Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

As drastic as it looks on the graph there is VERY little difference in the two cards, which honestly was to be expected. The Asus cards core and memory speeds are slightly lower than MSI's. (MSI is 580 core and 1500 memory while Asus is 560 core and 1400 memory). Over the course of the three runs both cards came out on top at least once.

Doom 3

Visually Doom 3 is one of my favorite games, even as dark as it is, it is just an incredible looking game. It also does a pretty good job of pushing your hardware. Once again neither card clearly dominates the other, and both provide more than adequate frame rates for enjoyable game play. As mentioned by myself and many many other reviewers Doom 3 is one of those games that cranking up the AA/AF really doesn't make much difference visually. 90% of the game is so dark you cant tell the difference, laying off the AA/AF gives a significant boost in performance with minimal "noticeable" image quality loss.

F.E.A.R.

Obviously we are seeing a trend here as far as performance of the two cards. For the runs through F.E.A.R. I cranked up the lighting and shadow settings. 30 frames per second is what most gamers would consider just making it to playable. With all the eye candy turned on there were several drops into the high teens, making play a real pain. Turning down the light and shadow effects got the average up to the high 30's with no drops in FPS below 25.

FarCry

FarCry benefits the most from AA/AF settings as far as eye candy goes, unlike Doom 3 the setting is a bright tropical island. All the trees, plants, grass etc. really look much better with the benefit of AA/AF smoothing things out. Once again there is no major performance difference in either card, at this point the deciding factor would be what you plan on using the video card for, and your plans for the future.

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