Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS

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 nowhere 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.







F.E.A.R. also proves that GeForce 8600 GTS is starved for memory bandwidth, as performance really tails off at 1280x1024 4xAA -- with around a 30% performance drop over its performance at 1280x1024 2xAA. Based on the fact that the inbuilt F.E.A.R. benchmark isn't quite as stressful as some portions of the game, 43 frames per second just isn't enough for smooth gameplay.

The card is ideally suited to running at 1280x1024, but if you're looking to run with 4xAA, you're going to have to lower some of the other quality settings. Otherwise, 2xAA at 1280x1024 is about the best you're going to get. Asus' EN8600GTS TOP performs about the same as Nvidia's GeForce 7900 GT as 1280x1024 2xAA, but it ends up slower than the GeForce 7900 GS when 4xAA is applied.

If you're running a bigger display than a 17" or 19" TFT, you're going to be stuck playing F.E.A.R. with 0xAA if you want to leave the maximum in-game quality settings turned on. You'll get smooth frame rates from the two different GeForce 8600 GTS brands we've tested here all the way up to 1920x1200, as long as you leave anti-aliasing disabled. With anti-aliasing enabled, there is no doubt that you are going to have to make image quality compromises in this title.