Fable 3 – PC performance graphics benchmarks of Graphics Cards

 

Year: 2011
Genre: RPG / 3D / 3rd Person
Developer: Lionhead Studios
Publisher: Microsoft
Publisher in Russia: Microsoft

Fable 3 is an Action RPG game, the third game in the Fable series of games, published by Lionhead. Fable 3 was announced on August 19, 2009 by Peter Molyneux at the GamesCom presentation in Germany. The game was released on October 26, 2010 for Xbox 360 in the USA and October 28 in Russia, in Russian. On August 3, 2010, Microsoft announced that the PC version would be delayed indefinitely.

And finally, on February 24, 2011, the release date was announced – May 17 for the US and May 19 for Europe. 

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Review: Playability

The game takes place 50 years after the end of Fable 2, when the industrial revolution begins in Albion. You will play as the son or daughter of the Hero from the last part. It’s a shame that the developers couldn’t release the second part on PC, so for most players the plot will be less clear and understandable. It is also worth noting that some players who spent many hours playing through the console version did not like the PC implementation of Fable III.

The character grows up in a royal family, while the country is ruled by an insidious, ruthless and crazy tyrant – the brother of the protagonist or heroine. The player will have to overthrow him and seize the throne, becoming a king or queen. But before that, we have a thorny road ahead on the path to power. On the one hand, you need to convince the people to take their side, and on the other hand, you need to resist the quests of your crazy brother.

We invite you to evaluate part of the game walkthrough of Fable III in FuLL HD resolution, where you can see for yourself the quality of this product:

Fable III is a quite good project, which is designed to return the player to the wonderful world of fairy tales and childhood. The strengths include the plot and controls, which, by the way, are perfectly optimized for both a keyboard and mouse, and naturally for an Xbox 360 controller.

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Review: Graphics

Fable III until recently was one of the Xbox 360 exclusives and, as we can guess, is nothing more than a console port on the long-suffering PC. One of the main elements of the console-centricity is the game graphics, which, so to speak, “straightly catches the eye,” especially in light of the recently released The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

It is especially pronounced on game characters – it is immediately clear that the main goal of the developers was not the desire to produce super-real facial and body animation, but to more colorfully characterize the characters with a pronounced appearance. The environment is quite mediocre and at the moment there is nothing outstanding that can surprise us.

But the developers also cannot be blamed for inaction. Thanks to their efforts, we can flexibly maneuver the graphic settings, allowing us to optimally adjust the game to the configuration of various gaming systems. And then, as you would expect, we move directly to the gaming tests themselves.

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Review: Resource-intensive game

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The minimum and average frame size is taken as the performance indicator. Below is the configuration of our test systems.

Less productive video cards up to the level of GeForce GTS 450 and Radeon HD 4870 are tested on the basis of Core 2 Quad Q9550 and Phenom II X4 940 BE processors, depending on the resource intensity of the game, and more productive ones are based on more powerful solutions. Overclocked versions of video cards presented by sponsors were equal to conventional analogues by reducing their clock speeds.

Our video cards were tested in resolutions of 1280×1024 and 1920×1080 at maximum quality settings. AMD Eyefinity and NVIDIA 3D Vision technologies do not work correctly. The first does not have settings for setting ultra-high resolutions in the game, and the second has a 3D “Fair” rating. Fable III has incorrect optimization for Cross Fire and SLI technologies, so video cards running in this mode have inadequate performance. This is especially true for AMD cards, where in the example of the dual-chip HD 6990 we see negative scalability.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1280×1024

At a resolution of 1280×1024, video cards of the Radeon HD 4770 or GeForce 9800 GT level showed an acceptable level of performance. The most optimal solutions for this mode are graphics accelerators of the Radeon HD 5770 or GeForce GTS 250 level.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080

At FuLL HD resolution 1920×1080, video cards Radeon HD 5750 or GeForce GTS 450 showed an acceptable level of performance. Video cards of the level Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTX 280 and higher will provide a comfortable FPS indicator. Based on the purchase of video cards specifically for this game, then currently the Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTX 460 SE look most preferable.

CPU dependency testing

We tested processor dependence on 10 models of basic configurations, which are the most relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of video cards for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, but this time at a resolution of 720×576 with minimal graphics quality settings.

Testing processor dependence at minimum quality settings 720×576

As we can see from the processor dependence test, Fable III has a clear affinity for Intel processors. The game is clearly poorly optimized in terms of CPU power distribution, as the game does not scale well with more than 2 processor cores and the presence of Hyper-threading technology.

 

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	Fable III is a distinctive example of its genre. But as they say, a spoon is always good for dinner – why was it necessary to release this game such a long time after its release on the Xbox 360, and even on the day of the release of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings?
	The graphics in the game are quite mediocre and it is very difficult to say anything sublime about it. One thing is certain, those players who will play Fable III are not chasing the graphics, but the gameplay itself.
	The optimization of Fable III is not bad, but still the requirements for the hardware are incommensurate with the implementation of the graphics itself…

 

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We express our gratitude to all the manufacturing companies that were able to provide test equipment for our GPU tests and we hope that in the future their number will increase significantly!



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Rating 85%