The Quest for playable framerates...

We then went in search of more playable frame rates with Ultra terrain enabled - the first thing to do was to remove anti-aliasing from the equation...



Here we saw just about playable frame rates from the BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTS OC 640MB with both 0xAA and 2xAA enabled, but the other cards were still rooted below the 25fps barrier and gameplay felt a little jerky, subjectively speaking (since FRAPS doesn't work under DirectX 10 yet).

While performance is neck and neck between the HD 2900 XT and the stock-clocked GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB card when anti-aliasing is disabled, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT really took a hit with 2xAA enabled. It looks like this game is making use of hardware-assisted MSAA resolves, which currently aren't working on R600.

We continued our quest for playable frame rates... ideally, we'd like to see 30fps - to 1680x1050 it is!




Finally, we've found a resolution where all three cards can maintain playable frame rates with both DirectX 10 shaders and Ultra terrain detail enabled. With 0xAA, all three cards delivered decent enough frame rates to enjoy the game, but again when anti-aliasing was enabled, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT's performance just disintegrated.

Both GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB cards managed respectable framerates at 1680x1050 4xAA 16xAF with Ultra terrain detail enabled, although we'd probably drop to 2xAA on the standard clocked 8800 GTS 640 for comfort reasons.