The GeForce 8800 GTX certainly runs the game faster than any of the other cards, but it's far more expensive. What's interesting is just how close the 8800 GT is-even at the currently inflated "hard to find for $300" price, it's way better bang for the buck. ATI isn't far behind with the Radeon HD 3870, which is a bit less expensive and a bit slower, though they have some driver work to do before the cards perform up to their potential. For a sub-$200 card, the 256MB Radeon HD 3850 doesn't do half bad, though you'll probably want to drop resolution or detail levels if you're using that card.

It's a bit disappointing that Epic Games has not made explicit anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering settings available. Certainly modern graphics cards are somehow capable of providing AA in the game, as they are working to enable it in their driver controls. Putting that control in the game, even if just for those cards that support it, would certainly be a benefit to gamers. With the frame rates we're seeing, we feel certain that those with SLI or Crossfire setups could enable AA and AF, and even single cards released in the next half year would be able to handle it.