Working on Radeon 9600XT

So of course everyone has been asking for benchmarks of the Radeon 9600XT, and next week we'll be able to provide you with them. Right now we're in the early formulation stages of the review and I wanted to get some feedback from you all in terms of what you'd like to see included.

Keep in mind that we'll be using our new test suite of around 20 benchmarks, so we have to watch what we include in order for there to be enough time to physically publish this thing by next week.

The first question is resolution; since we're talking about cards in the $100 - $200 range and not the top of the line stuff, is testing only at 1024x768 ok? Frame rates at 1600x1200 with these cards aren't exactly playable, so I figured 10x7 tests should be fine. We'd also probably throw in AA/AF tests at the same res, which will also help stress the card.

The next question is what cards do we include? Here's what I'm planning on doing right now:

ATI Radeon 9600XT
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
ATI Radeon 9700
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600

I'd like to stick to 6 cards simply because of the plethora of benchmarks we're running on them (6 cards * 20 benchmarks * 2 tests per benchmark = 240 tests). Anything you'd like to see added? Removed? I can't guarantee that we'll get it in there but I'd like to hear your opinions.

Finally we have to ask what platform we should test on. For this to be simply a video card test we should test on the fastest platform available (Athlon 64 FX 51), however whenever we do something like that we usually get complaints that the system isn't realistic enough and we should test on a cheaper platform. Our reasoning for going with the highest performing CPU is to remove the CPU as a bottleneck and truly figure out which video card is the fastest, but there is still much to be said about using a more reasonably priced test bed. My inclination right now is to use the Athlon 64 FX as the test platform and do a CPU scaling comparison later, but if we get enough requests to switch platforms I will. I don't think including a second platform would be feasible for this review simply because of the short time period we have to get all the testing done.

As always, your comments are much appreciated and even more desired. So let me know :)

I haven't been getting much sleep lately so I'm thinking a nice 5 or 10 minute nap may be in order before lunch.

Enjoy the day folks, take care.