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Best settings for 7800GTX ? ( having a problem with F.E.A.R )

Twix

Member
Hello everyone ! yesterday I got my little monster..the 7800GTX 256MB wich came together with my new PC :) , also picked up F.E.A.R and COD2.

unfortunately I am having a problem with F.E.A.R, at the maximum settings the game is very slow, no way it can be played, with turning the Auto Detect mode on, the game looked good with much better frame rate, but time after time the game suddenly freeze for 3-6 seconds before returning to its normal , this is very annoying..COD2 played well, but not perfect @ the highest resolution ( low frame rate, chobby, whatever )

I don’t know what the problem is , I am very disappointed :(

I asked a friend of mine, he told me to install the latest graphics driver form nvidia ( downloading it now ).. anymore advices ?

also can anyone give me the best GPU settings ? ( performance & quality settings ) e.g : AA- AF settings, tripple buffering..etc.

this is my rig:
AMD64 Athlon X2 4200+
MSI K8N Neo4 nVidia Nforce4 SLI Platinum Edition
1GB, DDR400 SDRAM PC3200 Kingston
MSI Geforce 7800GTX 256MB
80GB HDD


sorry if the thread isn’t clear, I am not good in expression :(
 

[Nintex]

Member
AA , AF on = Best image quality
AA , AF off = Better framerate

The graphics drivers should fix your problem.
When you install the new drivers make sure you delete the old ones first
 

BlueTsunami

there is joy in sucking dick
F.E.A.R will not work at the highest settings with the 7800GTX 256 (Well, not at an acceptable framerate) (probably would be better with the 512 to ;) ). The makers of F.E.A.R refer to this game as a "Next Gen" game, where you need "Next Gen" cards.

So I would use Auto-Detect. Any issues you may be having, installing the new drivers will probably fix it.
 

Sysgen

Member
Just lower the AA setting.

^^ I have a 6800 Ultra with 2 gig of ram and the game pretty much ran like butter though I think I set the AA to 2X.
 
turn down some of the settings in the CPU options.
Also, if there is an option to lower dynamic shadows or any type of shadows, lower those too, a bit.
Turning off Soft shadows really helps with the frame rates too, but, i would hope that the 7800 card would have no problems with those.

The freezes are probably due to low RAM, i would probably lower the texture resolution for that and posibly set Audio to Medium.
 
It sounds largely like HDD access is the root of your issue, which the solution is more ram. But be sure that soft shadows are turned OFF, a 7800gtx should have no fillrate issues at 4xAA. Or maybe defrag if you haven't already.
 
If you want AA, cut off soft shadows, they don't work with AA on anyway.

I run mostly in the 40-50s at 1680x1050 w/ 16x AF, 2x AA and vsync enabled on my rig

X2 4400+
7800GTX 256mb
2048mb pc3200 ddr
 

Deg

Banned
It is the 2GB of RAM. The others saying otherwise have no clue. Your 1GB of RAM is a bottleneck. If you want high texture settings you need 2GB of RAM.

In the meantime play with medium textures. You can yank everything else high/max, whever is there. This is typical mistake many people make when choosing their system spec as some components are overpowered whereas others dont match.
 
Deg said:
It is the 2GB of RAM. The others saying otherwise have no clue. Your 1GB of RAM is a bottleneck. If you want high texture settings you need 2GB of RAM.

In the meantime play with medium textures. You can yank everything else high/max, whever is there. This is typical mistake many people make when choosing their system spec as some components are overpowered whereas others dont match.

Benchmarks have shown that 2gb of ram vs 1 makes little to no difference in F.E.A.R. performance

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/fear_cpu_performance/page6.asp
 

BlueTsunami

there is joy in sucking dick
Its the card and the VRAM.

Like I said, at max settings with the best card (the 7800GTX 512MB/Comparable ATI card) you'll probably only get 25FPS max. This game NEEDS a more powerfull card. Playing it @ Max settings will get your attrocious framerate.
 
BlueTsunami said:
Its the card and the VRAM.

Like I said, at max settings with the best card (the 7800GTX 512MB/Comparable ATI card) you'll probably only get 25FPS max. This game NEEDS a more powerfull card. Playing it @ Max settings will get your attrocious framerate.

SLI is what helps F.E.A.R. more than anything else.. it is almost entirely GPU limited, probably due to its massive amounts of shaders.

However, you can have settings below max that look damn near identical (as I have done on my rig, a few compromises for acceptable performance at your given resolution)
 

Deg

Banned
Robobandit said:
BF 2 and Mmorpgs, apparently :lol

though maybe Oblivion will also make use of it :)

I thought quite afew games needed 2GB of RAM. Makes buying a good GPU and processor more worth it.

I am guessing online games use more CPU than normal?
 

Ark-AMN

Banned
I just got my new computer in the mail, can't wait to try FEAR on it and see how high i can go.

For reference it was a:
P4 3.6Ghz
2GB 667Mhz DDR2 RAM
256MB 7800GTX
320GB Raid 0 HD


Now, up until now, I've been playing FEAR on my older computer which was a:
P4 3.0Ghz
1GB 533Mhz DDR2 RAM
256MB Ati 9800XT
160GB ATA HD

For that, I managed to crank up most technical settings to the maximum, but of course, couldn't turn on AA or AF and especiallly soft shadows, and it ran at a decent frame rate at 1024 * 768.

For the record, I usually don't run anything above 1024 because if there's text, then it becomes hard to read. :D
 

Pimpbaa

Member
BlueTsunami said:
Its the card and the VRAM.

