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F.e.a.r. - Pc



  BMW e46 320 Ci Sport
lee is that in game graphics?? they're pretty incredible..

i used to build machines with abit, they were terrible, moved to asus, had since two motherboards blow out on me, neither OC'd. SO ii'm now using msi boards, the weapon of choice for a lot of gamers i have spoken to. It's awesome never had a problem. Replaced my northbridge fan for a vapochill extrem performance, works really well, keeps it's temperature around 40 under high load which is ok since i live in the boiler room in the house! gets as low as 27 under minimial load (downlaoding but nothing else etc)/.....
 
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Lee

  BMW M2C
I wouldn't say in game so to speak as there's not really a game in there, but that's all in the engine and in real time. Think the realism of Half Life 2 mixed with the dramatic lighting of Doom 3, with as many polys as you want (within reason) and all in a higher res, with massive hi res textures. Fancy bloom lighting will be the new anti aliasing on the next gen consoles and card, everyone will be doing it.

You can run around those scenes, picking objects up, throwing them around, watching how they cast realistic shadows. It even has it's own physics engine. Obviously all this being in the standard package will allow give developers a great starting point, from there they can personalise it to suite there games.
 
  BMW e46 320 Ci Sport
hmm still not convinced i'll enjoy fps on a console in the way i do with a pc...might just wait till pc#s overtake again and then upgrade or something..
 
Dilema time...

I'm enjoying the gameplay in F.E.A.R so much that it's putting me in my FarCry dilema again. I played through that game firstly with a 9800Pro and struggled to satisfy my quest for 60fps & high settings. Mostly it was a compromise, and in indoor sections (that bizzarely were more taxing than outdoor ones) I had to use 1024x768 to even stand a chance. I finished the game and really enjoyed it but was never really happy with the framerate my machine could maintain.

Then I upgraded to a 6800Ultra and I found I could run FarCry at maximum everything including big AA&AF, Vysnc...the whole shooting match, and run a pretty much constant 60fps (or what looked like it, I should say) I ended up playing the whole game through again and I enjoyed it more. Not only because it looked a lot better but also because you NEED framerate in gunfights to maintain accuracy. Slideshow gunfights will ruin your whole day if you're an FPS junkie eh? :D

Now the same thing is happening with F.E.A.R - its running about as well as FarCry did with the 9800Pro - and now I'm thinking I should stop playing it until I've got some new hardware that will allow me to really open up the game on full throttle with framerates that will meet my fussy demands. Either that or hope it's a good enough long term game that I'll want to play it again when I upgrade.

The prospect of splashing that much money out for what is essentially one game seems daft, but then I guess it's always one game that breaks the camels back and makes us decide to buy new hardware. Even more annoyingly I have the cash just waiting to go.

Hmmmmm
 
  BMW e46 320 Ci Sport
seems to me like u must be exagertaing, i can't imagine a game been released which is so demanding that a 6800gt ends up with slideshow gunfights like you suggest. if you got the money do it then...else don't see why your worrying about it. i always end up upgrading when i come to a game that is unplayable...although i have yet to find one with my 6800gt which is a lower spec than yours!
 
David said:
hmm still not convinced i'll enjoy fps on a console in the way i do with a pc...might just wait till pc#s overtake again and then upgrade or something..

Console FPS are not as good IMHO, mainly due to the controls. Halo on XBox was the exception for me. Also you just get far higher detail and resolution on a PC monitor, which makes everything seem far more real (for me). You are sitting quite close to the monitor and you are sucked into the game. I dont get that same feeling with 6ft of Ikea rug between me and the game on a relatively blurry and low resolution TV (even in RGB)
 
David said:
seems to me like u must be exagertaing, i can't imagine a game been released which is so demanding that a 6800gt ends up with slideshow gunfights like you suggest. if you got the money do it then...else don't see why your worrying about it. i always end up upgrading when i come to a game that is unplayable...although i have yet to find one with my 6800gt which is a lower spec than yours!

Well obviously I have throttled down some of the settings so I dont get slideshow gunfights. I dont have the best processor for games either dont forget. You should try F.E.A.R mate, it'll surprise you just how taxing it can be on your system :D

Also dont forget that 'slideshow' is a matter of opinion, not fact. To me, anything around 20fps is slideshow, but others might be less fussy.
 
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  BMW e46 320 Ci Sport
s**t man soudns pretty serious. not being funny but maybe u shud oc ur chip ... are there any benchmark tests u can check out to see what it needs to run the fps u want? will definitely get it as soon as i can then.

as for ur other comment on the consoles. But mate, the new 360 will be running in high definition...therefore it's only the controls which are going to be a problem, the definition should technically be better than a monitor iirc...
 
