We tested the graphics cards on the same Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard that we previewed last October. The Bios has gone through a number of revisions from version 0604 at the time of the preview to the current version, 1102,and we were able to overclock our Intel Core i7 965 Extreme to 3.9GHz rather than the 3.72GHz we achieved last year. We used 3GB of DDR 3 memory running at 926MHz along with a WD Caviar Black 1TB hard drive and 32-bit Windows Vista Ultimate Edition.

We got the ball rolling with a Radeon HD 4870 X2 which has recently had a price cut to £370, making for a straight comparison with the GTX 285. The HD 4870 X2 performed admirably and beat an overclocked GTX 280 in every benchmark and was level-pegging with a single Asus GTX 285.

3DMark Vantage Results
1280 x 1024, no AA, no AF

Longer bars are better