System Configuration, Installation, and Performance Testing
Testing Setup
Testing Hardware
- Gigabyte GA-Z170 Gaming 7 Motherboard
- Intel Core i7 6700K Processor
- Kingston HyperX Fury 16GB 2666MHz DDR4 Memory
- Patriot Ignite 3K 960GB Solid State Drive
- Custom Water Cooling
- Spotswood Small Tech Bench
- XFX PRO850W XXX Edition 850w Silver Power Supply
Software
- Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit
- Geeks3D – Furmark
- TechPowerUp – GPU-Z
- CPUID – HWMonitor
Synthetic BenchMarks
- Futuremark – 3DMark (DX11)
- Maxon – Cinebench R15 (OpenGL)
- Unigine – Heaven (DX11)
Game BenchMarks
- 2K Games – Bioshock: Infinite (DX11)
- Codemasters – Dirt 3(DX11)
- Rockstar – Grand Theft Auto: V (DX11)
- Deep Silver – Metro: Last Light(DX11)
- SQUARE ENIX, Eidos Interactive – Thief (DX11 and Mantle)
- SQUARE ENIX, Eidos Interactive – Tomb Raider(DX11)
Drivers
- Catalyst Omega (15.2.1) WHQL
Testing Environment
Performance testing consists two sets of tests, synthetic benchmarks and actual game benchmarks. Between the two synthetic benchmarks and five game benchmarks; we are able to test OpenGL, DirectX 9.0C, DirectX 11, and Mantle application programming interface (API) environments. Synthetic benchmarks are run at their default settings. For gaming benchmarks; 1920×1080, 2560 x 1440, and 3840 x 2160 resolutions are used with more demanding detail settings. This is the test where higher price range cards will typically perform well.
Games are chosen using four criteria: 1) Each game must be a well-known title. 2) Each game must have its own built-in benchmark. 3) Each game must be on a game engine that is different from the other games or utilize its game engine in a way that is unique from the other games used. 4) Each game must be free of continuous patch updates, to ensure a consistent environment for future graphics card testing.
Mechanical drives are eliminated in the test system, to alleviate any I/O-related bottlenecks. All testing was done with an Intel i7 6700K processor clocked at 4.5 GHz.
Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit is chosen as the operating system, due to it being the most common operating system currently in use. Only the most current non-beta release drivers are used for testing, unless specifically stated otherwise.
Synthetic testing is up first.
