F.E.A.R

Like Quake 4, F.E.A.R is extremely CPU limited on the low end. As such, we don’t expect to see performance benefits with the 8800GTX at low details. Let’s see if the results in F.E.A.R are reminiscent of the ones we saw in Quake 4, with the 8800GTX making the game even MORE CPU limited than it already is.


Well, it looks like F.E.A.R is a little too CPU limited for the 8800GTX to have any affect in that arena. However, performance numbers DID increase by a good 20 frames across the board. We don’t know whether to attribute this gain to the 8800GTX, the graphics drivers or something else, but 20 FPS is significant enough to make a difference. Next, we tested F.E.A.R on medium settings to get an intermediate look at what would be happening on the high end.


At medium settings it is clear that the 8800GTX outperforms the 7900GT, that much is expected. However, the performance gap here seems pretty small. We can only assume that this is because medium settings only puts a small strain on the video card. So then, since we didn’t get any spectacular results in the middle, let’s crank everything up and see what happens on the high end.


Ahh there we go. A 79.4% performance increase with the 8800GTX in F.E.A.R on high settings is just the spectacular result we were looking for. Even at low resolutions the 8800GTX beats the 7900GT by at least 40 frames. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about CS1.6 or CoD2; 40 FPS is a big difference.