DareDevil_747
Disabled
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2006
- Location
- North Carolina
I started doing quite a bit of research on this game - was kinda dissapointed that I paid $300 for a
graphics card, and it couldn't max the details of this game... I am putting these tips together for
anyone with the same problem...
Audio:
The very first thing you should do is locate the file WMADist.exe,
which is located "Optical Drive\support\WMADist.exe". This codec will improve the game's sound and sound performance, and will eliminate the static and crackling from most onboard sound chipsets, it cleared up the onboard sound on my Karajan audio on this DFI.
Driver settings: Be sure all of the settings such as AA, AF, and Vsync are set to "application controlled" or "application preference". You can also increase your performance a bit by setting the image quality to "quality" rather than "high quality". There is no noticable difference when
any level of AF is used along with this.
Custom Resolutions:
Don't like the resolutions F.E.A.R. offers you? Well, here's how to set your own resolution. Locate this file- C:\Documents and Settings\AllUsers\Documents\Monolith Productions\FEAR\settings.cfg. Open this file with a text editor, such as notepad. Will look something like this:
"GammaB" "1.017301"
"GammaG" "1.017301"
"Renderer" "NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT"
"GammaR" "1.017301"
"BitDepth" "32"
"HardwareCursor" "1.000000"
"ScreenWidth" "1600" <---
"VSyncOnFlip" "1.000000"
"DeviceName" "\\.\DISPLAY1"
"ScreenHeight" "1200" <---
"DisableMovies" "1"
Just take out "screenwidth" and "screenheight" and enter the resolution YOU want. Also, you can add a "1" to disable movies to skip the opening movies at the beginning of the game, this doesnt stop the cut scenes between levels, it only gets a new game started quicker, skipping the little
skit showing Fettel and Alma and all the clone soldiers.
For older graphics cards, Radeon 9600/9800 series and GeForce 5900 series cards, try setting the "BitDepth" to 16 or 24. Lower bit depths result in higher performance on older cards, and more color banding. On newer DX9 cards, this option may have no affect. Leave on 32 for best image and color quality. If you change this setting, make sure you set the settings.cfg file to
"read only" for this to stick.
I recommend using a high resolution without AA for nVidia cards, and for ATI cards, use lower resolutions with all the eye candy turned on, as they handle AA and AF quite a bit better than the nVidia's do.
Display settings: Screen resolution, if you used the custom resolution option above, leave this alone. Otherwise, 1024x768 or 1280x960 offers the most acceptable performance on most graphics cards, 9800 Pro or better.
Vsync: I like using vsync. I recommend enabling it, as this will cap your framerate, allowing your GPU to not have to work so hard to get the fastest framerate it possibly can at all times. This also will eliminate screen tearing - a graphic abnormality that appears to "tear" texture surfaces such as walls, when turning or strafing. Screen tearing occurs when your framerate
exceeds your refresh rate... even low end cards such as 9800 Pro's can produce framerates above 60 on various areas, I recommend enabling this setting for the smoothest performance and the best image quality and realism. Make sure vsync is set to "application preference" or
"application controlled" in your advanced driver settings. Also, in your advanced driver settings, try enabling "triple buffering" if your card has 256MB or more of RAM, and your system has 1GB or more of system RAM, triple buffering combined with vsync will enhance the game smoothness.
Now tweak the performance options...
Advanced CPU settings: If you have a CPU that is 2.0GHz (AMD) or 3.0GHz (Intel), you should have no problem setting all of these options to maximum. If your CPU isnt up to those speeds, use medium, as there isnt a lot of difference between minimum and medium. If your video card
is sort of in between medium and high end, like a 6800 GT for example, try maxing everything, and leave "world detail" and "corpse detail" on medium.
Advanced video card settings:
Effects Detail - This setting has mostly an effect on things like the "haze" effect coming off of fire in the map. I can't see any difference between minimum and medium, and the haze effect will only work on maximum, and one of the biggest performance boosters we will get to a little later (shaders) will speed this up a bit, so set it on max.
Model Decals: I like setting this to maximum, as it is more realistic... if your graphics card has 128MB or less, set this to medium.
Water detail: Just set it to medium, there is no noticable difference between any of the 3 settings.
Reflections and Displays: I recommend setting this to maximum, reason being - in the office map for example, if this setting is on medium or below, you wont be able to see the glass walls on locked doors. Setting this to maximum will display the little "bumps" or "stripes" across the glass. This setting shouldn't affect performance much.
