Date:
Tuesday , May 12, 2009
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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Dawn of War II Gameplay Performance and IQ

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II is here, sporting an updated Company of Heroes graphics engine! Join us as we examine this well-received strategy game using six of the most current video cards around today!

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Test System Setup

For our test system platform we are using an ASUS Blitz Extreme motherboard with an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor at 3.66GHz, and 4GB of OCZ Platinum series DDR3-1600. For the power supply, we will be using a CoolerMaster Real Power Pro 1250W .

While it might be a bit "overkill," we use the 3.6GHz overclocked quad-core processor in an attempt to keep from putting our evaluation into a position of being CPU limited. Obviously, we make every effort to not use CPU limited games for video card evaluations, but the 3.6GHz processor seems to put many peoples’ minds at ease when it comes to that subject.

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Driver Setup

With both the NVIDIA and AMD video cards we will be using the latest drivers. For the NVIDIA products we will be using the ForceWare 185.68 BETA driver. For the AMD products, we will be using the Catalyst 9.4 WHQL driver.

Evaluation Method

We evaluate what each video card configuration can supply us in terms of a playable gaming experience while supplying the best culmination of resolution and "eye candy" graphical settings. We focus on quality and immersion of the gameplay experience rather than how many frames per second the card can get in a canned benchmark or prerecorded timedemo situation that often do not represent real gameplay like you would experience at home. Then we will follow with apples-to-apples testing based on real gameplay as well.