Make sure before playing games only is setting up your monitors contrast & brightness levels a very important thing to do. I realized recently that a lot of you guys have setup your monitor improper. How do we know this? Because we receive a couple of email every now and then saying that a reader can't distinguish the benchmark charts (colors) in our reviews. We realized, if that happens, your monitor is not properly setup.

This simple test pattern is evenly spaced from 0 to 255 brightness levels, with no profile embedded. If your monitor is correctly set up, you should be able to distinguish each step, and each step should be roughly visually distinct from its neighbors by the same amount. As well, the dark-end step differences should be about the same as the light-end step differences. Finally, the first step should be completely black.

Devil may Cry 4 - DirectX 10

Typically we're not quickly impressed with games these days from a graphical point of view. The game Devil May Cry however opens up a can of graphics that is just really impressive. We play the game in DX10 mode with every image quality setting available set to it's highest possible variable. The game itself -- Stylish action, terrific boss fights, and beautiful, melodramatic cut scenes will inspire you to push forward, and they serve as an appropriate reward for a well-played sequence of demon slaying.

On consoles, Devil May Cry 4 might be beautiful; on the PC in DirectX 10 mode, it completely overwhelms, what a fantastic looking title. Let's check out the performance.

Since we'll be using this test for a long time-frame we decided to measure at DirectX 10 with 8 multi-sample Antialising levels enabled and all setting set to high. This is a really tough nut to crack for mid-range graphics cards (with these settings) but as you can see, the results are just fine, and good to use.

Image Quality Settings:

• 8x Multi Sample Anti Aliasing
• Textures: Super High
• Shadows: Super High
• Quality: Super High

Obviously with so much power under the hood, the game scales incredible. Small note, I recently started using this benchmark, I have no original GTX 260 results as that card was returned to the board-partner.

As you can see the Radeon HD 4870 rocks here, but a word of warning, after this test everything will equalize.

Gaming: Mass Effect

Controversial, new and definitely one of the bigger titles of the year. Mass Effect from BioWare. Originally released for the XBOX 360 it unveiled a vast, beautiful galaxy populated by diverse, fascinating alien races. Players stepped onto this stage as Commander Shepard, a hero at the vanguard of humanity's ascension in the arena of galactic politics, and thus began an epic story bolstered by engaging characters and rich, branching dialogue.

Set 200 years in the future in an epic universe, Mass Effect places gamers in a vast galactic community in danger of being conquered by a legendary agent gone rogue. A spectacular new vision from legendary developers BioWare, Mass Effect challenges players to lead a squad of freedom fighters as they struggle against threatening armies to restore peace in the land.

I started playing this game a recently. It's rare for me, but I spent the weekend on it and finished the game. I just had to include this new title in our benchmark suite. We had to overcome some problems though, a nasty framerate cap was removed and the game actually does not support AA. It does however show really awesome graphics, complex facial animations and applies a noise filter just to get you that really nice cinematic feeling. Overall one of the better games I've played this year so far. Definitely pick it up.

We covered all the bases and cards in previous reviews, plus you can compare numbers in our VGA charts. For a more broad perspective please have a look at those charts.

Mass Effect Settings:

• Noise Filter on
• Textures: Extreme high
• Filter: Anisotropic
• Everything maxed out

Again I really like this game, the screenshot below is literally the quality you play at, look at the GXT 260 OCX MaxCORE fly by the way, in 2560x1600 it's only 2 FPS on average away from the 400 USD GTX 280. That's amazing.

The standard clocked GTX 260 is 10% slower than the new SP216 version.