David said:
sh*t man soudns pretty serious. not being funny but maybe u shud oc ur chip ... are there any benchmark tests u can check out to see what it needs to run the fps u want? will definitely get it as soon as i can then.

as for ur other comment on the consoles. But mate, the new 360 will be running in high definition...therefore it's only the controls which are going to be a problem, the definition should technically be better than a monitor iirc...

Mate when you play F.E.A.R. you will realise how intensive it is. My P4 has been overclocked to 3.2Ghz (which dopesnt mean much I know) for ages and my system is in tip-top shape. It's just not the best processor for games, and this one is very intensive. My machine doesnt need any tweaking or anything, it's just met its match that's all. I'd be surpised if you didnt struggle a bit, as lots of forums around are filled with posts where folk are complaining of poor performance on what they thought was a power-PC :D

As for Xbox 360 Hi-Def...

1/ Not all games will be 1080p? Most are 780p? and even if they are, thats still a lot less than a PC can muster on a monitor.

2/ Unless you have a Hi-Def capable LCD, DLP, Plasma, Projector etc. then Hi-Def means exactly squat. I'm not about to spend £2k on a TV display just so I can play some Xbox games :D But I get your point, it's a positive step for consoles for sure.
 

Darren S

ClioSport Club Member
Roy Munson said:
Those pictures have convinced me I need to upgrade LOL, Will definitely get an SLi board, as it offers and easy (but expensive) upgrade path a year down the line.


I'm cautious when it comes to the whole SLi thing. We've been down that route before with the Voodoo 2 cards and it didn't take off then. Why? Because of the expense and the fact that most games had to have a specific patch written for multiple gfx card support.

There are clear and obvious benefits from SLi, but in reality, is it worth it? Imagine SLi support being out a few years back on say, a GeForce 3 card. I bet even a single, older 9700 Pro would run rings around a paired-up combo of GeForce 3 cards. It's pretty much standard know for a high-end card to cost anywhere between £350-£400, but to fork out double that price for the benefit of SLi is a bit mad, imo.

It's a tough call, really. Do we go for the faster, quicker (hotter!) single card options or spread the load out between two (or more) gfx cards? Maybe there will never be a right or a wrong choice. It may come down to those that have the deepest pockets! ;)

As for mobos, I agree with David. I was an Asus fan for a long time (still am in large number of ways) but my current choice is MSI. They seem consistent and with a decent amount of backup support. Certainly the top of my list come Upgrade Time....

D.
 
Darren S said:
I'm cautious when it comes to the whole SLi thing. We've been down that route before with the Voodoo 2 cards and it didn't take off then. Why? Because of the expense and the fact that most games had to have a specific patch written for multiple gfx card support.

There are clear and obvious benefits from SLi, but in reality, is it worth it? Imagine SLi support being out a few years back on say, a GeForce 3 card. I bet even a single, older 9700 Pro would run rings around a paired-up combo of GeForce 3 cards. It's pretty much standard know for a high-end card to cost anywhere between £350-£400, but to fork out double that price for the benefit of SLi is a bit mad, imo.

It's a tough call, really. Do we go for the faster, quicker (hotter!) single card options or spread the load out between two (or more) gfx cards? Maybe there will never be a right or a wrong choice. It may come down to those that have the deepest pockets! ;)

As for mobos, I agree with David. I was an Asus fan for a long time (still am in large number of ways) but my current choice is MSI. They seem consistent and with a decent amount of backup support. Certainly the top of my list come Upgrade Time....

D.

I totally agree mate, but my thinking is that if I get an SLi capable board, the option is at least there if I decide I need UberPower 12 months from now and I can pick up a fairly cheap 7800GTX and have an 'instant' boost. What I mean is, for the few extra pounds of buying an SLi board, the option is at least there should I choose to use it :) At that time it may be cheaper to pickup another 7800, than to splash out on the 8800(whatever)
 
  Yaris Hybrid
The problem is developers seem to create games designed to run on the top 1% of game systems as flash screen shots sell the games to muppets who end up shoving it in a drawer or nubs who play at 10fps and say "I don't notice any problems with the frame rate".

The cost of a top SLI system is ridiculous but people do buy them and games are made that struggle run on the best ATI cards you can buy at the moment (or is that new model out yet?).

