Alienware Area-51 7500 Gaming System
F.E.A.R., Prey & HL2: Episode 1
|
|
;) F.E.A.R |
One of the most highly anticipated titles of 2005 was Monolith's paranormal thriller F.E.A.R. Taking a look at the minimum system requirements, we see that you will need at least a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 with 512MB of system memory and a 64MB graphics card, that is a Radeon 9000 or GeForce4 Ti-class or better, to adequately run the game. Using the full retail release of the game patched to v1.08, we put the graphics cards in this review through their paces to see how they fared with a popular title. Here, all graphics settings within the game were set to the maximum values, but with soft shadows disabled (Soft shadows and anti-aliasing do not work together currently). Benchmark runs were then completed at a resolution of 1600x1200 with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled. |
This time the Area-51 7500 takes fourth place amongst our test rigs. This is a little bit better outcome, but it's still not what we expected.
|
|
;) Prey |
After many years of development, Take-Two Interactive recently released the highly anticipated game Prey. Prey is based upon an updated and modified version of the Doom 3 engine, and as such performance characteristics between the two titles are very similar. Like Doom 3, Prey is also an OpenGL game that uses extremely high-detailed textures and a plethora of dynamic lighting and shadows. But unlike Doom3, Prey features a fare share of outdoor environments as well. We ran these Prey benchmarks using a custom recorded timedemo with the game set to its "High-Quality" graphics mode, at a resolution of 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled simultaneously. |
The Area-51 7500 continues down the same path and finishes in fourth place again in this test. The margin between second, third and fourth place isn't that great, but the Area-51 7500 should be right in there with a slightly higher score.
|
|
|
;) Half Life 2: Episode 1 |
Thanks to the dedication of hardcore PC gamers and a huge mod-community, the original Half-Life became one of the most successful first person shooters of all time. So, when Valve announced Half-Life 2 was close to completion, gamers the world over sat in eager anticipation. Upon its release, HL2 was universally lauded, and the sequel won an array of "Game of the Year" awards. Armed with the latest episodic update to HL2, Episode 1, we benchmarked the game with a long, custom-recorded timedemo that takes us through both outdoor and indoor environments. These tests were run at a resolution of 1600 x 1200 with 4X anti-aliasing and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently, and with color correction and HDR rendering enabled in the game engine as well. |
In our Half-Life 2 test, the Area-51 7500 almost ties for third place, but it still maintains that fourth position.
