Microsoft has released several games and expansions for their Age of Empires franchise. AOE3 was announced earlier this year with a brand-new graphics engine taking advantage of the latest DirectX 9.0 features including Pixel shaders, HDR (High Dynamic Range Lighting), the Havoc physics engine and more. The demo of the game Microsoft released the other day, played wonderfully on the A-I-W X800XL, with no problems with performance even at 1280x720 and 4x AA 16x AF.
Half Life 2 was the latest game released from Valve Software. Valve Software released Half Life back in 1999 to a lot of accolades and sold a boatload of the retail game. On the A-I-W X800XL, the performance at 1280x1024 without AA and AF was entirely playable. Turning on 4x AA and 16x AF turned the game unplayable in most areas. Strangely, benchmarks were totally playable, but in actual game play experience the game was different.
