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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  • eljefeII - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link

    yeah, x1800 looks like a flop for the most part. and it doesnt exist.
    kinda gay
  • ryanlopez4550 - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link

    but games like this make up for the lower settings

    my friend came over last night and we played online FEAR for 6 hours

    He has a comp i built him with a 6600gt and it ran great on some custom setting and didnt look at all sub par. Didnt lag ONCE all night. The test program in the game is really cool to so now i dont have to sit there with fraps and stuff on for ever

    multi player - the gameplay is so fast most of the time there is NO time for you to admire the scenery
  • boyer00 - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link

    it says how the geforce 7800 is basically the only card to run it at the highest end, i just ordered a alienware about a week ago with, dual geforce 7800GTX-KO's, and a 19"LCD monitor, 4 gig DDR2 ram and 3.2 dual core pentium-D....my question is do i have anything to worry about in the upcoming months/year graphically?
  • Gary Key - Sunday, October 23, 2005 - link

    Since you are probably limited to 1280x1024 on your 19" LCD then you are fairly safe. However, the 840D will have issues in providing enough data (the GPUs will have wait states) for the 7800GTX SLI setup at the higher resolutions such as 1600x1200 in case you decide to change monitors. I have found the 7800GTX SLI setup and the 840EE to run Fear at 1280x1024 (960) without too much of an issue.
  • Regs - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link

    The answer to this question is always yes. You just bought a excellent system to play today's games. Not tomorrows games.
  • ryanlopez4550 - Friday, October 21, 2005 - link

    i have a 7800 gtx at 490-1300 and a gig of ram and a 3200 amd...

    i tested the game out on the MIN. settings... direct x 7 and such (looked like duke nukem) and i got a max of 60 a min of 58 and an average of 59

    everything else runs HORRIBLY!
  • ryanlopez4550 - Friday, October 21, 2005 - link

    ONE MORE TIME

    tried to get the new drivers for my 7800gtx

    its telling me i dont have the right drivers for my hardware... ?????????

    well anywho i uninstalled them all and reinstalled them so i have the old old drivers and now the game runs like normal

    'high' and 'high' settings got me a min. of 54 and a max of 214
  • ryanlopez4550 - Friday, October 21, 2005 - link

    ok just tried it again

    max setting (1024x768) soft shadows and 4x16x i got an average of 23 fps

    so i lower the settings... soft shadows off and 2x8x and i get the same results...
  • Kung Lau - Friday, October 21, 2005 - link

    Is there any way to get a poll of AT forum viewers and establish which cards get tested on bleeding edge software? Wouldn't that help us see data that pertains to the majority of us. I understand that you can't evaluate every possible card/model/resolution variation but a current reader based poll may help.
  • fogeyman - Friday, October 21, 2005 - link

    Post in the forums.

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