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Benchmarking Your GPU with F.E.A.R.
ThinSkin writes "Monolith's new shooter F.E.A.R. is all fun and games, but it can also be used as a benchmark to test your GPU's performance. ExtremeTech's Jason Cross goes into detail on benchmarking your GPU with this graphically-intensive game. In addition, the article also tests the performance of high- and mid-range cards from ATI and Nvidia to see which scores top marks." It's a tough game; I had to buy a new rig.
I found that if you have a midrange system you can turn everything to max, but keep volumetric lighting and all shadows turned off and the framerate stays pretty constant no matter what other settings are enabled or at what quality. The only thing i saw other than that, that hit my performance significantly was enabling full quality textures because i don't currently have enough ram ("only" a gig) to keep all the textures in. The HD swapped a TON with textures all the way up.
With your type of thinking we would still be playing pong just in multiple colors. There is nothing excessive about the game requirements what is excessive is the whiners about how other people spend their time and money.
There are always those who will try to guilt-trip anyone for whatever reason. Most always it boils down to money. Like people who harp about how much gasoline costs, to hummers, to millionaires buying rides to the ISS.
Enjoyment and relaxation come in many forms and how people spend THEIR money is of no real concern to me as long as it does not endanger me in the process.
Computer games are advancing the state of entertainment, attempting to bring realism to the screen. Doing so does require oodles of computer power and we have that luxury these days. People looking at the future would never imagine the power we dedicate to games but looking back 10 years the picture changes.
The amount of power expended by high end PCs is nothing to cry about. In fact it trivializes many other real wastes of power and money.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.