Volumetric lights and density: If you have an nVidia GeForce 6 or 7 series card, or an ATI x1600 or above with 256MB or more, set the density to medium, I cannot see anynoticeable difference between medium and maximum, however maximum will still tax your system more. Disable this feature on older graphics cards.
Graphics: FSAA - As mentioned before, this game is very jaggy, so set it to your preference, mentioned before, I recommened no AA and higher resolutions on nVidia cards and using AA with lower resolutions with ATI cards
Light Detail: This setting can either make or break your performance.. as this setting affects performance a lot. If you can stand it, setting this to minimum yeilds a huge performance increase, on the flipside, it takes a lot of the realism out of the game. If you set this to minimum, you should re-adjust your gamma, and make the game darker, as this setting will make the game a lot brighter, allowing you to see into to dark corners that would otherwise be too dark to see into.. Setting this to medium is what I recommend for faster cards, I can't see any difference between medium and maximum.
Shadows and shadow details: Again, mentioned before, if you have one of the cards mentioned to enable volumetric lights, enable these shadows. You might as well disable this setting if you are going to use the minimum setting, as it doesn't show any relevant shadows. I recommend setting this to medium, there is again no noticable difference between medium and maximum
Soft Shadows: Leave this setting to OFF no matter what graphics card you have. This setting can cut your framerate in half, and it doesn't even give you much more image quality. It just adds a little bit of "blurring" to the edge of shadows, sort of like FSAA just for shadows. Be aware using FSAA with this option enabled will result in graphic abnormalities and glitches.
Texture Filtering: On older cards, you shouldn't use any of the AF options, you might get by with using "trilinear" only, for nVidia 5xxx series cards, or ATI 9600 or below. You should set this to 4x on Radeon 9600XT, 9700 Pro, and 9800 Pro/XT cards, do not enable this option for stock 9800 SE cards, as this will hurt its performance pretty bad. For nVidia cards, only use AF for 5900 series or above cards. I recommend using 8x on 6800 / x800 class cards, and 16x on 7800/x1800 class or above cards. This setting will drastically improve your image quality, the higher the AF level, the further
away the textures will start to "blur". Making the image a lot more realistic. Make sure your Anisotropic Filtering setting in your graphic card's advanced driver options is set to "application controlled" or "application preference".
Texture Resolution: I love this setting, this is one setting that you actually can tell thedifference between medium and maximum. If your grapics card is medium-high to high end, and has 256MB or more of memory, enable this option. However, you maywant to set it to medium if you have less than 2GB of system RAM, you really need 2GB for the game to run smoothly with this enabled.
Videos: I really do not know what this setting does, just leave it on minimum or medium.
Pixel Doubling: This option is very very useful for older graphics cards. This option, despite it's name doesn't increase the number of pixels, it cuts them in half, for instance, enabling this option will allow 1024x768 perform like 512x384... this also obviously gives you a lot poorer image, but as said, enabling this option along with the next setting mentioned below, even allowed my cousin's Radeon 9250 128MB AGP card to play this game at an acceptable level. Disable this option for ATI Radeon 9600XT / Nvidia 5900 class cards or above.
DX8 Shaders: This option will also drastically help older cards, it will force Direct X 8 effects on cards that even support Direct X 9, as mentioned before, this option along with pixel doubling allowed even a card as low end as a Radeon 9250 to play this game. Leave this option to OFF for the best effect and image quality.
Screen Resolution: If you used the custom resolution tweak mentioned before, do not touch this option. This option will display the current resolution, even if it is a unsupported ones. Changing this will lose your custom settings and you will have to re-enter them in the settings.cfg file.
Shaders: This option drastically improves performance when set to minimum, which I recommend for all cards, especially nVidia cards. This option affects things such as the lighting, water, reflections, heat haze and so on. There is almost no difference between minimum and medium, however maximum will seriously tax your system on certain areas of the level. x1900 - 7900 series cards are the only cards I recommend leaving this setting on max.
Overclocking: F.E.A.R. is very GPU dependant, and overclocking your system's CPU will have a minimal affect on the game, especially if you have a 2.0Ghz (AMD) or 3.0GHz (Intel) or above CPU, however you will get faster load times and sometimes smoother gameplay by increasing your memory bandwidth by overclocking. The most performance increase can be gained by overclocking the graphics card. I have found that increasing the
graphics memory speed seems to help game smoothness more than GPU speed, but they will both improve performance. For example, my 7800GT's stock speeds are 470MHz core and 1100MHz memory. If I set this card to 495/1200, I score almost 4 FPS average LESS than using 475 / 1300. This game seems to love super high graphics memory bandwidth. Overclock at your own risk.
