3DMark06 simulates DirectX 9.0c (Shader 3.0) games and it also puts HDR (High Dynamic Range) into the equation to calculate its final score. So it simulates the most high-end games available today. Since we were comparing high-end cards, we ran this program in higher resolutions, as performance difference between high-end video cards is more expressive on such resolutions. We chose three resolutions, 1600×1200, 1920×1440 and 2048×1536. The results you check below. All video cards listed below were running with the default clock rates defined by the chip manufacturer, except MSI GeForce 8800 GTS “OC”, which is the reviewed model with its default overclocked settings.
We added five new thermal compounds to our previous roundup, for a total of 55 different thermal compounds from major brands. We also tried another alternative thermal compound: Philadelphia Cream Cheese.