F.E.A.R. GPU Performance Tests: Setting a New Standard
by Josh Venning on October 20, 2005 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Game/Test setup
There was a lot of hype about FEAR before it was released, which is common for ground-breaking games of this sort. Too much hype can be a bad thing as we've seen before with other games, and while it may have some similarities to the movies, we aren't quite willing to put FEAR on the same level as The Ring and The Matrix, in spite of the dramatic slow motion deaths and the scary looking little girl.
In this case, though, FEAR more or less lives up to the hype, and what we have here is possibly the most beautiful looking, first-person shooter that we've ever seen. The dark and moody atmosphere and lighting are nice, reminiscent of Doom 3 except that you can actually see most of the time. During heated action sequences, the combination of lighting effects from things like muzzle flashes and sparks from bullet ricochets, as well as dust that falls from wall shots creating hazy clouds create a beautiful scene of chaos. This is further enhanced by the much-copied (but still fun) bullet-time/reflex mode, which slows everything down so that the chaos of sparks, dust and bodies flying through the air resemble some bizarre ballet that will occasionally make you pause to marvel at its beauty. Other graphical elements worth mentioning are the fire effects, which are impressive, compared to most other games, as are the water effects (reflections, ripples and caustics).
To be fair, a few things could have looked better in the game. While the levels are pretty, they can be repetitive, as can the enemies, which are mostly hordes of a few different variations of clone soldiers, and the effectiveness of the games parallax mapped environment damage is not up to snuff. These are just a few complaints, however, and graphically, the good stuff more than outweighs the bad. Further more, because the enemy AI is so smart and action so intense, you'll be so caught up in gameplay that the small graphical problems won't matter much.
Not only is this the best looking game out right now, but it also happens to be the most graphically demanding, as we will see in our performance tests. It's so demanding in fact that it could be a good reason for people to upgrade their graphics card. FEAR only supports resolutions of up to 1600x1200, but only the highest end cards can handle this resolution well, especially with soft shadows and/or AA enabled. In fact, this may be the first game that puts the 7800 GTX to its full use, as our tests showed at 1600x1200 with soft shadows and AA enabled FEAR was barely playable.
We wanted to get an idea about how FEAR performs across a wide range of graphics cards, so we tested a good sample of high end and mid-range cards. These are the kind of cards that we could see paired with our high end test system.
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT
ATI Radeon X1800 XT (not yet available)
ATI Radeon X1800 XL
ATI Radeon X1600 XT (not yet available)
ATI Radeon X1300 Pro
ATI Radeon X800 GT
We also tested all resolutions possible up to 1600x1200, the highest that FEAR will run, with and without 4xAA and 8xAF enabled. FEAR gives the option to turn on a feature called soft shadows, which we will talk about later, and because of some issues that we saw with this, we ran benchmarks with and without this enabled. All other options were turned up to their maximum quality level. For those of you with older mid-range and lower end cards, maximal detail is not really an option at any resolution.
This is our test system:
NVIDIA nForce 4 motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 2.6 GHz Processor
1 GB OCZ 2:2:2:6 DDR400 RAM
Seagate 7200.7 120 GB Hard Drive
OCZ 600 W PowerStream Power Supply
We also made sure to test with sound disabled. This test isn't as strict a test of graphics performance as some of our other benchmarks. For one, we used the built-in test feature. While this gives us a consistent "run" through a scene, physics variability and slight differences in what the characters in the scene do are apparent. This is similar to the Far Cry test if Crytek had added physics cues to the camera path of their benchmark.
While we would like to see more consistent action in order to compare cards better, the built-in tool is a much better option than using fraps while running through a level. As mentioned, we tested three different game settings. Driver settings were all default except for VSYNC, which was explicitly disabled.
Before we get to the numbers, let's take a deeper look at some of the graphics and performance issues that we noted previously.
There was a lot of hype about FEAR before it was released, which is common for ground-breaking games of this sort. Too much hype can be a bad thing as we've seen before with other games, and while it may have some similarities to the movies, we aren't quite willing to put FEAR on the same level as The Ring and The Matrix, in spite of the dramatic slow motion deaths and the scary looking little girl.
