Interesting: FEAR Runs better with soft shadows??

After upgrading from a 256 MB X850 XT PE to a 512 MB X1900XTX, FEAR ran noticably smoother when I maxed it out. But there were still some areas of the game that didn't seem graphicly intense still run kinda choppy when looking around. So I went into the graphics options and started turning stuff down. Nothing really made a difference at all... until I started messing with the shadows. When I turned shadows completely off; silky smooth. When I turn them on with max shadow detail and "soft shadows" off, it went choppy again. It stayed choppy with "shadow detail" at "minimum" too. So I tried turning "soft shadows" on to see how much choppier it would get. Then it get noticably better, lol. Wtf? I've read on 3Dguru.com on their card reviews that this options significantly reduces performance on their tested cards, so they always test with it off. It did significantly reduce performance on my X850 XT PE, but noticably improves performance with my X1900XTX!

So then I did the ingame "test" to see what a diff it made there:

Soft shadows off:

Min: 20 FPS
Average: 37 FPS
Max: 60-sumthin FPS

Soft shadows on:

Min: 37 FPS
Average: 45 FPS
Max: 75 FPS

Weird as hell, right? I was wondering if anyone else has this card out there and could tell me what they get FPS-wise in FEAR. This is the only game I have that can bring my FPS down below 30 FPS with graphics maxed out. I find this quite vexing when I always see people boasting over 60 FPS average with nVidia 7600GTs and stuff. Do these numbers sound right to you guys?

Check out my sig for PC specs.

 

I guess nobody cared...

 

i really thought that was quite interesting, just didnt have an explanation for it lol Thats really fortunate on ur part tho, soft shadows totally bring most cards to their knees.

 

Sounds weird. Like you said( people with 7600gt's) I can play FEAR multi player with Maxed out settings with my 7600gt but when playing the single player mode I can only play at Medium-High settings.....weird.


*WaVy_+=*