As scary as Doom3 may have been when it was released, there is NO game scarier than Monolith's F.E.A.R. And as good as Doom3 looked when it first came out, it can't hold a candle to F.E.A.R. Those beautiful graphics come at a price, however. With the ability to bring even dual 7900GTXs to their knees, I was excited to see how the XXX cards would handle F.E.A.R.
Sadly, the 6800GTs were gone before I was able to run F.E.A.R. and so there is no previous generation to compare just how far these cards have come, but still the results I do have speak volumes. The in-game benchmark was run in 1280x960 and 1024x768 (vertical sync always off) in the following three quality levels: Maximum, High and Medium. There was nothing changed from the default settings the game enabled/disabled except for the resolution. The one complaint I have with F.E.A.R. is that the game changes the resolution based on the graphics settings chosen.
Other than that, though, the settings were left exactly as the game set them and each test was run twice to make sure the results weren't flukes. The 7600GST stock speeds were 506MHz/1416Mhz and overclocked were 559MHz/1640MHz (core/memory). The GST was the closest stand-in I had for the 6800GTs, and since the GST performed a little behind the pair of GTs these results provide some perspective and conjecture at how the 6800GTs in SLI would perform.
F.E.A.R.
F.E.A.R. being arguably one of the most demanding engines on the market today, it is refreshing to see that these sub-$200 video cards can play at 1280x960 with settings maxed out and still have a very enjoyable gaming experience. With an average framerate of 43fps, these cards can take some of the harshest abuse modern gaming has to offer and comes back asking for more and more.
