Widescreen Gaming Forum

Is it just me, or does anyone else think its crazy that even the 8800gts can't run F.E.A.R with graphics all the way - and vertical sync on - without slowing down sometimes?

It's the vertical sync that kills it. Everything runs along smoothly until you hit a big open area, or one with lots going on, and then the frames cut in half. Same with Call of Duty 2 - and that game was made back in 2005!! I guess its the 1680x1050 that does it, but even on my 1440x900 the pc cant cut it with vsync on...

Looks like the newer games are owning the top graphics cards... benchmarks on upcoming games like Call of Juarez are showing very low framerates - granted that they haven't been optimized yet...

Do ya'll play with vysnc on or off?

I play with VSync on. I played with it off on my old CRT monitor, but the tearing on my LCD monitor bothers me too much to leave it off (in games like Mafia for example, at times during cutscenes and in-game there's so much tearing that it causes jerky motion during camera pans). Like you mentioned though, the downside is that if the game can't output at least 60fps it cuts it in half to 30fps to keep it in sync with the monitor. With VSync on even with a modern game like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., it still runs fine except for the rare graphically intensive or perhaps unoptimised areas (this is with static lighting though, full dynamic lighting produces an insane amount of swapping for me). I'm not particularly bothered by the jumps from 60fps to 30fps, and vice versa.

Also, F.E.A.R. is notoriously slow if you enable soft shadows (it also apparently doesn't work properly if you have anti-aliasing on). Have you tried disabling that and seeing if there's any gain in performance?

I've been playing everything but the newest, newest games on all highest settings with my 8800 with V-synch and have never really had a problem. Sometimes I do turn shadows down simple because I don't care about them... FEAR is one of those.

Only game I ever had tearing on and need vsync was Doom3. Once I turned it on game was flawless tho.

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FEAR's got a crap engine which runs at fairly low framerates at high resolutions, even on the newest hardware. :P

As for vsync, I'd try running games without it by default, and only see if it improves things if you're noticing serious tearing. If vsync seems to be seriously reducing your framerate, make sure your game is using a feature called triple buffering. That'll prevent vsync from gimping your framerate too much, however it'll also use up more memory.

If you're okay with a bit of tearing and care most about high framerates, vsync off and triple buffering off is the way to go.

Here's a good post on how vsync works: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=928593

Hmm, FEAR runs at a constant FPS of about 60 on my 1900XT with everything at highest and VSYNC on. :|

Same here... FEAR is doing well... With my HD2900XT i get 110FPS with a res. of 1920x1200 everything at the max settings.

FEAR's got a crap engine which runs at fairly low framerates at high resolutions, even on the newest hardware. :P

That only really applied when FEAR was released, and a few months after that. :) To be honest, I thought FEAR's engine was pretty good - lots of games have worse ones, after all.

My X1950XTX merrily pounds out the framerate in FEAR and Oblivion at 1920x1200 with everything at max and Vsync on (I get tearing in pretty much every game if I don't). The only thing I disable in FEAR is Soft Shadows.

I might suggest to the OP that you have something running in your background processes that is causing your problems; an 8800, whether GTS or GTX, should have absolutely no problems with FEAR at all. Neither should it have issues with Call of Duty 2.

[quote]FEAR's got a crap engine which runs at fairly low framerates at high resolutions, even on the newest hardware. :P

That only really applied when FEAR was released, and a few months after that. :) To be honest, I thought FEAR's engine was pretty good - lots of games have worse ones, after all.

Okay, my bad. I just remember all the engines which are slow at release and don't ever forgive them. :P

Yeah, I know what you mean. ;)

I was playing FEAR on my 3400+ rig last weekend. It does surprisingly well on anything 7800/X1800 or greater. :)