[jgwdoc]

So, I just started the gold edition of FEAR (v 1.08) and the game auto-detects most of my settings as high, but it runs like molasses (8-core Macpro/8GBRAM/Nvidia880GT/Vista@1024x768). I don't quite understand why a 3 year old game would run so slowly on my rig. Not at all the case with other older Windows games. What would you folks suggest dialing down to get a snappier response?
As an aside: the built in benchmarking demo for FEAR runs a cinematic which clocks at an average of 59FPS, but I doubt I'm getting 20FPS in actual gameplay.

[teflon]

are you using the latest NV drivers? theyre likely to work better than the original Apple ones.
At the same time, GPU drivers on windows are fickle beasts, and often there is a particular driver which works best for one game, but not as good for another, its a crazy crazy world, but itd be worth looking at.

[jgwdoc]

teflon, on October 29th 2008, 04:31 PM, said:

are you using the latest NV drivers? theyre likely to work better than the original Apple ones.
At the same time, GPU drivers on windows are fickle beasts, and often there is a particular driver which works best for one game, but not as good for another, its a crazy crazy world, but itd be worth looking at.

Well, they're recent Forceware drivers, which actually seem to be more up to date than the ones on the Nvidia site. I could grab the absolute latest drivers from the forceware site. I don't think Nvidia has updated the official drivers in a while.

[teflon]

yeah NV does tend much more towards the beta drivers, from what i can tell.
even though its supposedly for laptop drivers, head on over to laptopvideo2go.com and have a look around on their forums for the latest best drivers, which arent necessarily the latest drivers.
If that doesnt work, then you could try the latest official drivers from NV.

on the other hand, it could be down to Vista?
Having a quick search on google dredged up that some people are having dodgy issues with it. One suggestion ive seen is to turn on 'force restart' in the options, which forces the rendering engine to restart between levels, takes a tiny bit longer, but could solve problems for you...

[jgwdoc]

Well, I downloaded the latest drivers from laptopvideo2go (180.43 for Vista64) and turned off Vsync, and there's a small improvement. I guess I'll just start dialing things down, starting with the Physics, to see if I can make it run acceptably. If anyone has tips, pass 'em on.

[AussieMacGamer]

Downgrade to XP. I know F.E.A.R used to run on high everything on my friends C2D 2.8 and a 7600GT

[jgwdoc]

Well, it may be the 8800GT, or perhaps Vista, though folks have played it successfully under Vista. Even with the newest drivers, I am unable to get decent frame rates. The interesting thing is that the frame rates are virtually identical on maximum or minimum settings. I think they might even have been better, though still slow, with the older drivers. I'm open to any suggestions (except I'm not really going to downgrade to XP for one game). Otherwise, I guess I'll just have to bail on the game. Sigh.

[jgwdoc]

OK. I figured it out, and this may be of some use to folks who will try to run this. Apparently, the problem is Logitech mice (Quicksilver, any explanations?). Seems like FEAR doesn't like Logitech input devices, as I discovered in someone's 2 year old post in a FEAR forum. If I hook up an Apple mouse, the timedemo gives me framerates of up to 300. But if I switch to my G5 mouse, I'm back at 10, which I doubled to 20 by downloading the latest G5 drivers. Any suggestions, short of buying a new mouse for one game? I can't really use the Apple mouse, for obvious reasons, and I don't have others lying around.

[teflon]

have you got the logitech software installed? in which case, even on PC its a complete pile of junk and should be completely destroyed A-SAP (as pronounced in the US of A). That should hopefully fix the problem.

[jgwdoc]

teflon, on November 5th 2008, 11:06 AM, said:

have you got the logitech software installed? in which case, even on PC its a complete pile of junk and should be completely destroyed A-SAP (as pronounced in the US of A). That should hopefully fix the problem.

I had no Logitech software installed initially, and FEAR ran terribly. With the latest Logitech driver, it runs very slightly better. I don't think going back to the original generic MS drivers would do any good. The FEAR forum suggests disabling "HID-compliant device" in Device Manager, but I don't know which one to disable, and if I disable the Logitech mouse, I can't use it in the game.

[jgwdoc]

OK. So here's the work-around: Go into Device Manager, Expand "Human Interface Devices," then Disable all "HID-compliant device" where Hardware IDs begin with "HID/Vid_046d&Pid_c041&..." There were 2 of them for me, and with them disabled, my framerates went from 10 to 200, and the mouse worked just fine. Go back and enable them when you're done with your FEAR session. Voila. Windows is just bizarre.

[teflon]

yeah at least if it was OS X, the new OS would have broken the game completely

[jgwdoc]

teflon, on November 5th 2008, 04:01 PM, said:

yeah at least if it was OS X, the new OS would have broken the game completely

I could understand it if it was Vista, but it's the Logitech mice only (even with generic drivers), and only with FEAR. Even better, the performance begins ok and deteriorates rapidly over the first 15 min of play. How does that even work?

[teflon]

not a clue, but it is also weird that there hasnt been a patch for it...
as an aside, you lookin forward to FEAR 2 and getting FEAR out of the way to get the backstory?

[AussieMacGamer]

I am tossing up over PS3 or PC versions though

[teflon]

PC every time for me. If a shooter is available on PC over PS3, then Ill go that route.

Theres only one example I can think of where I might differ, and that Mirror's Edge, which has a pretty individual control scheme, and is tantamount to a 3rd person game played in 1st person. At the same time, it has barely any shooting, so is a pretty good fit for a controller.

if theres lots of shooting, I prefer K&M every time.

[jgwdoc]

teflon, on November 6th 2008, 04:10 AM, said:

not a clue, but it is also weird that there hasnt been a patch for it...
as an aside, you lookin forward to FEAR 2 and getting FEAR out of the way to get the backstory?

Well, now that I can play the game I'm kind of hoping it gets better. So far, pretty generic shooter with vague, unexplained spooky things popping up, but no way as scary as (my favorite horror shooter) Undying.

[The Liberator]

It has reasonably good multiplayer. You might like that.

Liberator.

[the Battle Cat]

AussieMacGamer has demanded that this thread be moved into the Windows On Mac forum. In fact he made a huge stink about it. If this enrages you, you may find AussieMacGamer in school right about now in classroom 45a at the Australian Institute of Improbable Physics. So you can recognize him, he is the one who looks like a one of the biker gang that killed Mad Max's chick... only his hair is slicked back with roo grease and he is wearing tennis shoes. Weapons are allowed on campus you you'd better bring something substantial with you.

[AussieMacGamer]

jgwdoc, on November 7th 2008, 02:07 AM, said:

Well, now that I can play the game I'm kind of hoping it gets better. So far, pretty generic shooter with vague, unexplained spooky things popping up, but no way as scary as (my favorite horror shooter) Undying.

Hmm, i really liked it, i think its simplicity makes you enjoy every bloody combat situation.