Core i7 vs. Penryn vs. Phenom II with HD 4870-X2 & TriFire

F.E.A.R.

F.E.A.R. – First Encounter Armed Assault – is a DX9c game by Monolith Productions that was originally released in October 2005 by Vivendi Universal Production. Later, there were two expansions with the latest, Perseus Mandate, released in 2007. Although the game engine is aging, it still has some of the most spectacular effects of any game. F.E.A.R. showcases a powerful particle system, complete with sparks and smoke for collisions as well as featuring bullet marks and other effects including “soft shadows”. This is highlighted by the built-in performance test, although it was never updated. This performance test will tell you how F.E.A.R. will run, but both of its expansions are progressively more demanding on your PC graphics and will run slower than the demo. We always run at least two sets of tests with all in-game features at ‘maximum’. F.E.A.R. uses the Jupiter Extended Technology engine from Touchdown Entertainment.

We test with the most demanding settings. Fully maxed details with 4xAA/16xAF; soft shadows ‘off’, as they do not play well with AA. Let’s start first at 1920×1200:

Now at 1680×1050:

The HD 4870-X2 and Tri-Fire still appear to be having driver issues and some hiccups with its minimums as it did with the earlier Catalyst drivers. Even so, there is not much difference between the fastest and the slowest CPU with either card as the maximums are already ridiculously high; it doesn’t matter if Core i7 has maximums in the 600s while Phenom II is in the 400 frames per second rate range. There is really no practical difference that you will see playing F.E.A.R. with any CPU combination that we tested.

We see tight grouping of the Phenoms according to clockspeed. There is no difference between a dual- tri- or a quad-core. This game is faster on Intel CPUs, but not so that you would really notice in playing it.