A glance at S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl's performance.

    For those of you who don’t really know me, I play video games quite a lot, although recently it hasn’t been too much due to school.  The main game you can catch me playing is Counter-Strike: Source, (I so can’t wait until valve makes Counter-Strike: Source 64bit!!!!!)

    Today I installed “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl” on my Desktop. I’ve been reading reviews and watching trailers for some time now, thinking that this game would be amazing. However After installing it and getting it up to date. I find that playing the game is absolutely horrible experience.

CPU: 939 AMD 4400+ x2 Over clocked to 4800+ Specs
RAM: 1.5GB
VIDEO:  7800gs CO SUPER CLOCK (AGP)
Display:  Sceptre 20.1in widescreen.
Drivers: Nvidia 101.41
OS: Windows Vista x64 RTM.

    I can play any games on ultra high settings (1600x1050) and get decent fps.  Normally I game in XP Pro x64 SP2; I also know I should be experiencing some fps drop In Vista.

“THQ Inc. today announced it is working with AMD to create an optimized version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl for the AMD Athlon64 processor architecture.”S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is expected to leverage the strengths of AMD64 technology to provide an immersive gaming experience with a larger playable world, more detailed surroundings, better AI, and more people per map".”

    THQ should be spending about a year optimizing this game.  I normally game at High Settings on 1600x1050 resolution, and get around 100fps constant. This game is the only exception.  So after installing I turn everything to the max; I’m getting decent fps until I walk outside.  There my game lags horrendously and the system monitor on my g15 keyboard tells me the game is using no CPU and 100% ram constantly.  This game should be using more CPU and less ram, resulting in much better performance.

    After spending 5 minutes to get the resolution turned down to 1024x768, I venture off into the environment once again.  At first the game lags, but then I get about 20fps consistently with the game pausing every now and then to (auto save / refresh game content). It feels like the days on the old p2 playing Half-Life 1 and having it load game content.

    My personal opinion is that this game doesn’t look that good for how it performs.  It performs so awful that I’m wondering if the highest end quad core processor and 2 8800’s can even break 100fps with this game.  If I was THQ I would spend a month optimizing this game so that it runs better on above average hardware.

    I’m going to be installing “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl” on XP SP2 and will let everyone know how it performs.  I will also  get a hold of my friend with the quad core setup with dual 8800’s and ask him how this game performs.  I’d really like to see if the 64bit version of this game runs better the current version that I have my hands on. But it’s not likely that I’m going to go buy this game again for a 64bit version when the current 32bit version runs poorly on my setup.  Feel free to let us all know how this game runs on your system.