Thats about it for now, I hope this little guide was useful for someone out there. I'll add more tweaks if I can find them later on.
-DareDevil
graphics card, and it couldn't max the details of this game... I am putting these tips together for
anyone with the same problem...
Audio:
The very first thing you should do is locate the file WMADist.exe,
which is located "Optical Drive\support\WMADist.exe". This codec will improve the game's sound and sound performance, and will eliminate the static and crackling from most onboard sound chipsets, it cleared up the onboard sound on my Karajan audio on this DFI.
Driver settings: Be sure all of the settings such as AA, AF, and Vsync are set to "application controlled" or "application preference". You can also increase your performance a bit by setting the image quality to "quality" rather than "high quality". There is no noticable difference when
any level of AF is used along with this.
Custom Resolutions:
Don't like the resolutions F.E.A.R. offers you? Well, here's how to set your own resolution. Locate this file- C:\Documents and Settings\AllUsers\Documents\Monolith Productions\FEAR\settings.cfg. Open this file with a text editor, such as notepad. Will look something like this:
"GammaB" "1.017301"
"GammaG" "1.017301"
"Renderer" "NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT"
"GammaR" "1.017301"
"BitDepth" "32"
"HardwareCursor" "1.000000"
"ScreenWidth" "1600" <---
"VSyncOnFlip" "1.000000"
"DeviceName" "\\.\DISPLAY1"
"ScreenHeight" "1200" <---
"DisableMovies" "1"
Just take out "screenwidth" and "screenheight" and enter the resolution YOU want. Also, you can add a "1" to disable movies to skip the opening movies at the beginning of the game, this doesnt stop the cut scenes between levels, it only gets a new game started quicker, skipping the little
skit showing Fettel and Alma and all the clone soldiers.
For older graphics cards, Radeon 9600/9800 series and GeForce 5900 series cards, try setting the "BitDepth" to 16 or 24. Lower bit depths result in higher performance on older cards, and more color banding. On newer DX9 cards, this option may have no affect. Leave on 32 for best image and color quality. If you change this setting, make sure you set the settings.cfg file to
"read only" for this to stick.
I recommend using a high resolution without AA for nVidia cards, and for ATI cards, use lower resolutions with all the eye candy turned on, as they handle AA and AF quite a bit better than the nVidia's do.
Display settings: Screen resolution, if you used the custom resolution option above, leave this alone. Otherwise, 1024x768 or 1280x960 offers the most acceptable performance on most graphics cards, 9800 Pro or better.
Vsync: I like using vsync. I recommend enabling it, as this will cap your framerate, allowing your GPU to not have to work so hard to get the fastest framerate it possibly can at all times. This also will eliminate screen tearing - a graphic abnormality that appears to "tear" texture surfaces such as walls, when turning or strafing. Screen tearing occurs when your framerate
exceeds your refresh rate... even low end cards such as 9800 Pro's can produce framerates above 60 on various areas, I recommend enabling this setting for the smoothest performance and the best image quality and realism. Make sure vsync is set to "application preference" or
"application controlled" in your advanced driver settings. Also, in your advanced driver settings, try enabling "triple buffering" if your card has 256MB or more of RAM, and your system has 1GB or more of system RAM, triple buffering combined with vsync will enhance the game smoothness.
Now tweak the performance options...
Advanced CPU settings: If you have a CPU that is 2.0GHz (AMD) or 3.0GHz (Intel), you should have no problem setting all of these options to maximum. If your CPU isnt up to those speeds, use medium, as there isnt a lot of difference between minimum and medium. If your video card
is sort of in between medium and high end, like a 6800 GT for example, try maxing everything, and leave "world detail" and "corpse detail" on medium.
Advanced video card settings:
Effects Detail - This setting has mostly an effect on things like the "haze" effect coming off of fire in the map. I can't see any difference between minimum and medium, and the haze effect will only work on maximum, and one of the biggest performance boosters we will get to a little later (shaders) will speed this up a bit, so set it on max.
Model Decals: I like setting this to maximum, as it is more realistic... if your graphics card has 128MB or less, set this to medium.
Water detail: Just set it to medium, there is no noticable difference between any of the 3 settings.
Reflections and Displays: I recommend setting this to maximum, reason being - in the office map for example, if this setting is on medium or below, you wont be able to see the glass walls on locked doors. Setting this to maximum will display the little "bumps" or "stripes" across the glass. This setting shouldn't affect performance much.
Volumetric lights and density: If you have an nVidia GeForce 6 or 7 series card, or an ATI x1600 or above with 256MB or more, set the density to medium, I cannot see anynoticeable difference between medium and maximum, however maximum will still tax your system more. Disable this feature on older graphics cards.
