F.E.A.R. Performance
F.E.A.R. has a built in test that we make use of in this performance analysis. This test flies through some action as people shoot each other and things blow up. F.E.A.R. is very heavy on the graphics, and we enable most of the high end settings for our test.
During our testing of F.E.A.R., we noted that the "soft shadows" don't really look soft. They jumped out at us as multiple layers of transparent shadows layered on top of each other and jittered to appear soft. Unfortunately, this costs a lot in performance and not nearly enough shadows are used to make this look realistic. Thus, we disable soft shadows in our test even though its one of the large performance drains on the system.
Again we tested with antialiasing off and anisotropic filtering at 8x. All options were on their highest quality with the exception of soft shadows which was disabled. Frame rates for F.E.A.R. can get pretty low, but the game does a good job of staying playable down to about 25 fps.
The usual suspects are playable at 1600x1200, with the addition of the X1600 XT which just squeeks by our 25fps cutoff. The 7900 GT and X1900 GT which used to compete in terms of price are neck and neck again, but with the recent price cuts, the X1900 GT leads in value. The 7600 GT is solidly playable at this resolution, so if the budget prohibits the extra cash for the X1900 GT, the 7600 GT at under $200 is a good alternative for F.E.A.R. at 1600x1200.
At the low end, the 7900 GT leads the X1900 GT, but this game shows the ATI cards scaling a little better than the NVIDIA part. The 7600 GT, while neck and neck with the X1800 GTO at the low end, pulls away towards the higher resolutions. Owners of the 6600 GT will either want to upgrade to hit higher resolutions, turn down some settings, or drop to 1280x960 to see playable performance.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
74 Comments
View All Comments
DerekWilson - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
look again :-) It should be fixed.pervisanathema - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
You post hard to read line graphs of the benchmarks that show the X1900XT crushing the 7900GT with AA/AF enabled.Then you post easy to read bar charts of an O/Ced 7900GT barely eeking out a victory over the X1900XT ins some benchmarks and you forget to turn on AA/AF.
I am not accussing you guys of bias but you make it very easy to draw that conclusion.
yyrkoon - Sunday, August 13, 2006 - link
Well, I cannot speak for the rest of the benchmarks, but owning a 7600GT, AND Oblivion, I find the Oblivion benchmarks not accurate.My system:
Asrock AM2NF4G-SATA2
AMD AM2 3800+
2GB Corsair DDR2 6400 (4-4-4-12)
eVGA 7600GT KO
The rest is pretty much irrelivent. With this system, I play @ 1440x900, with high settings, simular to the benchmark settings, and the lowest I get is 29 FPS under heavey combat(lots of NPCs on screen, and attacking me.). Average FPS in town, 44 FPS, wilderness 44 FPS, dungeon 110 FPS. I'd also like to note, that compared to my AMD 3200+ XP / 6600GT system, the game is much more fluid / playable.
Anyhow, keep up the good work guys, I just find your benchmarks wrong from my perspective.
Warder45 - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
The type of chart used just depends on if they tested multiple resolutions vs a single resolution.Similar to your complaint, I could say they are bias towards ATI by showing how the X1900XT had better marks across all resolutions tested yet only tested the 7900GT OC at one resolution not giveing it the chance to prove itself.