The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

There's a rumour L4D 2 isn't coming to PS3 not sure whether to believe it or not but it's still a massive bummer for PS3 only owners...

 

Left 4 Dead is pretty dump on a console anyway. Not that it matters for any of us as we all know it's much better on PC, as are almost all games.
Nice list Jeff, there's going to be a Fable 3? Forza 3 I'm keen to try along with PGR4.

 

lot of superb PS3 exclusives aswell and some which are sure to be very good!:

Agent
Everybody's Golf: World Tour
Final Fantasy Versus XIII
Formula One Championship Edition
Genji: Days of the Blade
God of War III
Gran Turismo 5
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue
Heavenly Sword
Heavy Rain
inFamous
Initial D Extreme Stage
Katamari Forever
Killzone 2
LittleBigPlanet
MAG
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Metal Gear Online
MotorStorm
MotorStorm: Pacific Rift
Ninja Gaiden Sigma
Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2
Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty
Resistance: Fall of Man
Resistance 2
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation
Time Crisis 4
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Valkyria Chronicles
Warhawk

 

@ Estuansis - Actually, most people think that the PC version of Gears of War was better than the 360 version (and, indeed, it did contain more content and had more polished graphics). But i've only ever played the PC version (aside from a brief session online on the 360 one) and so can't really comment.

And Shaff kinda beat me to the punch with the list of PS3 exclusives - couldn't be bothered to write it all out on my iPod and i've only just got on the PC. But, i see one glaring omission; The Last Guardian. Gunna be awesome.

Ah well, i can still get the good PSN titles down (just as an aside; Rez HD on XBLA <3)

WipEout HD
WipEout HD Fury
Pixeljunk Monsters
Pixeljunk Eden
Pixeljunk Shooter
Flower
flOw
Fat Princess
Crash Commando
Pain (slightly boring if you ask me, but quite a few like it)
Lumines Supernova
The Last Guy
Echochrome
SuperStardust HD
Shatter
BurnZombieBurn

Quite a few others i don't feel make the grade (ie, not really worth their asking price).

 

Are you all finished yet?

The petty arguing gets very boring very quickly.

 

Since when were we arguing?

 

That's cheating a bit isn't it? Including that as two titles...

From what I saw of the GoW port it was fine really, but I never played it that much.

Why are we discussing console games in a PC gaming thread though? Surely the whole point of this thread would be recognition of the superiority of PC games.

 

LOL! In deed! The only reason I would buy a console would be for games like Gran Turismo 5. I don't think i'll buy one anyway. My brother will buy one soon, and I can play it when ever. Besides, give it a few years/decades and PC's will be emulating them seamlessly. I don't know about the rest of the population, but consolidation of hardware is friggin awesome LOL!

 

depends on the game (the superiority)

 

It will be at least a decade from now before the PS3 can be emulated, they can't even emulate the Gamecube yet.

 

Wow you guys know your console games! If I even thought about playing half of those games I could just forget about ever having enough money for the new rig. I'm like Kevin thinking - "time for some fun!" Thank god I'm almost exclusively world war II, except that somehow Left 4 Dead got factored in there.

As to whether Keith was right or not - meaning were you guys arguing or weren't you - it sure sounded like an argument to me! Haha.

THE GREAT CONSOLE WAR
The subject was "Which console is best?" and a rather spirited debate quickly ensued, handled well by the respective teams.

Jeff hurled a flamer "360s are worthless and are shipped defective" to which Sam countered: "Well but the PS/3 costs an arm and a leg" to which somebody else mentioned "Yeah, but you get a free blue ray player!" LOL

The exclusive games list from the respective teams was impressive - even though he doesn't like the hardware, Jeff know lots of good 360 games, and Shaff has always been a PS/3 fanboy and doesn't mind who knows about it - he's got his list too!

Yes, this is a PC thread of sorts, but the basic foundation is a love for video games, and it seems like most of you dudes have a PC, PLUS a console of one blood lineage or another. And I think Shokz just said he now has one of each!

I almost picked up a PS/3 for Vanessa instead of the Sony blue ray - it was only gonna be another $100 and I'd have had the blue ray player, PLUS the PS/3 box, and I figured her boyfriend at the time might like to play halo or some such nonsense. (Just kidding!)

