FEAR	Source: Sierra

FEAR is Sierra's latest first person shooter which relies heavily on DirectX 9 features. With its "Soft Shadows" feature enabled, even the fastest videocards run at a crawl, FEAR is definitely the new benchmark for future FPS games to follow.

FEAR 1600x1200 SS Disabled
Anti-Aliasing	FPS	Ranking
MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E 2x AA	46
MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E 4x AA	37
MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E 6x AA	30
Anisotropic Filtering	FPS	Ranking
MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E 2x AF	48
MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E 4x AF	48
MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E 8x AF	47
MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E 16x AF	47
Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering	FPS	Ranking
MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E 2x AA, 8x AF	45
MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E 4x AA, 16x AF	36
MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E 6x AA, 16x AF	29

FEAR is probably the game that is hardest on videocards, irregardless of ATI or nVidia GPU. Even the extra memory on the MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E doesn't quite enable it to run FEAR at 1600x1200 with details set to their maximum.

Nice to have ATi back in the game...

A two horse race is always more entertaining, and a healthy ATI and nVIDIA is good for consumers and gamers alike. The videocard market in 2006 are shaping up to be a very exciting turn of events, with a flurry of new technologies slated for release by both manufacturers.

There is little doubt that the MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E is a fast videocard, but all things being equal it is a bit "late" coming to the party. The GeForce 7800GTX has been around for half a year already, and performance of the 512MB-version X1800 XT VPU is only slightly improved on the 256MB 7800GTX in many instances.

As usual, MSI includes everything with its videocards that a user will likely need to take full advantage of its many wondrous features, options, connectors, and capabilities. The MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E is very well equipped, both in terms of bundled in hardware and software. We can't overlook the included full version of Colin Macrae Rally 2005 either.

To say that the MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E is fast is an understatement. This card has absolutely no problems running the latest games with Anti Aliasing or Anisotropic filtering fully enabled! In general the extra 256MB of memory allows the Radeon X1800XT core to performs at about the same level as a 256MB GeForce 7800GTX (in most instances), however it's not quite as fast as the 512MB-version Geforce 7800GTX videocard. The ATI R520 core is only a few months old, so it's realistic to expect subsequent driver updates will improve the situation in small doses.

Unfortunately overclocking the MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E was a no go. When we tried, the core would automatically drop back down to stock speeds within a few seconds of running benchmarks. I'm not sure what the issue is but hopefully retail cards will not suffer from the same limitation.

It's nice to see that ATi is back in the game and the MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E is definitely a videocard that hardcore gamers should consider. With a retail price of $615 CDN ($529 USD), the MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E is premium gamer hardware that competes nicely against nVIDIA's best.

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