This review is also available in German.




While Sanjin was busy checking out the performance of the new GTX 480 in Windows 7, some people like me were more interested in the performance differences between Windows XP in DX9 and Windows 7 with DX10/ DX11. Of course power consumption is also very important, especially in Europe where energy prices are high. One of the problems between AMD and Nvidia is the impossibility to compare higher Anti-Aliasing modes, because only Multi-Sampling between 2x and 8x are comparable and we have to stick with it.


Testbed:

Motherboard:
MSI P55-GD65 (provided by MSI)
Intel P55

CPU:
Intel Core i5 750  (provided by Intel) overclocked to 4.00GHz

CPU-Cooler:
Scythe Grand Kama Cross (provided by Scythe)

Memory:
G.Skill 4GB Kit PC3-12800 (provided by G.Skill)
1600MHz CL8-8-8-24 CR1T 1.40V

Graphics Cards:
MSI R4850-2D1G-OC (provided by MSI)
XFX Radeon HD5850 1GB (provided by XFX)
Nvidia GTX480 (provided by Nvidia)

Power supply:
OCZ Fatal1ty 700W (provided by OCZ)

Hard disk:
Samsung F1 1000GB RAID-Edition (provided by Ditech)

Case:
Cooler Master Stacker 831 Lite (provided by Cooler Master)

OS:
Windows XP SP3, updates March 31st, 2010
HD4850/HD5850: AMD ATI Catalyst 10.3
GTX480: Nvidia 197.15
Windows 7 64bit, updates April 6th, 2010
HD4850/HD580: AMD ATI Catalyst 10.3b
GTX480: Nvidia 197.25