The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Ok, so we'll wait for the drivers, to see if there is any imminent crysis-raping in our 30" dell future.

More from sam:

Are you up on what's going on, or are you up on what's going on? Where do you get those production and back-order numbers. I'm impressed.

We got on last week with Miles - the valve guy. He said "let's play realistic mode." He grabbed an axe and we were in the burning building - first campaign - dead center. Turns out that was a mistake. He "hated" the mall section - when we finished he said "what a nightmare!" Hahahaha.

He had play-tested with the valve guys the realism mode, on normal, but on parish, and another campaign whose name I forget. And he had loved it. But he did not like The Mall. We were trying to play at normal setting, then we beat a tank - and he got suspicious and pressed tab to see the difficulty - the game had glitched and we were on advanced. I said - "Well, then, that was a 7500 health tank we just had to battle with." He said "No wonder the damn thing was so hard to kill!" Later we got another 5000 health tank (back on normal setting) before the glass breaking crescendo run. We were out of ammo - but I had magnum - and mostly Miles and his buddies killed it in the hallway with axes and melee weapons. I was amazed any of us were alive - but nobody even went down. He said the melee weapons do major damage to a tank. Now THAT I did not know!

Before we finished that chapter - maybe the second or third time through as we got to the crescendo, he voted to drop to Easy. He just wanted to get rid of the damn chapter, lol.

Later last week he emailed me a link to a steam forum talking about Dead Center, and in particular, the Mall chapter - lots of great players have found that VERY HARD! One team, that beat the campaign on expert, realism, rushed that one chapter - with two guys making it to the safe house - the last one in at 1 health - in 3 to 4 minutes - after 10 failed repeats and over an hour trying it the regular way. So if all else fails - RUSH THE CHAPTER!!! hahaha.

(My brain isn't quite working yet - I got up early at 6:00 am to post - it's gaming day wednesday - and it's 48 degrees F in my trailer/office. Brrrrr! Wait - it was 48, now it's all the way up to 55 with the heat from my posting cpu - gaming cpu comes on in a short while.)

I knew lucid was too good to be true.

And Rush Limbaugh has officially joined the Communist Party!

You're out there on the bleeding edge - you're a scientist! I can certainly understand your frustration. Hmmmmm.

Kevin has joined the Left 4 Dead 2 movement:

And I know all you guys are playing it at better settings than myself - I'm 1440x900 with lots of stuff turned down or off, lol. But the good news is that I might start making real estate money - so I'm paying close attention to what Sam, the scientist, comes up with for gpu solutions.

Thanks for the link, sam. I used paperport to web capture the page - I'll read the whole thing later this week after gaming day today. I see some decent frame rates at enthusiast setting. But that's not the Very High setting, right - the one that really makes Crysis shine? As I recall you guys talking about it - there is Ultra high, that Jeff can get with some tweaks - and there is Very High, which is almost the same as Ultra High, and is stunning. Then, under that, are settings that are not so great - like Enthusiast, am I right?

THAT is very interesting! Windows 7 is starting to sound not too great to me. SSDs are now what - about $400 for the 150 gig version?

Hey Keith has some possible help:

Well, brrr, it's still freezing in here - about 58 degrees now. I could turn on the heater - but the gaming cpu will definitely warm things up - I'm going to start with Far Cry.

I'm going through the thing again on authentic. You know me, a glutton for punishment. It took me about 10 hours spread over two days to beat just one particularly bad section and all I kept thinking was: "I don't remember this being the hell that it is now!"

You trigger some destruction, then you take a phone call from the girl, you agree to wait in a ventilation shaft, then you have to get out of a control room with 6 heavily armored enemies outside, and another 6 coming in from a helicopter. I believe the problem was that I had tossed away the shotgun and the p90 (I had the silenced m5 instead - uses the same ammo - and I was playing the game with more stealth than I had ever used before - but it was a bad mistake to toss the p90.)

And the sniper was useless - two body shots wouldn't take those soldiers down - and they were moving around too fast for head shots. So on the second day, after my stiff fingers had relaxed (sound familiar Kevin?) and I was over yesterday's fatigue, I developed a pattern that seemed promising - it still took 4 hours and about 25 more attempts to jell for me.

