Frontlines: Fuel of war choppy/buggy

So like 2 months ago I bought Frontlines while steam was having a deal on it, installed it, it ran like general crap. I found this strange as I have a Sager NP5793 (4 gig ram, 9800gtx--1gig ddr3, core 2 duo @ 2.1ghz). Got frustrated so I put it aside. Happened to upgrade from vista to windows 7 in that time (clean install), thought I'd give it another try, still choppy. Its strange because I'm getting real good framerates (enough to cause screan tearing when I hook it up to my TV to play), its that the game itself stutters every few seconds. It's like smooth gameplay --hicup, even just when navigating the menus. My drivers are up to date, I tried a trick suggested elsewhere (which was to turn the folliage setting all the way down) which didn't work, can't put my finger on what's causing this other than a poorly optimized game. Anyone ever touch upon this, got any suggestions?

Afterthought: THIS is why I wish most games still had demos, I used to love downloading the demo, and it'd be so clear cut either "this game is AWESOME I have to get it!" or "this game makes me want to punch babies." I don't understand why this isnt the standard anymore.

 

I get this to. Got that back when I played it on my old dell in beta and just thought it was my crappy hardware

 

Alright good, so it's not just me being irritated then.

 

The game was poorly optimized from the start. When the game first launch I bought it due to knowing that it was from the developers of a mod for 1942 battlefield and the game constantly crash. This game is poorly optimized so don't feel bad that if you can't run it. Even after all the patches it still does not run smooth.

 

it runs fine for me on my crappy HD2400 xt on my laptop, but for my mate with a 250gts on desktop and 2.8ghz dual core its really crap... weird

 

Huh maybe it just doesn't agree well with nvidia. Still like I said, I wish the extra effort of a demo was still the standard, it'd resolve problems like this before they ever happened. I guess they sell more games without a demo though, huh?

 

Thats very odd, I've just been playing this game on steam as it was one of the games on the thq pack, and it runs fine on my 8600mgt

 

Hmm...possibly a driver issue. If I recall, I first ran it on 186.81 and it was running pretty well. I've recently updated to 195.62 and just tried running Frontlines. Needless to say it was lagging very badly... I'll try reverting to 18x drivers and see if that solves the problem~

 

Don't bother, when I first tried it I was using 18x drivers, now I'm using 19x drivers, both ran buggy.

 

its very odd this as Im playing on dox 195.62 and its playing very well for me!

 

Whats your hardware?

 

nothing as good as yours, only t7500 & 8600mgt

 

Well, 186.81 helped improve the lagging a bit. Might be some other settings or a different driver...

 

like I said I'm now using dox 195.62, when I used 186.81 for about a day I found it to be the worse driver for my system. One of the best drivers other than dox was 186.91 maybe he can try that or I can always list the settings i'm using in NVIDIA control panel & the game its self. all you need to do is ask

 

Sure lets see it, maybe we can find some sort of trend between us.

 

First Nvidia Control Panel

Ambient Occlusion: off
Anisotropic filtering: Application-controlled
Antialiasing - Gamma correction: on
Antialiasing - Mode: Application-controlled
Antialiasing - Setting: Application-controlled
Antialiasing - Transparency: off
Maximum pre-rendered frames: 1
Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration: Single display performance mode
Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: on
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Clamp
Texture filtering - Quality: Quality
Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization: on
Threaded optimization: on
Triple buffering: off
Vertical sync: use the 3D application setting

In Game Settings: Under Advanced
Mesh Details: the slider is up to where it says off (*)
Texture Detail: High
Decorations: High
Shadow Quality: Med
Draw Distance: High
Foliage: the slider is up to where its off (*)
Maximize framerate: on

Effects:
Post process: on
motion blur: off
depth of field: on
Bloom: on
Tone quality: High
Particles: slider up to off (*)
Distortion: on

* this means that the slider is moved to the right to where you see under it says off, hope you understand this, if not then i'll have to show a pic.
Hope this helps you guys as the game is not bad

 

I just registered to say thanks Portugeeza1 and everyone else...I updated my NVidia Control Panel settings to what you said and I can now play the game with everything maxed and FINALLY enjoy it =)

Thanks for the great instructions and help, and good hunting