Results: Full HD With Low And Medium Preset
We’re using a more mainstream setup with AMD's FX-8350 for the next two benchmarks. Compared to a Core i3, this machine benefits from its four modules scheduling eight threads. As mentioned, Fallout 4 scales well when you give it more cores and threads, regardless of whether they're physical or logical (through Hyper-Threading).
Even older graphics cards like Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 770 are bottlenecked a bit by our mid-range CPU, so we skip testing the fastest boards. If you have a big GPU in your machine, complement it with a well-balanced host processor.
1920x1080, Medium Preset
We're forced to drop to the Medium quality preset in order to achieve decent frame rates using lower-end graphics cards.
Disabling v-sync often makes the difference between playable and unplayable performance, since the frame rates fluctuate above and below 60 FPS. Which experience is better? It comes down to personal preference; we recommend trying both ways.
At the bottom of the range, graphics cards like Nvidia's GeForce GTX 750 and AMD's Radeon HD 7850 provide a barely-playable experience.
1920x1080, Low Preset
Now we're scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel, meaning we need to make some cuts at the top of the field one more time. The Low preset allows integrated GPUs like AMD's APUs and Intel's Broadwell-based CPUs to hit playable performance levels.
In spite of bearable frame rates, the overall gaming experience ranges from mediocre (Intel's Broadwell) to somewhat below that (AMD's APUs).
Almost everything that impacts performance is now turned off or manually disabled. This is what that looks like:
The integrated graphics solutions' low performance is predominantly due to low IPC throughput. Plus, they'd need significantly faster memory to facilitate higher average FPS.
