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F.E.A.R. CPU Shootout: AMD vs. Intel October 24, 2005 Chris Crazipper Angelini |
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Summary: Wondering which processor is best for Monolith's horror-themed shooter F.E.A.R.? Perhaps you'd like to know if upgrading from 1GB to 2GB of memory will help your performance? In this article we've rounded up 20 different CPUs, as well as 1GB and 2GB memory configs and even SLI. See which setups deliver the best performance inside!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 8 ) |
This Christmas looks like it’ll be a good one for enthusiastic gamers thanks to a new console and plenty of PC entertainment. But the surprises---the choice gems picked from a breadth of fresh titles---will be what set this holiday season apart. The first, a couple of months early, is F.E.A.R. It certainly wasn’t on my radar until I downloaded that immersive demo.
Though not for the faint of heart (I admit, it already scares me and I’m still at the beginning of the game), F.E.A.R is at least a masterpiece of visual decadence. It represents the pinnacle of what third-party developers have been able to do with today’s hardware. However, it doesn’t push those jaw-dropping visuals at the expense of other critical game engine components. This is critical. Without the physics, artificial intelligence, audio, scripting, and so on, you wouldn’t have the same compelling experience. You wouldn’t be pulled into the virtual environment and the game just wouldn’t be the same.
Instead, F.E.A.R. boasts some of the most impressive path-finding to date. Enemies don’t follow each other around like sheep to the slaughter. They’ll use squad tactics in an attempt to flank you. They’ll jump through windows, guns blazing, to catch you off guard. They’ll have you thinking that your mad-crazy game skills aren’t up to snuff any more. Or maybe that’s just me.
In any case, you’d think that the stunning improvements to those ancillary sub-systems would exact serious demands on today’s processors. After all, Half-Life 2 sure does. And that’s why we put this CPU scaling story together. The developer requires a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent and recommends a 3.0GHz. But you know how recommendations go. After all, Microsoft thinks Windows XP runs fine on a 300MHz chip with 128MB of RAM. Yeah, right.
So what processor should you add to your wish list? We dusted off 20 of them for comparison here, spanning single- and dual-core, high-end and mainstream, from $100 to over $1,000. We also ran a couple of memory tests, hoping to see some benefit to using 2GB of memory rather than 1GB. And to top it all off, there’s a page on SLI performance, if only to establish how graphically intensive this game really is.
| System Setup | Page:: ( 2 / 8 ) |
System Setup
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
AMD Athlon 64 FX-53/4000+
AMD Athlon 64 FX-51
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
AMD Athlon 64 3800+
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Intel Pentium 4 3.46GHz Extreme Edition
Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition
Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840
Intel Pentium D 840 3.2GHz
Intel Pentium D 830 3.0GHz
Intel Pentium 4 670 3.8GHz
Intel Pentium 4 630 3.0GHz
Intel Pentium 4 570 3.8GHz
Intel Pentium 4 530 3.0GHz
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
1GB Corsair CMX512-3200XL (x2)
1GB Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL (x2)
2GB OCZ PC-3200 EL 2-3-2-5
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB
34GB Western Digital Raptor (10,000RPM, 8MB cache)
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
DirectX 9.0c
Desktop resolution 1024x768, 32-bit color, 85Hz refresh
Notes
All power saving options are turned off, as are the Automatic Update and System Restore services. Graphics options under the ‘Performance’ tab are all disabled for maximum performance.
The first configuration represents F.E.A.R.’s maximum potential, with all settings cranked as high as they can go with the exception of anti-aliasing, which is set to 4x, and anisotropic filtering, set to 8x. The second configuration is F.E.A.R. toned down a bit. Anti-aliasing is turned off, trilinear filtering is used instead of anisotropic, and the resolution is switched from 1600x1200 to 1024x768.
| The Juggernauts | Page:: ( 3 / 8 ) |
The FXs and Extreme Editions
| F.E.A.R. Performance 1024x768x32 | ||
| CPU | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| Athlon 64 FX-57 | 45 | 156 |
| Athlon 64 FX-55 | 44 | 157 |
| Athlon 64 FX-53/4000+ | 45 | 154 |
| Athlon 64 FX-51 | 42 | 174 |
| Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz | 42 | 154 |
| Pentium 4 Exreme Edition 3.4GHz | 43 | 156 |
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| F.E.A.R. Performance 1600x1200 | ||
| CPU | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| Athlon 64 FX-57 | 16 | 65 |
| Athlon 64 FX-55 | 16 | 65 |
| Athlon 64 FX-53/4000+ | 16 | 65 |
| Athlon 64 FX-51 | 17 | 66 |
| Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz | 16 | 65 |
| Pentium 4 Exreme Edition 3.4GHz | 16 | 65 |
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Notes
What sort of gaming performance do you get after spending more than a thousand dollars on a processor? In the case of these ultra-powerful Athlon 64 FXs and Pentium Extreme Edition chips, not a whole lot of differentiation. Then again, that’s a somewhat plausible outcome if you consider the game might be limited by graphics performance and not processor alacrity. Let’s push on and see what the next set of scores reveals.
