Playing games on the 7800GT is a joy. The recent issues with anisotropic filtering and “shimmering” on 7800 class cards have mostly been eliminated with the new 78.03 drivers in games like Battlefield 2. A few game demos have been released recently, I thought I would take them out for a spin. F.E.A.R, Starship Troopers, Age of Empires 3, and Serious Sam 2 are highly anticipated upcoming games.

Robert Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers many years ago. The book was about a futuristic military that fought a war against giant alien bugs. The movie in 1997 was a good adaptation of the book. The latest game based upon the book is a FPS (First Person Shooter). You take the role of a human marine to take out the alien bugs. The demo played wonderfully on the 7800GTs in both SLI and single card mode. I set the resolution to 1280x1024 with no issues

Age of Empires is one of the classic RTS (Real Time Strategy) games of all time. In the game you play the part of an explorer building up an empire, gathering resources fighting opposing empires. Age of Empires II was released a while back and continued the tradition. The third installment of Age of Empires just went gold and should be hitting store shelves within a month or so. With an all-new graphics engine and other improvements, AOE3 looks to be a fun game. The demo played without issue on either the single or the SLI 7800GTs from XFX.

Serious Sam was released a few years ago from a Croatian company called Croteam. The first game was a FPS with a cartoon type look. The Second Encounter was released in 2000 to more acclaim. Recently, Croteam announced the Serious Sam 2. This game got another face-lift with graphics much improved over the original game. The demo played at 1280x960 with high quality AA and 16x AF with little effort. This game looks to be a lot of fun when it’s released shortly.