Final Thoughts
At the outset of this review I wanted to help you decide which of the high end graphics cards currently available were the best for playing the first wave of DX10 game titles and I think we have easily done that. The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX is our pick for anyone looking to play the likes of Bioshock, Company of Heroes, Call of Juarez, Lost Planet or World in Conflict in DX10 modes. The power of the G80 GPU and the time NVIDIA's driver development team has put into Vista are evident in our benchmark and gaming experience results.
The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB makes a great second option though for users with a slightly smaller budget. This card still does very well under Vista with the DX10 games and keeping another $150 in your pocket never hurt anyone. The let down for me here was the Radeon HD 2900 XT from AMD; the card was only able to get off the bottom post in our results in a single test (Call of Juarez) and the multi-GPU results of CrossFire were abysmal when compared to what NVIDIA's SLI was able to accomplish. AMD needs to put some work into the GPU segment if they want to maintain any kind of technological level with NVIDIA's products, whether that would require software fixes or hardware re-spins. And there is no time like the present...
With other HUGE titles like Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 just over the horizon, DX10 gaming is going to rocket-jump this holiday season. Let the fun begin!
