Date:
Monday , November 05, 2007
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
Google +1

Gears of War PC Performance and IQ

Gears of War is being released on the PC this week and we’ve got an exclusive look at performance and image quality in this game under Windows Vista in DX10. We test the GeForce 8800 GTX, GTS, and GT along with the Radeon HD 2900 XT. We cover DX9 vs. DX10 and best gameplay experience.

Introduction

Gears of War is coming to the PC Windows platform this week. It will hit store shelves in North America Tuesday, November 6th 2007. Gears of War, developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios, was released on the XBOX 360 platform one year ago. It was confirmed back at E3 this year that Gears of War would indeed be ported to the PC and set to be released this November.

Gears of War is a third-person tactical shooter, yes third-person, not first-person as is typically expected for this type of game. As you play the game it is as if there is a person holding a camera behind you, filming all the action taking place. This can create a slight learning curve for players familiar with first-person shooters as it takes some getting used to controlling a player in a third-person view. We found it quite easy though to adapt to this type of gameplay on the PC, as you will be zooming in quite a lot to take out your opponents and there is a clearly defined reticle used to target the enemy. While not zooming there is no targeting reticle, and you must use the particle effects of the weapon fire to guide your target positioning, which can pose a bit of a challenge for the novice. To get the lo-down on gameplay check out our evaluation of the game on the XBOX 360.

As Marcus Fenix, you fight a war against the immense Locust Horde, which not only out powers but outnumbers you, your squad, and the entire force of the Coalition of Ordered Governments. Gears of War is the only game to blend a deep and disturbing story of human survival against an endless mass of nightmarish creatures, a next-generation tactical combat system, and unsurpassed visuals and special effects. The story unfolds as a ragtag group of soldiers use every last ounce of strength to survive the onslaught from the forces of evil, which begins on the historic Emergence Day.

Article Image

If you have played Gears of War on the XBOX 360, gameplay on the PC platform is the same, though there are some content additions. There are five new campaign chapters that expand the storyline, including an encounter with Brumak. There are also three new multiplayer maps and a new multiplayer game type called “King of the Hill”. You will also find Unreal Editor included in the package. Finally, for us graphics fiends Gears of War on the PC supports DirectX 10 under Windows Vista using the Unreal Engine 3 game engine.

The required system specifications for the PC is Windows XP or Windows Vista with an Intel 2.4 GHz or AMD 2.0 GHz or higher CPU, 12 GB of free disk space, an NVIDIA GeForce 7900 series or ATI Radeon X1800/16x0 series and support for DirectX 9.0c and a broadband connection and Games for Windows – LIVE Gold account for online multiplayer. In another piece of documentation it lists the minimum video card spec as: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or ATI X700 or higher, so there is a bit of a conflict in minimum video card spec in the documentation provided. We would suggest that the GeForce 7900/Radeon X1800 card specs might be better as a "recommended" spec.

Gears of War is powered by Unreal Engine 3. That means Gears of War is a DirectX based game and is able to run in DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 under Windows Vista. Also, this engine uses deferred shading to speed up dynamic lighting and shadows, and as such does not support antialiasing in DirectX 9. The only current way to receive antialiasing is to run in DirectX 10 mode under Windows Vista. We will talk more about this later on in the evaluation because there are some limitations. To learn all about the capabilities of Unreal Engine 3 check out this link. Needless to say, this game supports all the latest graphic effects we would expect to see in a current DX9/10 capable game.

Today’s Testing

Today we are going to focus on highest-playable settings. We will be testing not only the GeForce 8800 GT, but also the 320/640 MB GeForce 8800 GTS, GeForce 8800 GTX, and Radeon HD 2900 XT in Gears of War. We have set out to find the highest-playable settings in DirectX 10 and then in DirectX 9, compare performance between both and figure out what is the best mode to play this game in. We will provide image quality screenshots afterward to look at how DX9 and DX10 compares and if there are any differences between ATI and NVIDIA hardware.