The effects on the more detailed textures are fairly impressive up close. The smoke effects are far more diffuse, putting a stop to harsh edges and banding when looking at objects through the haze.
The subtle DX10 additions aren't apparent when zoomed out. In fact all you're really going to experience is a massive slow down from your high-priced, high-spec system.
World in Conflict
Unlike CoH, World in Conflict was designed to incorporate DX10 features from release, rather than in patch form. And the benchmark figures we've recorded show this; with both machines running the game on their highest respective settings the DX10 rig was performing at more than twice the framerates. It was still running below the magic 30fps mark on the uber-rig though, and that was after installing the latest DX10 performance patch.
Dropping the resolution down one notch and switching to medium settings on the DX9 machine, however, produced near as damn it identical performance results, with little perceptible difference in visual quality.
Look closely and the volumetric lighting, breaking through the clouds from heaven and the enhanced smoke diffusion become apparent. But again, it's a question of looking very closely.
Up close though you can tell the difference, especially with the DX9 rig on medium settings, but the addition of a little bit of grass can't justify the outlay and performance hit of DX10.
Lost Planet
Lost Planet is finally a game where we see the biggest difference in all the games we've tested. The DX10 performance of Lost Planet came in at a thoroughly respectable 40fps out in the snow fields and 54fps inside, compared with the horrific performance of our budget rig on the highest settings, the DX10 system obviously wins hands down.
The only way that we managed to get even vaguely equivalent performance specs was by dropping the resolution a notch and the settings down to medium/high, and even then the score of 32fps was way off.
The visual difference too was very clear, with the snow storm creating lines across a screen filled with the jagged edges of non-anti-aliased objects.
In stark comparison with the performance of Bioshock on our DX9 system, it's strange that Lost Planet fails to run at a decent speed. With everything cranked up to the maximum settings, and at 1680x1050, Bioshock ran at the same speed as the DX10 uber-rig.