But no consoles for me for the time being. First of all - the 30" Dell is enormous as it is, and I sit right in front of it about 12" from my nose (in fact, I'll be in front of it within about 7 hours for 16 hours straight and get my weekly fix) so I don't need to game on a 50" from a couch across the room. However, that could all change if I decide to start socializing again and pick up a girlfriend. Then I'll be like Boozer with all the buds over, hanging out in the livingroom, a couple guys duking it out with consoles on the big plasma.

VALVE IS TIGHT WITH MICROSOFT
By the way, regarding Left 4 Dead 2 on the PS/3 - they didn't have Left 4 Dead 1 on it, did they? Miles told me no. He said that 360 has been good for Valve, but not PS/3. Their orange box, which they ported over to PS/3, sold badly on that console, but okay on 360. Valve's roots are Microsoft. Gabe, the founder, was one of the Microsoft millionaires and is probably still buddies with Gates and his old MS colleagues. So you won't see Valve games for Mac. And while they tried to get something going with PS/3, sales were disappointing, as I mentioned, so they decided "strictly 360" for Left 4 Dead. Maybe they didn't get the cooperation or the promotional help that they were looking for from Sony.

Getting back to the world of PCs here's something from Sam a couple days ago:

Hahaha. Well said. I think I'm somewhat like Jeff - not fully understanding all this good new technology. (In fact, don't get upset anybody, but I even have urges to give AMD a good look - if I can buy as good of performance maybe for a slight price premium - I might do that just to additionally patronize the AMD/Ati team.)

LUCID LOGIX AND HYDRA - TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE?
I have to say though, as soon as I posted - "Oh that's why Shaff said X58 for dual graphics cards" then I started thinking about the prior discussion about the Lucid chip.

For some reason, I am having trouble accepting that the Hydra chip will really deliver the goods the way they have described. Either it appears to be too good to be true, or I don't fully trust how they are going to re-compose the scene back together again after parceling out the polygons to the downlink gpus.

Yes, I DO like that their approach works on one frame at a time - all the gpus under their direction are working on the current frame - so no problem with inter-frame dependencies which cause problems with other multi-gpu schemes.

However, I am somehow suspicious of their basic philosophy of "Buy the best price/performance at any given moment" because I'm worried that could work against Ati at any given moment in time, and favor nvidia - who already have more muscle and economic advantage.

Anyway, now the Lucid Big Bang board makes complete sense - the Lucid chip brings along another 48 pci-e lanes, and the 16 lanes available directly sitting on the i5 or i7 1156 architecture, pumps all that information directly to the hydra chip. The clever Lucid Logix firmware analyzes the Open GL commands, breaks them down, parcels them out according to gpu capacity, then pulls the data back in, assembles the frame, and passes it back to the "main" gpu to send to the monitor.

When that motherboard starts shipping in 30 days, we'll see how all of that works out in real life.

Rich

 

Oh, I dont know. There are some pretty intelligent people out there For all we know, there could be someone in college now, studying PS3 technology on the side I suppose stating a decade is hopeful thinking though LOL! I thought Gamecube IS emulated...

Ahh, I think you mean without serious bugs LOL! In fact, I haven't been able to get it running on windows 7 yet. Probably a fix out there though...

 

Well there are both working PS2 and Xbox emulators out. They don't work very well or with a lot of games but I have seen them working with my own eyes. Gamecube I have heard of but never seen it done. Most of the emulation I do is still PS1, N64, SNES, you know the classics. I actually have a Gamecube and a PS2 right now. I did have a 360 a few years ago with Halo 3 and a few other games but that crapped. Besides just about every single PS3, Xbox and 360 game worth playing has been or will be ported to PC at some point.

Not to say I don't miss the exclusives though. I'm definitely feeling the hurt with games like Halo 3 and Killzone 2 remaining console exclusive and whatnot, but PC always has some awesome equivalent that's just as good with better graphics and gameplay. Halo 3? FEAR 2(not puppy console FEAR 2 either). Killzone 2? Crysis. I personally prefer gaming on a PC over any other platform. Even if most new titles are ports now, we still get better graphics, controls, extra content, and multiplayer.

Honestly Crysis pwns anything ever to come out on a Console. They just don't have the horsepower or memory to play something so wide-open, deeply detailed and graphically stunning. Sure consoles can have their bright moments, but nothing that's matched what we've had on PC for years.

@Sam

The actual port itself was pretty good. Superior graphics with AA support(I dunno how but it works with this build of Unreal Engine 3) and the performance was solid enough to have it playable at all high with a 7600GT at 1280 res. Even the controls and translation to PC were fine and dandy. The problem is that they built a death clock right into the game. When your system clock reached a certain date the game just suddenly stopped working. This was a big deal in the news mind you. Epic refused to fix it so for thousands of people a relatively new game does not work at all. Every time I want to play I have to set my year back to 2007... Needless to say that is the last Epic game I will ever pay for.

