F.E.A.R. Performance

Okay so I recently received a new Dell E1705 with the GeForce Go 7800 vid card. When I installed F.E.A.R., it hs an option where it auto detects your computer settings and configures the visuals for "best performance". But When I run it...it's SUPER-choppy and not a good experience. I've downloaded the newest Xtreme-G driver and it helped a little I guess, but it still isn't good. Now, I only have 512mb of RAM, which is the minimum to run the game, but in order for it to run smoothly, all options have to be at minimum or turned off completely.

I just ordered a 1gig stick of DDR2 533 RAM from newegg.com, with me having 1.5gigs, should I now be able to run the game SMOOTHLY at max settings?

 

Well I don't know about smoothly with all-settings...I had to shut off some of the lighting options and 1 other option. I don't know the exact names because I am at work.

I am sure someone else will post...they know what I mean.

512MB of RAM is too little for this game. I had 1GB and it still ran kind of choppy due to the size of the levels. I now have 2GB and it runs fine.

 

I actually just got this game for my laptop from a friend and have not installed it yet, but my friend has a gig of ram, and most of his settings are at minimum, and its a little choppy for him. 1.5 may work fine for you, but to be on the safe side, I'd try for 2 at some point.

 

Hi Poseign,

FEAR should run fine on 1GB RAM and x700/nV6600 128MB and above cards. I play on 800x600 all maximum with x700 128MB DDR and 300-550 MB hypermemory or whatever you call it for maximum textures.

Cheers,

 

This is probably an unpopular response, but a coworker of mine ran this game on his home computer with an Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB RAM, and GeForce 6800GT, and he said it didn't really matter what settings he ran the game at, it was still choppy.

I've run it on my notebook and it chops even at minimum settings.

I honestly get the distinct feeling this game was just coded badly.

 

When you already mentioned, "Fine" means to me 30 and more FPS. Choppy means a temporal stops or very big slowdown? I didn't see that. And I agree that FEAR seems to be quite unevenly programmed game. Sometimes it flies, and sometimes, well not. Quake 4 for example on maximum settings and 1024x768 is much more fluent. But that is an OpenGL game.


Cheers,

 

I agree - 30FPS is the minimum. If you dip below that too often, then it is a good idea to lower the settings.

I would just set the minimum settings, then go up from there. Keep AA off, and the shadows you might want to keep down along with the dynamic lighting, that is very hard on the video card.

One of the prime reasons yours is choppy is because you have 512MB of RAM - as USAFdude said, that's far too little to have a good gaming experience. I would suggest getting 1GB minimum.

This game is definitely not designed well in my opinion. It's fun and looks nice, sure, but you can only run it on decent settings with a very high end card. That's not how a game should be designed. It should be made to look nice on a mid-range card, which is closer to what most people have, and then have an option for the uber cards, such as an X1800, etc.

Half-Life 2 and CS:S are the best designed games as far as compatability and graphics go . . it looked great on even my old GeForce 4 MX 64MB. The Source engine conforms to your hardware to make for a great graphical and gaming experience.

 

Thanks for all the feedback. I should be getting my 1gig stick here in a couple of days. HOpefully, that'll solve a lot of my problems. I'm really looking to just be able to play the game at a decently high setting (when I was fiddling around using the 512 RAM, it looked like old playstation resolutions) without the framerates dropping to the point where there is a pause or delay in gameplay...nothing grinds my gears worse than having a guy in your sights, only to have the screen freeze up...

 

I hate when the gameplay stutters. And especially in fear. That game relies so much on the shadows, light and atmosphere, so I prefer 800x600, but with everything max and fluent gameplay. Ram makes things fluent.

Cheers,

 

Your ram might be the issue, I'm pretty sure it is. You need at least 1gig to run smoothly with soft shadows and other eye candy settings.

You can turn soft shadows off and that will help you greatly, also set shadows to minimum or medium, as you won't really be focussing on shadows while playing, especially when that little creepy girl pops out of nowhere and scares the #$#% out of you.

I've done some extensive testing with each of the graphics settings in FEAR and those lighting settings set to max and the second one to medium actually help performance. Strange no? When I set volumetric lighting to minimum and the other one after that to minimum my frames drop, when I set the first one to max and the second to medium I get optimum FPS.

I play in 800x600 as well, and set almost everything to max, except shadows, sounds I haven't really played with, and texture something or other, the last setting in the graphics options. With these settings I'm running smooth.

Your videocard is a beast so you should be running fine, maybe some kind of power saving setting you have on by mistake or something? Double check this.

Cheers,
Mike

 

Again, thanks to all who have helped to make me less dumb!! =) Here's an interesting question...to those who've installed the newest Xtreme-G drivers....what tempurature is your vid card operating at? Mine goes anywhere from the mid 60's all the way up to the mid 80's....is this normal? My threshold temp is at 93....and I've never received a notice that it's reached that yet though.

 

This is very interesting! Thanks Mike. I will try it and report back.

Cheers,

 

Hi Mike,

I did try your suggestions and you are right (as usual ). Volumetric light on and the next setting on medium gives better FPS in test run. I also have noticed that anisotropic 8x gives the best quality and no fps drop.

FSAA and softshadows are the FPS killers.

Cheers,

 

Agreed. The soft shadows will kill your performance more than anything. It has to render the shadow several times I believe, and then overlap them to make it appear 'soft'. They don't even look that good in FEAR, other games do it a lot better. Definitely not worth the performance drop.