When FEAR was released...

tomanders91

tomanders91

tomanders91

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Was there any graphics card around in 2005 that was capable of playing it at max with AA/AF, at high resoultions?

I mean now its still one of the most demanding games if you want to run it maxed out.
 
My X1900XTX @ 709/845 couldn't run the multiplayer smoothly at all at 1600x1200, with no AA or AF either. FPS were 50+ with 4xAA and 16xAF but it just kept jumping around :mad:
 
because i was just wondering, what the best card out at the time of its release?

Could it run it maxed with AA/AF, at 16x1200? im not too sure.
 
I can run it at max at 1280x1024 4xaa 16xaf with my 7600GT and it's smooth! I'm limited to res by my monitor though so it's not to say i wouldn't run i thigher. The Multiplayer maps, well some of them anyway, are laggy with only 1Gb of RAM. Now i have 2, it's smooth as lube on every map! :D
 
tomanders91 said:
Was there any graphics card around in 2005 that was capable of playing it at max with AA/AF, at high resoultions?

I mean now its still one of the most demanding games if you want to run it maxed out.
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i think some poor coding on monoliths part added to it being so demanding. And yes, on release no PC could run it smoothly because the patch wasn't released that fixed the performance. I remember people on forums with 7800GTX's and they said they were having issues.
 
tomanders91 said:
because i was just wondering, what the best card out at the time of its release?

Could it run it maxed with AA/AF, at 16x1200? im not too sure.
Click to expand...

Nope, best was a 6800 Ultra/X800XT. 1024 with 2xaa 4af was nice. I still think anything higher than 1600*1200 is a bit demanding, even on todays hardware. People have different opinions though. Some people like myself have to have silky smoothness before we pump up the res.
 
bfar said:
Nope, best was a 6800 Ultra/X800XT. 1024 with 2xaa 4af was nice. I still think anything higher than 1600*1200 is a bit demanding, even on todays hardware. People have different opinions though. Some people like myself have to have silky smoothness before we pump up the res.
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TBH, anything about 1280x1024 is starting to get overkill. And anything above the best HD res is definately overkill. I could see playing it at 1600x1200 but not any higher really. I'd also rather have it smooth first before i take the res up. I do usually start at 1280x1024 though, and set settings to max, and then if needs be, lower each setting from lowest priority to me until it's smooth enough to play.
 
The whole 'overkill' thing comes down to personal preference really.

I've ran a fair few games from 1920xwhatever right down to god knows what to get Q3 to stay smooth on a very old rig. Once you get down to it, if you can notice the difference (and some people can) then you may as well go for it.

A similar situation might be audio files (or audiophiles..hoho!) - I can't really hear the difference above 192kbits vbr mp3 but someone that's 'into' audio would prob be sickened by that statement.
 
Aekeron said:
A similar situation might be audio files (or audiophiles..hoho!) - I can't really hear the difference above 192kbits vbr mp3 but someone that's 'into' audio would prob be sickened by that statement.
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I know what you mean. I can't tell the difference above 192 either. Personally, even 64 is half-decent, but not for full time listening.

I can see the attraction with the ultra high res's, but tbh, it just tends to slow things down. I'd rather have FPS over quality any day. But i'd rather have quality over FPS any night if ya know what i mean :D ;)
 
I guess that's when you start getting into the SLI 8800 GTXs/etc/etc... ;)

I quite like to have a decent rig as it always hurts me inside to have to run a game on medium/whatever (bit silly I know, but I'm sure others suffer from the same malady) but I could never quite bring myself to spend the £1000 on SLI'd top-end cards followed by the same again on a monitor to support the res. When I'm rich and famous perhaps :)
 
Aekeron said:
I guess that's when you start getting into the SLI 8800 GTXs/etc/etc... ;)

I quite like to have a decent rig as it always hurts me inside to have to run a game on medium/whatever (bit silly I know, but I'm sure others suffer from the same malady) but I could never quite bring myself to spend the £1000 on SLI'd top-end cards followed by the same again on a monitor to support the res. When I'm rich and famous perhaps :)
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Do what i did if you can, get a christmas job. It payed for my whole rig even though the christmas temp lasted for over a year! :D I've got everything in my rig from there! As well as a 3200+ that is sat next to me gathering dust. That was £100+ when i bought it a year ago! :eek:
 
I'm not sure I could hack working full time AND working a second job, during the christmas period no less :)

If I did though, the cash would go straight into bills/debts. The joy.
 
I had SLI 7800GTXs when I first played FEAR. I played it pretty soon after it came out, but not immediately (couple of weeks later I think). I'm fairly sure the 7800 series was available at the time though.

It was playable with the above graphics setup at 1600*1200, but not with AA. Also, when in slomo mode the framerate would often drop into the 20s, which I can't say I was fond of. At the time, though, I had only 1Gb of memory and the paging on larger levels was quite annoying.

The game runs far better now, on my single 8800GTX. More than double the framerate on the dual 7800s, although I still don't enable AA in order to retain a good framerate in slomo fights. I haven't played the expansion though, which I hear is more demanding.
 
DJKahuna said:
TBH, anything about 1280x1024 is starting to get overkill. And anything above the best HD res is definately overkill. I could see playing it at 1600x1200 but not any higher really. I'd also rather have it smooth first before i take the res up. I do usually start at 1280x1024 though, and set settings to max, and then if needs be, lower each setting from lowest priority to me until it's smooth enough to play.
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Aye. I'm a little stuck now with my LCD at 1280, but I'm kind of glad I got that size - even with the spec in my sig. Everything looks stunning to me :) I might get a widescreen at some point to use in dual view, but again, not at uber res.

I miss the flexibility of the CRTs all the same. I'd consider taking it out of the atic, but its too flippin big for my desk, and CRTs are dust magnets. I got a bit tired of getting my head irradiated too. :(
 
At 1600x1050 with 6xAA and 8xAF it ocasionally drops down to 30fps, which is kinda dissapointing :D considering it doesn't look very good to be honest.

This is the expansion btw.
 
Andelusion said:
At 1600x1050 with 6xAA and 8xAF it ocasionally drops down to 30fps, which is kinda dissapointing :D considering it doesn't look very good to be honest.

This is the expansion btw.
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Its a fairly badly coded game. A bit like Farcry. Patches have improved things somewhat, but it's still pretty flaky.
 
bfar said:
Its a fairly badly coded game. A bit like Farcry. Patches have improved things somewhat, but it's still pretty flaky.
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How, exactly, is Far Cry badly coded?

wrt FEAR, how would YOU suggest they improve performance whilst still keeping the same complexity in the shaders used for the lighting effects? Or would you suggest they just bin some of the lighting/texturing detail (which you can do manually by setting lower detail levels)?

Honestly, sometimes I despair at the comments from people who clearly have no coding experience.
 
^^

I have to say I agree entirely - just because a game is written that blatantly wont run at massive res, 8*AA and 16* AS on the newest hardware doesnt mean its "badly coded" - I'd hate to think how many thousands of lines of code are written in FEAR, much less try to optimise it.

Besides... one day, we'll be able to play it at 100FPS constant (or whatever) just like we can now with CS 1.6 (non-source)

I installed original UT last night following a PC rebuild - still looks pretty good, despite the lack of wonderment in DX7 - we should all be able to play UT at whatever res we want now methinks ;-)
 
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