graphics s f e a r

Late last night I got my new video card working. It's an nVidia 6200 with 512 mb DDR. A good card for a board that doesn't have PCIe.
I have 1gb of system RAM.
I determined that I had to lower the setting of my AGP in the BIOS from the maximum of 256 to 128 (which was odd since my old card was 128 and it had always been set to 256 without me even noticing).
Anyway it worked and I was able to switch on the lovely Aero and it has been smooth and impressive.
Then I installed Oblivion and F.E.A.R. to see my new stunning graphics. heh.
Oblivion finally ran without having to use the OldBlivion tool and replacement textures but it didn't look that great and the auto-detect wanted to set my graphics to low! Sheesh.
Then I ran F.E.A.R. The auto-detect set my settings to custom and the test video ran smoothly but when I actually got into the game I found that it would freeze for a few moments every couple of seconds and then would get me stuck in a movement direction. I tried lowering the graphics just a little to no avail.
I do have the new nVidia beta driver installed and I'm at a loss. It didn't even make a difference if I switched off Aero. Surely a card like this should be able to handle such a game and also Oblivion didn't have the freezing so I just don't know.
Any thoughts please?
Thanks.
-- Ian M. Walker
http://www.IanMWalker.com
~ Look to your own life before worrying how others are living theirs ~

On Sat, 17 Jun 2006 21:30:25 -0700, "Ian M. Walker" wrote:

Late last night I got my new video card working. It's an nVidia 6200 with 512 mb DDR. A good card for a board that doesn't have PCIe.

Where do you get the impression it is a good card from? It is a very average card that you are trying to play very much above average games on. A 6600GT or a 6800GS make for much better gaming. -- Andrew, contact via http://interpleb.googlepages.com Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards, please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text. Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

Compared to my Geforce 4 ti 4200 (which was good in it's day of course) it IS a good card and since I needed an AGP card as I'm not prepared to replace my whole motherboard yet.......
It still should definitely be performing better than it did under XP on my Geforce 4. :P
Thanks for the, err, help though.
-- Ian M. Walker
http://www.IanMWalker.com
~ Look to your own life before worrying how others are living theirs ~ "Andrew" wrote in message

On Sat, 17 Jun 2006 21:30:25 -0700, "Ian M. Walker" nobody@nowhere.com> wrote:
Late last night I got my new video card working. It's an nVidia 6200 with 512 mb DDR. A good card for a board that doesn't have PCIe.
Where do you get the impression it is a good card from? It is a very average card that you are trying to play very much above average games on. A 6600GT or a 6800GS make for much better gaming. -- Andrew, contact via http://interpleb.googlepages.com Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards, please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text. Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

On Sat, 17 Jun 2006 21:51:46 -0700, "Ian M. Walker" wrote:

Compared to my Geforce 4 ti 4200 (which was good in it's day of course) it IS a good card and since I needed an AGP card as I'm not prepared to replace my whole motherboard yet.......

It might be better than a GF4, but it is still very low end for Fear and Oblivion, even without the performance handicap of running the games under an obviously buggy beta OS with beta drivers. There are much better AGP cards available, as I stated before.
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-8902_7-6213103-2.html -- Andrew, contact via http://interpleb.googlepages.com Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards, please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text. Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

Are your settings lowered all the way? Make sure that the settings that are CPU-heavy aren't raised up, unless of course your processor can handle it(you didn't mention that part). If they aren't already, make sure all your settings are on low, 800 x 600 res., and go up from there.
A 6200 should be more than enough to run the game - though certainly not on max settings. The 512 of RAM is helpful, but that's not the part that really lets you crank up the graphics. I ran FEAR on an ATI 64mb AIW 9000 Pro with no problem(graphics mostly on low with a couple cranked up to max). That card was the bare minimum needed to run the game. A 6200 is at least on par with the 9000 Pro, if not better - especially considering FEAR is optimized for nvidia cards.

Thanks, Adam.
I had used the auto-detect for the settings assuming the program would know what it could handle (and the test video was fine) but I'll give that a try.
I suppose Andrew was right about the card not being that great. I just thought it would at least give me better performance than my old card. :(
Cheers.
-- Ian M. Walker
http://www.IanMWalker.com
~ Look to your own life before worrying how others are living theirs ~ "Adam86" wrote in message

Are your settings lowered all the way? Make sure that the settings that are CPU-heavy aren't raised up, unless of course your processor can handle it(you didn't mention that part). If they aren't already, make sure all your settings are on low, 800 x 600 res., and go up from there.
A 6200 should be more than enough to run the game - though certainly not on max settings. The 512 of RAM is helpful, but that's not the part that really lets you crank up the graphics. I ran FEAR on an ATI 64mb AIW 9000 Pro with no problem(graphics mostly on low with a couple cranked up to max). That card was the bare minimum needed to run the game. A 6200 is at least on par with the 9000 Pro, if not better - especially considering FEAR is optimized for nvidia cards.

"Ian M. Walker" wrote:

Thanks, Adam.
I had used the auto-detect for the settings assuming the program would know what it could handle (and the test video was fine) but I'll give that a try.
I suppose Andrew was right about the card not being that great. I just thought it would at least give me better performance than my old card. :(
Cheers.
-- Ian M. Walker
http://www.IanMWalker.com
~ Look to your own life before worrying how others are living theirs ~ "Adam86" wrote in message Are your settings lowered all the way? Make sure that the settings that are CPU-heavy aren't raised up, unless of course your processor can handle it(you didn't mention that part). If they aren't already, make sure all your settings are on low, 800 x 600 res., and go up from there.
A 6200 should be more than enough to run the game - though certainly not on max settings. The 512 of RAM is helpful, but that's not the part that really lets you crank up the graphics. I ran FEAR on an ATI 64mb AIW 9000 Pro with no problem(graphics mostly on low with a couple cranked up to max). That card was the bare minimum needed to run the game. A 6200 is at least on par with the 9000 Pro, if not better - especially considering FEAR is optimized for nvidia cards.

Have you tried using Taskman and ending any unecessary processes? Certainly helped me out!
I think Vista is running a lot of extra processes because:
1) I'ts BETA!
2) Because it's BETA, it needs these extra processes to help with program and application compatibillity testing.
3) Vista-BETA would obviously have all the extra 'bells + whistles' turned on, to see how these work/run of course.
4) Any new features not yet seen in any other version of Windows, would also be on for various reasons/purposes.
Hope this helps, it certainly did for me and I thought I had a relatively capable system for running hardware/cpu/graphics - intensive games!
Mobo: ASUS P5GDC-Deluxe (LGA775, Intel 915P+ICH6R, CPU Lock Free, FSB-800 Overclocked) CPU: 3.0GHz Intel P4 630 (O/C'd to 3.6GHZ - No conflict with Vista either!) System RAM: Dual Channel - 1GB DDR2 PC4200(533MHz) Generic Video: Expert-Vision GeForce 6600LE (512meg) Sound: Onboard CMI 9880 (Vista has issues with running onboard CMI chips but I have it running nonetheless!)
Cheers,
Lee-roy (Australia)