Alright, I am guessing it MUST be the latest nVidia drivers or something, but I'm running F.E.A.R maxed out on everything, 1280x1024, 8xAF, no AA (obviously since soft-shadows don't work with AA) and Soft Shadows on, and I'm getting more than acceptable framerate even in gun fights with 6+ enemies.

And I'll remind everyone all I have is an 6800GT overclocked at 407 MHz and 1.11 GHz.

Could it be the new drivers that fixed a problem? I KNOW that they did fix soft shadows (SM 2.0++ feature) in Chronicles of Riddick.

Anyone getting good framerate?

(PS. I'm not saying soft shadows in F.E.A.R. look good. They are WAY too opaque on characters one way or another in this game)

Oh snap. Gonna have to try this one.

I had a set of beta drivers before the new nVidia drivers came out and Battlefront II & Battlefield 2 were both running choppy on the lowest settings (skipping literally every other second). With the new drivers they run as smooth as butter at full graphics settings.

These drivers suck.

Why do you say they suck? I'm real curious, because it seemed to enhance my GPU's power greatly in some games. Matter of fact in a lot of games, but I definatly want to hear your side.

Hmm, very interesting. I was disappointed when I couldn't run soft shadows (7800 GT & A64 3500+). Worth a try.

They gave me a drop to 1 fps every few minutes or so. For like 20 seconds I have 1 fps in every game/movie/anything hardware accellerated.

I switched to the betas and now I'm fine.

whatever drivers i just got made my media center not be able to output 480p on the component anymore, i have to use s-video.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]They gave me a drop to 1 fps every few minutes or so. For like 20 seconds I have 1 fps in every game/movie/anything hardware accellerated.

I switched to the betas and now I'm fine.[/QUOTE]

That is very curious, because that never happened to me and I've been running the 81.84 drivers for almost a month now.

I'm talking about 81.98

Well, I oddly enough, don't happen to have any nVidia cards more recent than the FX 5200, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least, particuarly in the face of ATi's hardware modifications for the X1900 series, which allow single-card rigs to beat the pants off of F.E.A.R..

And yeah, F.E.A.R. doesn't really have soft shadows, just a bunch of slightly offset hard-edge stencil volumes. Don't know why they insisted on using that method, when shadow-mapping has worked for years, actually looked authentic, didn't mess anything up, and even performs slightly better than ordinary stencil volumes. (see upcoming games like Oblivion)

Nottheking, are you the same nottheking thats on the Oblivion forums. If you are, I'm Belenos, and thanks for the info you sent me about the vid cards. :p

Edit : Yea, F.E.A.R's shadows actually leave a lot to be desired, they actually look very very aweful with or without soft shadows. I don't like this game, graphically, it does not impress me (except I always fancy games that show my body and legs when I look down). I think most effects are cheap ones and models aren't that great.

Except for the actual gunfights, those are awesome with the clouds of dust and whatnot.

Yes, I am; anybody that you see named "Nottheking" that's active is me. (aside from LiveJournal, as I've found out; I wouldn't be caught dead posting there, let alone as an impersonator of a Harry Potter character... ugh) This is the name I've used universally since about 1998 or so, when I used it for StarCraft and some other games. And you're very welcome; it's only the right thing to do when you've wound up spending too much time learning about video cards in the process of building/maintaining an impressive rig for only $800US.

And yes, F.E.A.R. doesn't really impress until the bullets start flying. Graphically, I'm more impressed by Call of Duty 2, even though it IS a newer game... the snow effects in particular, even if the water in there is crap.

Yea, snow effect in Call of Duty 2 was pretty awe-inspiring. Matter, of fact, its installed, I don't get why i'm not playing.

Damn Battlefield 2 taking too much of my time.

I will say that I was not impressed by Battlefield 2. It requires a whopping 2GB of RAM to run best, and graphics-wise, it's equal to Morrowind with SpeedTree thrown in. The gameplay's okay, though. But yeah, The Soviet Campaign in Call of Duty 2 is teh win. Shame that most of the stock MP maps are in France... It might be understandable if the buildings were on fire, though (:D) - but that's not the case.

Oh I agree, graphically, Battlefield 2 is far from impressive. Textures are aweful, except for character models, they are decent. Its the gameplay I really enjoy, but I don't have thats doubts that once Quake Wars or UT2k7 come out, i'll be done with this game.

And I have 2GB RAM so I'm good to go. :p

Now I'm just DIEING to see Oblivion and its performance. I'm hoping textures will look as good as on the screenshots, not choppy and pixelated like they were in Quake 4.