[section_title title=P3 : Testing Methodology ]
Testing Methodology :
We tried to keep all tests as fair as possible. In games, whenever possible, we tried using in game benchmarks. But not all games have that, so we had to recreate the same scene manually. Hence, the results might not be perfect, but they should give you a fairly good idea. These scenes might not be the most graphics intensive (no explosions, etc) as they are much harder to reproduce.
For this review,we have tested with 2 different driver suites, the catalyst 12.8 and the 12.11 Beta suite. To remove any possibility of bottlenecks, we have overclocked our 2500k to 4.5GHz and the RAM is overclocked as well. Below are the detailed test bench specifications :
Processor : Intel Core i5 2500k (Overclocked to 4.5GHz)
Motherboard : ASRock Z77E-ITX Motherboard
RAM : 8GB DDR3 RAM (@ 2133MHz ,10-10-10-26-1T) Samsung 30nm Green RAM
Graphics Card : AMD HD 7850 2GB DDR5 (with Catalyst 12.8 and 12.11 Beta)
PSU : Corsair 550VX
Cooling : SVG Tech HOC 40
Casing : Bitfenix Prodigy
Here is the list of games that we have used for our review:
- Battlefield 3
- Crysis 2 (with HD texture pack)
- Formula One 2012
- Mafia 2
- Just Cause 2
- Starcraft 2
- Farcry 3
If you guys would like to see more benchmarks, feel free to post them in our comments section.