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. We measure with 8x AA enabled, and that particular setting always did benefit the ATI cards somehow. This game at 64 FPS on average at 1920x1200 is just amazing though.

Let's have a look below:

We think that a high-end graphics card should be able to render any game at 8x AA at 1920x1200. And as such, the Radeon HD 4890 definitely meets that requirement. Sapphire's 4890 Toxic Vapor-X kicks in hard, really hard. On average 64 FPS at 1920x1200 with 8x AA. That is staggering performance, leaving even the standard clocked GeForce GTX 285 in hindsight.