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:

SystemMSI K8T Neo
ProcessorAMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.2GHz
North bridgeK8T800
South bridgeVT8237
Chipset drivers4-in-1 v.4.51
ATA 5.1.2600.220
Memory size1GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory typeCorsair TwinX XMS3200LL DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
Hard driveSeagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150 
AudioCreative SoundBlaster Live!
OSMicrosoft Windows XP Professional
OS updatesService Pack 1, DirectX 9.0b

We used ATI's CATALYST 4.4 drivers on the Radeon card and ForceWare 60.72 beta 2 on the GeForce cards. One exception: at the request of FutureMark, we used NVIDIA's 52.16 drivers for all 3DMark benchmarking and image quality tests on the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra.

The test systems' Windows desktops were set at 1280x1024 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.