
Chipset drivers ForceWare 3.13 4-in-1 v.4.51
ATA 5.1.2600.220
Memory size 512MB (2 DIMMs) 1GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type Kingmax DDR SDRAM at 400MHz Corsair TwinX XMS4000 DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
Hard drive Seagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100 Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150
Audio Integrated Creative SoundBlaster Live!
Graphics Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB with CATALYST 4.1 drivers
OS Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS updates Service Pack 1, DirectX 9.0b

AMD Cool'n'Quiet was disabled for all tests.

Thanks to Corsair for providing us with memory for our testing. If you're looking to tweak out your system to the max and maybe overclock it a little, Corsair's RAM is definitely worth considering.

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:

The tests and methods we employ are generally publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.