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, as you can see again we see very similar performance in-between the single PCB and dual PCB based cards. And when you compare that to the GeForce GTX 275 (which is a lovely high-end card really) you can see the dynamic of a card with a caliber like the GTX 295.

So even with 8x AA enabled we see a little CPU limitation at 12x10 ~ 16x12. Once we pass those resolutions the GPUs start to feel a little more stressed. At 2560x1600 we still get framerates above 60FPS, which is brilliant.