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Doom 3

We all know what Doom 3 is. We also know that it is the most advanced OpenGL game and benchmark to date, probably rivaled only by Valve's "Source" engine and Far Cry's Crytek engine, both of which are Direct3D-based. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 are the de-facto benchmarks for modern graphics cards today, as the engines that power these two games will continue to power games for the next few years.

The 6800 is beaten by the 6600GT in non-AA/AF performance, but comes out on top when 4xAA/8xAF are enabled. Memory bandwidth, something the 6800 has an abundance of, is more important when it comes to anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, and that helps the 6800 overcome its otherwise hurting core clock speed. All performance figures are at playable levels for this game, with the exception of 1600x1200 4xAA/8xAF, which is at that "under heavy action, it'll get bad" level.

Half-Life 2

As mentioned above, the recently-released Half-Life 2 is a de-facto benchmark for Direct3D performance, as the engine, along with the Doom 3 engine, will be powering games for years to come.

The 6800 pulls in absolutely awesome scores in this game, beating every other card in every test combination, with the exception of 1600x1200 resolutions + AA. Neither of the NVIDIA cards have a chance of beating the 9800 XT at such settings, as they simply do not have the memory.