Overall, I can't help but feel a little disappointed to see yet another game where the inclusion of DirectX 10 functionality has done nothing for the title either graphically or from a performance standpoint - I really can't tell the DirectX 9 and 10 rendering paths apart, yet performance is lower to quite a considerable degree using the latter. Thus, it looks like we'll have to wait a little longer for that first title that really makes DirectX 10 a must-have commodity for a graphics board.

Examining performance under the DirectX 9 rendering path, things are pretty much as we expected - The ATI boards look good when rendering 'straight', but once anti-aliasing is thrown into the mix performance suffers heavily, and drops to equal footing or worse when compared to equivalent NVIDIA boards. Overall though, 1280x1024 with 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering looks like a fair target resolution at our selected settings for both ATI's Radeon HD 2900 XT and NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB. At the mid-range, 1024x768 is comfortable for the Radeon HD 2600 XT, but both mainstream NVIDIA boards would require a drop in in-game image quality to make the game truly enjoyable from a frame rate perspective.

As we've just mentioned, the move to DirectX 10 in this title means quite a performance drop for all parts, which again raises the question of both how well optimised current drivers are for the new API, as well as just how well this generation of hardware is equipped to handle DirectX 10 functionality. It's still too early to answer either of these questions unfortunately, so only time will tell. Beyond that, we once again have to raise a sigh for ATI's showing - First, there's the in-game text corruption issue, which basically makes DirectX 10 unusable, and beyond that, performance in general on Radeon HD 2000 parts is simply unacceptable at present. To be fair, NVIDIA have the advantage of releasing beta drivers specifically to ensure this open beta works correctly, but that still doesn't excuse the poor state of ATI's Catalyst drivers when it comes to DirectX 10 content - If they aren't careful, they face the possibility of being written off in the DirectX 10 performance battleground before they've even started. On the green side of the fence, NVIDIA's performance is much better, with the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB capable of utilising the DirectX 10 rendering path happily at either 1024x768 with 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering, or 1280x1024 without - Once again though, mid-range DirectX 10 parts just don't seem to be cut out to handle the new API at all.

For now, AMD does seem to have an advantage in Call of Juarez, while NVIDIA leads the way in Company of Heroes and Lost Planet. But as far as NVIDIA vs. AMD in DirectX 10 performance, we really don't want to call a winner right now. It's just way too early, and there are many different factors behind what we are seeing here. As the dust settles and everyone gets fully optimized DirectX 10 drivers out the door with a wider variety of games, then we'll be happy to take a second look.

The more important fact to realize is that DirectX 10 is finally here. While developers are used to programmable hardware after years with DirectX 9, there is still room for experimentation and learning with geometry shaders, more flexibility, lower state change and object overhead, and (especially) faster hardware. But DirectX 10 isn't an instant pass to huge performance and incredible effects.

Let's look at it like this: there are really three ways a game can come to support DirectX 10, and almost all games over the next few years will ship with a DX9 path as well. The easiest thing is to do a straight port of features from DirectX 9 (which should generally be slightly faster than the DirectX 9 counterpart if drivers are of equal quality). We could also see games offer a DirectX 10 version with enhanced features that could still be implemented in DX9 in order to offer an incentive for users to move to a DX10 capable platform. The most aggressive option is to implement a game focused around effects that can only be effectively achieved through DirectX 10.

Games which could absolutely only be done in DX10 won't hit for quite a while for a number of reasons. The majority of users will still be on DX9 platforms. It is logical to spend the most effort developing for the user base that will actually be paying for the games. Developers are certainly interested in taking advantage of DX10, but all games for the next couple of years will definitely have a DX9 path. It doesn't make sense to rewrite everything from the ground up if you don't have to.

Clearly from our initial numbers ETQW loves the GeForce 8 cards particularly if you have an 8800 of any type. They can handle full on eye candy and maintain frame rates much higher than their GeForce 7 counterparts. Sure they are DX10 cards, but in this DX9 game they shine. Now results may vary, and in fire fights expect the performance to drop as more units are rendered. However from play testing experience there is a marked advantage to using an 8800 card versus a 7900 that you certainly notice as we experienced during several hours of play.

As for the gameplay itself clearing there needs to be some balancing and tweaking done. Head to head with Battlefield 2142 it does not yet stand up. Vehicles behave too much like toys. The tank is far to easy to destroy. If you are trying to shoot a Strogg hovering with the pack in the sky good luck. There is a lot of potential of course, and with Team Fortress 2 not out till October we hope that we can have a nice alternative squad based shooter to Battlefield this Summer.

- NVIDIA's DX10 hardware-based multi-sampled Anti-Aliasing resolve is disabled in the benchmark, with all NVIDIA GPUs now being forced to use software-based AA resolve similar to the ATI DX10 GPU (which lacks hardware AA resolve). This artificially deflates performance on NVDIA graphics cards and users are not getting the benefit of a key NVIDIA hardware feature.

- A hidden "ExtraQuality" parameter only accessible via a configuration file is automatically enabled when the benchmark is run on NVIDIA hardware, no matter what the setting in the configuration file. This setting has no apparent visual quality enhancement, but reduces NVIDIA GPU performance.

- Changes to shaders that deflate NVIDIA performance by approximately 10-14%, without improving visual quality on either NVIDIA or ATI GPUs.