Video Card: AIW 9600 Pro Review :: Gameplay

Temple Of Elemental Evil

It seems like a long time ago (1973 in fact) that TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) released the first Dungeons and Dragons board game. Dungeons and Dragons is a pen and paper role-playing game where you take the role of a character or characters forming a party of adventurers to try and solve an adventure. D+D has become a cult, with millions of players around the world playing the game including and up to it's most recent release, 3.5.

The history of the D+D computer game is a long and varied one. I remember playing games like Pool of Radiance on a old 286 computer with 1MB of RAM. The D+D license has been held until recently by Bioware, who released games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and other games. Recently, Atari got the D+D license from TSR. They've released games like Neverwinter Nights and now Temple of Elemental Evil.

Temple of Elemental Evil is based upon the module of the same name released many years ago (over 20 years). It was one of the original Gary Gygax modules (the creator of Dungeons and Dragons), but updated to the modern age. The game engine is based upon the Neverwinter Nights engine, and uses the AD+D 3.5 core Rule set making it an improvement over the rules used in Neverwinter Nights and other AD+D games which used 3.0 or earlier rules.

Playing Temple Of Elemental Evil on the AIW 9600 Pro is a great experience. Running it on a 15" LCD flat panel monitor exhibited no slowdowns on a 2.8 GHz P4 with 512MB and the AIW 9600 Pro (native resolution) as the game is not really up close and personal as a 3d action game like Max Payne2 would be, this is sufficient for my purposes.

System requirements for TEE are Operating System: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP Processor: Pentium® III 700 MHz Memory: 128 MB Hard Disk Space: 1200 MB Free CD-ROM Drive: 4x Video: 16 MB Windows 98/ME/2000/XP - compatible 3D video card Sound: Windows 98/2000/ME/XP compliant soundcard DirectX: DirectX® version 9.0 (included) or higher Peripherals: Keyboard, Mouse

Max Payne 2

Remedy released Max Payne in 2001 to some acclaim. Max Payne was an excellent game that set the standard for graphics techniques for the time it was released. Featuring "Bullet Time"- the technique where everything slows down for a period of time in a gunfight ala "The Matrix" , and using DirectX 7 class graphics cards (DX8 cards weren't released till after Max Payne was released), it still stands as a fun game.

Unfortunately, the sequel does not allow for easy benchmarking. In some comments made by 3D Realms on benchmarking Max Payne 2, it was revealed that the behind the scene work of the engine makes an apples to apples comparison with this game impossible. Therefore I won't do any benchmarking with FRAPS or with the built-in developerkeys key turned on to show fps in the game. I will describe playing the game with the AIW 9600 Pro.

Max Payne is a bit of a system hog. On my system, the game would play well on the AIW 9600 Pro up to and including 1024x768 32bit mostly. There were a few spots where the game play slowed a bit when in comparison to the AIW 9800 Pro on the AIW 9600 Pro. I still found it completely playable for the most part and enjoyable experience on the AIW 9600 Pro.

System requirements are ; 1 GHz Pentium III/Athlon or 1.2 GHz Celeron or Duron processor 32bit only 32MB DirectX 9 compatible AGP card with hardware transform and lighting support, 256MB RAM, 1.7 GB hard drive space, Windows 98/ME/2000/XP DirectX 9.0 keyboard and mouse. Recommended system requirements are: 1.4 GHz Athlon or 1.7 GHz Pentium 4 Celeron or Duron Processor, 32 Bit Only 64 MB DirectX compatible AGP graphics card with hardware transform and lighting 512MB RAM.

Command And Conquer Zero Hour

Zero Hour is Electronic Art's newest addition to the Command and Conquer series. You can read my review on the game by clicking here. An expansion pack to Command and Conquer Generals, it adds new units, missions, game play features and much more to the original game. If you have Generals, pick it up as it's an excellent addition to the original game.

Playing Zero Hour on the AIW RADEON 9600 Pro is a wonderful experience. 1280x960 is a fully playable resolution on the AIW 9600 Pro for the most part, with slowdowns only occurring when lots of units are onscreen. As this game uses DirectX 8.1 shaders to show off water effects (bodies of water, streams etc), the AIW 9600 Pro is fully capable of using all of the effects in the game. AA and AF are also usable in this game with the AIW 9600 Pro, just not at 4x AA and 16 AF like it would be on a AIW 9800 Pro. While playing the game, I was struck by the lack of a need for FSAA. The objects, buildings, weapons, enemies are so small that FSAA barely makes a difference.

System Requirements for Zero Hour include: a retail copy of Command and Conquer Generals already installed on the PC, Windows XP/ME/2000/98 (Windows 95 is not supported), 800 MHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon CPU, 128MB of RAM, 8x CD/DVD-Rom speed, 1.4 GB free hard disk space plus space for saved games, Windows swap files and DirectX 8.1, 32 MB AGP video card using the NVIDIA GEFORCE2, ATI RADEON 7500 or more recent chipset, DirectX 8.1 compatible PCI 16-bit sound card, keyboard/mouse. Recommended system specifications are 1.8 GHz or faster Intel Pentium IV or AMD Athlon processor, 256 MB or more, NVIDIA GEFORCE 3 or better Direct3d capable video card.

Halo

Bungie first announced Halo at MacWorld San Francisco in January 2000 for the PC and Macintosh platforms. At the time, the graphics blew the gaming public away. Subsequent to the demonstration, Bungie was bought by Microsoft who is one of the biggest companies in the world. Microsoft planned to bring a new game console to the public in 2001 and needed a "Killer App" to help sell the console. That killer app is Halo.

Halo is a tactical First Person Shooter that was released in September 2001 for the Xbox game console. A game console has a single set of hardware. On the PC, game designers have a choice of literally millions of hardware configurations to support. Just in the arena of modern video cards, for example, there have been 4 generations of ATI cards (RADEON, RADEON 8500, RADEON 9700, RADEON 9800), and 4 generations of NVIDIA cards (GEFORCE 2, GEFORCE3 , GEFORCE4 , GEFORCE FX) In this case, I'm only counting the generational cards not the sub variants) each with a different set of features and performance. On a console, however, there's ONE hardware set. The developers can work with the hardware with the understanding that it'll work the same on every console.

So anyway, what about the PC Halo? Bungie decided to upgrade the engine in the PC version to support Pixel Shader 2.0 effects instead of the Pixel Shader 1.1 effects found on the Xbox version. This is noticeable in better shiny armor, water effects and better looking grass. To run Halo on the PC requires a pretty high end system.

On the 9600 Pro, I played 1024x768 with no AA and no AF without issue on the AIW 9600 Pro while using PS 2.0 settings. Playing at 1280x1024 seemed to be fine, but there was a couple of areas that slowed down. As this game is meant to run at 30 fps at all times, the fact that it plays this game with little trouble is great for a mainstream videocard.

Halo requires a personal computer with the following minimum requirements. Multimedia personal computer with a 733 MHz or higher processor. Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Me, Windows 2000 Service Pack 1, or Windows XP. 128 Megabytes (MB) of RAM. 1.3 GB of available hard disk space. 8× CD-ROM drive. 32 MB 3D hardware-transform-and-lighting-capable video display. Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device. Sound card and speakers or headphones. DirectX 9.0b (included on CD; see below for installation instructions). 56 Kbps modem or LAN for online network play. Broadband required to run a server.