With the recent release of Microsoft's Vista Operating System I decided to take a look at a few games running on the Vista OS as well. The release of a new Operating System usually has bugs in the drivers from hardware and it's always a good idea to look at how the new video card will operate on it. With that in mind, I took a few games out for a spin on both XP and Vista with a look to see if there were driver problems or setup issues.
Oblivion is still the standard by which other games are measured in terms of graphics. Liberal use of HDR, Pixel and Vertex Shaders in every scene of the game means that this game is a good test of the abilities of the X1950 Crossfire Edition card. In Windows XP I was able to play the game at 1280x1024 with 2x AA and 16x AF with HDR enabled. ATI X1K cards differentiate themselves from most NVIDIA cards by the ability to do both at the same time in a game like Oblivion with the exception of the 8800 series. Performance in Vista was similar I found no issues with playing game in the new operating system. Crossfire allowed me to play Oblivion 1600x1200 with 4x AA 16x AF comfortably.
The second game I took for a spin was the included game Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. This game is a "Clancyverse" game set in the future in Mexico City circa 2013. Tom Clancy is the master of the modern action thriller novel with Jack Ryan his main protagonist. A series of games including Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, and games based upon his books including The Hunt for Red October have been released for the various platforms including Xbox and the PC. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter uses Pixel Shader 2.0 programs and HDR throughout. The game was completely playable on the x1950 Crossfire Edition card, with playable framerates. Installing the game with Vista showed no ill effects as to performance.
The Battlefield series has been around for several years now with the first game in the series being Battlefield 1942 set in World War II. Subsequent games in the series include Battlefield Vietnam, Battlefield 2 set in the modern era and Battlefield 2142 which is the game I played on the X1950 Crossfire Edition card. Battlefield 2142 was mostly playable, with 1600x1200 2x AA 16x AF fully playable throughout. Upon installation, the game indicated that it was only tested with XP, but Vista ran the game without problems. Crossfire mode allowed the two cards to be completely playable at 1600x1200 4x AA 16x AF. Star Trek Legacy is the latest game based upon the Star Trek Franchise that was started on the PC many years ago with the release of Star Trek 25th Anniversary and games like Star Trek: Elite Force being among the best Star Trek games. Last year Bethsheda Softworks, the makers of Elder Scrolls released Star Trek Legacy that covered all the eras of Star Trek. The game is a lot of fun, but was panned by reviewers. The game played well on the x1950 Crossfire Edition card.
Game screenshots