| Dual-Core Compared | Page:: ( 4 / 8 ) |
The X2s and Pentium Ds
| F.E.A.R. Performance 1024x768x32 | ||
| CPU | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| Athlon 64 X2 4800+ | 44 | 155 |
| Athlon 64 X2 4400+ | 44 | 166 |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 35 | 157 |
| Pentium 840 Extreme Edition | 35 | 150 |
| Pentium D 840 3.2GHz | 34 | 148 |
| Pentium D 830 3.0GHz | 32 | 151 |
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| F.E.A.R. Performance 1600x1200 | ||
| CPU | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| Athlon 64 X2 4800+ | 17 | 64 |
| Athlon 64 X2 4400+ | 16 | 65 |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 16 | 65 |
| Pentium 840 Extreme Edition | 16 | 65 |
| Pentium D 840 3.2GHz | 16 | 65 |
| Pentium D 830 3.0GHz | 17 | 65 |
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Notes
There aren’t any threading optimizations that we know of in F.E.A.R. So, it’s little surprise that the dual-core chips behave more like single-core processors in the game benchmark. Despite advanced physics and AI, it looks like we’ll have to keep waiting to see performance advantages from multi-core chips.
| Mainstream Processors | Page:: ( 5 / 8 ) |
Your Athlon 64s and Pentium 4s
Notes
At first glance there’s not much to say about the performance of these processors in F.E.A.R. But in fact, that’s what is so amazing. At 1600x1200, no matter what chip you’re using---be it an Athlon 64 FX-57 or old school Pentium 4 530---frame rates are completely flat.
Switching it up to 1024x768 you at least see some variance, if only by a handful of frames. The message here is pretty simple: you merely need a respectable processor to run F.E.A.R. Everything else is up to your graphics card.
| F.E.A.R. Performance 1024x768x32 | ||
| CPU | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| Athlon 64 3800+ | 43 | 158 |
| Athlon 64 3500+ | 41 | 157 |
| Athlon 64 3200+ | 37 | 157 |
| Athlon 64 3000+ | 35 | 155 |
| Pentium 4 670 3.8GHz | 42 | 155 |
| Pentium 4 630 3.0GHz | 36 | 151 |
| Pentium 4 570 3.8GHz | 42 | 153 |
| Pentium 4 530 3.0GHz | 33 | 149 |
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| Memory Matters? | Page:: ( 6 / 8 ) |
Add a Gig of RAM
| F.E.A.R. Performance 1024x768x32 | ||
| CPU | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+1GB Memory | 35 | 157 |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+2GB Memory | 37 | 159 |
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| F.E.A.R. Performance 1600x1200 | ||
| CPU | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+1GB Memory | 16 | 65 |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+2GB Memory | 16 | 65 |
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Notes
Eager to see if there was anything we could do to boost performance, we added another gigabyte of memory to our test bed, hoping for Battlefield 2-like results. As it turns out, the extra RAM helps out a little at 1024x768 (though you wouldn’t be able to tell from the average frame rate) and does absolutely nothing when you move to 1600x1200. There seems to be a recurring message here…
| SLI Saves the Day | Page:: ( 7 / 8 ) |
Finally, New Numbers
| F.E.A.R. Performance 1024x768x32 | ||
| CPU | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+2GB Memory | 35 | 157 |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+2GB Memory SLI | 36 | 235 |
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| F.E.A.R. Performance 1600x1200 | ||
| CPU | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+2GB Memory | 16 | 65 |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+2GB Memory SLI | 36 | 140 |
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Notes
As you might imagine, benchmarking 20 processors and seeing the same results over and over is incredibly frustrating. So, we ran some SLI scores just to make sure everything was working properly. Sure enough, adding another GeForce 7800 GTX card shot the scores at 1024x768 and 1600x1200 through the roof. Lesson learned, case closed.
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 8 / 8 ) |
Adding a load of extra memory won’t really do anything for you either. Although we were able to show minor improvements, on average, F.E.A.R. doesn’t demonstrate that same performance boost you get in Battlefield 2 with an NVIDIA graphics card and extra RAM. With that said, there are still plenty of reasons to go with 2GB of memory today, if you have the money.
The real answer is graphics, graphics, graphics. It doesn’t matter if you own the fastest video card on the market---two of them will nearly double your speed with all of the eye candy cranked up. Dropping the resolution and dialing down some of the knobs will improve performance, but it won’t minimize the game’s dependency on graphics horsepower.
As a side note, we had originally considered adding even more value-oriented processors to the mix. However, dropping to Athlon XP and Socket 478 Pentium 4 platforms would have also meant going for AGP graphics cards. If a GeForce 7800 GTX is pegged at 1024x768 with this game, we can’t imagine a GeForce 6800 Ultra would fare any better. Bottom line, if you want to play this game in its full glory, it’s time for an upgrade.
From the way things are shaping up for me in these first few levels, F.E.A.R may be the one game since Half-Life 2 to make buying new hardware truly worthwhile, too.