The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

1920x1200 is as high as I would need to go as well

 

I'd say it's a very good resolution at present. I'd imagine that it looks agreeable on a 2560 x 1600 monitor as well. I'll know in a few months I bought a BFG GTX 260. It's been rock solid since day one. One of my best components next to the Phenom II Deneb 940!

 

You'd like it to be nvidia, yet two of the three cards you've chosen are ATI...
To be frank, there's very little from nvidia worth buying right now. That's not to say none of their products are any good, it's just that all of their products are very overpriced now, you pay a lot extra to get an nvidia version of something.
The HD4890 is by far the best offering there, it's much more powerful than the other two cards. It's DirectX10.1 vs the GTX260's DirectX10, but the HD5770, though slower, is DirectX11. That tradeoff is up to you, but the HD5770 should be cheaper.
All graphics cards, if they don't have an HDMI port on them, come with an HDMI dongle, so you will always have an HDMI output.

 

I'd personally jump on a 4870 due to the dropped prices but the 5770 looks like the current mid range leader. 4890 is still a great buy though. One of my friends just picked one up and they are fast.

 

2/3 are ATI because those are the cards that fit in my budget. I don't really have a preference for either, I just currently have an Nvidia card and it has been great. I noticed all of the Nvidia cards were way overpriced which is why I had picked out the two HD cards. I don't plan on upgrading from XP for quite some time so DX 10.1 is just fine for me. (XP supports 10.1 right?)

I think I will be going with the HD4890. I assumed that if you used a dongle for HDMI that it would not carry audio and that native supported audio.

Thanks everyone for your input. Happy holidays.

(Just checked the benchmarks on the 4890.. :0 it outshines the gtx260 in almost everything except when playing the last remnant and h.a.w.x )

 

well XP can only do dx9, and TBH between dx9 and dx11 there is hardly any difference.

go with the 4890, it should be cheaper than the 5770 but much more powerful.

 

Haha that's right. vista was a big deal because it had DX10. I have been out of the loop for about 2 years now so pardon my ignorance.

 

In Vista/Windows 7 HAWX is the game where the HD4890 has the biggest lead of all over the GTX260 this is what DX10.1 does, not so much getting better graphics, but better performance. DX11 would offer substantially better graphics, but hasn't been used to any good effect in games yet since very few games started their production after DX11 was made available. When that time does come, Windows 7 will be more commonly recommended for gaming systems.

 

What's your opinion on HAWX? I just watched a trailer on that. Looks pretty intense XD

 

Not tried it yet. It seems like the kind of game best enjoyed with a joystick, which I don't currently have :S

 

It's on par with ace combat 5. The graphics are definitely not nearly as good as AC6 but they are at least located in real places.

I enjoyed it. But the "assistance" view mode was a terrible idea. There was no need for it to be added. Granted I played it on the 360 with a 360 controller so that could factor in the difference in graphics.

I am somewhat of a flight sim enthusiast ever since MSFS95.. h.a.w.x is definitely not as over-the-top as ace combat.

 

Agreed HAWX is great but Ace Combat 6 is on another level. My friend got it with the Ace Edge flightstick and it is wicked.

 

Hmm, I may have to consider this, whenever I find the free time to do so... :S

 

Yeah the models and textures are near photo-realistic. I watched it for 3 hours last week absolutely awed by the attention to detail on the planes. Fun game and better dogfights than HAWX.

 

HAWX is terrible imo because I can't get used to itsflight controls and method. The "assistance off" view and control is awful and useless to me and that pretty much kills the game for me.

AC6 is superior in almost every way and a heck of a lot of fun to play The biggest drawback is the ground textures suck compared to HAWX, but I'm rarely paying attention to it anyway X)

 

The controls are almost the exact same, save for a few button uses. You aren't forced to use the crappy camera view other than in the tutorial so it's not really that big of a deal either. HAWX was really fun actually.. just not as good as AC6.

