VGA performance: Fallout 3 (DX9)

Fallout 3

You know, its been a decade since the last Fallout release, and a lot has happened since then. Fallout 3 takes place roughly two-hundred years after a nuclear war devastated the planet. While the series originally started in Southern California, this time around youll find yourself in a post-apocalyptic Washington D.C., better known as the Capital Wasteland. You are a resident of Vault 101, one of a series of fallout vaults built to protect its inhabitants from the harsh conditions in the wasteland. As the story goes, in Vault 101, nobody enters - and nobody leaves. Raised as a child in the vault, the game begins with you as a young lad learning to take your first steps and continues as you grow older (this portion of the game is used as both a training mission and to build an affinity with your character). It isnt until you wake up one day to find the vault in chaos - your father has somehow left and its up to you to follow him into the wasteland - where the story really begins.

Fallout 3 is an immersive, graphically stunning title with that awesome movie feel. Easily one of the best games of 2008, a must buy Gurus... a must buy.

Image quality

• 8x AA
• HDR enabled
• Detail level: Ultra

Fallout 3 then is one of the bigger titles released in a long time. We measure with no less than 8x AA enabled, a mode that the Radeon card absolutely manages the best.

Again, see that flat red line there? We ran into a CPU bottleneck, and yeah we use a Core i7 965 processor overclocked at 3.75 GHz my friends.

So even with 8x AA enabled we see roughly 92 frames per second rendered at 1920x1200, the grand equalizer thus is the processor, it's limiting the CrossfireX solution from going any faster, which definitely would be the case.

We'll deal with it though, 1920x1200 at 8x AA averages at 90 frames per second.