The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

god i cannot stand cricket. if anything can put me to sleep faster than farcry 2, this is it.

 

lol I'm only just patient enough to put up with various motorsports and on rare occasion I go and watch the ice hockey.

 

+5,000,000

 

Hardly anyone i know likes watching cricket... And if they do, well, i should consider not knowing them

Sooo excited about the HD5870, simply because it's the start of the next generation, and considering how impressive it is in benchmarks (and the fact it's DirectX 11 and the rest of it), it's priced quite competitively. Can't wait to see nVidia's contribution

 

http://vr-zone.com/articles/ati-hemlock-radeon-hd-5870-x2-pictures/7738.html?doc=7738

OH MY GAWD!

soa 5850x2 and 5870x2?

i assume the 5850x2 will be $500 and $600 for the 5870x2, BUT this means price cuts for the 5850 by 50$ and 5870 by $100. (hopefully)


12" CARDS!!!


WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but "only" a 6+ 8pin connector.

 

Cool a whole foot of graphics card ;-)

 

I'm sure my case could house it But the price...I think i'll wait til after I purchase the 30" dell monitor, and see how the GTX 260 can handle it Im sure its gonna have trouble at the 2560 resolution...

 

Only a 6+8 because the 5870 uses exactly as much power as a 4870 thus, 4870X2 should ~~ 5870X2.
12" though, glad I bought the HAF!

 

Haha. Yeah, that was pretty much tongue in cheek. As a former physics major - Newton is as highly revered as Einstein - the early "god" of science (don't get offended Keith) and inventor of calculus.

But regarding your famous Brits list - I sure never heard of that sewer guy! However, regarding Old Ben, that was quite interesting to get that tidbit about the dad of our much beloved author of Poor Richard's Almanac!

Well, you are probably more up to date on that than Miles would be.

So you think the hydra might really work? Me too I'm hoping. Lots of pci-e lanes - was it 45 in all?

Over the last few years I have always thought that multiple gpus should work without the game title even knowing anything like that is going on. That thought came from the original 2-gpu 3dfx attempt to compete with Nvidia, where they split the page horizontally, with one gpu handling the top, and the other handling the bottom of each frame. Game titles didn't know anything like that was going on.

As we all know, Nvidia put them out of business anyway. It's sure good to see Ati/AMD hanging in there now with the strongest gpu of all! I think the price is fine - I hope they make some good profitable dollars before the green guys move forward again. I'll happily buy two of those for the new build, at the present price, if I have the money by Feb or March.

LOL. Naw - I'm not saying anything else - and what I posted were just a few tidbits - exclusively just for you guys: you, Shaff, Jeff, Kevin, Keith, and Shokz from down under. But don't tell anybody else - I don't want my source to get into trouble from my big mouth. Believe me, I didn't spoil anything - when you see it you'll love it!!

If you mean me - not at all, Keith, it was all in jest. As to your racist american comment (still kidding!) I planned that historical american list full of brits until it made me laugh thinking about posting it. Sam and Shaff know I'm a big kidder. And often I leave out the " " to be even more tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing. It's kind of an in-joke in the family - including video dude Miles, to say things that only the most ignorant redneck would utter, like somebody who didn't even realize Winston Churchill was British.

Hahaha. You see, I knew shaff was a footie guy. But shaff - what are you saying about far cry 2 that sits in the new game box waiting for the new rig - is the game THAT bad?

Wow Shaff - nice post - Hemlock - the 5870x2 already! Ok, I'll buy two of them - $1000 worth of graphics cards that finally should be able to rule Crysis at 2560x1600 - I see Kevin's got his eye on the 30" Dell too!

Sam are we gonna need hydra to make two of those cards perform on Crysis - since quad cf crytek support does not exist (nvidia sell-outs the whole lousy lot - just kidding!)

Rich

 

As did I - I think it's incredibly anachronistic in this day and age to still have the profile system we do now.

Rumours are that at a similar time to the HD5870X2 Hemlock release, nvidia will put out their GT300, supposedly a faster card of the order of magnitude of GTX280 vs HD4870 - of course, rumours are just that, rumours, and rumours also state that nvidia's yields on GT300 are even worse than that of the infamous HD4770... Ouch! That said, the stock levels of the 5870 are pretty dismal as well at the moment, though we are technically still before ATI's "readily available" date.
What also needs to be considered is the GT300 product will almost certainly come out at an nvidia "we're the best" sort of price, i.e. beyond what anyone bar the financially carefree and nvidia fans would be willing to spend.
Far Cry 2's not terrible but nothing happens for hours and hours of gameplay other than literally running around a vast open space killing random guys as jobs. Trust me, that's not as much fun as it sounds. Later on in the game I'm told it gets quite good by someone who stuck with it, but frankly I'm not sure I have the patience. The game's implementation of Quad crossfire is somewhat buggy too, so I didn't really experience smooth gameplay when playing it.

Actually not quite true, as of about catalyst 9.7 - QCF support for Crysis and Warhead is around 3.0-3.2x scaling in some areas now which isn't bad. Where ATI falls down is that triple SLI isn't far behind at 2.7-2.9x

 

The 5870X2 looks badass. I love the cooler. They are definitely putting more effort in aesthetics lately. Some of the newest cooler designs are just awesome.

Oh yeah Cat 9.7 is sweet. Eliminated some minor issues and gave me 2FPS in Crysis which is a sizable increase

 

agreed. very nvidia style.