Before triggering the explosion, drop the sniper rifle and drop the dead guard's pistol, leaving colt, m5, and rocket launcher. Shoot all 6 rocket launcher rounds out the door, before anybody tosses in a grenade, killing all first platoon of enemies. Rush outside, running over dead weapons, which will pick up a p90. Go prone on left behind a pillar - turn on cry vision - and try to pick off one as they first drop from the helicopter - which might cause them to head toward me from that one side (if they come from both sides I'm dead.) Then using strictly p90 on head shots - staying right where I am - try to take them out as they advance toward me. The P90, 50 very fast discharging rounds, is the go to weapon in that game. On my last successful attempt, I didn't make the mistake of assuming everybody was dead, as twice before when one guy was still silently waiting for me. I threw rocks. And more rocks. I threw so many rocks they could have built the Taj Mahal. Finally I figured out that I was safely alone, and I shot the lock off the ventilation shaft.

What a bi*ch! I went back and played it again later - I might do it again today also. But so far they have come from both sides on the 3 or 4 times I tried it - and no way can you beat it if that occurs. It's random every time - like the valve Director.

But what a great Crytek game for me - 2560x1600, everthing maxed, fireflies flickering around that I never saw before, colorful parrots, gorgeous plants, and very nice fire and smoke effects. Now I only need 15 times this 3850 horsepower, to see what the next Crytek game, 3 years newer (crysis) has in store for me!

- Rich

 

I disagree, having witnessed the third batch of F1s go pop at the last fragsoc. RAID arrays can't save all four drives failing at once...

There almost certainly will be, based on how Warhead performs.

Hear-say, and a quote from Bit-tech's review (on the back order numbers). The laser-calibration fault is well publicised, as it is responsible for the lack of early HD4770s, HD5800s and the GTX300 series.
The melee weapons in L4D2 do loads of damage, you can one-hit things like Smokers with them on Normal, and Smokers aren't that easily killed compared to the other specials.
So far I've played Dark Carnival, Swamp Fever and Dead Center, with a bit of Hard Rain. Yet to play The Parish.
Nono, Enthusiast IS the cream of the crop for Crysis.

 

Ohhhh, so that article you linked me to - that's the top quality graphics at 2560x1600 - fantastic!!!!!!

Then there's hope! That really is great news!!

Just finished about 8 hours of Far Cry. I'm leaving off where you are back on the islands - no weird monkeys to deal with - and you have to take down all the communication towers. I picked up the explosives - and that's probably enough Far Cry for a few weeks. Do you guys remember the sinking ship and having to battle the helicopter before you drown?

Hahaha. That's a fun one. The rocket launchers will do the trick if you're lucky.

But there is also another fun way to scare off that helicopter, that doesn't keep you on the boat.

I picked up a tip a few years ago from a Far Cry forum, that if you take a running jump off the back of the ship while triggering the explosive timer - and swim mostly near the surface - you actually CAN make it to that little island behind you without the blast killing you.

The advantage is that the little island is connected to the shore, and you can park a jeep there, slightly uphill on a little mound. That way you can use the jeep rocket launcher to do enough damage to the helicopter until it flies away.

Each way is fun.

Changing the subject, it sounds to me, Sam, that with the effort you’re putting in to get it to work, you have come around to liking Dragon rising as much as Keith and Jeff, am I right?

Rich

 

I'll be honest, I've not really played Dragon Rising since I last posted about it. I'll wait and see if there are some patches for it, and better crossfire support. ATi are upholding their usual tradition of not bothering with any crossfire profiles with the november driver release, but instead waiting until December's. We'll see how things go after that.
On the interesting side, the low fps until Alt-Tab or change Resolution bug affected Left 4 Dead 2 and the Demo as well, which I might have told you, and believe it or not that one affects all dual graphics users, not just Crossfire, but SLi as well.

 

So sorry to hear about your bad luck with the game. Crossfire has been working for me and so far it has been relatively bug free. I hold the game in high regard as far as realism and tactics go. Even the friendly AI has been competent enough to avoid total frustration. I hope you can have a better go at it after things improve. There will more than likely be a few patches seeing the history of it's predecessors.

