The Cards

Pre-Game Attributes

Here are the pre-game attributes for the ATI cards to give you a sense of what we are using before we enter the actual game options and tweak them. I did not use Catalyst Control Center for these cards.

Still a great card, set to Application Preference

My baby! I love this card!

Almost godlike, set to defaults.

And here are the settings for the Nvidia cards I used in this optimization guide.

Yup, still using her.

Application Preference

This is a great card!

*Test Notes: Listed are the cards used in this guide and the level of DirectX used in both the software and hardware-side of this game. Keep in mind when viewing benchmarking results that the lower end cards have DirectX limitations (i.e., they aren’t running in DX9 mode), which will adversely affect performance.

	Hardware Level	Software Level
ASUS V9280 Ti4200 8x	Direct X 8.0	Direct X 9.0
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra	Direct X 8.1	Direct X 9.0
Tyan Tachyon G9500 Pro	Direct X 9.0	Direct X 9.0
Radeon 9800 XT	Direct X 9.0	Direct X 9.0
GeForce 6600GT	Direct X 9.0	Direct X 9.0

*Test Notes: This is not a video card comparison article, but an optimization guide for various cards. The Value card was tested at 800x600 and 1024x768. Mainstream cards tested at 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x1024. The high-end card was tested at 1024x768 and 1280x1024 with AA and AF enabled. All cards were tested using both normal or recommended and maximum settings under the video options menu of the main menu. Direct X levels are kept at their native hardware levels. All resolutions are at 32-bit using the default Direct3D option with Vertical Synchronization enabled.