FEAR problems still!

Dreadi · 17 Mar 2007 at 09:16

I made a thread a few months back about this and have since re-installed a fresh, up to date copy of windows xp and left the game un-updated but the problem is still there!

When i first installed FEAR i could play it on fairly high settings at 12x10 (or 12x7?) res or slightly lower at 16x12 res. Then for some reason i went to back to the game after shutting down one night and then began to try playing it again when it then decided it wouldn't go above 16fps at ANY TIME, ANY SETTINGS.

Having a fresh windows and non-updated game i thought I'd try again but alas, still not seeing above 15FPS on any settings and the game update didn't help last time so probably wont now.

Any suggestions before i make a fear a lovely coaster ? ?

furnace · 17 Mar 2007 at 09:20

Are you running XFire in the background? If so, try closing it or going to
"open tools > options > go to the game tab and select FEAR > Advanced options > disable ingame chat"

Fortunately I haven't had any problems and I don't run XFire

That was just a quick google dig

Dreadi · 17 Mar 2007 at 09:27

Ah, you legend

Dreadi · 18 Mar 2007 at 16:54

ok, having played this for a while now i get real bad drops in FPS when walking round corners or just randomly sometimes, would the updating fix this you think ?

furnace · 18 Mar 2007 at 19:05

I think that'd be your 1GB RAM... if you put another gig in, you might be alright. You're probably finding that when you walk around a corner, it's having to load new things up off a page file on your hard drive rather than from your ram.

But of course it's still worth patching. Use Download Accelerator Plus to make things faster, and find mirrors for files using filemirrors.com

Duff-Man · 18 Mar 2007 at 20:38

Yeah. When I first played this game with 1Gb memory (and SLI'd 7800GTXs) there were certain levels where the HDD paging would be really apparent. This is one game that really benefits from having 2Gb.

Curio · 19 Mar 2007 at 02:53

Played FEAR with both 1GB and 2GB, at fairly high settings, and I have to say it didn't make much difference. It certainly wouldn't explain such bad performance, that's for sure.

Duff-Man · 19 Mar 2007 at 03:01

Curio said:
Played FEAR with both 1GB and 2GB, at fairly high settings, and I have to say it didn't make much difference. It certainly wouldn't explain such bad performance, that's for sure.

The 1Gb comments are in relation to this:

Dreadi said:
ok, having played this for a while now i get real bad drops in FPS when walking round corners or just randomly sometimes, would the updating fix this you think ?

The OP's original problem has been sorted.

As for 'not making much difference', it depends mainly on the resolution and texture-detail settings you use. If the total level size does not exceed 1Gb, then it will all fit in your memory and you will not get any paging. Otherwise, the system needs to load data from the HDD into the memory periodically, which will cause brief periodic drops in framerate (usually when you turn a corner).

A similar effect comes when the texture data won't fit in the video memory, although in this case the paging is between video memory and system memory. This kind of paging is generally more frequent, but much faster (since there is a lot more bandwidth between memory-memory transfers than HDD-memory transfers).

furnace · 19 Mar 2007 at 09:36

I've played a few games on both 1GB and 2GB, and I find that it's definately made a difference. Especially on Battlefield 2. I usually run a fair amount of stuff in the background while playing games (Dreamweaver, a few browser windows, MSN) due to work, so I had a good benefit when I got my 2GB ram

But BF2, even when it's only BF2 that I'm running, 1GB would lag a lot.

Definately worth going up to 2GB... tbh, modern games are most likely gonna need it!

But if you're planning on upgrading you rig soonish, then you're probably better putting up with 1GB and putting the money towards your next rig

HangTime · 19 Mar 2007 at 13:39

You MUST set textures to Medium (or lower) when using 1gig RAM, otherwise peak commit charge will soar over 1gig.

Dreadi · 19 Mar 2007 at 17:08

HangTime said:
You MUST set textures to Medium (or lower) when using 1gig RAM, otherwise peak commit charge will soar over 1gig.

I'll bear that in mind

And with what Furnace was saying about BF2, it is horrendous with 1gig, it takes soooo long so load and lags so much at the start but again i dunno if i can be bothered to upgrade anytime soon but 2 gig does seem like a smart thing to do, i just don't like parting with my money

Curio · 21 Mar 2007 at 03:15

Duff-Man said:
The 1Gb comments are in relation to this:

The OP's original problem has been sorted.

As for 'not making much difference', it depends mainly on the resolution and texture-detail settings you use. If the total level size does not exceed 1Gb, then it will all fit in your memory and you will not get any paging. Otherwise, the system needs to load data from the HDD into the memory periodically, which will cause brief periodic drops in framerate (usually when you turn a corner).

A similar effect comes when the texture data won't fit in the video memory, although in this case the paging is between video memory and system memory. This kind of paging is generally more frequent, but much faster (since there is a lot more bandwidth between memory-memory transfers than HDD-memory transfers).

Yeah, thanks, I already know all that

I just didn't notice any real difference in FEAR, compared to other games in which I find 2GB actually does make a difference.