There it was, the hugely anticipated UT3; well a beta demo of the game anyway. Here I was still trying to get over the excitement of the Call of Duty 4 playable demo which was just released a few days prior. I have to admit, although being a huge fan of the Unreal series and very excited about the prospect of a UT3 demo, I had little to no idea if there was even going to be a demo and if so when it would be due for release.

While I suspected there would be a demo, the release date for the full version of the game has been bounced around that much at news sites I gave up trying to track down the official release date. Initially news sites were claiming that the release date would be the 3rd of September and then the 28th of September and now that those dates have passed, late November seemed to be the next target.

Nevertheless today we do have some performance results for you that have been recorded using the recently released beta demo. Now we must stress that this is a “beta” demo and not necessarily an official demo, so the visuals and performance may not accurately reflect that of the full release. That said, we would imagine that this beta demo is pretty close given the game is only a matter of weeks from release or a month at the most we believe. Apparently this beta demo was being shown off at a press event that was held by Epic Games at its headquarters in North Carolina. It is believed that a member of the press leaked the demo to a number of download sites, whether this is true or not is really irrelevant at this point.

The good news is we have now tested the demo and it is available on all major sites for download so you too can also grab a copy today. There is no secret to which game engine Unreal Tournament 3 uses as it is yet another visually stunning first person shooter to be built around the “Unreal Engine 3” just as Bioshock and Medal of Honour: Airborne were! The Unreal Engine 3 has already proven to be very impressive in terms of visual quality and it has also proven to be an extremely demanding game engine. Games such as Bioshock and Medal of Honour: Airborne were not mainstream hardware friendly and that being the case we hardly expect Unreal Tournament 3 to be any different.

For resolutions above 1280x1024 gamers have been required to use one of four graphics cards, three of which are Nvidia built. The GeForce 8800 GTS/GTX/Ultra and Radeon HD 2900XT are the only graphics cards that have really proven to have what it takes to play these new games built on the Unreal Engine 3 with maximum in game quality settings enabled. Furthermore, because these games do not feature official anti-aliasing support, the Radeon HD 2900XT has fared very well against the GeForce 8800 competition. It shall be interesting to see once again where the Radeon HD 2900XT stands in terms of performance in this latest game built around the Unreal Engine 3!