Windows X64 and F.E.A.R NEED HELP BAD!

[Hapatingjaky]

To whoever may listen,

There has been an ongoing discussion on the VU Games forum over FEAR and very very very low perfomance issues with Windows XP Pro X64 Edition for a long time now. I am pretty upset on how we've been treated by VU Games, Monolith and Sierra since no one returns any emails about technical support issues, just the various run MSCONFIG garbage and remove items off startup. So I thought if I can get my favorite tech site to jump in and help us out I may aswell give it a try.

For about 2 months now I've been trying to get F.E.A.R to work on my desktop. Desktop specs are as follows:

AMD Athlon64 3700+
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe ( 1016 Bios )
2048MB DDR PC3200 ( 2x Corsair 1024MB Stick running in duel channel at 5,2,3,2.5 timings )
ATI Radeon X850XT PE
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZG
160GB SATA 2 Raid 0 NCQ ( 2x Seagate Baracuda 7200.9 HDD's )
Benq DW 1640 DVDRW
ThermalTake Armor Case w/4x 120mm fans and 2x 80mm fans
Thermaltake Purepower 480w Power Supply
Logitech G15 Keyboard
Logitech G7 Mouse
Windows XP Professional X64
ATI Catalyst 6.4 CCC
Nvidia Nforce 4 8.22 Chipset Driver

Back when I first purchased F.E.A.R on October 18th 2005 it worked flawlessly on my system. The system specs are exactly the same now as they were back then just the only difference is the keyboard and mouse which I will touch base on later. The issue cropted up about 2 months ago. I wanted to do some testing and got borred with the games I was playing so I decided to install F.E.A.R. I patched the latest version and began to play within a few seconds to a few minutes Performance dropped drastically which I had never seen before. Back in October my tests would show 0% Below 25FPS, 40% Between 25 and 40FPS and 60% Above 40FPS. Now for some reason it always gives me the performance of 100% Below 25FPS, 0% Between 25 and 40FPS and 0% Above 40FPS. I thought for sure it must be the patches that have been released for FEAR so I uninstalled and re-installed the game and tried playing without any patches but the exact same issue occured, 100% Below 25FPS. So I decided to do some testing and this is what I have done:

1.) Went back to the bios and drivers I would have had installed back in October. Still 100% Below 25FPS.
2.) Installed the OS without and Windows Updates. Still 100% Below 25FPS.
3.) Used a CD Crack thinking it was a problem with the disc, still 100% Below 25FPS.
4.) Tried different drivers ranging from Catalyst 5.10 to 6.4 and Nvidia Nforce drivers from 6.39 all the way up to 8.22. Still 100% Below 25 FPS.
5.) Tried different memory timings, still 100% Below 25FPS.
6.) Checked temperatures of all the hardware. 32C CPU Load, 35C MB Load, 55c GPU Load. All below average temps.
7.) Removed the Sound Card and 1 stick of ram. Still 100% Below 25FPS.

Durring these tests and the last 2 months I have been reading the VU Games Forum with people having similar issues as me even using Crossfire X1900XTX video cards and have the same problems. But as of this morning I think I have finally figured out what is wrong and its a pretty stupid problem at that. Back in October I was using a Logitech Cordless Desktop MX3100 so I decided to try using PS2 instead of USB and this is what I have discovered:

PS2 Keybaord & Mouse USB Disabled in the Bios:

0% Below 25FPS
11% Between 25 and 40FPS
89% Above 40FPS

PS Keyboard & Mouse USB Enabled in the Bios:

0% Below 25FPS
13% Between 25 and 40FPS
87% Above 40FPS

PS2 Keyboard & USB Mouse:

35% Below 25FPS
65% Between 25 and 40FPS
0% Above 40FPS

PS2 Mouse & USB Keyboard:

42% Below 25FPS
58% Between 25 and 40FPS
0% Above 40FPS

USB Mouse & Keyboard:

100% Below 25FPS
0% Between 25 and 40FPS
0% Above 40FPS

So I decided to test this on a completely different PC. Specs are as follows:

Dell XPS Gen 1 Prototype
Intel Pentium 4 Exterem Edition 3.6GHz
Intel 0X1193 I865P Chipset Motherboard
1024MB DDR PC3200 ( 2x512MB Kingston Value Ram 8,3,3,3 timings )
ATI Radeon Mobility 9800 Pro 256MB
Sigmatel C-Major Audio
60GB Hitachi 7200RPM Hard Drive
NEC ND-6500A DVDRW
Dell 150w AC Adapter
Windows XP Home Edition w/service pack 2 and all windows updates
ATI Catalyst 6.4 CCC
Intel 7.2.2.2 Chipset Driver

Tests results are as follows:

Using Onboard Keyboard and Touchpad USB Disabled

38% Below 25FP
44% Between 25 and 40FPS
18% Above 40FPS

USB Mouse & Keyboard

59% Below 25FPS
30% Between 25 and 40 FPS
11% Above 40FPS

Not as drastict as it was on the desktop but it does actually give you some playable options. I can not figure this one out, is it a compatibility problem between Logitech and the Nforce series, it does look isolated to the Windows XP Professional X64 edition as there is no huge performance drop in Windows XP Professional 32bit. I was thinking that it was an issue with the power supply I have in my desktop. As I wrote earlier I have a Thermaltake Purepower Butterfly 480Watt PSU with a 20 pin ATX Power connector, the motherboard I am using is a 24pin ATX power but Asus states that if a 20 pin PSU has over 15amps it will work just fine. But since testing it on my Notebook using the keyboard and mouse with its 150 watt PSU I don't think its a power supply problem. If anyone can help in this matter it would be great.

( All tests were run using the latest drivers and bios's, all tests run at 1024x768 no aa, no soft shadows no anisotropic filtering )

 

[pxc]

There has been an ongoing discussion on the VU Games forum over FEAR and very very very low perfomance issues with Windows XP Pro X64 Edition for a long time now.

Sorry I can't help, but I have no performance problems with F.E.A.R on WinXP x64. Performance is within a couple % of the same hardware running 32-bit WinXP. That was both with the version on the CD and with patches released later.

 

[Tigerbiten]

Does it make any difference if both the PS2 & the UBS mouse & keyboard are plugged in at the same time ?

How about a PS2 keyboard & mouse and another type of USB device ?
Printer, thumb drive, floppy, hard drive ?
If a hard drive then if the games on that hard drive or not ?

Just trying to think up more variables to check on/out.

Luck........

 

[Hapatingjaky]

I've already tried that in the testing above, PS2 Keyboard and mouse with a USB Key and USB 2.0 Hard Drive. It did effect performance some what by aboue 3% but not as bad as plugging in the G15 and G7.

 

[General Crespin]

That's very interesting. I wonder if it's a F.E.A.R.-only problem, or if affects all games, just not so drastically?

 

[Hapatingjaky]

I've tried other games:

Doom 3
Quake 4
Farcry
Half Life 2
World Of Warcraft
C&C Generals Zero Hour
Unreal Tournament 2004

All these games run perfectly fine and suffer no performance loss.