4xAA/8xAF Performance Tests

This is a good option for gamers with a high end card. Generally, the best way to get a better experience from a game is going to be increasing resolution. This is especially true of FEAR because the performance hit of enabling 4xAA is incredibly large. Much of FEAR is designed well to avoid noticeable aliasing (low contrast edges), and the most noticeable edges in the game are high contrast shadows.

When we enable 4xAA and 8xAF, the higher resolutions take an even bigger performance hit than with soft shadows (as we will see soon). At 1600x1200, the framerates of the 7800 GTX and GT are cut in half, making the game less enjoyable to play. At 1280x960, the 7800 GTX gets 39 fps, and the 7800 GT gets 33 fps; both of these are playable. The X1800 XL gets 32 fps at this resolution, which would also be playable. At lower resolutions, the cards didn't take as big of a performance hit with AA as with soft shadows enabled. You can see that all of these cards are playable at 800x600 except for the X1300 PRO, which is borderline at 640x480 with AA. Let's also make it clear that we stopped testing performance at higher resolutions when framerates dropped below 20 fps. Performance that bad or worse is simply useless.

No Soft Shadows and No AA/AF Performance Tests Soft Shadows Performance
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  • giles00 - Tuesday, October 25, 2005 - link

    I thought the bit-tech review was more relevant - they actually sat down and played the game, proving that the inbuilt graphics test doesn't bare any representation on real game play.

    http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2005/10/24/fear/1.h...">http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2005/10/24/fear/1.h...

    here's a good quote:

    quote:

    To give an idea of how intense our manual run through is in comparison to the built in "stress" test, the average and minimum frame rates for the NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX at 1280x960 2xAA 8xAF were 41 fps and 11 fps respectively. In contrast, the stress test reported a 55 FPS average and 35 fps minimum frame rate with only 17% of the frames below 40 frames per second. We think it is fair to say that the stress test isn't really much of a "stress" test after all.
  • lindy01 - Sunday, October 23, 2005 - link

    Having to upgrade your hardware to the latest and greatest to get good looking games is crazy. In the last two years its spun out of control.

    My 9700pro lasted the longest, then I bought a 6800GT for $359.....my next purchase is a xbox360 for $399....I am sure if they make a version of Fear for it it will look great on my 50inch HD Sony TV. Ahhh and it probably wont ship full of bugs.

    Dam if it were not for PC games my system would be a 1ghz P3 with 512megs of ram!
  • Regs - Monday, October 24, 2005 - link

    I'm a little reluctant too this year to upgrade. The worse thing about it is when they make a good optimized graphics engine , like HL2's & Far Cry's, they dont seem to last very long. I expected at least a few other developers to make good quality games with them but that never happened. So the end result is that you're upgrading your PC for 2 or 3 titles a year. ID's OpenGL based engine was the only real "big" seller with Riddick and Quake 4 thankfully. Plus if you include the problem that if the games turned out not to be in your liking you're stuck with 1000 dollars worth of useless hardware.
  • CronicallyInsane - Sunday, October 23, 2005 - link

    I got the game, installed the new patch, and have been running @ 1024x768 just fine with the majority of the goodies on. Given, no soft shadows, and on 4x rather than 8x or 16x, but it looks beautiful to me.

    2.4Gig Northwood @ 3 gig
    1 gig pc3200
    Raptor 36G
    6600gt agp @ 550/1.1

    Try it before you bash it, ya know?

    d
  • carl0ski - Sunday, October 23, 2005 - link

    I am starting to think technology sites are forgeting they are to be reviewing the game.

    Not VIDEO cards.


    quote:

    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



    So What the hell is this (not yet available) doing in an article helping us decide to buy a game?


    we want to buy the game knowing whether it will run on what people own.

    Geforce TI's
    ATI 9800XT
    ATI Radeon X1300 Pro
    ATI Radeon X800 GT
    NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX
    NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
    NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
    NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT
    etc

    AS that is what the mainstream/people own already

    We want to know if it'll run on our own computers!!


    simple as that.

    How many of the 1,000,000's of copies a game is sold on do people run on $400 current generation Cards?
    probably only a small percentage

    most people i know who bought BF2 use cards ranging 6 months - 2 year old cards.
  • yacoub - Sunday, October 23, 2005 - link

    Any chance this will actually happen?
    http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...amp;thre...
  • Regs - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link

    You make reference to how the soft shadows are implemented to Riddick compared to FEARs yet I searched the site and there is no benchmarks or IQ comparisons of Riddick. If you asked me that's a major problem considering you have no evidence published to back up your own statement.
  • Jeff7181 - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link

    This should be a game review... not a GPU review. Review the game, play the game how you'd actually play it... with sound enabled. THEN show us the FPS measurements.
  • yacoub - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link

    A large number of Anandtech readers do not comprehend anything other than "GPU review" so you will likely not see a true game review anytime soon on a realistic rig. It's always only ever a GPU test with an FX-55. =/
  • yacoub - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link

    You include the 6600GT and 6800GT but not the X800XL and X800XT, the two comparable cards. Stop with the 1800-series nonsense and post the BUYABLE ATI cards as well please! Would be nice for those of us considering upgrading to an X800XL or 6800GT to see how they stand up in FEAR. :(

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