Our testing methods
Because the VT2DR256 is a dual DVI card, I would be remiss not to test it against something from the Matrox camp. Price-wise, the Millennium P750 is a more appropriate competitor. However, the P750's anemic 3D horsepower is really no match for even low-end graphics cards, so I'm invoking a mercy rule and using a Parhelia instead. Not that it will make much difference.

Since ATI partner HIS is apparently making dual DVI Radeon 9600 Pro cards, I've included a 9600 Pro as well. It wouldn't be much of a party without at least some representation from the red corner.

All tests were run three times, and their results were averaged, using the following test systems.

ProcessorAthlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz
Front-side busHT 16-bit/800MHz downstream
HT 16-bit/800MHz upstream
MotherboardAbit KV8-MAX3
North bridgeVIA K8T800
South bridgeVIA VT8237
Chipset driverHyperion 4.51
Memory size512MB (1 DIMM)
Memory typeCorsair XMS3500 PC3000 DDR SDRAM
GraphicsRadeon 9600 Pro 128MB FX5700-VT2DR256 256MBParhelia 128MB
Graphics driverCATALYST 4.3ForceWare 56.64Matrox 105.01.008
Storage

Maxtor 740X-6L 40GB 7200RPM ATA/133 hard drive

Operating SystemWindows XP Professional
Service Pack 1 and DirectX 9.0b

I tested all cards with antialiasing and anisotropic filtering disabled, and the ATI and NVIDIA cards with 4X antialiasing and 8X aniso. Since Parhelia isn't capable of 8X aniso, I've left it out of our AA/AF tests.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

The test systems' Windows desktop was set at 1024x768 in 32-bit color at a 75Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests. All of the 3D gaming tests used the high detail image quality settings.

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.