Windows F.E.A.R. thoughts thread...

You have a 256mb 5500? Someone bought into silly marketing... (points at 512MB 6200 at newegg). For all the difference 2gb would make I think a GPU upgrade would be more beneficial, but I suppose it depends where you're coming from. I haven't yet found any decent benchmarks that really compare the game with 1gb and 2gb (found some huge roundup recently, covered everything BUT FEAR and Q4)

 

Wow, it is silllky smooth in multiplayer using a 2.8d CPU. The 3.73 stuttered a bit during single player slowmo but the 2.8d doesnt faulter at all (although i havent tried slowmo with it on yet).
Much impressed.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/08/24/city_villains_fear_dual_core/

From our own news



The square bit is in-game play. Each line represents a CPU useage.

 

Fecking hell. I'm well stuck.

I'm on the Bad Water section, killed everything, explored the whole floor of the building, cannot find my way out. It's the bit with the dead fella in the swivel seat and the jet of flames coming out a gas pipe. What am I missing exactly? I heard a mean sounding voice telling me "It's in the water" but I can't find any water... grrrr.

 

Rich - I think it uses the second core for physics... I've not confirmed that yet though.

 

I'm not familiar with the area you're speaking of, but here's a link to the gamespot walkthrough.

 

well ive just ried this and it runs like a dog on my so thought reasonable system
ive got most of the things on medium and alot of the stuff like shadows etc off.
and it still runs jerky.

3200 venice stock
7800gt stock
1 gig corsair

dissapointed to say the lesat with this game. quake 4 runs sweet as the cherries but this is crap.

 

It is incredibly resource hungry

My OCed 7800GTX can only just do all high (this is on the demo) on 1024x768, and that's just about playable in a firefight - I disabled smooth shadows to improve things a little. Guess it goes to show that they design these things with future hardware in mind...

I think you might see a benefit from overclocking that 3200+, though. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a bottleneck - try cranking up the AA/AF and you'll see whether it is.

 

what do you mean, crank up the aa/af? i had it up before at 2 and 4 i think and it was awful

 

You need 2 gig of ram, i can play it all on maximum with a 6800gt and a 2.8d.

 

seconded
i can play it on max settings 2xaa 2xaf 1024 with a 2.6gig X2 and x800xl as long as i have 2gig ram

 

Monolith engines are typically CPU intensive - Tron was very intense, for example.

 

i was running it at 1280x1024 for my tft, so with 2gb of ram itll improve things then?

 

Almost totally maxxed here too. Occasional stutters but nothing too bad.

Only problem I have is with occasional popping and rhythmic crackles in the sound. Seems to be worst when there's really loud music.

 

That's supprising since it was simple colours and textures, spose the water was nice in it though. Cant remember the physics.

 

truckin along w/ my oc'd 6600gt. This is definitley one of the best games i have ever played. I mean who can't love an fps where you can do sliding, sweeper, roundhous, and scissor kicks? The best slomo effects yet. And it really freaks you out w/out having eveything dark.

 

Well I just beat the game. Can't wait until i have time to try it on the hardest setting.

I ended up with 195 health so I must have missed one health booster. All I've got to say is... I think I might have a few nightmares tonight. In Doom3, I got nervous because I hated my character dying from the constant and annoying demon onslaught that always came at me. In this game, I was afraid of what I was seeing and turning corners made me nervous since I didn't know what was going to jump out at me.

You know that scene at the end of "The Ring"? The scene where the girl climbs out of the TV and is just not right? Get used to it.

I'm avoiding saying anything that could be considered a spoiler, but I just have to say that I'm a little disappointed that the AI doesn't try harder to kill me. On the second hardest difficulty, they throw grenades and fire at me from beyond cover, and at times retreat and hide, but they don't patroll the halls and they don't seek me out. I don't like the fact that the position of each soldier is preset and that they can always be found in the same spots. This game is supposed to have "revolutionary AI" but I have my doubts about it. Where the AI "uses the environment," the events are scripted and they only turn over furniture that is written into the combat sequence. With that said, although the AI isn't as advanced as I've been led to believe, the programed responses and sequences are at times fantastic.

Grenades can be used very effectively but their supply is too far and infrequent such that they should only be used when absolutely necessary.

What do you guys think?

 

We've just published our thoughts on FEAR on the front page, including hardware benchmarks

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2005/10/24/fear/1.html

 

I have a question... how can I take screenshots? Print Screen works, BUT I have a 2nd monitor and I don't want that screen included, and I don't want to be limited to 1 screen per session.

What do you guys use?

 

Alt + PrintScrn will do a capture of the active app. only. Try that.

And people, you need to toy with settings more, I have the game running fine (although not looking the absolute best) on a 2500+ w/1GB ram and a 9800pro (128).

 

Thanks, but how do I take successive screenshots without closing the game?

I'm also running a 9800pro, but I'm having to compromise between resolutions, shaders, shadows, and texture filters. I see some lag on the outdoor levels but during the rest of the game my framerate is decent. My 1 gig of ram gets maxed out, so I'm sure there's at least a minor bottleneck in there.

I too think that the game engine is ahead of the current state of hardware, but then again, it always is. I wonder how differently the game would perform if it was adjusted to take advantage of the new physics processing units that are soon going to come out.

Anyways, thanks again, kiljoi for your tip!