Inno3D GeForce 7900 GS iChiLL ACS6

F.E.A.R.

Publisher: VU Games

We used the full retail version of F.E.A.R. patched to version 1.08. The game makes use of a lot of effects - including soft shadows, volumetric lighting, parallax mapping and particle effects, along with a slow-motion mode that really taxes today's top of the line GPU's. There's extensive use of high resolution textures. The walls are both bump mapped and parallax mapped to give a realistic feel to the brick walls that are a big feature of this title. Also, the world is incredibly destructible, which is made more realistic by parallax mapping.

In general, this is a graphically intense game and the most outstanding part of the graphics engine is undoubtedly the player character's shadow that is cast on the wall. It also has the most advanced A.I. that we have ever seen in a game engine to date - there are times when you'll find yourself with your pants down around your ankles with no where to go.

We used the built in benchmark for our testing. Although this isn't as stressful as many portions of the game, it does give a good indication of overall game performance.







Again in F.E.A.R., Inno3D's card was more than capable of playable frame rates at 1280x1024 with maximum details, and even 4xAA enabled too. However, performance started to tail off at 1600x1200 and you're either going to have to lower in-game details if anti-aliasing is important to you, or turn it off if it isn't. Based on our own internal testing, we've found that around 55-60 frames per second in the game's in-built benchmark gives very playable, albeit slightly lower, frame rates during real-world gameplay.