Like I said, at max settings with the best card (the 7800GTX 512MB/Comparable ATI card) you'll probably only get 25FPS max. This game NEEDS a more powerfull card. Playing it @ Max settings will get your attrocious framerate.

It does not need a more powerful card. It plays fine on my 6600GT. Not everything is high of course (auto made a mix of things high and medium for the various settings). The game seems very scalable.
 
Deg said:
I thought quite afew games needed 2GB of RAM. Makes buying a good GPU and processor more worth it.

I am guessing online games use more CPU than normal?

I still look at cpu and gpu as being more important, but with 1gb becoming the standard amount of ram, I can't say that 2gb would be a bad choice. As levels get bigger (all of F.E.A.R.'s environments are small, really.. which is why I suspect that it doesn't help a lot), I think ram will be more important and it isn't like it is very expensive anyway.
 

BlueTsunami

there is joy in sucking dick
Pimpbaa said:
It does not need a more powerful card. It plays fine on my 6600GT. Not everything is high of course (auto made a mix of things high and medium for the various settings). The game seems very scalable.

At Max settins though, it seems to be pumping out something that makes even the newer cards come to a crawl. It is true that you have to pull the settings back to work well with the card your using (everything doesn't have to be @ High).

If you DO want it on High, then even the best cards don't seem to be cutting it.
 

Twix

Member
downloaded the latest graphics driver, yeah I noticed some improvements especially on COD2 , but somehow I still think there is a problem.. here are my setteings for F.E.A.R:


# Computer : Medium

#Effects:

- Effects Detail : Maximum
- Moden Decals: Maximum
- Water Resolution: Medium
- Refelctions and Displays: Maximum
- Volumetric Lights: On
- Volumetric Lights Density: Maximum

# Graphics:

- FSAA: Off
- Light Detail: Maximum
- Shadow Detail: Maximum
- Soft Sahdows: Off
- Texture Filtering : Anisotropic x16
- Texture Resolution: Maximum
- Videos: Maximum
- Pixel Doubling: Off
- DX8 Shaders: Off
- Screen Resolution: 1024x 768
-Shaders: Maximum

Test Mode Results ( the short in-game cenematic ) :

FPS:
- Minimum : 14
- Average: 22
- Maximum: 37

75% : below 25 FPS
25%: between 25 and 40 FPS
0 % : above 40 FPS


so what do you think guys, is everything normal ?

some facts I forgot to tell about:

- The GPU tempreature during the gameplay was 72 C ( high ? )
- I am using two 40 GB HDDs, the first one is internal while the other one is external ( attatched to the PC via USB 2.0 port )..I installed the two games in the external HDD.
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
i was having horrilbe problems with FEAR. I was getting 1 FPS (!!) but granted my PC was much lower powered than yours.

I reinstalled the drivers and the latest Direct X drivers and then it became hot butter sex!
 

Deg

Banned
Twix said:
downloaded the latest graphics driver, yeah I noticed some improvements especially on COD2 , but somehow I still think there is a problem.. here are my setteings for F.E.A.R:


# Computer : Medium

#Effects:

- Effects Detail : Maximum
- Moden Decals: Maximum
- Water Resolution: Medium
- Refelctions and Displays: Maximum
- Volumetric Lights: On
- Volumetric Lights Density: Maximum

# Graphics:

- FSAA: Off
- Light Detail: Maximum
- Shadow Detail: Maximum
- Soft Sahdows: Off
- Texture Filtering : Anisotropic x16
- Texture Resolution: Maximum
- Videos: Maximum
- Pixel Doubling: Off
- DX8 Shaders: Off
- Screen Resolution: 1024x 768
-Shaders: Maximum

Test Mode Results ( the short in-game cenematic ) :

FPS:
- Minimum : 14
- Average: 22
- Maximum: 37

75% : below 25 FPS
25%: between 25 and 40 FPS
0 % : above 40 FPS


so what do you think guys, is everything normal ?

some facts I forgot to tell about:

- The GPU tempreature during the gameplay was 72 C ( high ? )
- I am using two 40 GB HDDs, the first one is internal while the other one is external ( attatched to the PC via USB 2.0 port )..I installed the two games in the external HDD.

Install on internal HD.
 

Twix

Member
Install on internal HD.

NEVER install these type of games on externel HDDs. NEVER!!!!

opppps :D

hmm..sorry I got another problem but now with RIDDICK, when I tried to start the game, an error message appeared on the screen says "make sure the game is installed in the proper folder " or something like that.. then a second error apeared " OpenGL 1.3 or higher is required for this game".. this is strange escpecially after installing the latest driver which supports OpenGL 2.0...any clue ?

thanks a lot guys :)
 
BlueTsunami said:
At Max settins though, it seems to be pumping out something that makes even the newer cards come to a crawl. It is true that you have to pull the settings back to work well with the card your using (everything doesn't have to be @ High).

If you DO want it on High, then even the best cards don't seem to be cutting it.

That something it's "pumping out" is the soft shadows. That stuff just murders any current video card. Also, the game is pretty much designed to be ran at below 1280x1024 res, as the shader use in this game is too taxing on the cards at higher res.

Any way, with my 7800GT I ran it at 1280x800, 2x AA/4x AF, everything maxed out, except Soft Shadows turned off and while the frame rate was generally rather high, there was occasional nasty stuttering. It looked fantastic though.
 
I think most modern cards are capable of running 3D games at 1280X1024 without much of a performance hit.
I was running BF2 at 1024X768 and it was jerky as hell, going to 1280X960/1024 made it more stable and fluid.
NFSMW @ 1024X768 gives me 38fps with vsync and i get the same fps if i set the resolution to 1280X1024.
 
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