S.T.A.L.K.E.R lighting settings on 8600gt

Heres my spec

Dell Vostro 1500
2ghz Core 2 Duo
2 gig ram
8600GT
Vista Business

Installed Stalker, patched up to latest version, and its the only game thats give me real problems, apart from DIRT. Set detail to max and lighting full and it has a fit with super slow framerate. Drop the lighting down and it runs super smooth. I still have the drivers that were on when I got the machine. My question is has anyone seen any real improvement in this game with the latest drivers?

 

It's known to be one of those "raise lightning, see no difference & drop your computer to it's knees".. Reduce lightning and it'll be just fine

 

Dynamic lighting kills the framerate in Stalker, even on X1900/7900 AFIAK. I am using object-dynamic-lighting on my 8400GT(at 575/700 for Stalker), and it is barely playable in most areas (it runs awful in Bar, but framerate is not needed there) at 1280x800. I am using float32mod, minimized shadow(see no differences anyway), cut down most of glasses to help framerate. I may even try booting it with -noshadow.

So, yeah, you need 8800 class GPU to even think of run this game at max details. Oh, and static/dynamic lighting does make huge difference in visuals.

 

S.T.A.L.K.E.R has probably the best use of lighting of anygame out there, have you seen the difference between static lighting and fully dynamic lighting?

 

I don't see such a great difference between those two options worth the load it adds on the GPU.. But, me thinks that the fact that i can only run it with static lightning might affect my opinion. ^^

 

check out:

http://www.thefloatingpoint.org and there is a patch that makes the game very playable with dynamic lighting...

I'll check it out and bench it myself when I get a chance. It worked great on my desktop PC

 

I've got a Inspiron 1520 w/ 8600 GT at 550/500 and it seems to run just fine with just the patch and everything at max. I've read differing views on the float patch so I have not installed it. I'm only running at 1280x800 though.

 

i have run STALKER previously on my MR x1800. I ended up playing it with full shadows but at like 640x480 cause im a stickler for frame rates but manager to play through most of the game at a decent frame rate. The Bar always killed frames.
But the reason i mention this is cause I wouldnt play the game with anything less than full shadows cause it just makes things so much more immersive. Wait till your caught in an electrical storm outside in a gun fight!!!