Gaming Tests: HL2 and CC:FA

Judging from our results in Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the Radeon HD 4000 series really pulls ahead of NVIDIA GeForce products. Palit's GeForce 9800 GT Super+ still performs ahead of the 9600 GT Sonic and behind the Radeon HD 4850. What's interesting here is that the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 rendered frames at a level higher than the GeForce 9800 GTX could, while the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 ran away with a huge lead.

For Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the 9800 GT NE/9800TXT302 actually performed closer to the 9800 GTX than it did the Radeon HD 4850.

Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is a standalone real-time strategy computer game expansion to Supreme Commander, developed by Gas Powered Games and published by THQ. Because it is a standalone expansion, it is possible to play without owning Supreme Commander. Forged Alliance adds new game play features to the game, several new units for the three preexisting factions, and is further optimized for increased performance beyond that of the original game.

Supreme Commander makes extensive use of two technologies relatively unused in video games prior to its release, namely multi core processing and multi monitor displays. When detecting a multi-core processor, the game assigns a specific task, such as AI calculations, to each core, splitting the load between them. Supreme Commander is one of the first games to specifically support dual and quad core processors in the game.

Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance may not offer the first-person shooter experience that many gamers prefer, but the graphics are among the most demanding possible. Even so, there begins to be a trend showing which places high demand on the graphics card as evidenced by mutually low minimum frame rates.

Unlike the other games we test, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance does not use a short in-game benchmark to determine a score. In these tests, Supreme Commander plays an entire round of the game from start to finish and generates composite scores based on this lengthy test. This composite score is based on two factors: sim and render.

SupCom: Forged Alliance did put the Radeon HD 4850 below the 9800 GTX, however the Palit GeForce 9800 GT Super+ still found its familiar spot between the Palit 9600 GT Sonic and Sapphire Radeon HD 4850.

In our next section, World in Conflict hopes to confirm our findings and cement expectations for the 9800 GT.

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