Q6600/HD4850 can't do Clear Sky, disappointed in card performance

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CHAoS_NiNJA

[H]ard|Gawd
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May 26, 2005
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Title says it all. I fire up S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:Clear Sky for the first time, and I admit...I got ahead of the game. Maxed every setting at 1080p, thought I'd be easy peasy.

Start the game....10FPS. What?!

Up til now the most demanding game I had was TF2, which this card easily maxes. I max the original STAKER with ease, nothing lags for me except when I throw on Clear Sky, suddenly it feels like I'm back on my 6600GT.

The 4850 is supposed to be the bomb digity, whats the deal? This game acts like I'd need i7 and SLI'd GTX 280s to run it.

(For the record, this is with CPU at stock speeds, was having stability issues)
 
Its a mid range card :cool:

Im a newb, but what res does 1080p become into pc res?

Turn down the settings a bit and start from there :)
 
I was able to play that game with my stock 3870 and e6750 @ 3.4.

I had stuttering problems when I got my GTX 260 and 24" monitor with everthing else unchanged. Turned out to be a hard drive issue as Mass Effect "streams" the data as if your PC was a console (from what Iv'e read). I moved to a RAID 0 set with the replacement drive and everything worked perfectly. Crysis FPS also improved.
 
This may help put it into perspective: You expected to play Crysis's rival at 1920x1080, maxed settings?
 
I played STALKER:CS on my Q6700@3GHz and a 8800GTS (G92) on a 22" (1680x1050) and everything was fine. I had some of the eye candy turned on but not a lot of it because I wanted to have high framerates. Your hardware has enough power to handle it so I am guessing it's software. Make sure you are running the latest patch and that your video drivers are up to date.
 
Clear Sky is as demanding as Crysis. When I had a 4850 I had to run at medium settings with DX10 at 1680x1050- and even that got chuggy from time to time. On my GTX 260 I can do high at the same res and it's mostly smooth.
The 4850 is a great budget card, but games like Clear Sky and Crysis, which need a large frame buffer, really show the weakness of the 4850 - the 512mb GDDR3.
 
The game just runs like crap. I bought it, installed it, played it for a few hours, and then put it away while I wait on some patching (didn't help that the other new games I have are more fun).
 
CS is extremely hard on the CPU and GFX card. I managed to run the game at 1680 x 1050 with DX10 Dynamic Shadows by tinkering with the settings. Ran very smoothly after reducing Sun Rays and a few other things. Check out Tweakguides.com for further info. http://www.tweakguides.com/ClearSky_6.html

Casper312 is right, a 4850 is mid range and moving towards low to mid very quickly
 
palmboy5 said:
This may help put it into perspective: You expected to play Crysis's rival at 1920x1080, maxed settings?
Click to expand...

GregP24 said:
Clear Sky is as demanding as Crysis.
Click to expand...

QFT.

Jakalwarrior said:
The game just runs like crap. I bought it, installed it, played it for a few hours, and then put it away while I wait on some patching (didn't help that the other new games I have are more fun).
Click to expand...

I beg to differ, sir. While Clear Sky is rather demanding, and requires a high end system (i.e, better than the one in your signature) to run well on maxed out settings, it does not run like crap. Admittedly, there are a few bugs, which will be patched. But my brother is able to run Clear Sky fine on his 3 year old system with a GeForce 6800, he just turns the settings down. Both Stalker games are designed to work well with older hardware, and IMHO, they are some of the most immersive, atomospheric, realistic, and flat out fun games on the market.
 
Casper312 said:
Im a newb, but what res does 1080p become into pc res?
Click to expand...

1920x1080

I don't know, I just expected more I guess. People were going nuts about this card around the time I bought it, I might have been pulled into the FUD.

Do you think attempting to get my CPU back to 3GHz would really help, or am I ust at my cards limit? Maybe I should see if someones willing to trade for a GTX 260...
 
CHAoS_NiNJA said:
1920x1080

I don't know, I just expected more I guess. People were going nuts about this card around the time I bought it, I might have been pulled into the FUD.

Do you think attempting to get my CPU back to 3GHz would really help, or am I ust at my cards limit? Maybe I should see if someones willing to trade for a GTX 260...
Click to expand...

Lower your resolution. The 4850 isn't powerful enough for that high of a res. 1680x1050 (720p in your case) is the realistic limit for a 4850. It is a great card, just not at high res.
 
I was completely unable to play CS on my 8800gtx at 1680x1050 with the graphic set at anything above medium even then it was choppy. I had to use 1280x800 or something just to get it running at a consistance playable rate. I'm running a 3.2ghz C2D with 4gb ram. I call BS on anyone running it with an 8800 series card at that res with everything on and DX10 lighting.

