F.E.A.R - Erm, Just finished it... Riiight!!??

FatRakoon · 23 Jul 2006 at 16:36

badgermonkey said:
I know this doesnt have anything to do with FEAR, but since we're talking abou performance... I know a guy who apparently has the best spec out there, with a 3200+, 512MB ram and an x850xt, and he runs games like FEAR (Oh it does relate ) and Counterstrike Source with 190fps on max settings apparently

Anyone else smell a bit of poo in his statements?

Not really, or at least not much anyway.

The RAM Id say he is wrong on, but the GFX and CPU are perfectly capable of playing all the games he would want to at a not-to-shabby rate.

A while back, I was on a Barton3200, Rad9500np@9700np and 512MB and I had a few jerks now and then on UT2K4... I upped to a 9700Pro and found no real difference in the gameplay, a tad better frame-rate, but the jerks were still present.... I upped to 1MB and found the jerks had gone.

I put this to the test and found that a 1MB Machine with a 9500np was able to play games a lot better than a 9700Pro with only 512MB, and this, to me, prooved that RAM was more important than I thought.

A lot of games dont really need the latest and greatest CPU, so I would say his CPU is fine, and the GFX are more than adequete for playing any game he would want.

But the poo-ey smell does come when he says its the best spec... Thats simply nowhere near right and it does indeed give off a bit of a whiff.

fdxd · 23 Jul 2006 at 16:40

the shooting is awesome in the game. Vety Halo style but much better.

I have huge issues running the game however. Its like i get corruption when playing sometimes. :mad:

Probably wont be a fix ever for this.

FatRakoon · 23 Jul 2006 at 16:40

Gerard said:
2.8ghz opteron and crossfired x1900's not upto it...doubt it.

Ive seen tons of complaints about the games coding in general, the vast majority of sites that use this game in benchmarks for hardware leave soft shadows disabled just because of the over the top performance hit it gives.

hardocp in their x1900 crossfire evaluation concluded that the best playable settings for fear on a setup similar to mine were 2x adaptive fsaa 16xhqaf, at a res of 1600x1200.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=OTUzLDUsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0

Note that soft shadows are disabled because they mess up aa and presumably the performance hit for something you'll barely notice is not worth it.

I didnt say anythign about the specs of his PC not being up to it.

I said his PC was probably not up to it.

Just because a person has all the latest and greatest gubbinbgs in his PC, it does not automatically make it faster than the next persons!

I have seen some really low spec PCs running stuff that they simply should not be able to, and I have also seen some high end systems running badly.

I have been running FEAR on a Newcastle 3000 @ 2.4 and a 9800Pro at 1024x768 and not once did I see any glitch or slowdown in the screen other than when it was saving my progress.

That to me, says that my Newcastle 3000 is quicker than his Opteron!!!

badgermonkey · 23 Jul 2006 at 19:12

FatRakoon said:
The RAM Id say he is wrong on, but the GFX and CPU are perfectly capable of playing all the games he would want to at a not-to-shabby rate.
.

Theres a difference between not too shabby and running demanding games like FEAR at 190fps on max settings you know

FatRakoon · 23 Jul 2006 at 21:25

badgermonkey said:
Theres a difference between not too shabby and running demanding games like FEAR at 190fps on max settings you know

And....?

Whats your point?

I know there is a difference, you have to look at the context I wrote them in.

I am merely saying that the mentioned hardware is capable of playing them fairly well. I never said anythign to suggest that they can play them as good or as bad as any other hardware? I merely stated that they can play the games at a not-to-shabby-rate, and they can.

So, whats your point?

NightmareXX · 23 Jul 2006 at 23:44

Gerard said:
Fear on the other hand ran like crap on even high end pc's with anti aliasing enabled.....

Erm I'm running it on an AMD X2 4200 with an X1900 all at stock with everything at high/full apart from softshadows and textures (medium). Runs at a constand 60FPS. During a really really solid and intense firefight with SlowMo it'll drop to around 30.

No idea why you think that though...

Eliot · 24 Jul 2006 at 00:07

1.nightmare thats not taht great considering what fear is, think about it....
2.FEAR is generally well know for shoddy coding
FACT now lets stop pretenting its coded better than jesus

Boogle · 24 Jul 2006 at 00:13

Eliot said:
2.FEAR is generally well know for shoddy coding
FACT now lets stop pretenting its coded better than jesus

Fact eh? I take it you've not only seen the code, but you have at least some experience of C/C++ to be able to recognise good/bad coding? Or you know someone who meets the aforementioned criteria?

Its a theory / idea / thought / guess until proven.

6 billion people also agreeing doesn't make it true either. The Earth was flat once apparantly.

Curio · 24 Jul 2006 at 01:58

Ran great on my system with everything maxed except textures and soft shadows. 1024x768, 2xQAA, 4XAF - steady 40-45fps. Much better than I hoped for.

Cronox · 24 Jul 2006 at 09:16

I think when people comment on the performance of fear its more in comparison to games like half life 2 and doom 3 which tend to run better on the same system.

Personally I thought fear was an incredibly fun game, let down somewhat by insanely repetitive levels and enemies. I didn’t really think much of the story either way, wasn’t terrible but I didn’t think it was anything special either.

NightmareXX · 24 Jul 2006 at 18:01

Eliot said:
1.nightmare thats not taht great considering what fear is, think about it....

Ok well I've thought about it and decided that I disagree with your comment. It's the best looking game that I've ever played and I would put it at the top of my list for games to play on a high end system, purely for the graphics.

Ok so it might not be the best coded game in the world but are any games coded that well these days that look as good as FEAR?

Cronox · 24 Jul 2006 at 18:09

Personally I feel HL2 does far better outdoor/landscape/realistic environments while doom 3 looks better indoors with its amazing shadows and generally heavily polished (although slightly cartoony) look. But then graphics really do come down to personal taste, everybody likes different things.

FatRakoon · 24 Jul 2006 at 18:54

Cronox said:
Personally I feel HL2 does far better outdoor/landscape/realistic environments while doom 3 looks better indoors with its amazing shadows and generally heavily polished (although slightly cartoony) look. But then graphics really do come down to personal taste, everybody likes different things.

Agreed on that.

I personally love the UnReal 2 engine perhaps better than most, especially for seriously massive outdoor maps, but then again, while it is starting to look dated, there is also still so much that can be done with it, even today.

Many people say that FarCry is the best visually, but I for one didnt get that... Its good sure enough, but it, like UnReal 2, has a strong cartoonish feel.

Fear, like HL2 and Q4, do look very real indeed...

Oh I long for the days gone by when I had to run doom at 320x200.

For those of us who have been doing PC since day 1 will also remember how much we jumped and generally needed to change our undies far too often, and yet today, we expect so much more.

Back then, and before that, games had gameplay ( Well, mostly ).

I feel that in order to make FEAR so visually impresive, they have lost out on a lot of the gameplay for me... That said, I still finished it, I just expected more and felt too much of it was samey.

Perhaps maybe that some of us were too immesed in the graphics that perhaps we missed some of the vital gameplay I dont know? if thats so, then the coders might have done more for us.

The thing is, that we are never happy are we? These days, we want more all the time.

We really are a bunch of ungrateful sods sometimes and I am just as bad as the next one.