Soft Shadows Performance

Please refer back to our earlier section on soft shadows to learn why (aside from abysmal performance) we recommend against enabling soft shadows. Upon selecting the option in FEAR to enable soft shadows, a dialog box will pop up to inform the gamer that soft shadows are a high end option, which will only run well on heavy hitting graphics hardware. It is very true that you need to high end hardware to run the game with soft shadows, but we just don't like the feature.

With Soft Shadows enabled, the game takes a very significant performance hit. You can see that the 7800 GTX and GT become borderline-unplayable at 1600x1200, while the rest of the cards' framerates drop off quite abruptly. The X800 GT is only really playable at the absolute lowest resolution, and the X1300 PRO isn't really playable at all. At 37 fps, the 6600 GT does very well at 800x600, and although this is a low resolution by other games' standards, FEAR is still impressive. While 640x480 leaves something to be desired, 800x600 doesn't do a bad job in a pinch. But in a case like the 6600 GT, it is especially desirable to disable soft shadows and go with a higher resolution.

4xAA/8xAF Performance Tests Final Words
Comments Locked

117 Comments

View All Comments

  • eljefeII - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link

    yeah, x1800 looks like a flop for the most part. and it doesnt exist.
    kinda gay
  • ryanlopez4550 - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link

    but games like this make up for the lower settings

    my friend came over last night and we played online FEAR for 6 hours

    He has a comp i built him with a 6600gt and it ran great on some custom setting and didnt look at all sub par. Didnt lag ONCE all night. The test program in the game is really cool to so now i dont have to sit there with fraps and stuff on for ever

    multi player - the gameplay is so fast most of the time there is NO time for you to admire the scenery
  • boyer00 - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link

    it says how the geforce 7800 is basically the only card to run it at the highest end, i just ordered a alienware about a week ago with, dual geforce 7800GTX-KO's, and a 19"LCD monitor, 4 gig DDR2 ram and 3.2 dual core pentium-D....my question is do i have anything to worry about in the upcoming months/year graphically?
  • Gary Key - Sunday, October 23, 2005 - link

    Since you are probably limited to 1280x1024 on your 19" LCD then you are fairly safe. However, the 840D will have issues in providing enough data (the GPUs will have wait states) for the 7800GTX SLI setup at the higher resolutions such as 1600x1200 in case you decide to change monitors. I have found the 7800GTX SLI setup and the 840EE to run Fear at 1280x1024 (960) without too much of an issue.
  • Regs - Saturday, October 22, 2005 - link

    The answer to this question is always yes. You just bought a excellent system to play today's games. Not tomorrows games.
  • ryanlopez4550 - Friday, October 21, 2005 - link

    i have a 7800 gtx at 490-1300 and a gig of ram and a 3200 amd...

    i tested the game out on the MIN. settings... direct x 7 and such (looked like duke nukem) and i got a max of 60 a min of 58 and an average of 59

    everything else runs HORRIBLY!
  • ryanlopez4550 - Friday, October 21, 2005 - link

    ONE MORE TIME

    tried to get the new drivers for my 7800gtx

    its telling me i dont have the right drivers for my hardware... ?????????

    well anywho i uninstalled them all and reinstalled them so i have the old old drivers and now the game runs like normal

    'high' and 'high' settings got me a min. of 54 and a max of 214
  • ryanlopez4550 - Friday, October 21, 2005 - link

    ok just tried it again

    max setting (1024x768) soft shadows and 4x16x i got an average of 23 fps

    so i lower the settings... soft shadows off and 2x8x and i get the same results...
  • Kung Lau - Friday, October 21, 2005 - link

    Is there any way to get a poll of AT forum viewers and establish which cards get tested on bleeding edge software? Wouldn't that help us see data that pertains to the majority of us. I understand that you can't evaluate every possible card/model/resolution variation but a current reader based poll may help.
  • fogeyman - Friday, October 21, 2005 - link

    Post in the forums.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now