Big tip to make FEAR run 6 times faster fps wise!

[Overclocker550]

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/8522/1024noshadows2gx.jpg

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/8896/lolsoftshadows7tj.jpg


Look closely and tell me the differences. I for one dont see much of a difference, yet the fps are almost 6x higher! In case you havent figured it out, the ONLY difference is the bottom screenshot has softshadows turned on. :eek:

[Nexus Realized]

I don't notice much diff. in the foreground, the background is a diff. story. Mostly from the area where the light is on the wall. Not a bad tradeoff IMO for lower end cards trying to squeeze every last FPS. :thup:

[Overclocker550]

your right. But this just makes the wall too dark and hard to see so theres no benefit here. I see alot of people complain about poor fps so by using this tip they can get many times better performance :)

[Prodigious]

Something seems wierd. On my 6800, there is a HUGE visual difference between soft shadow enabled and disabled. With it on, it looks like the second screen shot, but with it off, the shadows seems very sharp and harsh looking.

Actually upon further inspection, I see why. You clearly took shots that hide the difference(probably not on purpose ;)). If you had a screenshot in an area with lots of objects or enemies standing up, you'd be able to see a huge difference. Obviously the stencil shadows from static lights will look the same, but you can easily see how different the shadows are on the bodies laying on the ground. If you took a shot that actually had larger easy to see shadows, instead of something barely visible, you'd notice a bigger difference.

[austinbmxnig]

hah, its OC550!.....his sig is always funny too - and im not sure everybody's card runs 6 times slower due to softshadows, i mean talk about crippling fps, i bet two rats in a wheel can render more frames in a second

[speed bump]

Try taking a screen shot elsewhere you always seem to take screenshots where no one is around. I see your performance no soft shadows with soft shadows on and all kinds of things going at me with my x850xt pe so I don't mind having them on for the sexy details they give me.

[Overclocker550]

Ok I think some of you just misunderstood me.


me: ive posted numerous screenshots as proof
me: now they are making the excuse im running without shadows
me: LOL I get better fps at 1600x1200 no shadows than 640x480 with softshadows
me: Ive told them the programmers messed up the shadow parts
me: I take more a hit running just shadows than anything else combined
me: I can make fear look crap at 640x480 and it still wont run smooth with softshadows or I can make it look great at 1024x768 minus shadows


any questions? All of you are using the shadows excuse to pick at me. If I wanted to run shadows I have two choices:

run 640x480 with everything turned off except softshadows on or.....
spend $700 for a 7800gtx just so I can turn softshadows on. Neither are viable options.

[dfonda]

hah, its OC550!.....his sig is always funny too

I don't think OC's sig is funny, I just think its like one of the mysteries on "Lost". We just need more clues and info to deciper it.

Meanwhile OC appears to be just one more, of many overclockers, who deserves much respect because they know way more then I do. IMHO

[apu318]

Overclocker550, you realize that your "tweaks" are not relative to the rest of the world. I did not go from 100 fps to 600 fps with your "tweak". Please don't post something you consider a tweak when its blatantly in the options for that specific purpose. It's nothing new. I guess it's the though that counts, so thanks.

[Overclocker550]

Thats because the cpu bottlenecks your max fps. I cant get close to 600fps at 640x480 with everything turned off. Heck if your getting 100fps with softshadows then you dont need to turn them off but for people like me whos getting fps in the teens and ones with softshadows, turning them off gives me like a 5 fold increase in fps.

[Vrykyl]

but in fairness your card represents the lower end of the market...I didnt see this massive hit or massive boost with soft shadows on or off.... i did turn them off however simply because I couldnt see any visual difference between on and off...transparency AA made a greater difference imo.

[Blackmage]

but in fairness your card represents the lower end of the market...I didnt see this massive hit or massive boost with soft shadows on or off.... i did turn them off however simply because I couldnt see any visual difference between on and off...transparency AA made a greater difference imo.

yes it does but it's DX9 capable and he has a valid point disable soft shadows may give you that one resoluton or more that you want.

[ninthebin]

everyones known that soft shadows was a bain of FEAR performance since atleast the demo - if not the betas (wasnt part of :( ) - however all you are doing ... AGAIN! ... is taking a screenshot in the vaguest location possible to show exactly what you want to show.

1. do you get a 5-6x fps increase everywhere in any particular level, let alone other more or less demanding levels of the game? (doubt it)
2. is every other member of this forum going to turn this off and get 6x the fps? (doubt it)

[shard]

Is it lets shoot Overclocker550 night? Enough with the flamin, I say that to him and his card it does increase 6 times, but to others, not as much. All he did was word it wrong, not claim that he is god or something absurd like that.

[ps2cho]

If you look above the wooden planks, you can see a difference. Otherwise i cant see any difference between them.

[tom10167]

I seriously have no idea how anyone can tell the difference between these screenshots. Even when I see like low, and then super high, it takes me a second to see anything noticeable, and with that said, who notices this when you're hunting down people?

Good post OC. :cheers:

[Prodigious]

ok, let me clarify what I had said. Stencil shadows are whats predominately being shown in his screenshots. These are the static shadows on the walls. Turning soft shadows on or off won't change how they look at all. Period. The things that DO get affected by soft shadows are the dynamic shadows of basically all movable objects(characters, barrels, swinging lights, etc). Those you can see a huge difference. With soft shadows off they are hardedged, and aliasing effects them a lot. With soft shadows on, they are smooth and natural looking without a distinct edge.