Remember Grand Prix 2? There wasn't a PC that could play that on the settings used in magazine screenshots for about 2 years after its release! Yet all the mags reported no problems with frame rates until a few years later when they did their budget/classic game reviews and said "this needs the mother of all PC's even today"!
 
Toypop said:
The problem is developers seem to create games designed to run on the top 1% of game systems...

And thats why I love PC games. Playing the hardware game is part of the fun. I expect that every new UberFPS game I buy should NOT run at liquid frame rates with everything on Full Monty (resolution, maxAA&AF, Vsync, maximim settings) with anything but the very latest hardware or even what isnt available yet. It's what drives the games to look so good if you can afford it. For those that cant, or are not inclined, the options to throttle back the settings are always there to be tweaked so the actual game can be played nicely.

Of course, the actual gameplay is the most important factor always - but with cutting edge PC gaming, you get the luxury of paying for how good you want it to look, and how liquid you want it to run.

It's all good :approve:
 
  Yaris Hybrid
I know what you mean about us PC gamers always having cutting edge graphics. I spend my time trying to explain to satisfied PS2 owners why their system really is long over due replacing but they won't have it.

HL2 was for me one of the best games I have played in many years. A leap forward for graphics and physics on a top end PC but even on my brothers old PC (that I handed down to him) it still looked better than any other game he had and ran smooth.

Now on my PC, Doom 3 and HL2 look better than F.E.A.R and thats the problem...
 
Half-Life2 was already old when it came out though. It does look superb as its clever - it doesnt use any fancy shadowing and the textures arent massively high res, which 80% of gamers dont miss.

F.E.A.R may not look as good because of its locations, but it's doing visual things that HL2 didnt. That extra 2% can be all it takes to bring your PC to its knees. Also the way F.E.A.R works is a lot more hectic than those games IMHO. The combat is very complex will all sorts of things going on. I'd imagine it's very processor hungry compared to games like HL2.

Either way I'm loving the game :approve:
 

Darren S

ClioSport Club Member
Roy Munson said:
Of course, the actual gameplay is the most important factor always - but with cutting edge PC gaming, you get the luxury of paying for how good you want it to look, and how liquid you want it to run.

It's all good :approve:


Very good point, actually. I suppose the headache for most developers is that they have to cater for a million-and-one combinations of motherboards, gfx cards, chipsets, memory size and types, etc. Yet for the most part, they get away with it and games (unless we're talking BattleCruiser 3000 here :dead: ) tend not to crash. Its then entirely up to us with various sliders on how much we punish our PCs... ;)

As for the gameplay being the most important part - definitely. I actually find the gameplay of say, the original Unreal Tournament to be much, much better than either UT2003 or UT2004. The graphics and sound took a massive leap forward, but I don't think the actual 'core' of the game did...

D.
 
  Monaro VXR
Darren S said:
Well, I'm still chugging along nicely with an Athlon 3200+, 9800 Pro, 2x 512 Corsair and an MSI nForce2 Ultra mobo. Not the screaming piece of tech it used to be, but it's ok for now! :)

In all fairness, I'm not looking at PC upgrades at least until next year. There seems to be loads of 'ifs & buts' at the moment - especially where 64-bit is concerned. The trouble is, like Roy said - for me to make a decent upgrade, it would be CPU, memory, mobo AND gfx card - a serious wedge of cash.
D.

Memory would be fine with an A64 board corsair stuff is still pretty much best you can get i bought my stuff over a year ago and they currently dont have anything better out. It will overclock to stupidly high speeds and run at low latencies of 222 at normal speeds. So saves you some cash lol. But you have a similar setup to me 9800xt 3200+ gig of corsair xmsxl dfi lanparty nf2 b board. still can run most things without a problem as long as you dont want anything higher than 1024x768
 
  Monaro VXR
Roy Munson said:
Half-Life2 was already old when it came out though. It does look superb as its clever - it doesnt use any fancy shadowing and the textures arent massively high res, which 80% of gamers dont miss.

F.E.A.R may not look as good because of its locations, but it's doing visual things that HL2 didnt. That extra 2% can be all it takes to bring your PC to its knees. Also the way F.E.A.R works is a lot more hectic than those games IMHO. The combat is very complex will all sorts of things going on. I'd imagine it's very processor hungry compared to games like HL2.

Either way I'm loving the game :approve:

HL2 does make use of some rather large textures in a pretty naff format as well hence the ridiculous loading times at points. Although they were improved. Doom3 uses big textures and a lot of brush work in its maps though hence why it looks imho a hell of a lot better than anything out right now. Anyone tried Quake4 yet? Doom3 engine is used on that.

