Good enough for STALKER ?

For those who've played the game look at my sig and tell me if this system will run STALKER with decent frame rates.

THX !!!

at what res do you play ?

I was thinking of an upgrade soon .... guess I'll play with this system for now and enjoy all the eye candy later loll

Well I run Oblivion at 1280*1024 high settings and 2xAA and outdoors it never goes under 25fps. Keep in mind I oc my gfx card to 625/830 to do this.

As for the cheats be patient, in a couple of days we should have them.

Yeah I do .... Zalman VF-700cu + 2 120mm fans blowing air on the card

as far as I know stalker isn't optimised for dual core so his single shouldn't matter. When I play I never see my processor go over 52% and usually only sits at 50%

Stalker is optimized for multi-core cpu's. Says so in the *README* file. It plays fine on my system at near max settings.

nope, sorry, I'm running it in XP. I have Vista (32) dual boot but only peek at it from time to time. Have you thought of doing that, you know dual boot.

i bought the game yesterday and it plays "ok" on my pc.
i have an x1900xtx w/ AMD 4400+ oc to 2.6, and 2gb ram and i get 45fps avg. It drops down to 25 every one in a while but its runs "ok". I'm sure if i messed around with the settings some more i'd get a decent performance boost if i carnk some stuff down. I assumed it would run better on my setup since the game has been in the making for 6 years but that was not the case.

Gamewise, this is a great game ... really emersive and fun!

Happy hunting!

I'd have to agree that it does not appear to be as optimized as other games, but it does run fairly well on my system - of course I can't enable the better shadow options.

1024x768 is smooth - will have to test frame rate later. I have run it at 1280x1024 but it can get jerky in a fight.

If I enable the better shadow options, it's a slideshow.

P4 3.4 ghz HT Northwood
1.5 GB DDR 400
X850XT/PE
Audigy2
2x160 GB Seagate 7200.9 RAID 0
200 GB Maxtor

Yeah, I'm sorry but on my PC, Oblivion runs great and this game runs rather bad. Lots of stuttering and choppiness running at 1280x1024. Probably need more RAM, but Sup Com, OB, FEAR, everything else runs great. Hoping the patch released will help but, dang, it invalidates saved games! No fun!

Running:
e6300 @ 2.5
1gb DDR2 @ 710
74gb Raptor
7900GS PCI-E

well... I finished stalker on sunday and can say that it is VERY POORLY optimized... the game can use one of 3 different renderers. first is static lightning, second is object dynamic lightning and the third is full dynamic lightning. my laptop (I don't have a desktop and use laptop for everything) is T5500 (1.66 GHz), 2 GB RAM 667 (dual channel), ATI mobility X1600 so I thought the object dynamic lightning + medium detail is the way to go. result ? 10-14 fps... ok, so I set all the details to minimum and... 14-20 fps and a game looking crappy as hell. I was on the verge of trashing the game but tried the last thing to do - changed lightning to static. and with static lightning and eveything MAXED out (view distance >500m...) the game stayed above 40 fps as long as there was no rain/water on the screen. friend of mine with a better setup and x1950 PRO also had to run static lightning, in his case dynamic lightning caused the game to crash right away. however, I saw the game on 6800 GT + E6400 running dynamic lightning with no problem. so something in the game is really, really screwed and probly causes ATI cards to generally suck with dynamic lightning (my guess is that shadows are working similarly to doom 3 which greatly favored nVidia arch). yet I must say that the game really looks sweet even with static lightning, and you really don't need a good PC to run it that way

Just wondering if the huge performance caused by dynamic lighting is worth it. I have seen screen shots, and it doesn't seem that much better, but screen shots aren't the best judge. Just wanted to know .

Yes it looks nicer, as the name suggests it looks best when stuff is in motion.

The A.I is pretty good despite a few bugs here and there. Much better than the run straight at you style of doom.

12x10 high settings and never goes below 25 fps? Hmm....

Everyone has their own idea of high settings I guess. And a 7600GT isn't going to stay above 25 fps in what I call high settings. Shoot, my 7800GT tanked at 1024x768 high settings, paired with 2GB ram and an A64 4000+. And If you go by what review sites call high settings, at 1280x1024 the 7600GT would be doing single digits at times.

Notice in Anand's Gate test the 7900GTX averages 29 fps and drops below 20 fps, and the 7600GT does about 50% of those framerates.: http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] i=2746&p=4

Firingsquads high settings, the 7800GT averages less than 15 fps with 4xAA. http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page6.asp
and a tad less with HDR instead: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page5.asp

And the 7600GT averages 20 fps running 2xaa at their medium settings in the mainstream test: http://firingsquad.com/hardware/ob [...] /page8.asp

Anyway, according to firingsquads testing, the 7600GT is a 10x7 medium detail card in Oblivion.

As far as stalker, the 7600GT looks to do a decent job, unlike the 7600GS: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page7.asp

I've read that review at firing squad and I was surprised with their numbers. Last time I played Oblivion it was at 10x7 4xAA high settings(set in Oblivion options, I've been a gamin for years so yes I know I am playing at high settings with some settings set manually a tiny bit lower) and it ran very smooth. And I mesured my fps with the built-in tool and also with fraps.

