Rome: Total War
To get a bit of a break from the first-person shooters, we're testing this real-time strategy game with some very fancy graphics of its own. We used FRAPS to measure performance in this game during the first 150 seconds of the tutorial battle. This sequence is scripted and repeatable, and it switches between birds-eye views and close-ups of the armies. Of course, we turned up all the game's eye candy to max before testing.

Rome: Total War doesn't want to go any higher than about 45 frames per second on any of the cards. Of course, that's just an average frame rate. What about performance across the length of the demo?

Performance is pretty consistent across all six cards, although the GeForce 6600 GT AGP does manage slightly higher frame rates in a few areas. The card doesn't dip below 30 frame per second at any point, either.