Current location:	Koobikal Hel, a tad blury after too little sleep
Current mood:	pleased
Current music:	"For the Craftworld", DoW2 soundtrack

Prepare to witness the firepower of this *fully operational* battle station...
So I got my bonus last night, and it was even bigger than I expected. Almost enough to make my system come under the "50% of the loot" budget, even. The extra money came from a reserve fund from last winter; each year an extra lump of cash is set aside to cover possible "spikes" in service expense for our Roadside Assistance division, for instance in case of an ice storm the size of the one that hit Quebec and Ontario a decade ago. This contingency fund often gets tapped into during the winter, but this year apparently the cold snap led to more battery boosting (which is cheap to provide) than towing (which ain't) and folks took their driving seriously... so when last year's fund matured at the end of last quarter it was rolled over, so operational money didn't have to go in, so extra profit, so bigger profit-share bonus for everyone. Yay!

Which means, of course, that my impulse control slipped last night and I picked up a new game for "Dark Knight", Dawn of War 2.

Gosh, it's pretty. It also provided the first real measure of what "DK" can do, as I ran its configuration test; at 1280x1024 resolution (the maximum I'm willing to put through my ancient monitor) with 4xAA/4xCF, all details and effects dialled up to maximum, and full Havok™ physics invoked, it returned the following framerates.

Minimum: 33fps
Average: 61fps
Maximum: 140fps

Checking with the motherboard's temperature sensing utility showed a peak CPU temperature of 48°C, a peak system temperature of 49°, and the southbridge just stayed in its usual 62°-66° range. Alas, I didn't think to log the CPU usage to tell how much of its horsepower it used, but I don't think it actually broke a sweat. I think that the Phys-X support on my multiplexed pair (total 2GB RAM) of graphics cards took a lot of the burden away from the rest of the system there.

I am pleased.

-- Steve does note that DoW2 does run under DirectX 9, so in retrospect perhaps it wasn't a good test of the system's limits.

PS: I'm still in the early stages of the singleplayer campaign and I haven't tried any multiplayer at all, so I'll hold off on reviewing the game until I have more experience with it. So far, though, it's been fun... though it peeved me somewhat to find that I had to install Steam™ before installing the game. WTF? It's a Games for Windows Live™ title on DVD, not a Valve title or a download. Also, having to write down a second product key for multiplayer provided by Steam™ did not endear this form of DRM to me.