Ahh yes so it remains in the full version? I had a similar issue with Modern Warfare 2. Except alt-tabbing caused it. I'd bring the game back up and my FPS would be halved. I just stare at the floor for a few seconds until my FPS slowly crawls back up and then the game plays normally. It might be another issue with dual graphics but I think it has something to do with video memory loading. It needs time to regain it's pre-rendered frame buffer or something along those lines. It may be similar with L4D2. Alt-tabbing out then back in may cause it to reload a certain amount. The loading code for resume might work vs the code for the first load not loading the game correctly.

 

The Crossfire bug is livable, it's the fact that the AI is among the worst I've ever seen coupled with the random bugs that puts me off. How you can live with the AI in that game I do not know. Co-op or no-op as far as I'm concerned.
As for MW2, can't say I've had that issue, but then I don't recall alt-tabbing, I just remember closing the game because of how irritating the performance was.

 

Well my wrist is doing much better. I'm thoroughly enjoying Left 4 dead 2! Liking the new enemies, weapons, gameplay in general! Only one thing worthy of noting was a rather repetitive line by one of the guys! "Get this thing off my back, Get this thing off my back, Get this thing off my back... I thought that was rather irritating, but shrugged it off after hearing it a few times. Are the witches slower about reacting in this one? I swear it seemed like she was rousing from a Drunken Stupor last time I saw her LOL!

LOL! I think he says, "Shoot this thing on my back"

 

I know what you're saying, though I don't think I've found it as repetitive yet. Considering the L4D1 alternatives were either 'get it off' or 'get it off me' it's not much to complain about.
Were you playing at daytime? Remember the daytime witches wander around aimlessly, though I do have to say I think the new witches take a bit longer to hunt someone down. They have done so successfully though, with the same deadly results.

 

HD5000 series stock


Scan
HD5750: XFX (512MB only)
HD5770: Asus
Ebuyer
HD5750: XFX (512MB + 1GB), Powercolor (1GB)
HD5770: OEM, XFX (B-Grade), Gigabyte
Aria
HD5750: XFX (1GB), Sapphire (1GB)
HD5770: Gigabyte, VTX, Sapphire
CCL
HD5750: Asus (1GB), Sapphire (1GB), XFX (1GB)
HD5770: OEM, Sapphire, HIS, XFX
OcUK
HD5750: Powercolor (1GB), Sapphire (1GB), XFX (512MB)
HD5770: HIS, Powercolor, Sapphire
Tekheads
HD5770: XFX, Sapphire
HD5750: Sapphire (1GB), Asus (1GB), VTX (1GB), Powercolor (1GB),
Specialtech
HD5750: XFX (512MB + 1GB)
HD5770: XFX
Dabs
HD5750: Sapphire (1GB), XFX (512MB)
HD5770: Sapphire
Novatech
HD5750: OEM (1GB), HIS (1GB), Sapphire (1GB)
HD5770: OEM, Sapphire, XFX
HD5870: HIS


At almost £400 delivered, the HD5870 from Novatech is not cheap, but the fact that it's in stock shows just how effective removing the HD5800 category from the 'browse by' section of the site is for consumers.
The popularity of the HD5700 series is taking its toll on stock, but fortunately it's not enough to create any problems - you can still buy either the 5750 or 5870 from pretty much any of the UK's component retailers from a board partner you like.

 

the prices are insane an not worth it!

 

That's interesting. I don't recall ever acknowledging that fact. I suppose it was around daytime when I spotted her...Hard saying, I was a bit intoxicated last night LOL! I can't believe a grenade launcher didn't take her down! Followed by a shotgun blast however...

 

LOL I get ya! I drink very seldom, but when I do I more than likely end up playing L4D

 

I'm leaning towards the Samsung I couldn't help but notice this: http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/high_end_drives.html
It's hard to find but the Samsung is on a really rather high 905 Points And the WD is only on 526.

 

Synthetic benchmarks. Think about those two words very carefully.

 

Yeah but such a gap must stand for something in the real world!

 

No, not necessarily. The Samsung HD502HJ scores higher than OCZ Vertex SSDs and WD Velociraptors. That's a 16MB cache 500GB drive. The test is meaningless.

 

Oh no! Not SSD talk again. You guys are gonna make me drool and jealous LOL!

 

LOL! Guess it didn't work this time...

 

^ wow that looks way better then on the 360 XD

 

Thats been downscaled a great deal too Almost cut in half!

I also tried throwing puke at her. She didn't like that LOL! She started glowing pinkish purple.