Fallout 3 Performance

Fallout 3 is based on the Gamebryo engine that powered Oblivion, though it has gone through modifications and tweaks along the way. The game looks great with all the settings cranked and it's pretty fun as well. We disabled vsync and set iPresentInterval to zero, but we still had some quirks with framerate. It seems like we may be system limited in some ways, which is impressive given our system. In the future we will try to refine our test to make it more graphically intense though some .ini file tweaks and see if that helps out.


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Framerates are compressed up near the 77 frames per second. The lead the NVIDIA hardware has here is thus also compressed. In running around, it is clear framerate is not limited: we saw max FPS up over 110, but the benchmark we ran just ends up coming out this way. This is a straight line outdoor run at twilight.

Again, the single Radeon HD 4870 1GB leads the GTX 260, but GTX 260 SLI outperforms the 4870 X2 indicating an SLI advantage over CrossFire (or an NVIDIA driver advantage over AMD -- without more low level technical data we can't assess what exactly the issue is). But as this article focuses on the GTX 295, even though the gap looks small we can say that this one goes to NVIDIA as well.

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  • cactusdog - Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - link

    SiliconDoc, you sound like a tool.
  • TheDoc9 - Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - link

    Actually while I don't agree with everything silcondoc says. I also read some very lite well hidden bias in this article. I simply called it indifference in one of my posts.
  • zebrax2 - Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - link

    you know who really likes a certain team...
    plain bullshit. if they really wanted to favor the red team they would have rigged the test. you have no basis on accusing them and I'm sure that they have some reason for not adding it.

    if you don't like what they write just go to another site
  • SiliconDoc - Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - link

    If you don't like what I wrote, follow your own advice and leave.
    How about it there fella - if that's your standard, take off.
    If not, make excuses.
    I think it's Derek, to be honest, and specific.
    That's fine, I think not noting it - and not being able to adjust for it, IS a problem.
    You cannot really expect someone that is into hardware and goes that deep into testing to wind up in the middle.
    So use your head.
    I used mine and pointed out what was disturbing, and if that helps a few think clearly on their purchases, no matter their decision, that's good by me.
    However, your comment was not helpful.
  • Goty - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link

    Uses less power than... what?

    By bit-tech's numbers, the GTX295's power consumption is about 70W more than a single GTX280 and only about 40W less than a 4870X2 at full load.
  • SiliconDoc - Saturday, January 17, 2009 - link

    Oh, let's not have any whining about where's the link
    http://vr-zone.com/articles/nvidia-geforce-gtx-295...
    Not that you ever thought about doing that at all - although I'm sure others did.
  • SiliconDoc - Saturday, January 17, 2009 - link

    lol- wrong comparison - again....

    " By bit-tech's numbers, the GTX295's power consumption is about 70W more than a single GTX280 and only about 40W less than a 4870X2 at full load. "

    Let's correct that.

    " By vr-zone's numbers, the GTX295's power consumption is about 60W LESS than a single 4870x2 at idle, and about 45W LESS than a 4870X2 at full load. THE GTX295 stomps the 4870x2 into the GROUND when it comes to power savings, and BETTER PERFORMANCE. "

    There we go , now the red ragers can cuss and call names again - because the truth hurts them, so, so bad.

  • AdamK47 - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link

    It's interesting you got the game working with these drivers. The game crashes for most with these.
  • Goty - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link

    Doesn't the documentation state that the 8.12 hotfix is only needed for 4850 crossfire systems?
  • Marlin1975 - Monday, January 12, 2009 - link

    A $500 video card that used 289watts of power. Just what every one wants.


    I was happy with AMDs new video cards. Not because they were at the top of all the charts. But that they offered a lot of power for a fair price and did not use to much power. Maybe some geek that wants to "brag" about spending $500 on a video card will get this. But for the other 99.9% of users this brings nothing to usefull table.

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