Odd Slowdown in F.E.A.R. with G1S

Hey guys, I've been having some trouble with F.E.A.R. on my G1S, and I want to make sure it's normal. My G1S has the HDD upgraded to a Momentus 7200.2, no changes to RAM.

When I play the game at 1680x1050 with 8x Anistrophic, no AA, and max settings (only soft shadows disabled) The game shifts from running at high framerates, then dropping below 15fps for no apparent reason. Nothing complex visually is in the scene, and if I stay there long enough the framerate goes back to normal. This is gameplay btw, not the stress test.

If this is normal with the G1S, I'd assume it's due to the high resolution I'm trying to play at, plus the gpu memory not being able to handle it.

If any of you have used the G1S with 2GB RAM, and then 3GB RAM, did it lessen the problem?

 

*Small update. I've now reached level two in F.E.A.R., and I will continue to play it to see how it goes.

Anyway, the problem is the worst on the first level. When you first get out of the car down the alley it's smooth as butter, but when you get into the wide area with the garbage on fire it will take a framerate hit all the way down to 10fps or so. And if you let it sit long enough it will return to a smooth framerate.

The second level so far is much better, hopefully it's just a problem in the first.

I appreciate any personal experience you guys can offer, and what causes this. Thanks!

 

F.E.A.R. is a very intensive game. The stress test is not as representative of game play as we might like. You might want to turn down your resolution and get the latest video drivers (if you are using the drivers that came with the G1S, the only 16:10 resolution you can use is 1680x1050 - laptopvideo2go's drivers allow you to use other 16:10 resolutions). Using laptopvideo2go's 163.16 driver for Vista, I am able to play F.E.A.R. with perfectly playable frame rates (averaged around 45 fps) at 1440x900, everything else maxed out except for AA at 2X and no soft shadows.

 

Maybe you should try lowering the textures, but it should not be a problem with 2gb of ram, when I played quake 4 on my old desktop with only 512 MB of ram the game had very low framerates for a long time at the start of each level, while it seemed to be finishing loading the level.