ASUS Radeon EAH5850

Five out of the seven current games we use for testing are either sequels, or titles in an established series. F.E.A.R. 2 is one of the former, following up on the very popular First Encounter Assault Recon, released in fall of 2005. This horror-based first-person shooter brought to the table fantastic graphics, ultra-smooth gameplay, the ability to blow massive chunks out of anything, and also a very fun multi-player mode.

Three-and-a-half years later, we saw the introduction of the game’s sequel, Project Origin. As we had hoped, this title improved on the original where gameplay and graphics were concerned, and it was a no-brainer to want to begin including it in our testing. The game is gorgeous, and there’s much destruction to be had (who doesn’t love blowing expensive vases to pieces?). The game is also rather heavily scripted, which aides in producing repeatable results in our benchmarking.

Manual Run-through: The level used for our testing here is the first in the game, about ten minutes in. The scene begins with a travel up an elevator, with a robust city landscape behind us. Our run-through begins with a quick look at this cityscape, and then we proceed through the level until the point when we reach the far door as seen in the above screenshot.

F.E.A.R. 2 is another one of those games that looks and plays great at the same time, proven by the screenshot above and also the incredible FPS reports. NVIDIA’s dual-GPU GTX 295 was the only card aside from the HD 5870 to beat out the HD 5850, but neither is much of a surprise. The performance in the end is still fantastic, with yet another minimum FPS of 51 at 2560×1600. That result would make a great average FPS, let alone minimum FPS!

Because the game runs without a hitch at the game’s maxed out settings, that’s the best playable here.