And doubt FEAR will be more processor hungry HL2 is rather processor intensive. Although all the people on here with 7800gtx's seem to be running 3200 and 3500+'s you guys do realise you prolly wont get a massive speed increase over a 6800ultra due to cpu bottlenecks?

Unfortunately in modern pc's cpu's just arent progressing fast enough no more and everything else is. Hence why were now going the multicore way as its just too difficult to cope with heat issues and manufacturing issues with high speed cpu's.

Unreal3 is rumoured to be one of the first games to take advantage of dual cored cpu's etc. Theres alrready a couple games out that support it but unreal is gonna need it more than they will. Anyone looked at the Xbox360 game gears of war. That is using the unreal3 engine. And it cant actually be that bad on gfx cards unless your running it with massive resolutions and loads of AF and AA on. Due to the xbox360 using an R500 based card by ati only 16 pipes. all games on the xbox360 have to be HD capable and running well on it. as well so 1960x1080 i think the resolution it will go up to and still run fine with AA on by default in the xbox360.

I saw a demo fo unreal being run on 2 machines 1 with 2 6800ultras and 1 with 1 6800ultra both using 2 3.6ghz xeon chips they would have both been playable. but the sli did make a massive difference.
 
The CPU restriction thing is a good point, but it was also doing the rounds a long time ago. I was told that upgrading to a 6800Ultra from a 9800Pro wouldnt help much, as my system would be restricted by my CPU. While this was probably true to a point, my gaming performance nearly doubled with the 6800.

I am pretty sure that upgrading to a better CPU and a 7800GTX would dramatically improve my framerates in all games.
 
  Monaro VXR
Yeah from a 9800 to a 6800 would improve things due to the better architecture better at handling AA and AF the 6800 and optimized for higher resolutions.

However the 7800 on the other hand does need a beast of a cpu to stop it from being bottlenecked. Either a P4 around the 4.6ghz mark or 5ghz mark or an A64 running aruond 3.4ghz obviously neither of these are available so only way to get there is overclocking em.
 
  Monaro VXR
depends what your going from. im coming from a 9800xt with a 2500+ at 3200+ and looking to be going to a 7800gtx and a 4400+ i expect to see a massive difference.
 
  Monaro VXR
Aberclio182 said:
roy you played quake 4 yet, anyone know if its any good? thinking about getting it 2

Download it and try it. Havnt had the chance to play it yet but im expecting good things. If you played quake2 it starts where that left off.
 
  Focus ST-2
i am in work right now, doing weekend cover :( 3 12 hour shifts. so just looking at all the s**t i can buy like. want a new chip and motherboard but trying to decide what to get. spent heaps last year upgrading lol
 
  Focus ST-2
good idea might do that when i get home like. only emm 9 hours to go! lol


wozzaa said:
Download it and try it. Havnt had the chance to play it yet but im expecting good things. If you played quake2 it starts where that left off.
 
Firstly I think you should choose PCI-E over AGP, so that pretty much means choosing a socket 939 board if youre sensible.
 
  Focus ST-2
already have a 939 board giga-byte GA-K8NSNXP-939 but it was one of the first so doesn't have pci-e, don't know if i want to spend another £400 on a graphics card, bought my 6800 ultra last year, still a decent card. so might just get a new chip, got a amd 3500+ 64 now so might just go higher.
 
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ok I have the same card but with a P4 3.0 CPU.

The next serious gaming upgrade is going to be the 7800 but it's PCI-E only so youre snookered. You arent going to get far better game perfromnace without changing your mobo.
 
  Monaro VXR
wont really get that much better performance unless your gonna spend some serious cash FX57 £600 decent mobo £150 and graphics card £300-£400 depending on make and preoverclocked or not.

The 3500+ and 6800ultra are more than up to the job of running the latest games as long as you dont wanna run them all at 1600x1200 with full AA and AF you can still have some of them on though.
 
  Focus ST-2
might just get a bigger chip and then wait to buy a new motherboard and graphics card next year, or might just wait till next year, normally try and miss a year but they are moving so fast.
 
Youre lucky that you already have a socket 939 CPU, you can upgrade just the mobo and gfx. I have to do the fukll 3-piece suite. Well...I think I could get a socket 775 P4 PCI-E board but it doesnt seem worth it since my P4 would be a bottleneck anyway
 
  Monaro VXR
7800GTX £300- £400 cheaper if you want just a GT.

But your chip shouldnt be a problem. You could just overclock your cpu will still be perfectly fine and cheaper. And would likely easily reach 4000+ speeds with the stock heatsink and fan
 


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