Athlon 64 Dual-Core Upgrade and NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB SLI - Page 9 of 9
Review By Mike Chambers - January 21, 2006
F.E.A.R. GAMEPLAY PERFORMANCE
F.E.A.R. gameplay began at Interval 02 - Initiation where you receive instructions to rendezvous with Ron Janikowski's team. The walkthrough takes about one minute and 10 seconds to complete.
F.E.A.R. Gameplay - Start of Walkthrough
Click Image to Enlarge
The lowest frame rate occurs in the scene below, as a well thrown grenade causes the barrel to explode. A 320x240 MPEG-1 video/audio clip of the entire F.E.A.R gameplay scenario can be viewed using this link (~ 22MB). A shorter clip, which contains the first 15 seconds of the walkthrough, can be viewed using this link (~3MB).
F.E.A.R. Gameplay - Minimum Frame Rate Occurrence
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Fraps was used to determine the average and minimum frame rate during each walkthrough. Fraps was also configured to record the frame rate per second, which is plotted on the small graph next to each benchmark result.
F.E.A.R. - SLI Gameplay Performance
CONCLUSION
In early January, AMD announced the Athlon 64 FX-60 dual-core processor, which is the last of the 939-pin models. The Socket M2 is scheduled to rollout in the second quarter of 2006 as a 940-pin Athlon 64 with an integrated memory controller designed to support DDR2 memory. By the end of 2006, AMD's top-of-the line processors will be the Athlon 64 FX-62 and Athlon 64 5200+.
Entering 2005, the GeForce 6800 Ultra was NVIDIA's most powerful desktop GPU. The GeForce 7800 GTX debuted six months later and was so powerful that it surpassed the performance of the GeForce 6800 Ultra in SLI in Battlefield 2, Half-Life 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory w/HDR, Enemy Territory, Far Cry w/HDR, Lock On: Modern Air Combat and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005.
Not to be outdone by ATI and the Radeon X1800XT, NVIDIA released a higher clocked 512MB version of the GeForce 7800 GTX in November of 2006. The GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB ended up outperforming the GeForce 7800 GTX as much as 50%. The increase in performance during the past year at 1600x1200 with 4X antialiasing has been very impressive.
GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB vs. GeForce 6800 Ultra
The performance of the GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB is mind-boggling at times, but its record-breaking price tag and scarce availability confirms that it was a temporary measure to compete with the Radeon X1800XT. But competition is good for the consumer. Let's hope that it will lead to less expensive graphics cards at the high-end in 2006.
