Test: F.E.A.R, Prey
F.E.A.R is one of those games that are not all that ATI friendly and we have even noticed that at the lower resolutions even the Radeon HD 2900XT cops a hiding when compared to the GeForce 8800 cards, for example. This being the case, we were not surprised to find the HD 2600XT trailing way behind the 8600 GTS at every tested resolution. The HD 2600XT really struggled to deliver playable performance when maxing out visual quality settings. Scoring some 37fps at 1024x768 was very weak, especially when the 8600 GTS produced 63fps.
Interestingly the Prey performance is almost identical when using either graphics card. This time the Radeon HD 2600XT was slightly faster at 1920x1200, while the GeForce 8600 GTS just managed to steal the lower resolution tests. Overall it is safe to say that the high quality Prey testing was a stalemate.