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Of course, with this being the brave new world of DX10, Gears of War fully supports the latest gaming standard under Vista. However, given the current state of things it should come as no surprise to hear that the game still supports XP and the DX9 code path as well. A little surreptitious snooping revealed that the demo units were running XP, with 2GB RAM, an 8800 GTS and, somewhat surprisingly, a 3.4GHz Pentium D. As a result there was no DX10 to be had, so we'll just have to wait for the full game to get a taste of the differences in image quality and performance.

All the same, with the game running at 1,920 x 1,080 the game looks stunning. It did back when it was released on the Xbox 360, and time has nothing to dent this impression. Hell, the game wasn't even running at full detail and it still looked superb. CliffyB even went as far as to suggest that this was "the way the game was meant to be seen" due to the higher resolution textures a PC can handle, which says everything about how good the game looks.

In the final product the game will purportedly support up to 1920 x 1200, which makes it ideal for running on a 24in LCD, though those enjoying the wonders 2560 x 1600 on a 30in won't be so pleased. It's also worth noting that, in this version, the game was by no means perfectly smooth, with some frame rate issues. However, without knowing the state of the code being used one can't draw too many conclusions.

Overall, I went away feeling that the only thing likely to hold Gears of War on PC back was simply the plethora of other games to enjoy in the near future. What with Bioshock, Halo 3, Half-Life 2 Episode Two, Portal, Team Fortress 2 (also known as collectively as The Orange Box), Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Crysis, World in Conflict to name just a tiny selection, does a PC version of a year old Xbox 360 game have enough clout make its mark?

I wouldn't like to guess, but regardless Gears of War PC is looking to be an excellent conversion of an already excellent game, which is probably all you need to know. Moreover, with the PC version providing new chapters, more story, another major boss battle in the form of the Brumak, more multiplayer options and an editor, there are still plenty of reasons to consider it, even if you've played it on the Xbox 360.

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