In this case, though, FEAR more or less lives up to the hype, and what we have here is possibly the most beautiful looking, first-person shooter that we've ever seen. The dark and moody atmosphere and lighting are nice, reminiscent of Doom 3 except that you can actually see most of the time. During heated action sequences, the combination of lighting effects from things like muzzle flashes and sparks from bullet ricochets, as well as dust that falls from wall shots creating hazy clouds create a beautiful scene of chaos. This is further enhanced by the much-copied (but still fun) bullet-time/reflex mode, which slows everything down so that the chaos of sparks, dust and bodies flying through the air resemble some bizarre ballet that will occasionally make you pause to marvel at its beauty. Other graphical elements worth mentioning are the fire effects, which are impressive, compared to most other games, as are the water effects (reflections, ripples and caustics).
To be fair, a few things could have looked better in the game. While the levels are pretty, they can be repetitive, as can the enemies, which are mostly hordes of a few different variations of clone soldiers, and the effectiveness of the games parallax mapped environment damage is not up to snuff. These are just a few complaints, however, and graphically, the good stuff more than outweighs the bad. Further more, because the enemy AI is so smart and action so intense, you'll be so caught up in gameplay that the small graphical problems won't matter much.
Not only is this the best looking game out right now, but it also happens to be the most graphically demanding, as we will see in our performance tests. It's so demanding in fact that it could be a good reason for people to upgrade their graphics card. FEAR only supports resolutions of up to 1600x1200, but only the highest end cards can handle this resolution well, especially with soft shadows and/or AA enabled. In fact, this may be the first game that puts the 7800 GTX to its full use, as our tests showed at 1600x1200 with soft shadows and AA enabled FEAR was barely playable.
We wanted to get an idea about how FEAR performs across a wide range of graphics cards, so we tested a good sample of high end and mid-range cards. These are the kind of cards that we could see paired with our high end test system.
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT
ATI Radeon X1800 XT (not yet available)
ATI Radeon X1800 XL
ATI Radeon X1600 XT (not yet available)
ATI Radeon X1300 Pro
ATI Radeon X800 GT
We also tested all resolutions possible up to 1600x1200, the highest that FEAR will run, with and without 4xAA and 8xAF enabled. FEAR gives the option to turn on a feature called soft shadows, which we will talk about later, and because of some issues that we saw with this, we ran benchmarks with and without this enabled. All other options were turned up to their maximum quality level. For those of you with older mid-range and lower end cards, maximal detail is not really an option at any resolution.
This is our test system:
NVIDIA nForce 4 motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 2.6 GHz Processor
1 GB OCZ 2:2:2:6 DDR400 RAM
Seagate 7200.7 120 GB Hard Drive
OCZ 600 W PowerStream Power Supply
We also made sure to test with sound disabled. This test isn't as strict a test of graphics performance as some of our other benchmarks. For one, we used the built-in test feature. While this gives us a consistent "run" through a scene, physics variability and slight differences in what the characters in the scene do are apparent. This is similar to the Far Cry test if Crytek had added physics cues to the camera path of their benchmark.
While we would like to see more consistent action in order to compare cards better, the built-in tool is a much better option than using fraps while running through a level. As mentioned, we tested three different game settings. Driver settings were all default except for VSYNC, which was explicitly disabled.
Before we get to the numbers, let's take a deeper look at some of the graphics and performance issues that we noted previously.
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dashrendar - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
I'm the only person on the face of the planet who's going to be able to play this game at 1600x1200 with everything set to max, with min 60 fps, and enjoy every dpi of its beauty... a year from now that is.Icehawk - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
Personally I don't think the game looks all that great and once I set it so it is playable it looks pretty bad IMO - Quake 4 looks better and runs smoother at higher rez with more options.P4 3.4ghz, 1gb ram, 6600GT - I need to run it at 8x6 with everything on medium, no AA - it's fugly man.
