The software bundle with the HIS card is not bad at all, with a total of 5 disks being included. First up, lets take a look at the main talking point of the bundle, Half Life 2. Although we have reviewed 2 9800XT cards already, we have not yet taken a look at this groundbreaking title in detail. The original Half-Life became the benchmark FPS came on its release a staggering five years ago. Since then it has 50 game of the year awards to its credit (including a classic rating from our own gaming section) and the adoration of fans world wide. Thanks to mods such as counter-strike it is still one of the most widely played online games to be found.
Once again you take on the roll of scientist Gordon Freeman, although this time your role is all the more challenging – before you had to rescue a Research Facility from alien forces, this time you have to rescue the entire world from the wrong unleashed back at Black Mesa. Unlike the original that used a licened Quake engine from ID, the sequal has its own custom engine called “Source”. Incorporating stunning Direct X 9 technology, this is by far the most sophisticated use of new technology we have seen so far. Although half life will run on a DX6-level video card, this is the kind of game that makes spending over £300 on a video card (almost) justifiable. With heavy use of DX9 pixel and vertex shaders, ragtroll physics model and of course extremely detailed modelling, Half-Life 2 achieves a level of realism on both characters and environments unsurpassed so far.
The other games supplied with the card in the “6-in-1” bonus disk are actually demos. Included is Comanche 4 – an ugly Direct X 8 helicopter sim, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down demo, which is a continuation of the Novalogic DF series of FPS war simulations, Serious Sam 2 demo, a fun tongue-in-cheek tip of the hat to Duke Nuke Em, Tom Clancy: Black Thorn Demo, a stealth-em-up, and a demo of Vietcong, a war simulating FPS set in Vietnam. Finishing the package off is a demo of worms Armageddon.
Included in the box is CyberLink's PowerDirector 2.5, a video-editing solution for beginners. It covers pretty much all the aspects of the editing process, from transferring footage to your computer, right up to outputting the finished product to a number of different formats, such as tape, DVD or VideoCD.
If you don't know what Power DVD is then you must have been living under a rock for the last six years. Now in its fifth encarnation, PowerDVD is arguable the best of the software PC DVD decoders around. Providing you have a 300MHz PC or better and a DVD drive, you can watch movies at full quality on your PC.
