Funny enough I was just doing some more testing with FEAR and Vista. In this
test I have everything set to max setting, Softshadows on, AAx4 ASx16. The
Test benchmark gives me 54 low, 100 average, 250 High. This is using the Cat
7.2 drivers. Under XP I get pretty much the same numbers with the 7.3
drivers. This is with a X1900XTX @1024x768.

So obviously, you do have an issue. My first question is, what Keyboard and
Mouse are you using. If it is the Logitech G5/7/15, and I hear one of the
Saitek keyboards, then you're in for a special treat. As those keyboard and
mice and partly, their drivers causes problems in FEAR and FEARXP. In my
case, it caused stuttering and reporting my framrates around 30 fps, even on
the lowest settings.

In the FEAR forums I also seem to remember hearing about performance issues,
when running in a not standard resolution. I want to say 1600x1200 is the
highest "optimized' resolution.

I'm amazed you got the 7.3 cats working under Vista, as under both V32 and
V64, I get a BSOD (which ATI is currently working on a fix for) There is a
fix that works, in turning off the ATI External Event Service, but when I
ran the FEAR benchmarks, (even with the 7.2 drivers) it caused about a 20+
fps drop in FEAR. (didn't check other games yet).

There is an active thread in the FEAR forums about massive performance drops
in FEAR and Vista.
http://forums.vugames.com/thread.jsp...threadID=43967

The problem isn't limited to ATI or nVidia.



"JB" <none********.com> wrote in message
news:64617CD4-61FC-4E15-BA59-48C9DF72D758@microsoft.com...
> Hi,
>
> I was playing FEAR with Windows XP with no noticeable problems, however,
> since installing Vista the game is now unplayable in any outside areas,
> even if I switch everything off or set to minimum and even at 800x600
> resolution. I probably get 1 frame a second (literally).
> I have updated FEAR to version 1.8, I'm using the latest ATI drivers
> (7.3).
>
> I don't appear to have any other problems with other games, COD2 and NFSC
> all play brilliantly at 1680x1050 with all of the eye candy switched on.
>
> I've got an AMD X2 4200+, 2gig RAM and the X1950PRO.
>
> There must be some kind of driver / software issue?
>
> Can anyone help?
>
> Thanks
> JB