Hello People,
I’ll start with my basic system specification which is
AMD AM2 dual core processor 4200
Nvidia Geforce 7600GT
160GB SataII Drive
550W Power Supply
1024 DRR2 533mhz Ram.
I recently downloaded the new F.E.A.R extraction point game demo and ran it maximum settings from which it ran absolutely fine. Because I never owned the original game I decided to buy it and give it a go. This game is now over a year old and because my system handled the recent demo (september2006) I thought it would play the original game (came out start of 2005 I think) no probs on full settings. When I tried the original game I get quite a bit of jerking and like lag and it doesn’t run smoothly at all. I play games like Half Life 2 and Doom 3 on max settings all the time and don’t have no problems so I think it’s a software problem. I have the latest graphic card drivers 91.47 nvidia and have also updated the original F.E.A.R game to version 1.08 to see if that helped but it didn’t. The only hardware I’ve changed recently is I added an optical mouse! The only other thing I noticed was when installing the game it said it needed to install direct x 9c(august) and wudn’t proceed unless I clicked yes. Im pretty sure I had a newer version of direct x already so I don’t think it installed it anyway. Any suggestions? Im gonna play my copy of half life 2 2nite and see if that’s still running ok,then I’ll try re-installing F.E.A.R see if it makes a difference.

It's possible that your memory is doing something odd - worth testing it with memtest86 (the demo might be fine because it's a smaller game?)

It's possible that Windows is doing something weird - might be time for a reinstall? When did you last reinstall Windows?

Have you checked that the max quality in the demo is the same as in the full version? A lot of demos do not include the highest quality textures in order to save on file size and make them more downloadable. Therefore perhaps what you think is max, is actually more like medium.

For reference my x1800xt (256MB version) stuttered on max textures. Could have been my A64 3200+ but knocking down the textures fixed it so i thought otherwise.

Have you installed the dual core patches and dual core optimizer?

Dude, there is no way that a 7600GT can run F.E.A.R on max details, my massively overclocked 7900GT struggles in places. Try toning the detail down to around medium.

Where can i get the dual core patches and optimizier? are these just for the game F.E.A.R or released by AMD for all applications and software? Please let me know i'll give it a try then.

http://www.tweakguides.com/FEAR_1.html

hi, check the above link out, its a compleate tweak guide for f.e.a.r.. it tells you about some settings that make practically no diffrence to in game visuals but cripple the performance

and heres the link for amd updates, including the dual core one you might need;-

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processor [...] 06,00.html

I doubt that has anything to do with it. I have an X2 4800 myself and dont have any of the optimizers installed, I have tried them and they didnt make a difference in any of my games including fear and fear ep.

Now I did however notice in older games that dont like dual core and you have to disable one of the cores it seemed that the dual core patch took care of that particular problem.

Dude, there is no way that a 7600GT can run F.E.A.R on max details, my massively overclocked 7900GT struggles in places. Try toning the detail down to around medium.

I hate so say it but this guy is correct. You need to turn some things down a little.

Your biggest killer would be soft shadows so turn that off and you get a big frame rate increase. Also try running 2XAA instead of 4 and use 8Xaf instead of 16.

Last thing I would do if I had to would be to turn the textures down to medium. You will not notice a big difference and its actually recommended on cards like yours with only 256mb memory.

These settings are what I used to use on my X850XT and it made the game fly.

Agreed. I have a e6700+x1900xt+2GB and the only way I could get really good performance on max settings was to drop the resolution to 1280x1024.

You're not going to be able to run it with everything at max. Just use the auto detect, and make minor adjustments from there. You should be able to run most settings at max with no AA, and no soft shadows with good frames.

Lower your details Take softshadows off and see if that helps. you could also try scaling back the detail level.

7600GT won't ever run fear at max settings my x1900XT can't really do it that reliably. but then again i run stuff at high resolutions

My GPU setup is considerably faster than yours, and I don't play F.E.A.R. on the "maximum settings".

What kinda frame rates you getting? I run an overclocked X1900XT@730core, 1664mem, X2 4800@2.7ghz and 2gigs ddr 400 mem.

I get awsome frames at maxed out settings with 1280X1024. Everything is maxed with Soft Shadows off and inside the corridors I am getting 75fps which is actually being held back by my monitors refresh rate because I play with v sync on and use triple buffering of course.

Worst case scenario for me is 40fps in the big outside areas with tons of enemies on the screen firing at me all at once. But most of the time 60-75 fps is what I play at.

That in game bench test showed min 38fps, average 87fps and max 226fps for me last night 8)

Turn soft-shadows off... your card (and most cards) can't handle it. Usually this one tweak alone fixes the problem and doesn't make much of a difference visually.