Tips for getting STALKER to work on laptop

I just bought a new Asus F3T with a 7600 go video card.

At first I couldn't even get STALKER to load, so did a windows update and got new drivers for the card. These drivers got me to the intro movie, but only showed about every 5th frame.

I downloaded the forceware 158.16 drivers, figured out how to change the .inf file, and got those working. Now I can get through the starting movie and move around, but it is really choppy and the sound goes funny at times.

So I checked for new sound drivers, but windows tells me I am up to date on those, and the drivers on the Asus website have a lower number than the drivers on my laptop.

Any suggestions on how to improve performance before I just start toning down the settings?

I only have 1 gig of RAM, could this be the problem?

 

Download the latest patch (1.003). I heard there were some performance optimizations that may help low-end systems.

 

Get another gig of ram.
First thing is to turn off dynamic lighting.
You should be able to run at low to med settings.
Stalker has enough seting to bring it down to most moderate or better gaming machines out right now.

Search will get ya some more info as well.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=119838&highlight=stalker

http://forum.notebookreview.com/search.php?searchid=1170690

 

I have no problems running Stalker on my W3J w/ ATI x1600 at native resolution 1280x768. The biggest thing is to change render to Static Lighting, then just turn up all the other settings or until you reach a good balance of fps and eye candy. Other performance options would be turn off AA and AF but I think that's preference as the game won't look as pretty.

Another gig of ram will definitely help especially if you're running windows vista. Other than that, your hardware seems fine to run Stalker. Goodluck!

 

You know I've been having the same problems with my X1400. It runs like sh*t on my laptop, but when I play it on my desktop (Which is MUCH MUCH less powerful) it actually runs better.

I've updated my drivers, and my laptop is never connected to the internet- so I doubt its a virus. Any suggestions?

 

The only performance boost I got for my current laptop is to change the lighting to Static, which uses DX8. But, still things look quite decent. However, I have the texture quality and view distance to maximum, and runs at 1280x800. And I get somewhere around 30 outside in the zone, 50~60 inside houses.

2GB of RAM definitely helps this game. And also be sure to decrease the density of grass, I set mine to medium. And I can still see plenty of vegetations. Also, don't allow the NPCs to use flash lights, having 10 NPCs on screen with their flash lights on will eat your frame rate up.

 

Turn off EAX i Sound options.
You can also check this link, for more Stalker tweaks:
http://www.tweakguides.com/STALKER_1.html