HAWX does have flares though which are quite useful. I don't recall if AC6 has them or not.

 

Interesting - I think I was saying "Hunting Rifle" but really meaning Military Sniper rifle - the one with 30 rounds per clip.

And since that post I have played the concert finale two or three more times using that 30-round sniper rifle. It worked out very well. No doubt it is a great weapon. Other than concert finale, I tend to take AK over the military sniper rifle though. However, on Dark Rain the other night, after all being killed by a tank on the return trip near the playground, when we started out of the stormy safe house again, I held back a bit as the other three were already on the roof ahead. When they got horded, I stayed where I was blasting all the zombies running toward them with AK.

Suddenly the tank music started.

I went back inside and grabbed military sniper rifle. It was dark as all get out, but the tank showed himself across the way on the roof for long enough for me to get off almost a full 30 rounds into him. Then he dropped off into the rainy darkness.

I switched weapons and climbed up to join them, the tank music providing dramatic accompaniment to the roaring thunder. He showed himself again - I let him have it. As he collapsed in a heap on the roof, I muttered to the team, "I knew that bi*ch couldn't have had much life left - I was able to nail him with almost the entire sniper clip before grabbing AK."

WHERE TO DO BATTLE ON SWAMP - AFTER OPENING AIRPLANE DOOR!
Hey - speaking of tank - I have a great tip on where to hold out during the airplane door crescendo event in the Swamp Fever campaign!

We were about to trigger opening up the airplane door to get out on the wing, but we could hear the tank growl. It sounded like he was just on the other side of the airplane. The idea of fighting the hordes and the tank at the same time was not appealing, but we couldn't get a visual on the tank to start him.

So after a few minutes of wondering what the hell to do, we decided to fall back to the clump of land in sight of the plane, next to the sleeping bag. MAN! That was so easy to defend - they come from the airplane, or from the other opening, but not from directly behind. We easily beat the horde, tossing a couple molies. (I will not hold out on the airplane wing ever again!!)

MORE HUNTING RIFLES
I keep passing up the 15 round hunting rifles - but just the other day I asked myself why? If I like the 30 round rifle, why not pick up the 15-round, and replace my uzi until a better rifle comes along like SCAR or M16 or AK?

But Sam, I had no idea there was a difference in sound - I'll try to pay attention and see if I notice that.

I am quite impressed with the military sniper rifle's ability to drop a distant charger in 4 shots - like the magnum pistol can do close up. I assume the 15-round hunting rifles are equally as powerful - I'll have to test that out.

RIGHT-CLICK WITH MELEE WEAPON
Speaking of magnum, I rarely grab it anymore. After learning about the push-back ability of right-click melee weapon (the force of the push-back extends out about 6 feet and doesn't hurt teammates) I am much more effective at melee weapon now. The game allows you 5 right-click melees in a row before the slow-down timer kicks in. All you need is one or two pushes at a time - it is sooo effective.

CHAIN SAW IS NOT A GIMMICK!
That also means you can run around with noisy and fume-emitting two-cycle chain saw, and use right-click most of the time to conserve your gasoline. I kind of hate the noise it makes - but it is THE most effective left-click melee weapon of all - especially great for the challenging gate-run in the chapter after roller coaster.

Other than chain saw, my favorite is katana. In truth I will usually grab katana and stay with it, unless that gate run is coming up. Then in order, I like machete, then axe, then guitar, cricket bat, baseball bat, police stick, and finally frying pan, lol. Did I miss any?

ROLLER COASTER - SPLIT THE TEAM!

Yeah - same here. I was so bored doing that roller coaster run over and over and over. On Expert, that swan boat love ride chapter, culminating in roller coaster, requires a very tight team.

Even on Advanced, I am finding the roller coaster works best if I can convince somebody to follow right on my butt and back me up against smoker or hunter, as I run with sword or axe. On full health I take a shot as the gate opens, and that makes me faster than anybody else on the team. We let the other two follow up. Doing it that way, all four of us got into the safe house the last time. Not doing it that way - falling back to help revive comrades - we all got killed!