 

What amazes me, Jeff, is how you can play any game at only 2fps. I thought you said my lousy 10fps in GTA4 was unbearable.

Oh, wait a sec - do you mean +2 fps MORE????

Hahaha.

Ok, all seriousness aside, I'm reading all I can about this Israeli firm Lucid (more Israelis like the dudes who developed CORE and saved Intel from netburst embarrassment) who have heavy financial support from Intel.

Their web site says:

That makes me realize that effects like AA, Anisotropic Filtering, etc. all will have to be applied by the Lucid guys - because the gpus will be handled polygon rendering tasks.

The founder of Lucid, Offir Remez, mentioned in one interview that he and his son are both avid gamers. Very cool! Several articles of theirs talk about the desire to create lifelike graphics solutions.

I hope their definition of lifelike is high enough in quality to keep everybody happy, because, as we can see, if hydra is at the front of the graphic request from the cpu, parcels out the workload, and then puts the final frame together giving it to the strongest gpu to render to the monitor, the hydra chip and its code will make all decisions regarding final image processing.

So forget about if you prefer the way that Ati renders, compared to the way Nvidia renders, that will all end. Everything will be "the way Lucid renders."

I suspect that they would strive to uphold the highest of all graphics fidelity standards regarding smoke, particles, bump mapping - everything that makes a scene realistic - high enough fidelity to keep Sam and Jeff happy.

Back to the only motherboard coming out that supports the technology (although Offir said he is talking with 3 of the top 5 mobo manufacturers) it looks like the MSI Big Bang will support i7 processors, but not in a 1366 format.

What does that mean?

Far Cry 2 takes hours of time pursuing single assassination missions. Hmmm. Sounds like GTA4 and the Wanted List. Right up my alley, lol. Thanks for the explanation - I MAY have the patience - if the landscape is pretty enough to wander around in. We'll see.

Rich

 

LOL my rig running Crysis at 2FPS? Never

Yes +2FPS which is nice. The built-in Crysis GPU benchmark gets me 41FPS while regular gameplay sees me anywhere from 30-50 depending on the action.

Far Cry 2 is wildly beautiful and beats out Crysis for overall visual fidelity and performance. But IMO Crysis is better looking(eye candy wise) and more fun, despite the lack of AA. If you can get into it Far Cry 2 ramps up the action quickly enough. The first few levels are a grind for sure but it allows you some time to wander around and explore.

It's especially fun with a bolt action sniper rifle. Creeping slowly through the grass quietly and slowly scoping out the enemy position. Lining up that first shot then BOOM, you watch the guy grab his throat and go down. His buddies scatter so you break your aim, work the bolt, and get ready to line up another shot. BOOM, another guy's head explodes into a red mist. Now his friends are really freaking out and they dive into a building for cover. So you chuck a molotov cocktail into the bushes outside their hiding spot and throw in a grenade. Seeing the grenade, they rush out just in time to meet your bonfire. Their hesitation gives you another chance to peg one before you move in and finish the rest off with your Uzi.

Fun times

 

Well now...Far Cry 2 sounds interesting

Thanks for the tidbit

 

Yeah both Crysis and Far Cry 2 are well worth the play if you haven't yet. Your system should play both quite capably Omega

 

I gave crysis about an hour one day. It does seem entertaining LOL! I just haven't gotten back to it, since I haven't beaten the other games yet. When I get bored of one game, I move back and forth. You just reminded me of the game LOL! I have so many projects on my back burner, I forget to have fun every once in a while. You know...I think I'll play it now

 

lol I've not even finished the first level of Crysis I'm about up to the bit with the radio tower I think... I've got distracted by playing NFS: Most Wanted on the PC. I never bothered to beat Razor on the PS2 so I'm now determined to play through and add it to the (very short) list of games I've actually completed (most of which are games renowned for their shortness - Mirror's Edge, Portal, ermm)

 

I had a post lined up for this, was halfway through writing it on the vista laptop when it ran out of RAM and entered a shuffle cycle, something Vista occasionally does when low on RAM. System completely locks up including mouse cursor while this is in progress, it will eventually finish but it can take anywhere between 2 and one occasion 17 minutes to finish. Rather than wait, I needed to go out so it was a 5-second power button job. Sigh, off I go again I suppose.
Jeff: It was a lot more than that for me, maybe I'm thinking of 9.8 but I got an extra 6-7fps at least out of a recent driver update in Warhead.
Rich: Haha, of course he means more. As for the Lucid technology I'm not sure that's how it works. The reason I say this is because that renders 90% of what's on a graphics card redundant, all you would need is the GPU Chip plugged into the PCIe slot, none of the rest of it, not even the memory, would be necessary and for that to be the case the Lucid would have to be a full-size graphics card in itself, just with the Hydra chip where the GPU might be - that's not how it's been designed, so call me sceptical but I think it's a little more complex than that.
Rich remember the MSI Big Bang board is a P55, which is Socket 1156, something people don't seem to realise exists. That is the core i5 socket, but two of the processors for it are called the core i7, the 860 and 870, NOT the 900 series, which use socket 1366.


No DiRT 2 until christmas, me sad

 

About what? Your not missing anything. It'll be full of bugs that won't get fixed. The online will be bursting with cheaters and something important won't work. Or am I just peeved that they lied about the GRID v1.3 patch and the DiRT 1.3 patch before that, that they published a game no-one had any plan of supporting or in fact finishing (FUEL) and that they decided DiRT 2 should be delayed and DX11 without thinking about the consumer once of which about 80% of people don't want.