The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

I'm slightly peeved by the lack of native x64 software I'm in possession of. I had a gander earlier and I have just 1GB in my 'program files' and 75GB in my 'program files (x86)' Does anyone actually have any decent x64 stuff that replaces x86? Or is there simply no advantage to 64-bit (other then RAM booost) until the programmers WAKE UP!

 

Crysis and console emulators - about all I can think of at the moment, since I don't use any professional software as such.

 

Well, I've been off actually trying to do something that will earn money for the new rig - although I can see that skeptical Sam doubts any such project will ever be finalized. Just wait and see!

Today I made the first set of "short sale" real estate phone calls in more than six months. I'm on the second week of confining gaming just to Wednesdays again. I actually have a tie on today - same thing last Saturday. That's a good sign - puts me in a business mood.

I plan to do the "tie thing" every weekend - it's my defense against my very negative drywall brother (UCLA honors math grad - the guy who is doing the Cad/Cam stuff for his construction company) who often drops by on weekends. According to my new psychological theory, my construction brother needs to see me in a tie in order to re-establish the proper pecking order ("suits" - who are usually the owners - are generally on top in the construction business) otherwise his rather caustic view of life, augmented by being surrounded by dim-witted rednecks all day, tends to damage my new-found sales enthusiasm, lol. (Dreams of the new rig propel me forward!)

Apparently - as my new "insight" holds - seeing me in jeans and a two-day old stubble gives him free rein to vent his workplace frustrations - and then I hear things such as how our close relative, Miles, the animator dude, has ruined my life by turning me onto video games, lol.

Completely changing subjects, catching up with you guys provided an ususual surprise.

Hahaha. This thread can be vastly entertaining from time to time for reasons that have nothing to do with the great technical information that is regularly shared.

Now it seems to me, that the particular Keith comment above would lead one to believe that Keith is the sort to avoid a confrontation.

WRONG!

Apparently Keith likes a good fight as much as anybody and promptly takes on Sam.

It started innocently enough:

Referring to his opinion that it will take a loooooong time before we see games on blue ray disks:

That Keith comment made sense to me - for a while I used to look for the CD version of a game so I could later pass the game on to little 12-year-old Fernie who didn't have a DVD player.

But Sam rejoined:

That also made a lot of sense.

Then, with an "En guarde" Keith lunged:

Very nice twist of the tongue, I have to hand it to you, Jonny boy.

Sam wasn't about to take that lying down:

Hmmmm. Well, the two arguments didn't exactly sound the same to me either.

But Keith holds his ground (sort of):

Well, when those massive urges strike ... you might see me a day later after 15 straight hours of ... whatever video game I'm hooked on at the moment. "Echo Gecko" only comes but once in a generation, so I don't mind Keith looking for any excuse to share it with the world!

Sam sees the emotion behind Keith's initial lunge, but falls back to the simple facts:

Spoken like a true gentleman and a diplomat!

And please, don't for a minute, either of you, think that I am on the attack - I just can't pass up the opportunity to have a little fun at both of your expense.

But truly, that was a particularly enjoyable Sam and Keith joust!

Changing subjects:

Say what? 3,000,000,000. Holy moly!

Wow, that would upset me too. But how can the information about how many times a game has been installed, be burned onto a DVD? If it is in the registry somewhere that key should be able to be removed. And out of curiousity, why did you install the games so many times - was it on different platforms - plus different operating systems? Again, I don't see how they could burn info like that onto the DVD - what if you were installing from a reader-only DVD player without writing ability?

Wow, nice information about new results for 5870 outperforming the 285.

Rich

 

A server is recording how many times your particular Game KEY has been used. I hope that doesn't happen with my GTA IV. I'll be very angry. Its likely that i'll install it at least that many more times.

 

Hey Kevin, thanks for clarifying that for me. Nice new slogan - you throw no stones, lol.

So when Jeff installed Bioshock again, the installation went on-line and told the server. Why didn't he just install it without being connected to the internet? Hmmmm. GTA4 is probably the worst - you can't even save where you are in the game without being connected to Windows Live and that Rockstar Social Club bullsh*t, hahaha.

Following Sam's link to Fudzilla, and the Eyefinity 6-screen display, I finally see Hawx - so that is what it looks like as you fly around and shoot missiles and such.

Hmmmmm. Awesome!

I was reading that AMD/Ati is working with Samsung to develop monitors with ultra-thin bezels to minimize the monitor to monitor gap! I wonder what I could get on ebay for my Dell 30" (just kidding!)

 

I suddenly don't feel so bad about not buying games anymore; that's total BS.

 

I understand where your coming from Red Maw. However, I don't regret buying GTA IV. I will give credit where credit is due. Its one of the most advanced games on the planet Should they try and deactivate my key...there gonna see a side of me that I'VE never seen LOL!

 

I'm not condemning buying games by any means. It's just when they do stuff like that it makes it makes me less likely to support them unless I really like the game.

 

Can you blame me? Don't make me go back and find the first post you made saying you'd shortly be buying stuff for it

Read them again, the 5850 outperforms the GTX285, and costs 20% less!
As for the Mass Effect thing, a lot of games have done this, mostly EA ones I think. When you install the game, it's mandatory that you go online and register your CD key for installation. That counts as an "install" - while you get one back if you officially uninstall, if you do what I do and reformat your PC without manually uninstalling your games first (let's face it, what's the point?) that's one of your 3 that you've lost forever. Consequently, I do not buy games that come with this DRM installed.

 

Mirrors Edge allows 5 installs but you don't have to have the disk to play and if you install it a 6th time it just locks the first install. So I've sold it but can still play just by re-installing it from the iso when it goes kaput. MASSIVE DRM FAIL!!!

EDIT: I'm not sure why I would want to play it mind.

 

Mirrors Edge was one of those games that looked fun but took so many hours and hours to get running properly I gave up. This was back in the days when X2 cards could still reverse crossfire. Thankfully that doesn't happen any more.

 

lol for me it kept crashing at the end of the silly server room level that's stupidly hard and every time it did it took me back to the start of it >:-|. I managed to *crawl* passed where it was crashing only to reveal I had wasted all the messing about for a frankly pathetic ending.

 

Hmmmm. DRM sounds REALLY bad. Kevin and Red are as upset as I am over what happened to $100 worth of Jeff's games.

So it's mostly EA games that use DRM?

When you're researching a game, Sam - where do you find out that it uses the DRM protection scheme? Is it printed on the game box cover? Is it on the web site?

Okay, I give up. What's a "yob."

 

DRM is really bad. It essentially skews things in favour of pirates. Those who legitimately buy games come off worse.
It's far from just EA that use DRM sadly, EA are just one of the popularised cases. As for what uses DRM, they're not really obliged to disclose on the box, you have to do your own research.
What's a yob? I thought that was an international term!
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Yob

 

I always forget about you foreigners coming over here using our sites.

I know AD's Finnish! It was a joke shhhhhhhhhhhh.

Wow pretty impressibe BTW

 

I've heard the servers are in texas, not sure though.

 

Well the companies based in Finland anyways it says so on the about bit at the bottom. No further down then that

 

No the servers are in Finland as well as far as I'm aware.

 

Okay I got curious and looked it up, they're in Houston - Texas - United States. Don't we all love useless info XD.

 

Ah ok, it's obviously just the web server that's in finland then.