One thing I was eager to try my hands at with the 9800GX2 was Crysis. After all, this game really pushes the envelope in terms of graphics horsepower needed and the visual beauty of Pixel Shader 4.0 and Vertex Shader 4.0 effects. Unfortunately, those expecting to play this game at 1680x1050 with full settings will likely be disappointed. I want to comment on the map I use to FRAPS a card with. On most cards, the map drops down to low 20s fps on the 9800GX2 the map drops to 30fps which is ok but not what I expected from this card.

The second game I wanted to talk about was Unreal Tournament 3 which was released last year. This game has a lot of good points and is fun in my opinion. UT3 plays wonderfully on the 9800GX2 card, with framerates in excess of 100 fps in the highest intensity map we use for benchmarking, but it also is decently playable at 1680x1050 with 4x or 16x AA. Note that 16xQ AA is not playable in this game as the mode is hard on any card. Company of Heroes is the game included with the 9800GX2 from XFX. One thing that’s nice is that XFX includes the DirectX 10 Update CD to the game. The game played well all the way to 1680x1050 on the 9800GX2 with no slowdowns with any of the levels. DirectX 10 mode was playable throughout the game without anti-aliasing.