questions about F.E.A.R

i got the copy today and installed in my pc.wow i never feel my pc is really getting old before.i can barely play this game at max setting now i know it is time to upgrade my pc.
my curremt setup
P4C 3Ghz,Asus P4C800 Deluxe,1GB of ram,6800GT 256 AGP,and Soundblaster X-Fi soundcard.

what should i upgrade to play F.E.A.R and the coming shooting game at max setting?<1280 by 1024>
my budge is around 800 bucks i would prefer to keep the video card and soundcard if possible,maybe more rams.anyone in forum play F.E.A.R at max setting?

I ran into the same thing.
My computer runs everything else finr but when I tried to run the FEAR demo...it crawled a bit.
Recommendation:
Have at least 2gig of memory and see what you can get for a higher powered 256 AGP.It was suggested to me to look into GFX cards that have some of the newer shading based off of dx9.0 or higher.
But before you do all this, assuming you havent purchased the game, download the FEAR demo and see how it runs.

FEAR runs fine on my dinky 2.5ghz P4 w/ 6800-Ultra card and 1 GIG RAM.

PS: I think this belongs in off-topic, unless it mentions GW.

Hehe. You just did!

Your system specs seem fine to me. Why are you so obsessed with running at max settings? Smart game developers plan ahead for hardware support so that their game doesn't seem outdated as quickly. Many games aren't intended to be run at max settings when they're first released. I would say it would be a waste of cash to upgrade, but that's just my opinion.

Don't run FEAR at max settings, also make sure "soft shadows" are off. Soft shadows destroys even the most powerfull systems.

As yaos said, turn off soft shadows. I run FEAR with no problems on max settings minus soft shadows on my AMD 64 3000+, 1GB ram, and 6600GT.

I got the same config and run FEAR as well with no problem... You ought to try again before spending your money..