 

I thought you already had, we've been discussing it for how long?

and I think you're missing out, severely.
As for the whole console thing, the PS3 and xbox 360 are finally on their own merits as gaming machines at last - Bluray players are so much cheaper than the PS3 that the PS3 being a Bluray player isn't pulling the sales weight it used to. The xbox 360 HD-DVD addon having been shelved that solves that issue.
There are stereotypical arguments from both sides, a lot of which I agree with. Early xbox 360 hardware reliability was inexcusable, but the newer revisions are vastly improved, yet are tarred with the same brush due to past problems (understandable). The HDD space of the 360 being relatively easily changeable, and potentially so high does it favours, but the limiting size of DVD9 discs count against it. Fact is, to buy a new bit of PC hardware I need to see where the existing one is insufficient, which could be in any demanding game - upgrading it may well improve lots of games I already own. Buying a new console requires me to want a game I can't otherwise have (which there aren't many of due to the crossovers on 360 and PS3) and then it's justifying paying that much to get one of those games, or however many from that list I'm desperate for (not many) - the rest are simply "ooh, now I can get this, that might be cool" which at £40 per disc is of very little importance.

This is essentially it, and why i don't want this to be a console v console forum. Ideally, I would have all three. Eventually, I do intend that to be the case. Obviously the 360 I already have for Rock Band purposes, the Wii and PS3 are battling it out to be the next one in line. The most likely winner to me, now it's been price-dropped, is the Wii.
As far as I'm aware, no, L4D1 was PC and 360 only. One of the reasons for that is how much more difficult PS3 games are to program than 360 ones.

There's nothing wrong with that, but sadly it's the opposite way round. There are no truly fast AMD CPUs, they're all just really cheap to make up for it.
I am as sceptical as many about the Lucid chip but I know too little about it to say one way or the other, the proof is in the results for this one.

Guess you don't keep up with the news. AMD, while being weighed down by the failings of past generations are slowly recovering from their financial woes, while nvidia's shares slump day by day and they're heading for real trouble. The HD4 series from ATI did them no favours at all!

As far as I'm aware, it's 32 lanes not 48. 48 would be nice, but very expensive!
Omega: A PS3 emulator may work already, but it will require being omni-threaded, with 8 teamed 4 core i7 Xeons at 6+ Ghz to produce 10-12fps in it, if it was as well coded as the best emulators for the other consoles right now (which have had 5+ years of development)

Jeff: I've not heard of an Xbox emulator, only PS2 and Gamecube/Wii. The PS2 ones seem to work reasonably well, just for a small selection of games. The gamecube ones work ish, but don't yet have working sound and the performance isn't yet high enough on current CPUs to make them playable.
Never realised there was a death clock in the PC GoW. I wonder what for? Mind you I'm guilty of playing with a cracked exe, so that may well have bypassed it - I certainly didn't have to change the clock to play in late 2008 (when I last ran it).

 

i dont think there will be anyproblems with nvidia. as much as US enthusiasts perfer price/performance, MOST people just see nvidia and are content, esp due to their fav games have a TWIMTBP. also ION and Tegra are/will beome huge!

i mean with tegra getting into the Zune HD and the new samsung PMP, and soon phones they will be generating alot of revenue from that.

I wonder when PC games will come in bluerays?

 

in a lllooooonnnnnggggg lllloooonnnngggg time!

It took ages to get them on DVD because frankly for a fair few years after the launch of a format it's cheaper, easier and allows more of the market access if they're just on multiple discs.

 

it took them "ages" to get on DVD because it took "ages" after DVDs came out before games needed to be on DVDs. UT2004 was one of the first that didn't come on say 2CDs, and that was maybe 7 years or so after DVD players became common. Likewise, there are still relatively few 2 DVD games out there, once 2 DVD games are the norm and 3 DVD games become numerous, then bluray games will start becoming popular.

Remember, PC games have an advantage over consoles because the content can be compressed on the disk and decompressed when the games are installed.

 

didn't I just say that?

Sams a bit of an echo Gecko!

 

I don't recall stating any of the reasons you gave in your post unless I'm misinterpreting it.

 

I was slightly led into it by my massive urge to use echo gecko which I just made up!

Although it was the same just with different facts!