I'm sick of reviews with only the highest end gear - the 6600GT #s mean almost nothing to an actual owner, who has an FX processor and "only" a 6600?! Please start using TWO machines for these tests, one super mega rig for getting absolute #s and one average machine so users can see what they will REALLY get.
mostlyprudent - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
I have to agree with what others have said. Where are the X800 Pro/XL and X850 XT? Why test with ATI's new (unavailable) cards at the expense of the currently available ones and then dismiss tham as options because of availability issues? If you feel so strongly about it, refuse to test with them until they become available. Then we can all complain about the absence of testing with forthcoming cards! :) Sucks to be a reviewer and have to test 15 different cards to please most of us.Which brings me to my industry issue: How long can NV and ATI realistically continue to crank out new architectures every 6 months? Something has got to give. I think the worst case scenario is ending up in a single manufacturer situation. I keep hoping ATi pulls something out of their hat just for competition sake.
Are the days of passively cooled cards over?! I haven't even gotten around to picking up Gigabyte's passively cooled X800XL and it's already becoming outdated :(
flexy - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
>>>I have to agree with what others have said. Where are the X800 Pro/XL and X850 XT? Why test with ATI's new (unavailable) cards at the expense of the currently available ones and then dismiss tham as options because of availability issues? If you feel so strongly about it, refuse to test with them until they become available.
>>>
i totally agree. I just stuningly overflew the article and the charts where in the AA/AF tests (which are the ones which count) the 1800XT CLEARLY comes out a TAD faster than the 7800GTX.
THEN - below i read: "We can only recommend 'saving up for a 7800GTX'.
a)if you recommend 'saving for a 7800GTX' then i dont understand that you dont mention that the 1800XT might be available the same time when this person saved it's money going out for a GTX - and then XT would be faster
b) having the XT in the charts and then dismiss it in the recommendations because availability is WEIRD. I UNDERSTAND, and we're all frustrated by ATI's paper launches and non-existing fantasy cards.....but, still..i THINK you would have done better if you'd waited a bit longer 'til the XT is an available product...instead of showing it in the graphs and then forget about it because it might take a few more weeks 'til they're available.
ALSO - you as testers HAD one (XT)....so it doesnt make sense because you HAD the product in hands and compared it - and this was a real product which will be available soone (ehrm, i hope :) )and not some calculated "benchies" based on a totally differnt hardware.
c) X850PE: For sure. Miss the numbers becausew i have one
d) i think it would be worth to mention that, amongst all the hype, a engine which runs BARELY 40FPS on super-duper high-end cards realle "does not make much sense" - especially if opinions are split whether the gfx in it are REALLY *that* ground breaking. MAYBE - maybe this game engine is just really BAD and inefficient. Sorry...we're talking about high-end machines here with 2GB ram and top-notch gfx cards in the $500 range...and a mediocre resolution like 1280x doesnt get better than 40FPS ??? Not really a reason to rave.
And as some said, there are similiar titles out with (subjective seen) on par (or even better) graphics which runs WAY faster.
OrSin - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
Why are review impressed when games need more graphic power? Can we be impressed with good graphics and lower requirements. It a shame when a $50 game need a $500 video card. And whats worste is that in year another will need the next $500 card. And all this to play maybe 5 FPS at most in the next year.bob661 - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
Don't play the game or turn your settings down! It's pretty simple. I've been doing it for a long time as until last year, I couldn't even afford a midrange video card.Pythias - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
Don't play the game or turn your settings down! It's pretty simple. I've been doing it for a long time as until last year, I couldn't even afford a midrange video card.Thats a great idea, except I just purchased an lcd. Mine doesnt play well with anything other than its native resolution.
bob661 - Friday, October 21, 2005 - link
Well then you need to get crackin on that new video card! :)antiprnt - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
Seemed like it was more of a 1800xt vs 7800 gtx article..all the other stuff mentioned was just a bonus, maybe thats why they didnt include sli in the mix..latino666 - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/fear_performan...">They use the X800 XL . Not only that but when they review a game they do it in two different articles. One for mainstream and another for high-end. I would like to see Anandtech do the same.