It's not just Firingsquad. Anandtech, [H]ardOCP, Toms, etc all place the 7600GT as a 1024x768 medium details card. And even still, the GF7 series in general have low dips in framerates (less consistent).

Here, have a look at Tom's testing. http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] age10.html
The 7600GT averages 20 fps at 10x7 high with HDR. It averages 18 fps with 12x10 high with just bloom. Yet your minimum framerate is somehow way above all the review sites average? You must admit they and you have a different idea of what High details are. Correct? If you still think not, here are two more links:

playable at 1024x768 with alot turned off:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/arti [...] lzdWFzdA==

more 10x7 medium benchies:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] i=2746&p=6

Just so you understand, I'm only trying to keep it real so nobody is misled. That is my intention in bringing up your 7600GT claim. A 7600GT can in no way stay above 25 fps at 12x10 with high details. I'd hate for anyone to think if they buy a 7600GT that's the performance they will get. I can post many more reviews that show results to the contrary, plus I have played/tested Oblivion with over a dozen cards and I know that far better cards than the 7600GT struggle at 12x10 high. Actually, very few cards could stay above 25 fps at 1280x1024 and high details. If you truly stay above 25 fps, you have either tuned the settings down alot or you aren't heading out to where it is stressful, or some of both.

Anyway, I am glad you are happy with the 7600GT and the settings you find playable on it. I'm not trying to take away from that. Glad to here you have enjoyed some great Stalker gameplay too already. I just bought it tonight but haven't had a chance to install it yet.

Good number sharing. What did you use to guage your framerates with and where did you go in the game when testing. I would like to do some similar tests on mine just out of curiosity. I have noticed no slow downs but am curious anyways.

LOL - I cannot wait to play either. The game can be quite addictive and is very immersive.

If you do some google searching there are a couple of trainers out there. I haven't found many cheats - but I haven't been looking much.

Well its good to hear the dynamic lighting looks good in motion because in the screenshots on Firingsquad, the textures looked muddy and everything was overcast and dimly lit with dynamic on. The static looks arguably less realistic in screenshots but things are clearer and certainly more lit up and textures seem much more detailed with the static lights.

Guess I need to go buy the game and try it in person to see the true difference that screenshots just don't show

So far just about everyone I've heard from says its fun. Eh I've certainly bought worse games at full price in the past so it won't hurt.

The game has a patch out. I didn't notice any vid problems fixed, mostly multi-player fixes, but can't hurt to try.

The non-US version can be found here

Just turn the lighting setting to static and you light distance to about half and everything else should be fine all the way up with high settings and 1280x1024 res or so. The games gfx are terrible! I wouldnt worry about it to much. They just messed up with the programming when it came to the HDR lighting!

Best,

3Ball

The modeling is horribly dated in both character and gun models (gun models especially as bad not only in detail, but it scale to person/enviroment game size and placement as well!) and it the textures are bland. I put it a step behind farcry, which is what 4 maybe more years old. I suppose when they started development 6+ years ago that they didnt update the graphics engine very much since games such as DooM 3, FarCry, and Half Life 2 look much better and they were realeased much sooner not to mention games such as CoD 2 and Rainbow Six vegas (which is a crappy console port and still looks and plays much better) Im not saying that it is a bad game I am just saying that for as big of a release as this was made to be it is a bit to dated, but they released it at a great time and for a good price as there are no major new competitors for it at this time. I also had to diable my crosshair, because of how terrible it was in size and lack of customability. Basically when compared to many predicesors it lacks in graphic detail and assets, but since the game is suppose to be more story and gameplay based it may be ok, but it is currently plagued by to man bugs and my laptop with an X1600 runs it perfectly fine at full res! Thats all I was saying. I would honostly prefer a counter strike 1.6 version of this game over the current because the gameplay mixes so well with the engine and creates a better experiance (IMHO). Oh well...to everyone his/her own!

Best,

3Ball

It looks like a DX8 game, and, in fact, it IS a DX8 game with a couple DX9 effects tacked-on later, (which are murder on most video cards - I am FORCED to run static lightning on my X800XL) and really not well optimized because they thought "In 6 years processor will be 10 times faster". Well they are, but it doesn't make the unoptimized code run smoothly.

But the gameplay is awesome, I confess. Though without a walkthrough it gets easily confusing. Some quests are bugged so if you don't know what's supposed to trigger when you kill those baddies and it doesn't trigger, you're in for a lot of won/wan-dering.

Well if it makes anyone feel better...

I have all settings MAXED at 1900x1200 and "only" run 42 - 60 (using fraps). As soon as I turn off dynamic lighting the FPS skyrocket which tells me it's badly coded.

In Oblivion (which is a much better looking game and has more shadows IMO), I almost never drop below 70 FPS with 4xAA and HDR.

Despite the performance issues, this is a terrific game. Without the rpg elements and atmosphere this would be a good game, with them it's really unique.

Well im at 1024x768 on my 4ms LCD Monitor and the detail is all the way up on everything with the except of having it on static lighting because even on 1024x768 static lighting messes with it.

Best,

3Ball

Yup, 40-62 FPS is more than fine with me That's why I put I "only" get...
It's just, I'd expect a little better on my rig even with everything maxed.

I do have the lighting distance slider all the way up. I try reducing a little, but I'm ok with my performance as is.

Oh, btw I'm getting crashes to desktop every 5-10 minutes now.