Thanks for this great article. I'm sure we're excited about this expansion add-on. It was amazing to see Quad-SLI work that good (improved drivers, perhaps?), except when at 1280x960 due to STILL-buggy Quad-SLI drivers.

I think that the game that we'd want to know about the most would be The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It is pretty much the most demanding game today in terms of graphical performance. Also, it is not just an add-on or expansion--Oblivion is the reason why quite a few of us buy SLI or Crossfire systems.

FEAR was the killer app for new GPU's last year. This year, it's Oblivion. Please bring on Oblivion!

Also, for Oblivion, I'd like to see the comparisons done on "High" and then "Ultra-High" settings for the high-end cards, instead of no AA/AA and with AA/AF on (since neither ATI nor Nvidia officially support FSAA with HDR in this game). Any additional stuff would be greatly appreciated by the large Oblivion gaming community.

7600GT is entry level !?
I find that strange, I would rather have put 7300GT in entry level, but that's because I forgot you have to help graphic card makers push for more expensive cards.

And I understand fully that a 7300GT might be unable to play the game well with the high quality settings you used, but still, what defines the entry-level and mainstream categories is what can be bought in a store, not what you deem acceptable to play the game.
If you had called the categories high quality settings / average / hardly playable THEN you could have put the cards the way you did.

My 0.02 $

How come the 7950GX2 is rated as a "Premium card" when in fact it is much better performing than the 7900GTX?...

lol, looks like max payne 2

I thought the 7600Gx was mid level and the 7300 was entry level going by what people will end up with in their machines. I'd love to have seen the lowest end 7300 in their too in order to show somebody buying a new PC how much more powerful a 7600 (or ATI equiv) would make their new PC for not much more money.

Do Company of Heroes next please! :)

Would it be possible to benchmark also using different CPU's? Its not just about the GPU anyway, so it would be nice to know if my CPU still cuts it or should upgrade it too...

I'm very concerned that the testing based on the game's demo version is not representative for the final situation.
I have a very hard time to accept that a CrossFire X1950XTX system pulls 40FPS avg on 1600x1200 while with the original F.E.A.R. game it was able to deliver 69FPS with the same settings.
I'm quite certain that the video performance is not optimal and with the next release of drivers the situation is going to change dramatically.

I played F.E.A.R once and thought the supposedly scary interludes were boring and pointless. It interferes with the flow of the game regardless of the graphics card.

how is it possible, that quad-sli gains more than 100 percent performance over single gx2?

this is physically impossible. in particular when the 4-way afr rendering mode is not allowed in d3d and quadsil has to use sfr/afr mixed mode.

ok 4-way afr would be a big shit in low fps situations because the addional lag of 4 frames compared with single gpu rendering.
so we take opengL because there is 4-way afr allowed. every doom3 engine multiplayergame limits at 60fps. with 4-way afr the lag would be ~67ms. this is inacceptable for a multiplayer game!

btw: great decision to test the cards in hq driver mode. :-)

i played fear three month ago and used a hig end pc , x1900xtx w an opteron 170@ 2.8 (=fx62)+2GB hz.
I never use Antialiasing with fear. AA IS USELES imho, it adds too much blur effect imo, it is good on a static image but useless and uggly in moving scene like real playing.
And i always activate SOFT SHADOW, it is really beautifull and realistic. One of the best innovation effect in fear.

How to play without soft shadows ????

So, i play fear a 1280/1024 all options max, soft shadows, vsync on, but without AA.
i use High AF (ati driver) and aniso 16x.
I also use Sync Vert ON : because of tearing.

How too play wo vsync ON ???

I got may be 45 fps moy, drop at 28 fps sometimes, and the game is really beautifull and playable, better looking than any of tested settings of the article

Please make an update WITH soft shadows and WITHOUT antialiasing... that the way of fear

A 7600GT is entry level, do you see it completely destroying those other entry level cards? It is the top of the entry level, but hardly standing out by miles.

Secondly I can confirm Extraction Point requires more grunt than the original, but even on a 7950Gt it still looks like Half life 1 with a few cheap sm3.0 lighting effects thrown in...... ugly.

Must be some kind of a joke I have a 7300GT with all of the eye candy cranked up 1280x1024 and it is not choppy at all.

I really liked the original and although the plot wasn't as good as the original, the floor layout and opponents seemed more challenging. I think it is worth the $$ for the extra play after loving the original. Visually it is great even on less than perfect hardware (6800 ultra, 1280x1024).

What I didn't like was the gross product placement from Dell. I am a Dell fan and I don't mind a poster on the wall in a game or that all the machines happen to be Dell boxes. That is fine. If the pc in a room fits a scene and it happens to be Dell, no problem.

I just feel used when there is a general dark feel to a room except the bright red out-of-place, nothing-to-do-with-the-story-line laptop with the only purpose to beat the Dell logo into your skull. I lost count of the LCD panels in the game that flash the XPS logo. Enough!!! Make the machines look like part of the intended background or make them part of the game. Don't make them stand out as advertising.

I hope this isn't a preview of the future of gaming.

i don't see how the "entry-level" graphics card are actually low-end unless you're a super nerd, doesn't it also matter how fast your processor is?