The only shadows effected by the soft shadow setting in those screenshots are the ones from the bodies on the floor and the gun. That's it. That is why I said his screenshots favored what he was saying, because he didn't use scenes that give a blatantly clear view of things affected by soft shadows. Nothing in the background will be different for the reasons I just explained. If you look at teh bodies, there is a difference, but it's hard to see much in those shots. Also, it doesn't look like his card is rendering softshadows anyway, because I can clearly see two overlays of shadows in the second pic, so I don't even know if his card can properly render them. If you took shots during a fight scene, no one would be going "hey I can't see a difference."

And OC, people were knocking you because you claimed that turning off soft shadows gives an instant 6x fps boost. You simply weren't clear about the fact that this only applies to your card. Just because a card is DX9 doesn't mean it scales the same as every other DX9 capable card. 9700s are more than 2 generations old, have far less pipes and shader abilities, and afaik only support up to SM 2(not even that IIRC). So while something like softshadows might make a huge difference for you, more modern cards will not see the same benefit. My 6800 slows down a bit with soft shadows, however, it is hardly a night and day difference, and it certainly doesn't mean the difference between the game being smooth and the game being unplayable.

[darkknight187]

looking and looking then thinking of the bodies, if you open those two pics up set them side by side with the gun being your center of focus your going to see a large difference in those shadows, you've got the "optimized" version where it looks like a big black block shaped sort of like the gun...no curves, ect. then you take a look at the soft shadowed version of the gun where you can see a much more realistic shadow, theres some shades of gray and alot less black. also you must realize that true shadows are within the shades of grey and are not often pure black. most likely with the soft shadows off you just get one pure black box. and is only going to be worth it on cards down that low... and once you've gotten to a game like this where you really need to start turning off "the future" it's a good time to look into upgrades. not to say you won't be able to make it a few more months on that card...but right now with graphics card companies making moves in leaps and bounds with my 9800pro/xt i was getting what i considered horrible frames for myself so i kicked soft shadows as to myself once i start to see games where i'm down into the 30s-40s at times while keeping medium settings @ 1024x768 i find it to be time to upgrade, due to the time of my original system build good upgrading time just happens to fall right around xmas so i use that for my upgrading means.

Definately a good budget solution but a true optimization is normally something that you do that won't effect the quality of ones visual experience.

[3DFlyer]

but in fairness your card represents the lower end of the market...

So does his CPU and his avatar...probably why he gets no respect here. :beer:

[Elif Tymes]

You guys... chill.

Anyways, it's an interesting fact, but one that has been noted. The soft shadows do hinder performance on video cards that can't handle them. It's nothing to do with your capacity to render shadows in other games, but with the method soft shadows use.

Softshadows(I believe) are actually rendered multiple times, at different intensities, thus giving them a "smoother" look. Admittedly, in some areas it's not a very huge difference, and for me personally, I have a hard time telling the difference between very many grapical options. My 8500LE looked fine to me in HL2. It ran at a constan 30FPS @ 800X600, and on my 21" CRT it looked great(to me).

When I stepped up to a card that actually could run Anti Aliasing, thats another story entirely.

Heres the deal: If you need some extra FPS, then turning off soft shadows does seem to help. If your already getting a consistant 30 or so FPS, then theres not a whole lot of need, unless your one of htose "60FPS MINIMUM of I lose!" type charachters ;).

So, in conclusion: If I had a midrange card(which the 9700 is, btw... anything over the 9800 is still high end for anyone except heavy gamers and AA junkies(which it appears I am)).

[speed bump]

I personally don't really game much since it always seem slightly boring and I would rather do other things.

However I would tend to say I notice things like this not so much in OC550's screen but when something is out there or its a bright room.

Oc550 any chance of you posting screenshots with actually things attacking you rather than it looking like your a cop on patrol for druggies?

[Dan0512]

SS kill performance on lower end cards (a 9700 is mainstream now)..... If you'd had a higher end card, you wouldn't see that big of a difference on fps.

I thought you were going to post something about a tweak for average rigs )(who have SS off).... who plays FEAR @ 6 fps anyway?

Can't believe you can play FEAR with everything max @ 1024 x 768 anyway... my rig is faster and only gets 40+ fps on medium no AA (800 x 600)

dan

[Banyan]

unless you have something along the lines of a 7800 soft shadows should be off anyways. there's no way any of my x800's could handle it.

[SuperFarStucker]

I have soft shadows off... They don't look much better and are a performance hog. Game runs like a pig at 1680x1050 so you gotta cut back some stuff :)

[RAMMAN]

unless you have something along the lines of a 7800 soft shadows should be off anyways. there's no way any of my x800's could handle it.

good thing im getting a 7800-based rig for christmas then :cool: .soft shadows is a must for those with cards that can handle it.and yes there is a noticeable difference between these two pics.

[SolidxSnake]

there is a huge difference.. in firefox, open both in different tabs and flip between them.

It still looks incredible though. though soft shadows looks nice..

too bad the damned game doesn't run on my comp...

[PottaCoola]

I didnt even know softshadows works with ati cards well the x800 and below anyway, when i had my x850xt it didnt run with softshadows it just mest up all the lights. now i got a x1800xt i can run softshadows and it even runs a lot better then it did when i had a 7800gtx, with the x1800xt its actuly playable with softshadows! Plus its looks better then the 7800gtx did.