My machine handled Crysis better.
 
Bigbacon said:
I was completely unable to play CS on my 8800gtx at 1680x1050 with the graphic set at anything above medium even then it was choppy. I had to use 1280x800 or something just to get it running at a consistance playable rate. I'm running a 3.2ghz C2D with 4gb ram. I call BS on anyone running it with an 8800 series card at that res with everything on and DX10 lighting.

My machine handled Crysis better.
Click to expand...


E8400, 4GB, 8800GT OC'd and I'm running everything maxed (qualified below) in DX9 at 1660x1050 with graphics pack mod, sharper textures mod, enhanced lighting mod.

Some things to note - I'm not using any AA and just 8AF, AA KILLS this game and tweakguides alludes to this in their article.

This Game is not Dual Core optimized, it runs a single core no matter what you do. Therefor, Ghz are important, overclocking should show a good improvement.

SSAO looks the same on "low" as it does on "high" and Detail Objects and Lighting Distance do squat down to 25% but offer a performance boost when lowered.

With the mods I'm running lighting effects appear maxed without the fps hit, I can safely lower Sun Quality and Sun Rays to "low", I suggest you do the same with mods listed above.

Because I'm in DX9, I can't run Volumetric Smoke or Wet Surfaces, so factor that in as well. I have all other options turned on. At these settings I average 40 fps (dips to 25 and spikes to 65fps).

Realize that from 6am-8am your frames will be cut in half at all times due to poor optimization of the Sun Rays rendering and the STALKER Village in the beginning is the most taxing scene in the game, don't judge the rest of the game by the first area.
 
Bigbacon said:
I was completely unable to play CS on my 8800gtx at 1680x1050 with the graphic set at anything above medium even then it was choppy. I had to use 1280x800 or something just to get it running at a consistance playable rate. I'm running a 3.2ghz C2D with 4gb ram. I call BS on anyone running it with an 8800 series card at that res with everything on and DX10 lighting.

My machine handled Crysis better.
Click to expand...


It's not BS, I ran it perfectly smoothly with DX10 Full Dynamic Lighting here. You just need to sacrifice some of the eye candy to get it that way.
 
if you look at the benchmarks done by all the sites, including H, even the 4870/280 can't run it past 30 fps at 1900x1200
 
Tylerdurdened said:
Nobody will trade you a 260 for a 4850. A 260 equals to a 4870 1GB. Your 4850 is only slightly better than a 8800GT.
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Well not straight, no, I was speaking of trade+cash. My mobo is SLiable, maybe someone with a Crossfireable mobo and a GTX 260 would be interested :p

It sucks to hear that even much better systems then mine are having troubles with this game. I was (and am) a huge fan of the original STALKER, now it seems I'm going to need to dish out some cash if I want everything and a bag of chips from this game.
 
CHAoS_NiNJA said:
Well not straight, no, I was speaking of trade+cash. My mobo is SLiable, maybe someone with a Crossfireable mobo and a GTX 260 would be interested :p

It sucks to hear that even much better systems then mine are having troubles with this game. I was (and am) a huge fan of the original STALKER, now it seems I'm going to need to dish out some cash if I want everything and a bag of chips from this game.
Click to expand...

I agree that games being released with amazing graphics is no fun (and I don't know if this game does have amazing graphics or just poorly optimized, but I'll assume just great graphics), but look at it this way:

They can either release games like right now, with the highest graphics being hard even on the top of the line rigs, or they could release games with having the best graphics for the game as a medium in it's current state (if you understand what I mean.. instead of having very high as really great graphics, very high would mean medium graphics with todays tech).

I explained that terribly, forget that, lmao
 
the graphics in stalker aren't all that great though...there is just too much to put on the screen at once.
 
You should have read the articles on Clear Sky. You were expecting too much from a 4850 for such a demanding game in DX10. You can run in DX9 and/or turn down some of the eye candy.

Finally, at 1680x1050, we were able to use DX10 on the Radeon HD 4870 X2 without too severe a performance impact. We did have to disable some features, but not as many as we would have at 1920x1200, and we felt that the sacrifices we made were relatively minor compared to the advantages brought by the DX10 renderer.
Click to expand...
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU2MSwzLCw0MA==
 
Thought I'd give an update, I just moved up the 1.5.07 patch and the DX9 sun shaft rendering has been greatly improved. My frames during 6-8a.m. have literally doubled and I'm averaging 35-40fps with the settings mentioned earlier.

I also added the 24-7 sunrays mod (which gives you "god rays" throughout the game and increases lighting levels) and it looks spectacular and runs great due to the patch.

Dunno why people are getting miserable frames, wish I had more answers.
 
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