Lost Planet DX9 and DX10
People may not like Vista, but DX10 sure can make jaws drop. Originally released on the Xbox360, Lost Planet is a treat to look at even in DX9 mode, but it is all the extra effects in the next-next-gen mode that truly make it shine. To give you guys a chance to compare the results with the ones we got we decided to use the two demos released on Steam instead of a retail copy of the game, even though we are aware that the final version of the code performs better due to some additional optimizations.
Unlike the Call of Juarez benchmark where the HD2600XT shined, Lost Planet shows a different picture. It should be noted that the abysmal performance of the card in DX10 mode is most likely due to a driver bug and/or the fact that the DX10 code of the game was developed with nVidia. This shows in the performance of the two 8600 cards – the performance in DX10 mode is near identical to the DX9 performance, sometimes even slightly faster. At higher resolutions the DX10 mode starts to lag behind due to the more demanding pixel shader effects employed. The ATI card manages to beat the 8600GT in DX9, a good sign with most of the DX9 benchmarks in this roundup favoring nVidia cards.
