S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadows of Chernobyl Stutters Badly

TBE on 21/1/2009 at 11:34

I've been playing SoC for about a year. I played on Objects Dynamic Lighting without any hesitations at all. I even tried playing on Full Dynamic Lighting, and it got down to about 18 frames per second, so I just settled for Objects Dynamic Lighting instead.

A recent install of my OS and game however has made almost any playing, other than Static Lighting impossible. The game stutters badly and is like watching a slide show. I tried the -noprefetch switch, which seemed to help the Static Lighting setting, but nothing else.

My specs:
P4 3.0 GHz
BFG 7800GS OC AGP card
163.71 video drivers (any later drivers than this make strange artifacts and tearing)
74GB WD Raptor 10K RPM drive

I thought maybe I wasn't getting enough power to the 7800GS, so I even tried temp installing another power supply solely for my card. (Two power supplies total) Same effects. :(

HALP! I like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but I wish I could play with decent effects again.

Cardia on 21/1/2009 at 18:15

I´ve just bought this game recently "shadow of chernobyl", and i´m loving it!!!:thumb:, i´m really addicted to this one, i love the scenaries , the gameplay is really captivating, i love the storyline, could some one tell me exactly in wich country did this nuclear explosion ocurr?

prideassassin on 21/1/2009 at 18:42

Defrag your drive?
Or if you haven't tried it already, pay a visit to (http://www.thefloatingpoint.org) The Floating Point. My install of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was barely playable even in static lighting but after using the customs shaders from that site I got acceptable fps using full dynamic lightning \o/

@cardia1
That was in the Ukrainian SSR

242 on 21/1/2009 at 18:46

Quote Posted by cardia1

i love the storyline, could some one tell me exactly in wich country did this nuclear explosion ocurr?

Chernobyl catastrophe occurred in Ukraine, a republic of USSR back in 1986.

But SoC's explosion has nothing to do with nuclear power at all, just the same place. According to the plot, the second, mysterious, explosion of unknown nature occurred in 2006, and the game takes place in 2012.

Taffer_Boy_Elvis, so what changed between two installs? Did you use XP, and now have installed Vista? Anyway, try older drivers for your videocard.

TBE on 21/1/2009 at 23:58

I changed my RAID 0 array (2 500GB WD drives) to a 74GB Raptor. But I had played it before with the Raptor just fine. The RAID was starting to give me headaches with backups and stuff because of the size. I think I'll just use them for media storage and what-not. Other than that, I've changed nothing. I've noticed several of my newer type games that they run a little slow on my nVidia, so maybe it's just dying. I don't know for sure, but I bought (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102730) this Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 512MB video card today on a whim as a replacement. If it's not the video card, I'm guessing it's the motherboard or something. My computer has been pieced together from a Dell OEM system and different aftermarket parts. I accidentally ran a screwdriver across my original Dell motherboard and scored it bad. I just bought an Asus motherboard about 3 years ago that's been great until now. This system has to last me about 6-12 more months, so I'm willing to gamble on the Radeon fixing my problems. If it doesn't I'll just sell it to one of my friends. :(

I'll try the Float32 thing. I remember now that it did make a good difference the last time I played. I think everything looked better too, if I'm not mistaken. Later dudes. Thanks for all your help in this forum 242.

nelson on 22/1/2009 at 11:19

Had similar problems before myself, both with SHOC and Clear Sky and with Crysis(+Warhead) and Farcry2. All of them installed over two months period. I experienced stutter in all of them and couldn't get why, as I'm running an Yorkfield, 4gb Corsair, 4870 in CF.

I understood recently that the DRM that both Warhead and Farcry2 come with may cause some issues like that if it didn't install correctly. I removed all the games from my system and reinstalled them back one by one, testing them after each install. The stuttering is gone in Warhead/Farcry2 and greatly reduced in Stalker, although it didn't dissapear completely.

If you're running games that have DRM protection you may have to do the same. Everything is personal experience though and there's no guarantee that it'd help you.

TBE on 28/1/2009 at 00:03

Seems that the video card was to blame. :(

I installed that (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102730) Sapphire HD 3850 Video Card. I was playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC on Full Dynamic Lighting and the maximum resolution on my monitor. (1680x1050) It stuttered a bit in really busy places, but played at 30-45 fps in most situations. I lowered the resolution and set to object dynamic lighting, and it just flies along fast!

I bought my original video card 3 years ago from newegg.com and found out that BFG has a 10 year warranty on their video cards. So I RMAd the card to BFG, and I'll probably sell it to my friend who has an AGP motherboard. The 2 500GB drives I had seem to have been bad too, so I RMAd those back to Western Digital. They have a 3 year warranty I think. So in the next few weeks, I'll have my RAID back, and a friend will get a new 7800 GS OC for cheap.