Hardware - Intel Core 2 Extreme E6850 (3.00GHz) LGA775 - x2 Corsair DOMINATOR Twin3X2048-1800C7DF G Module(s) - Seagate 320GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA300) - Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (768MB) - Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT (512MB) - Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS (640MB) - ATI Radeon HD 2900XT (512MB) - ATI Radeon HD 2600XT (512MB) - Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS (256MB) - Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT (256MB) - ASUS P5E3 Deluxe (Intel X38) Software - Microsoft Windows Vista (64bit) - Nvidia Forceware (169.01) GeForce 8800 GT used 167.37 - ATI Catalyst (7.10) - Intel System Drivers (8.4.0)

Now we have moved from Windows XP to Vista were we will be testing the DirectX 10 performance of these graphics cards. The GeForce 8800 GTX was very impressive offering similar performance under Vista in DX10 mode as it did in XP running DX9. The GeForce 8800 GTS on the other hand did drop quite a bit of performance, while the Radeon HD 2900XT became completely useless when operating in DX10 mode.

The mid-range graphics cards also did not enjoy the DX10 rendering mode and the Radeon HD 2600XT in particular dropped quite a lot of performance. The fastest graphics card now was the GeForce 8600 GTS which managed just 27.6fps at 1440x900, which is quite weak really.