Fallout 3 is based on the same engine used by The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and it is a DirectX 9.0c (Shader 3.0) game. We configured the game with “low” image quality settings at 1024x768. To measure performance, we used the FRAPS utility running an outdoor scene at God mode, running through enemy fire, triggering post processing effects, and ending with a big explosion in front of Dupont Circle. The results below are in frames per second (FPS).

Here Sapphire PI-AM2RS780G (AMD 780G) was 38.37% faster, Biostar TA785GE 128M (AMD 785G with 128 MB) was 47.53% faster and ECS A790GXM-A (AMD 790GX with 128 MB) was 71.52% faster than ECS A785GM-M.

A 64-bit Radeon HD 3450 was 58.82% faster than the on-board video from the reviewed motherboard. When this video card was configured to run under CrossFire mode with the on-board video, performance increased 156.75% compared to the on-board video alone and 61.66% compared to the Radeon HD 3450 alone.

However on a newer game like Fallout 3 the frame rates achieved by all motherboards were way below 30 FPS, meaning that playing a new game using on-board video is close to impossible.