Adjusting some F.E.A.R Settings , for my system .

[UnLeashed]

F.E.A.R auto detected my PC specs and auto adjusted CPU and Graphics settings to maximum of each , still when I began playing the performance didnt satisfy me , it's kinda choppy , now I used : Test settings opyion and I found about 60% of FPS is between 25-40 , about 10% below 25 , and about 30% above 40 FPS .

I tried re adjusting some CPU and graphics settings , and results vary alot cause am not sure what these settings are exactly and what they do , except for the fact I discovered that graphics settings affect my performance but re adjusting CPU settings doesnt do much .

My Specs :

Pentium 4 630 3.0Ghz @ MSI 945 Neo Platinum ( No OC )
XFX GeForce 6600 DDR II Edition , Factory settings 450/800 , Forceware 81.95 , ( Vertical Sync , Anisotropic filtering and antialiasing are off )
1 GB DDR II Bus 533 Kinsgston ValueRam , 512x2
Maxtor SATA 160 GB HD 8 MB Buffer

So I'd like someone please to tell me what's the ideal settings to play the game smoothly , and am not paranoid so ignoring some very fine details with gaining speed is preferable , I dont really care about the very tiny tiny details , I just want a nice image quality and smooth perofrmance @ 1024x768

I'll list graphics settings here so it would be easier for people to help :

Under "Effects" tab :

Effects Details , Model Decals , Water Resolution , Reflections and Displays , Volumetric Lights , Volumetric Light Density

Under "Graphics" tab :

FSAA , Light detail , Enable shadows , Shadow details , Soft shadows , Texture filtering , Texture resolution , Videos , Pixel doubling , DX8 shadows , Screen resolution , Shadows

Thanx in advance , I hope my long post didnt bother you .

 

[DonNagual]

Here is a decent tweak guide that may help:

http://www.tweakguides.com/FEAR_5.html

 

[mastronaut]

I run it with all settings on high, except reflections (med), shadows off, run your AA through your graphics card (not in game option).
I'm running it with an ATI 9600XT 256 smoothly at 1024x768, so I see no problem running it with your card. Just experiment with lighting and shadows and you should be fine. The link for FEAR tweaks will help also. I love this game! Make sure you run a defrag and clean up un-needed files etc. Get that machine running lean and mean! :grinthumb

 

[UnLeashed]

Gosh , DonNagual's guide was awsome !!!
I read it and wrote everything and am running to my game to adjust everything

 

[UnLeashed]

Update , I adjusted my settings according to the article , the secret key is setting some options to medium , which doesnt cause "noticeable" change in image quality but does ALOT to performance , now these options were :

1 - Water resolutions
2 - Reflections and Displays
3 - Light detail
4 - Enable shadows ( disable it )
5 - Shadows detail and Soft shadows ( disable em )

Now after testing my results that's what I got :

1 - 0% of frame rates below 25 FPS
2 - 22% of frames between 25-40 FPS
3 - 78% of frame rates above 40 FPS

I played the game too and it works like butter .

Another solution for older cards is to set everything to maximum but set "DX8 Shadows" to ON , it will force using DX 8 shadows not DX 9 , I doubt any loss of quality except for extreme hardcore gamers , but the boost in performance is awsome , this way worked with me while playing COD II with my old FX5700 LE .

Thanks again Donnagual and mastronaut for the help

 

[mastronaut]

Glad I could help!

 

[Eko]

AA and AF

Most of the games run smothly if no AA or AF is turned on. However, I don't know how to do this outside the game, nor you can really see a difference...(NVIDIA settings for the video card, maybe?)
Personally, I think that overclocking your video card a little may increase your framerate to a decent level. With a coupple of changes in the cooling of the chipset and memories, you can obtain some differences. I o/c-ed my Leadtek 66600 GT TDH Extreme Edition from 550/1120 Mhz (chipset and memories) to 580/1320 stable, but for this I used the VGA cooling solution from Arctic Cooling 6, and bought some passive heat spreaders for the memories.
Doing this, I managed to have a smooth play (over 30 FPS) in FEAR at 800x600, with everything at full level, except the soft shadows (don't now even now what they do ).
Careful though, you don't want to fry your board completely, don't you ?!
Good luck, and wish you the highes possible framerate...

 

[oxeyereed]

That tweakguide donagual mentioned is excellent, they cover most major games shortly after release.

even my 7800gtx is still pretty limited in that game. I hope the 7900gtx changes that, looking to run it at 1920x1200 4xAA everything set to max.