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
No Soft Shadows and No AA/AF Performance Tests
This is the setting that we would recommend most people establish. Anisotropic filtering can be enabled for a minimal performance drop, but many people just won't have hardware that can handle soft shadows or antialiasing. Also note that we have made quite a big deal about the fact that soft shadows in this game just aren't worth it.
Without soft shadows or AA enabled, you can see that until you get to a resolution as high as about 1024x768, all of these cards get playable framerates. The X1300 Pro is the most limited of these cards and can really only play this game well at 640x480 and 800x600 without AA or soft shadows enabled. But you can see how low the framerates are in general at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 for all the cards, giving us a first look at the graphical demands of this game. The 7800 GTX and 7800 GT get very respectable framerates at 1600x1200 though, and at this same resolution, the 6800 GT and X1800 XL are low, but still playable. 25 fps is about as low as we would consider barely "playable", but to really enjoy the gameplay, you'll want a framerate of about 35 fps. Now, let's look at what happens when we turn on 4xAA and 8xAF.
This is the setting that we would recommend most people establish. Anisotropic filtering can be enabled for a minimal performance drop, but many people just won't have hardware that can handle soft shadows or antialiasing. Also note that we have made quite a big deal about the fact that soft shadows in this game just aren't worth it.
Without soft shadows or AA enabled, you can see that until you get to a resolution as high as about 1024x768, all of these cards get playable framerates. The X1300 Pro is the most limited of these cards and can really only play this game well at 640x480 and 800x600 without AA or soft shadows enabled. But you can see how low the framerates are in general at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 for all the cards, giving us a first look at the graphical demands of this game. The 7800 GTX and 7800 GT get very respectable framerates at 1600x1200 though, and at this same resolution, the 6800 GT and X1800 XL are low, but still playable. 25 fps is about as low as we would consider barely "playable", but to really enjoy the gameplay, you'll want a framerate of about 35 fps. Now, let's look at what happens when we turn on 4xAA and 8xAF.
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Le Québécois - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
Like many peoples said it would have been nice to see older generation HW...especially on ATI side of thing since most of the card tested here are nowhere to be found on the market.Seeing performance with the X800XL and the X850XT would have been nice.
I also hope you'll do some CPU testing in the future since I doubt you'll see many peoples out there with AMD FX55...especially paired up with the like of X1300... :)
Kogan - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
Since the max upgrade for AGP users on the ATI side is an X800xt/x850xt, it would have been nice to have seen one of them included.ballero - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
I'm looking forward to the SLI numbersAbecedaria - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
It is a significant error that SLI numbers were left out of the article since it seems to be about how fast current video card technologies can play the game:"Those who want to play FEAR at the highest resolution and settings with AA enabled (without soft shadows) will basically have to use the 7800 GTX, as no other card available gets playable framerates at those settings, and the 7800 GTX does just barely (if uncomfortably)." ...unless you have an SLI setup, I assume. Does Anandtech feel that SLI is not a viable graphics technology or am I missing something?
And then there's Crossfire... while it STILL isn't available yet, it would have been interesting to see some performance numbers along with SLI tests.
I'd would be nice if you could update the article with dual card frame-rates.
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Abecedaria - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
Oh wait!!!!PC Perspective has already beat Anandtech to the punch on this subject, and the results show that SLI has a SIGNIFICANT impact on playability, even without any driver optimizations....
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=175&type=...">http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=175&type=...
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Ender17 - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
I agree. Can we get some SLI benchmarks?Kyanzes - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
...to see a card performing on the top when it's not even available...9nails - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link
Exactly! I love this Land of Make Believe. It's a good thing that I have a AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 2.6 GHz processor in my Desktop, Laptop, and PDA. And I'm loving it because after an unreal CPU like that, I would still have hundreds of dollars left to burn on make-believe GPU's. Because, if I was only a regular Joe Anad-reader with a middle tier Pentium 4 and old school AGP graphics port I would be quite upset that the author is targeting his reviews at the well connected Beverley Hills posh.Just who is Josh writing his articles for any way?! I'm going back to surfing pr0n. Because I have a far better chance at dating a porn* than owning a system like the one that he's showing scores on.
yacoub - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link
Well thanks for supporting the thread I started in Video forum section last week addressing that very issue. All the idiots came out of the woodwork to do their best to misinterpret and misread the post and very few actually bothered to support my suggestion that a test be done with a REAL WORLD system most of us own, not an FX-55 setup with a 7800GTX that few people own.I'd LOVE to see how modern games perform on a system I'm actually thinking of buying, not an imaginary supersystem.
deathwalker - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link
You know..it's simply come to the point to where I don't know how the average gamer can keep up. It's come to the point to where if you are not willing to spend $300-$500 every 6-12 mos. or so you just can not keep up with the demands that games are putting on computer hardware. This is stupid..I mean who the hell is dragging this industry along? Do they develop new and more powerful hardware so more demanding software can be created or do they develop more demanding software making it a necessity to develop more powerful hardware? Is all this crap really needed to have a decent gaming experience? I guess I'm just gonna have to starve the Cat for the couple of months so I can toss out my POS 6800gt and get some new wizzbang graphics cards the industry wants me to buy. This has become a never ending process that is wearing thin on me.