Thinking about buying STALKER. Will it run on my PC?

Saturos

Saturos

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I'm in the market for a new PC game. Any recommendations? How will my PC run STALKER? (Check my sig). Also, I thought about trying my hand at a good RTS title. Some thoughts there would be nice too since the only RTS titles I've ever played was the older C&C series and WarCraft2, which I liked back in the day. I want to play ,"The Witcher" too, but from the looks of it, my PC will probably struggle.:eek: I hope I can save up enough for a video card/CPU upgrade soon.:p Damn credit/rent payments suck.
 
Im on a dual core, 2gig of ram and 2 8600gts in SLI, and its like watching a slideshow on 1024 res and max settings.

The STALKER engine is HORRIBLE, even the most powerful PCs can struggle, its so stupid.

The game is fun though, if you can get it to run smoothly.
 
I had the strange urge to re-install this a coupla days ago, just to see if they had fixed some of the major play-killing bugs. They haven't. The progressive slow-down/memory leak that ruined it for me the first time is still very much there and it ground my game to a gradual halt within 2 minutes. I uninstalled straight away and will never install it again.

That said, the first time I played it after release last year, I had mighty great fun for a while, despite the poor engine and bugs, and it's a game worth persevering with to the end, if only so you can say how good it could have been. Your rig should be able to handle it well, especially if you install the latest patch. And the float32 mod. This mod is essential.

It's a fps experience you won't forget, just don't expect a smooth ride.
 
Oh no, means I can't play STALKER? I was hoping of getting it. 8600GT is my card now.
 
Its an fps experience you wont forget in that you wont forget how low your fps was.

BUT, if you look past the engine, its a great game. SO atmospheric its almost unreal. It was such a cool idea, they just didnt get the right team on it. If someone like EPIC or Ubisoft had done it, the engine would have made it worthwhile.

I mean come on, who releases a game that has so many bugs in it, and relys on the mod community to fix it???

Theyre making a sequal which is coming soon i think...lets see if theyve learned something.
 
does this float32 thing actually make a lot of difference because i might consider reinstalling if so
 
I don't get what some of you are talking about... run it in without dynamic lighting and it'll run fine. You still get lightmapped shadows (HL2-style).

You could run Stalker with 40+ fps on a Pentium 4 3ghz and an x800.

STALKER_6a.jpg

STALKER_6c.jpg
 
You could run Stalker with 40+ fps on a Pentium 4 3ghz and an x800.
Click to expand...

Really? I might pick it up.

I have an x600 and P4 3.4 GHz

I know it's crap but I'll be upgrading at some point in the future.
 
thats what i did when i first got it but to be fair, its not as pretty and it takes away from the atmosphere
 
Static lightning certainly takes away from the atmosphere, but at least you can run the game very smoothly. I prefer that. Yes, get the game. Even with all the bugs, it's worth it.
 
Saturos said:
I'm in the market for a new PC game. Any recommendations? How will my PC run STALKER? (Check my sig). Also, I thought about trying my hand at a good RTS title. Some thoughts there would be nice too since the only RTS titles I've ever played was the older C&C series and WarCraft2, which I liked back in the day. I want to play ,"The Witcher" too, but from the looks of it, my PC will probably struggle.:eek: I hope I can save up enough for a video card/CPU upgrade soon.:p Damn credit/rent payments suck.
Click to expand...

dude...your machine will rape stalker if you don't overdo it that is.

i've played stalker nicely on my amd 2800+ xp barton, radeon 9800 pro/xt, 1024 Mb ram.

i say go for it
 
I played it all the way through on a Semprom 3000+ and a 6800GS. I had dynamic lighting on originally but it was too much so I turned if off. It was much better although it look a lot shittier but I didn't mind.
 
jverne said:
dude...your machine will rape stalker if you don't overdo it that is.

i've played stalker nicely on my amd 2800+ xp barton, radeon 9800 pro/xt, 1024 Mb ram.

i say go for it
Click to expand...

Really? Cos I have similar specs to yours and wasn't sure if i could run it considering my specs don't meet the minimum declared on the box.
 
The rape is vision distance and mostly dynamic lightning. I can set everything but those two on absolute max (I have vision distance at 2/3 on the slider, sliders rule btw). What's truely disturbing is that is I set everything to MINIMUM I still get only 20 fps max with full dynamic lightning.
 
Mine was fine. I had a dual-core and 2gb of memory and a 7950 Geforce. Ran it at 1920x1200 on Medium, ran fine.
 
If you don't have a more recent graphics card, full dynamic lighting is simply going to bring it to a halt.

STALKER should run beautifully on almost any rig without full dynamic lighting.

Be sure to make use of those graphics mods. Float 32 does wonders.
 
You will run it fine.

I can get it to run on an old ATI X1300 ;)
 
Erm.

Switching off full dynamic lights is just jumping on a phantom bandwagon because you don't know any different. Yes obviously it's an effect that impacts on frames, but the game is easily playable with this and everything else turned on, even on ageing PC's like mine with an old 6800 in it's guts. What causes the painfully low fps is the memory leak / stack.

Not many people seem to realise that this bug can be completely fixed temporarily by accessing the options menu during a game, opening the graphics settings menu and then resuming the game without even changing anything. Another way is to type vid_restart in the console, suddenly gaining up to 30 fps (in my case), with full EVERYTHING. Full dynamic lighting ISN'T the bad guy. Don't believe it? try it.

This workaround does not last long however, as covering any sort of distance appears to subtract fps and so running down the road will have the game running like a slideshow again as data stacks up. Use it just before a firefight, and when you are exploring buildings.

I managed to get through the entire game opening and closing that damn menu whenever things got too slow to play. Tedious, but wow did it look good.

And yes, the float32 mod gains you another 5-10 fps.
 
wow. . you'd think someone would come up with some kinda mod that just monitors the fps counter and does the reset manually.
 
DEATHMASTER said:
The rape is vision distance and mostly dynamic lightning. I can set everything but those two on absolute max (I have vision distance at 2/3 on the slider, sliders rule btw). What's truely disturbing is that is I set everything to MINIMUM I still get only 20 fps max with full dynamic lightning.
Click to expand...
That's similar to Oblivion actually. I can run everything fine on maximum except the draw distance and HDR and get around 20-25FPS outdoors 55-60FPS indoors, which is good for Oblivion's severely un-optimized engine. Thanks for the input too BTW guys.:E What about a good RTS title though. Should I get Tiberium Wars, C&CGenerals etc.? How about it?
 
I'd say get either CNC 3 or World in conflict
 
I've heard that Company of Heroes is pretty good, can't say I've played it myself, but I've heard nothing but praise for it. I found C&C 3 wasn't particularly motivating for some reason myself.
 
I have to say i wasn't impressed with coh really.
 
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