Graphics: FSAA - As mentioned before, this game is very jaggy, so set it to your preference, mentioned before, I recommened no AA and higher resolutions on nVidia cards and using AA with lower resolutions with ATI cards
Light Detail: This setting can either make or break your performance.. as this setting affects performance a lot. If you can stand it, setting this to minimum yeilds a huge performance increase, on the flipside, it takes a lot of the realism out of the game. If you set this to minimum, you should re-adjust your gamma, and make the game darker, as this setting will make the game a lot brighter, allowing you to see into to dark corners that would otherwise be too dark to see into.. Setting this to medium is what I recommend for faster cards, I can't see any difference between medium and maximum.
Shadows and shadow details: Again, mentioned before, if you have one of the cards mentioned to enable volumetric lights, enable these shadows. You might as well disable this setting if you are going to use the minimum setting, as it doesn't show any relevant shadows. I recommend setting this to medium, there is again no noticable difference between medium and maximum
Soft Shadows: Leave this setting to OFF no matter what graphics card you have. This setting can cut your framerate in half, and it doesn't even give you much more image quality. It just adds a little bit of "blurring" to the edge of shadows, sort of like FSAA just for shadows. Be aware using FSAA with this option enabled will result in graphic abnormalities and glitches.
Texture Filtering: On older cards, you shouldn't use any of the AF options, you might get by with using "trilinear" only, for nVidia 5xxx series cards, or ATI 9600 or below. You should set this to 4x on Radeon 9600XT, 9700 Pro, and 9800 Pro/XT cards, do not enable this option for stock 9800 SE cards, as this will hurt its performance pretty bad. For nVidia cards, only use AF for 5900 series or above cards. I recommend using 8x on 6800 / x800 class cards, and 16x on 7800/x1800 class or above cards. This setting will drastically improve your image quality, the higher the AF level, the further
away the textures will start to "blur". Making the image a lot more realistic. Make sure your Anisotropic Filtering setting in your graphic card's advanced driver options is set to "application controlled" or "application preference".
Texture Resolution: I love this setting, this is one setting that you actually can tell thedifference between medium and maximum. If your grapics card is medium-high to high end, and has 256MB or more of memory, enable this option. However, you maywant to set it to medium if you have less than 2GB of system RAM, you really need 2GB for the game to run smoothly with this enabled.
Videos: I really do not know what this setting does, just leave it on minimum or medium.
Pixel Doubling: This option is very very useful for older graphics cards. This option, despite it's name doesn't increase the number of pixels, it cuts them in half, for instance, enabling this option will allow 1024x768 perform like 512x384... this also obviously gives you a lot poorer image, but as said, enabling this option along with the next setting mentioned below, even allowed my cousin's Radeon 9250 128MB AGP card to play this game at an acceptable level. Disable this option for ATI Radeon 9600XT / Nvidia 5900 class cards or above.
DX8 Shaders: This option will also drastically help older cards, it will force Direct X 8 effects on cards that even support Direct X 9, as mentioned before, this option along with pixel doubling allowed even a card as low end as a Radeon 9250 to play this game. Leave this option to OFF for the best effect and image quality.
Screen Resolution: If you used the custom resolution tweak mentioned before, do not touch this option. This option will display the current resolution, even if it is a unsupported ones. Changing this will lose your custom settings and you will have to re-enter them in the settings.cfg file.
Shaders: This option drastically improves performance when set to minimum, which I recommend for all cards, especially nVidia cards. This option affects things such as the lighting, water, reflections, heat haze and so on. There is almost no difference between minimum and medium, however maximum will seriously tax your system on certain areas of the level. x1900 - 7900 series cards are the only cards I recommend leaving this setting on max.
Overclocking: F.E.A.R. is very GPU dependant, and overclocking your system's CPU will have a minimal affect on the game, especially if you have a 2.0Ghz (AMD) or 3.0GHz (Intel) or above CPU, however you will get faster load times and sometimes smoother gameplay by increasing your memory bandwidth by overclocking. The most performance increase can be gained by overclocking the graphics card. I have found that increasing the
graphics memory speed seems to help game smoothness more than GPU speed, but they will both improve performance. For example, my 7800GT's stock speeds are 470MHz core and 1100MHz memory. If I set this card to 495/1200, I score almost 4 FPS average LESS than using 475 / 1300. This game seems to love super high graphics memory bandwidth. Overclock at your own risk.
Thats about it for now, I hope this little guide was useful for someone out there. I'll add more tweaks if I can find them later on.
-DareDevil
