For gameplay evaluations on a CRT, please head back to our CRT performance section.
We used the full retail version of F.E.A.R. patched to version 1.04. The game makes use of a lot of effects - including soft shadows, volumetric lighting, parallax mapping and particle effects, along with a slow-motion mode that really taxes today's top of the line GPU's. There's extensive use of high resolution textures. The walls are both bump mapped and parallax mapped to give a realistic feel to the brick walls that are a big feature of this title. Also, the world is incredibly destructible, which is made more realistic by parallax mapping.
In general, this is a graphically intense game and the most outstanding part of the graphics engine is undoubtedly the player character's shadow that is cast on the wall.
It also has the most advanced A.I. that we have ever seen in a game engine to date - there are times when you'll find yourself with your pants down around your ankles with no where to go. For anyone who hasn't bought this game yet, we highly recommend you do - check out our full review here.
We did a manual run-through from the "Heavy Resistance" level, between two save game checkpoints - it was a section of intense outdoor gameplay that lasted around three and a half minutes. We recorded frame over time graphs for all of our manual run-throughs because we found that the SloMo mode dropped our frame rates in to the low teens. We suspect this drop is part of Monolith's technique for slowing down the gameplay, as the game was not as jerky as the frame rate suggests.
Anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering were controlled from inside the game, and thus drivers were left set to "Application Controlled".
The two GeForce 7950 GX2 speed grades were both incredibly fast at 1920x1200 and in a completely different league to both the BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GTX OC and the Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX. There was quite a large difference in average frame rate, but both the XFX 570M XXX Edition and the reference-clocked GeForce 7950 GX2's delivered a similarly smooth gameplay experience at the same detail settings.
We feel that F.E.A.R. benefits from anti-aliasing, and neither the GeForce 7900 GTX OC and Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX were fast enough to play the game smoothly with anti-aliasing and maximum in game details enabled. We had to reduce the details in order to make the game smooth enough to deliver an acceptable gaming experience at 1920x1200. The BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GTX OC was faster than the Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX, as it was able to deliver smooth gameplay at higher in-game details.
As with Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, we had to lower the shadow details on the Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX in order to maintain a high enough minimum frame rate. Average frame rate wasn't the issue here, as gameplay was generally fine - it just wasn't smooth enough.
F.E.A.R.
Publisher: VU GamesWe used the full retail version of F.E.A.R. patched to version 1.04. The game makes use of a lot of effects - including soft shadows, volumetric lighting, parallax mapping and particle effects, along with a slow-motion mode that really taxes today's top of the line GPU's. There's extensive use of high resolution textures. The walls are both bump mapped and parallax mapped to give a realistic feel to the brick walls that are a big feature of this title. Also, the world is incredibly destructible, which is made more realistic by parallax mapping.
In general, this is a graphically intense game and the most outstanding part of the graphics engine is undoubtedly the player character's shadow that is cast on the wall.
It also has the most advanced A.I. that we have ever seen in a game engine to date - there are times when you'll find yourself with your pants down around your ankles with no where to go. For anyone who hasn't bought this game yet, we highly recommend you do - check out our full review here.
We did a manual run-through from the "Heavy Resistance" level, between two save game checkpoints - it was a section of intense outdoor gameplay that lasted around three and a half minutes. We recorded frame over time graphs for all of our manual run-throughs because we found that the SloMo mode dropped our frame rates in to the low teens. We suspect this drop is part of Monolith's technique for slowing down the gameplay, as the game was not as jerky as the frame rate suggests.
We feel that F.E.A.R. benefits from anti-aliasing, and neither the GeForce 7900 GTX OC and Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX were fast enough to play the game smoothly with anti-aliasing and maximum in game details enabled. We had to reduce the details in order to make the game smooth enough to deliver an acceptable gaming experience at 1920x1200. The BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GTX OC was faster than the Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX, as it was able to deliver smooth gameplay at higher in-game details.
As with Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, we had to lower the shadow details on the Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX in order to maintain a high enough minimum frame rate. Average frame rate wasn't the issue here, as gameplay was generally fine - it just wasn't smooth enough.
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