April 16, 2007 7:18 pm
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...Sucky Terrible Abominal Life Killing Emotional wReck. Before I receive too many fanboy hate mails, let me put in this disclaimer - I M H O. Thank you. Why do I hate this game so much? Answer - because I cannot play it. Why can't I play it? Answer - because it's impossible to play a first person shooter (fps) at 10 frames per second or less. Why is it only running at 10 frames per second? Answer - I don't know. I have a top of the line gaming PC. Then why is the game running like shit on your computer? Answer - - - fuck if I know.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is the newest PC fps game to come out. I got the game almost a week ago and I yet to even finish the first mission yet. The reason I've yet to even complete the first mission is because I keep dying. And no, it's not my gaming inability, but rather the handicap that comes with a game that runs at horrible frame rates. It's virtually impossible to aim and shoot at moving enemies that are in front of you one second then disappear the next.
I'm not lacking in hardware either. I have an AMD 64 4600+ dual core CPU, Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB video card, 300GB SATA hard drive, and 2GB of memory. I still consider this a very close to the top of the line gaming PC. I can run other games like Half-Life 2: Episode One, F.E.A.R., and Oblivion at virtually maxed out graphic settings. So what the hell is going on with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? Maybe it doesn't like Vista or drivers for Vista. I don't know. All I do know is that I had to run the game at 800x600, no AA, no AF, medium graphic settings, and any other graphic settings set to medium or low in order to get the game running at a playable frame rate. But then the game looks like shit and it's hard to differentiate between your enemies and the surrounding area.
So for the time being I decided to put the game away. My life's been pretty busy lately and I don't have time for games like this. Maybe I'll revisit the game when I move into my new house. And yes, I did install and try the patch as well. Still running at horrible frame rates. And it sucks because I was really looking forward to this game when they first announced it ___ years ago. But then it fell under the radar until one day, POOF, it magically appeared again and was promptly released. Maybe they released it too soon? Maybe these outdated graphics just need a super computer to run them? I don't know. I don't have the time, effort, or drive to look online for any of these answers. So instead, I'll just shove my opinion in your face. And who knows, it might change somewhere down the road.
I miss Space Ghost
Strange to hear that you are having trouble hitting 10 FPS with STALKER. I know they did a crappy job with their custom 3D engine but damn, 10FPS is crap. I myself haven't played the game but I've seen enough screenshots to safely say the graphics look subpar, guess you are suffering from a terribly designed engine. Now time to dance around a fire while chanting in hopes of getting Crysis to launch sooner.
ps: 7800GTX came in 256mb and 512mb variants, not 250mb ;) feel free to edit this, just pointing out an error.
Well, when STALKER was first announced it looked great. Great looking graphics, concept, etc. But it took too long to be released and now doesn't look that great. Kind of disappointing. Some game devs really know how to optimize their engines for great performance no matter what (like id Software, Valve, and Crytek), but the devs behind STALKER didn't seem to do as much play testing and optimizing as they should of.
Thanks for pointing out my mis-type. I sometimes go into an emotional rage while creating these articles.
Yeah, I found the same problem. Did you try disabling the shadows? Seems like they're the reason for all the slowdown.
Maybe the problem is not STALKER, but Vista?
I have an AMD 3800 x2, 1Gb Dual Channel and a 7800GT. Stalker runs very smoooooth. (ok, I have Win XP 64bit)
Try install XP in another partition, or, you can uninstall Vista Garbage, install XP for games and Ubuntu for work. It's a great combination
I just finished stalker, the game, in my oppinion (as an artist working on a "next gen" game) looked as good as any game out there, and had art design to match any AAA title. (you have to see it in motion, with a full lighting model to appreciate how gorgeous and moody the environments are)
it also ran just fine on my old Athelon 3000 with a geforce 6600, 1GB RAM (work computer is better) the key is to realize where the framerate bottlenecks are... in the case of stalker, it's two things,
first,
it's the speed of your card's memory, this engine uses deferred rendering meaning lots of frame buffers being transfered inside the card every frame... meaning the resolution has a higher than normal impact on performance.
second,
this game loads immense amounts of texture data into memory
, so the texture level slider also has a huge effect on performance. once you have more textures loaded than memory on your videocard, THEN you start seeing the card swapping textures in and out of main memory and those weird pauses every few seconds
so with that in mind, try and tweak the game a bit, it looks VERY good even at lower details, and really the game is also buckets of fun, especially since you seem to enjoy oblivion, you'd probably enjoy it a lot, in my oppinion it outdid farcry, as well as any recent game in memory... but I'm just one gamer
On the other hand, I get between 200-300 fps on DOD:S and HL2. Go figure.
Is still worth me getting this game?
Are you running Vista or XP? With Vista you're going to have some performance issues, but I've heard the game runs and looks great on XP. So really, that's what it boils down to.
My PC is slightly older technology:
Intel P4 HT 3.0GHz
Intel D865PERL MBD (800MHz FSB)
2GB DDR (400MHz)
300GB SATA -150 HDD
but my video card is almost current technology:
ATI X1950 Pro 512MB GDDR3 AGP-8x
Yet for some reason i get horrible framerates in STALKER...
I've been running Vista for all of 3 weeks now and i believe Vista (or crap ATI Vista driver) is the culprit...
Under XP i had MUCH better framerates with the EXACT same hardware...
Having been certified and employed in the I.T. industry for the past decade (network administration) and having used windows since the days of NT i've tried every possible tweak to Vista i could think of.. I've even scoured the net for ideas.. Even with Vista stripped down to bare bones (only 10 services running approx) i still can't achieve the framerate i achieved under XP...
also, beware of the random crash in lots of games on Vista
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105)
Also a small interesting note. STALKER on Vista @ 1280x960 gave me 29.4 FPS and on XP gave me 44.6 FPS averages over a 4 hour test i did using FRAPS , yeah, i loaded the exact same saved game in XP and Vista and played for 2 hours on each doing as close to the same things on each go