F.E.A.R and 7900GS. Recommended settings?

What settings do you use for F.E.A.R?
I think I've set mine too high....
I die too fast

any gameplay (how-to-play) advices are also welcome

 

for the 7900, you could push almost all settings up at 1024X768, leave soft shadows and AA off, and AF set to 8. if the frame rate seems really high, you could try some AA, or soft sadows if you wan't, i may be underrating your card. what are the specs for the rest of your system?

remember to use slomo, defalt is control. its best to kill of a bot before they see you, so they get unorganized, and don't give them enough time to get really organized, becuase they are really smart. although, you can usually hide around a corner to wait for slomo to recharge, just watch out for granades. and if you are playing on the max dificulty, then you might want to start out on low or normal.

 

with tweaked 7900gs or stock 7900gtx you can play FEAR at 1440*900 with all settings included AA & AF at high. I have a 7900gtx when it was on stock i got great results with the tester:
- 25fps min
- 43fps avg
- 62fps max

 

nice. I'll give that a try

2 Tangent: My system specs are in the sig.

 

I wonder how my X1600 256mb will do...

 

i think u should use the 1024*768res and turn almost all things to max

 

I've never used a X1600 but I'm still using an X800 256mb in my desktop PC - more or less similar to the X1600. Can run FEAR no problems at 1024x768 on a combination of high and medium settings, game still looks great - you should be fine!

 

use the built in test function in FEAR to see how your FPS are. that will tell you where you need put your settings.

 

I actually have FEAR Combat (new free multiplayer version of FEAR). It does not seem to have the test function or at least I couldn't find it.

The settings I use now are:
1024x768 res.
everything on max except texture detail, video detail and volumetric light quality settings (those are medium).

Texture and Video deatil set to max seem to cause lags because of their hard drive usage.

AA is off and AF is at x4. That way I don't get any lag anywhere. I think I can probably increase these but it looks good enough for me

 

with 1Gb of ram it shouldn't be paging the hard drive much. I think your having the same problem I had running BF2 at anythign higher than 1280/1024. not enough video memory for AA and a few of the other fancy settings. 256Mb of video ram just isn't enough for high settings with all the eye candy turned on anymore. wish the go 7900GS came with 512 MB of ram.

 

I have the EXACT same setup as you (other than a slow hard drive) and I can play mine at 1920x1200, at VERY close to high settings, simply set yours to as high as they go, see what frames your getting, and start bumping things like the AA and some eye candy down until you get down to a playable frame rate. With the system you have, I think if you just leave all your video settings were you have them at the moment, and turn your res up all the way, you will still be able to get like 30+ frames per second during a fire fight.

 

ok thanks for the info

 

they weren't when you first posted.

thats a pretty good setup, the only problem you will have is your ram, you would be better off at two gigs. with one the game will stutter when its loading somthing, or if you turn around suddenly. but during normal play you shouldn't notice this.

 

that's nonsens. I have a 256mb 7900gtx and i can play fear at best settings with a res of 1440*900. So the 7900gs won't have a memory problem. Maybe it is possible with bf2 but with fear 256mb will work.

 

It's not possible with BF2 either. A 7900 can run BF2 maxed out easily. I think the guy just doesn't know what he's talking about...

 

hey, what the heckles? i just finished installing and am getting an "unable to initialize renderer to a valid video mode" message. and this is happenin to my bros new dell desktop too. both of us are running 7900gs's, which should no doubt be supported, rest of specs below. i've run the fear demo on this thing, so I know some form of fear works. what is going on?

EDIT: Found it, had to download the 84.63 drivers from nVidia, dell's support gives 84.69. odd that the newer drivers don't work, but that was the problem, a simple rollback.

EDIT: I'm literally running everything maxed except soft shadows, 4x aa 16 x af, at 1440x900, and it's smooth as butter online, no lag whatsoever. although, yea, the test function would be nice.

 

Im installing now, and making a back-up copy with Nero because I dont want to download 1.77gbs again LOL.

 

I played at 1280-800 , no AA or AF or Soft Shadow, Other setting max, looking pretty good, no lag in Single Player
Now for tip of playing: this is by far the best FPS I ever play, this one and Quake 4, give me the feeling when shooting other FPS cant.
-Save offen, quick save
-Use slowmo, If you are using laptop keyboard, suggest change the slowmo button to space or some easy accest key, for me, a A8jm user, this is hell for pressing Ctrl under enemy fire so I change it too space, for I rarely jump.
-Go slow, look around, listen carefully, enemy chit chat so much you may know their present, after that, go slow.
-Use grenades, ,move from cover to cover, dont stand still to much, they know where you are and they try to flank you (very good AI)
-Run if you overwhelm.
Will think of something else and post later, hope this help
This is a good game.

