Company of Heroes
Company of Heroes can also use DirectX 10, and its developers have included a simple performance test in the game. This test plays through an introductory cinematic scene and reports the average and low frame rates. We tested with all of the game's visual quality options maxed, along with 4X antialiasing. Physics detail was set to "Medium."

The 1GB GDDR4 card isn't much faster than its 512MB sibling here, either. If there's a bright spot, it's the median low frame rate for the 1GB GDDR4 card, which matches that of the GeForce 8800 Ultra. CrossFire is a bust in this test, as well.

Call of Juarez
Next up is the Call of Juarez DX10 demo and benchmark, created by the game's developers, Techland. This test employs a number of the game engine's DirectX 10 features, including waterfall particles that use geometry shaders, soft-edged vegetation, and advanced material shaders. Looks purty, too. We tested at 1920x1200 resolution with 4X antialiasing, "normal" shadow quality, and 2048x2048 shadow map resolution.

The Radeon HD 2900 XT cards look much better in this test, beating out the 8800 GTX. One reason for this result may be Techland's controversial decision to bypass hardware-based MSAA resolve and force all DX10 cards to use their shaders. Nvidia has complained about this decision, though it does seem to have some technical warrant. Then again, the two previous DX10 games we tested were part of Nvidia's "The Way it's Mean to Be Played" program, so who knows? We've looked at three DX10 titles, and they're all still disputed ground. Crysis can't come soon enough. Let's head back to DX9 and some well-established games.