Introducing the Radeon X1650 XT: A New Mainstream GPU from ATI

F.E.A.R. Performance

F.E.A.R. is another one of our standard benchmarks for testing GPU performance. When it was first released, it was the most graphically intensive first-person shooter (or of just about any genre for that matter) on the market. We also found that the game had a few quirks, notably a poorly implemented "soft shadows" effect option that caused a big performance hit without really working graphically at all.

The test we use is the built in performance analysis test that the developers conveniently included in the performance section of the game menu. This is basically a flythrough of a few different rooms consisting of a gunfight, a pool of rippling water and an explosion with flames at the end. We tested F.E.A.R. with the highest quality settings enabled, naturally with the exception of soft shadows which were disabled.



With F.E.A.R. the 7600 GT goes back to getting a few FPS better than the X1650 XT across all resolutions. Around 25 FPS and above is what we consider playable for this game, and most of the cards here achieve this up to 1600x1200. The 6600 GT doesn't quite manage this resolution, and the X1800 GTO is borderline playable. These happen to be cards that have been on their way out for a while now, so this isn't such a surprise.