Haha. I took a look, Jeff - in all sincerity I think that picture looks pretty good. I like your partial beard and your kewl rectangular hippy style glasses. "Wisconsin accent - Deal with it!" Hahaha.

You look like the one of the crew who are responsible for creating these video games that we all love so much!! Speaking of looking like a techno expert - how is your computer shop job working out?

By the way - if you guys have not seen it - GO SEE AVATAR! When they make a video game out of it - assuming it's a great crysis-quality effort - that will definitely take me one more step away from World War II!

HAWX vs AC6 - captured in PAPERPORT
That discussion, stemming from what card andmill should pick up (looks like between Kevin and Shaff and Sam and Red Maw that all leaned toward 4890) was quite interesting. I web-captured the visible portion of part of the page as a PaperPort thumbnail in my Games folder. I can view the thumbnail full size - or double click and the imbedded link will take me back to the forum page, for when I finally have a rig that will run HAWX or AC6 (6 mos from now?). If you guys don't know about PaperPort 8.0 - it's just the most useful program I have ever owned, lol.

Rich

 

Yeah I like to dress retro. I actually have a better pic now. I am shaved and have my goatee trimmed up. It makes me look much more mature, TBH. And not to mention I'm dressed a bit better

Haha I thought you knew. I quit after about 2 months due to irreconcilable differences

 

AC6 has flares I think, never used them though lol.

I never did voice an opinion on the gpu, although I would concur with the others as you said (do you read minds? ); ati is the better choice right now. I'm still waiting for fermi and *prays* price drops.

 

What!! Why does that remind me of Tiger Woods and his wife?

"He likes to chase women and I don't like him to do that."

Yeah, I read minds - although I failed with Sam - I never would have guessed he's planning to build an nvidia rig, lol.

Well, I'm back to Wednesdays only - games and forum. The early afternoon several times a week didn't work out.

I have to make money for the new rig - unlike Jeff there are no irreconcilable differences between me and my boss since I am the boss - but that hasn't translated yet into money. Still no real estate sales, but I'm still doing okay with Zombieland's #1 Survival Rule - Cardio - two miles of easy going jogging every morning.

But on an exciting note (don't laugh guys) I finally traded out my P4 3.2 ghz processor for the 3.8 ghz $70 ebay 670 processor I bought a few months ago, cooling it with the $23 open box arctic freezer pro from newegg.

I ran 10 iterations of the Linx linpack series - took about an hour and a half - with 2mb of L2 cache versus my 1mb on my old processor - this new thing is 40% faster! My 3dmark6 (another round of - don't laugh) score jumped over 1000 points to around 6150 (two years ago would have looked respectable compared to Sam's leading 7000) and on the first test - Return to Proxycon - the frames were 35 fps in the pirate ship and low 20s in the photon gun battle, compared to low teens with the prior processor.

NEW PROCESSOR GIVES ME +5FPS ON L4D2
Putting the new processor to the test on Left 4 Dead 2: Just as I had hoped would be the benefit - I am picking up probably at least +5 fps - it is taking me out of the red low 20's to between 25-30 depending on the action, eliminating the slight lagginess that I was getting before.

(One last test will be with GTA4. With my old processor, I found about 6 months ago, that running at full 2560x1600 resolution improved graphics dramatically while only hurting my frames -2fps, running at a very laggy 10-12 fps. Interestingly enough, as I posted before, you can kind of play that game at that frame rate because you don't seem to feel it while you are driving, and even while in gun battles I was able to (not too smoothly) get the cursor up to the right spot to blast the bad guys in the head while I ridded the town of the most-wanted criminals. So now, with the new processor, and double the cache, I am hoping that my frame rate gets up to the high teen level - making the game much better.)

Well, now I'm off to the gaming computer. I'll be on Left 4 Dead 2 for the next 8 hours - maybe I'll see you guys there!

Rich