 

Actually, I can't play bf2 at even close to highest settings. We are only talking about medium-high settings. Its because of the RAM, bf2 can use one and a half gigs EASY if it is all there. I know as soon as I get the money I am upgrading mine to 2 gigs. The card can handle everything on maxed settings easy, its just the amount of ram sort of makes a choke point.

 

I know, ram is very important. Especially the speed is important i think. I hope the ddr3 will come out soon!

 

Well, the difference between a DDR2 553mhz and 667mhz is not noticable, and in some cases the 553mhz can be faster because of less latency. Hopefully we will see a big improvement with DDR3 though.

 

from the start of ddr2 i heard ddr2 won't have a huge speed improvement, but ddr3 will have that!

 

Holy Cow PC_pulsar! 2047GB of RAM! That is awesome! You could prolly just remove your pagefile with that kind of memory.

 

You are still mistaken. I can run BF2 at all high settings with my basic X800 card and a gig of ram - I'd try new drivers if I were you, even with only a gig of ram the 7900 should absolutely eat BF2.

 

Alright, I think I know what our misunderstanding is here. I CAN play BF2 on ALL highest settings (full AA and all the rest), and get frame rates of 70 and up, on SINGLE PLAYER MODE. I have to crank things down to be able to get a playable frame rate on multiplayer. I have the latest Nvidia drivers by the way. Trust me, I KNOW my card can handle bf2 like no ones buisness, but leave it to EA to create such horrible coding for online play that I need to crank my graphics settings down.

 

Will DD3 work in E1505 and E1705? I heard not, but what ever.

 

I have the Quadro 1500M which is pretty close to the same as the 7900GS and I run F.E.A.R. at 1440x900 with all settings maxed, no AA, 16xAF, and Soft Shadows on, and I rarely get below 30fps. My bottleneck right now is the RAM. I only have 1GB. But turning up the resolution to native and then turning of AA helped tremendously.

 

aight guys so I adjusted the settings (used fraps for FPS data). I've configured it on the server with 12+ ppl (again, I have FEAR Combat that has no single player).

Here are the settings that I was able to play at w/o lags:
1024x768 res
8x AF
no FSAA
Med textures and video (if set to max it lags with the HD light on solid)
Soft Shadows off
everything else on max

I'm using latest nVidia drivers (off nVidia page - 84.63).


At this config the framerate is usually in 40s with occasional drops to as low as 25.

Seems like others are getting better results than me. I wonder why...

 

Thats terrible for a 7900.

I'm using a 2 year old X800 and can run FEAR Combat at 1024x768 with all the texture, details and physics set to maximum. Runs fine.

 

I already did, the pagefile slowed my notebook down!

EDIT: it must be 2047MB

 

with my GS, I run FEAR Combat at 1280x960 with EVERYTHING on... it runs great!!! but then again I have my card permenantly overclocked to 600/1200 @ 1.24v. I get over 30fps at all times

 

Get the 2gb ram upgrade and that drive lag goes bye bye..

 

That's not necessarily true. Depending on your windows and ram config, this can take quite an impact on bf2. Map loading under 1GB is much longer, and when entering a map you get a lot of lag (30sec+) while the system catches up.

With 2gb, my lag is about 1/2 sec then runs beautifully.

 

turn down or turn off volumetric lighting, that is a big performance killer, and its hard to notice. only in a few specific areas will you see the benifits, but the downsides are seen everywhere in framerates.

 

I play FEAR with a 7900GTX @ stock. I play the game at 1440*900 with everything on (except pixel doubling and forcing directx8). I get over 40fps at all times.

 

Hmmm, it seems like everyone who has done even a little overclocking to there GS gets huge performance boosts in game, I might do this...right after I back up all my data (lol, can never be too sure).

 

it also seems like it's impossible to overheat the video card. GPU fan on slow takes care of the temperature even during intense gaming.

 

Well, thats because of the design of the card. For the preformance this card gives, it uses an amazingly small amount of energy and produces very little heat to begin with. This makes it ideal for notebooks (haha, I've always wanted to see a 7900gs in a 15 inch modle, I think it could be done ).

Edit: Plus the thing doesn't even slow down until it hits 90C, rofl insane.

 

actually my nVidia driver says that slowdown protection kicks in at 102C! lol

btw I tried decreasing volumetric light and that didn't seem to make any difference.

 

very very true. just got off an intense session of combat and my peak was 70 with fans runnin slow. the gpu regularly idles at 70+ with the fan off.

 

I have I8kfangui installed, and a very agressive fan setup, so my gpu temp has never gotten above 58C, lmao. And the fans barely ever turn on high, its great.