Benchmark Results: Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X

Air combat game H.A.W.X provides visually stunning backgrounds, but they’re essentially static. It’s a little disappointing to see scorch marks on the ground disappear a few seconds after your opponent crashes, but this design is probably what allows the game to be playable at its highest detail levels across most high-end cards.

Owners of 30” flat panels should appreciate smooth game play at super-high detail levels and 2560x1600 pixels.

Most graphics cards are limited to 4x AA at 2560x1600 in H.A.W.X. The 2 GB GeForce GTX 285 doesn’t seem to have any advantage yet.

At 8x AA the GTX 295 would crash, locking the system using a 2560x1600 resolution. The 18 FPS shown for the GTX 285 1 GB card is just a fantasy, since the game lost background image data and crashed immidiately after the performance test. Meanwhile, the 2 GB card could play the game all day at our highest setting, though at slower-than-ideal frame rates.