40 & 41 & 42. Doom 3 built on IDTECH4 engine is the next game to be tested. Unlike previous games it is extremely tough on the video card; no period correct GPU can ever hope to play it on max details; in fact no DirectX9 GPU could put up 60fps using maximum settings, not even at 640*480. It is single threaded only so using an Athlon 64 X2 does not deliver superior performance to an Athlon 64 4000.
It is the first game I know that allows AA to be set at 16X! Because we would be GPU-limited at such high levels of aliasing I limited the maximum AA level to 8X in all synthetic benchmarks and games. That means that we are CPU-limited - so GTX 285 can not fully stretch its legs at such "low level" of anti-aliasing.
A good pci-express implementation is mandatory of you want high frame-rates in Doom 3 at these settings with such heavy hitters as GTX 285- by now it should be clear that i am writing all this because i am going again to contradict all established knowledge!

For testing I used the HardwareOC benchmark tool for the first time! Here we go:
A. NFORCE4
B. K8T890

And now everyone: WHAAAT??? How is that even possible?
NVIDIA wipes the floor with VIA in Doom 3! Third game in and nforce4 managed to score already decisively in 2 games! nforce4' s performance until now has been outstanding! The only point of contention is the poor GUI performance in Tom2D.

I wonder why nforce4 system used just 2 GB RAM, doesn't it enable CR 1T ? VIA has 4GB RAM in Doom3. Also memory timings are different.

That is because I removed the Corsair XMS pro in order to install it in the AX8 and installed some "normal" Corsair modules. Originally I saved the HTML page with the results but forgot to capture the screenshot with irfan view. After I managed to acquire another GTX 285 - it seems people do not realize how useful is this card with late Windows Xp era games and always want some geforce 7900 something - I re-pasted it and let it run 3dmark 2006 overnight to check the temperature and stability.
Retested this morning in original configuration again before heading up for work:
Abit AN8 SLI +Athlon 64 X2 4800 + Corsair xms pro + gtx 285

Second GTX 285 in working order after some TLC; it seems they all follow reference design and come with the same GPU/shader/memory clocks: