Diamond HD4890-XOC, Review – Part 2

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 a bit, 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 2 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 again first at 1920×1200:

Now at 1680×1050:

In this case, the HD4870-X2 appears to be having driver issues and some hiccups at its minimums; even the HD4870 does better.  Still, the HD4870-XOC scales nicely when it is overclocked and it is solidly faster than the HD4870.  The GTX280 keeps the single GPU leadership here although our overclocked HD4890-XOC comes close.