Since there is a built-in performance test in F.E.A.R., we simply used the built-in utility to test the video cards. We tested over a broad range of resolutions. Since 1280x1024 LCD displays are still quite common, we decided to also test a that resolution. The test was run on a 1.08 Version of F.E.A.R. Our first test consists of a combination of 4x AA and 16x AF, while our second test has Soft Shadows enabled.

At lower resolutions both GTS cards perform very similar to each other with F.E.A.R. having a very light performance advantage of 2 FPS at 1280x1024 with the 320 MB GTS. As we move to higher resolutions, it is easy to see that F.E.A.R. benefits from the extra 320 MB that the GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB has to offer as we see it perform around 10 FPS faster at 1600x1200 and 1900x1200. At the highest resolution nearly all test cards experience performance reductions, and again the two 8800 GTS cards perform similarly. None of the tested parts have playable performance at 2560x1600, and the Gainward GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB is no exception, coming in last at 15 FPS.

Average frame rates don't always tell the whole story, so to provide another aspect of the tests we also recorded the minimum FPS each card had while running the built-in time demo. A general trend for the 320 MB GTS is that the minimum FPS halves each time the resolution is increased. F.E.A.R. seemingly benefits quite a lot from extra memory at 1920x1200, as the 640 MB 8800 GTS' minimum FPS is 11 frames higher than the Gainward 320 MB GTS. Since the Gainward 320 MB 8800 GTS is actually faster than the 640 MB card, we can only point to the smaller memory as the source for the lower performance.

Soft Shadows has always had a large performance hit on GPUs, but we see an overall increase in performance here since we have disabled anti-aliasing and anisotropic-filtering. GeForce 8800 GPUs perform well with this setting enabled, and this test confirms that trait. F.E.A.R. performs nearly identically with the two 8800 GTS cards, and there is a very small performance difference between the two cards throughout the tests. At 1600x1200, 1920x1200, and 2560x1600 the Gainward 320 MB 8800 GTS holds a very small lead in FPS, often hovering at a small 1 FPS advantage. At the highest resolution, however, we see its lead slip and the card fall behind the reference board 1 FPS. For the most part, these performance differences are negligible.