The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

I disagree. They cost more than they normally should, but given the direness of the competition, they cost an appropriate amount.

 

We really shouldn't encourage the companies that produce them...

 

We should. Without ATI, AMD would probably be sliding further towards bankruptcy. Not so long ago, I would have said ATI made the situation worse, but right now, the graphics side of AMD is a lot stronger than their beginnings.

 

Perhaps. How is their coding as of late? Last time I checked, it was scary to say the least. Please don't misinterpret. Believe me, my next GPU IS an ATI! As I'm sure you know, my future board, only supports Ati crossfire

 

Gtaphics drivers all have bugs to some extent. I wouldn't say ATI's drivers have been worse than nvidia's other than in Linux for several years, nor would I say they're that great.

 

So you would say, no matter which brand a person goes, there is always the risk of a Driver bug. Which is too bad. But, a reality! I suppose I should understand that better than most. I have experienced certain flaws, which I would attribute to the nvidia driver. If ati is at least equal in that respect, I should cut them more slack

 

There's only one real bug with ATI drivers that they refuse to cure at the moment. That is that if you are ever running two games simultaneously, the clock speeds will not return to 2D on the slave graphics cards, only the master. The only problem this creates is more power usage/heat/noise at the desktop, an issue for the HD4870X2, but would go unnoticed on an HD5850/5870 except for on your power bill. Clearly, this issue cannot affect single cards as well. Other than that it's the usual X/Y/Z game isn't optimised for dual graphics.
Crossfire gets a bad rap for game support but it's much better in the last year or so than it has been, and most importantly, the game I play at least 50-70 times as much as any other that requires dual graphics is Left 4 Dead, where crossfire scaling is up to 100% for dual cards and at least 200-220% for quads. Contrast that to SLI which essentially makes no difference, two GTX285s may as well be one GTX285. That's a big plus point for me using Crossfire over SLI.

 

if nvidia was doing it sam, there would have been outrage but most people on lots of forums dont mind the price becuase ATI are an underdog.

we really shouldnt encourage high prices, competition or not. hell Intel dont have competition for the 920 but its still a good price at £200.

yes amd are doing better know due to ati but for a long peroid they wernt, and didnt have the money to due that to compete with intel. personally the 1.25b payout by intel and global foundries are the reaosn AMD madea profit this year (and then only just about). not sure if they will next year, as there wont be another 1.25b injection.

ATI drivers, for me as a single card user (even with my one 4870x2) have been perfectly fine. id assume the problems would come with more than one card, btu thats to be expected.

and lolowut at SLIGTX285 being a single GTX285. even more lolwut at 200-220% scaling for quad cards. thats a real fail.

 

I wouldn't encourage price gouging. After all, given the lack of competition there's nothing to stop ATI charging MARS295 prices for the HD5970. Given the sales of the MARS, and the availability of the HD5970.
Frankly, for what they are, the hd5850,5870 and 5970 are reasonably priced. Annoyingly expensive, but still reasonably priced. Ho hum. The fact that ATI are willing to drop prices if the GTX480 is competitive is reason enough not to doubt them.
What you say is right, not so long ago AMD propped up ATI, now it's the reverse.
I only forsee AMD making a profit next year if they either release an amazing new CPU, or if ATI do well enough to prop up AMD again for the whole year.
What's a real fail? The GTX295 doesn't come close to matching the 4870X2 in Left 4 Dead, but 200-220% scaling as an at least hardly seems fail to me.

 

Hey, Jeff sent me an invite and I jumped in with him and some friends on Left 4 Dead 2 last night. That was fun! They talked a lot about Mass Effect, lol.

Hmmmm. So you HAVE noticed some rate of fire tweaking.

Other L4D2 news: I thought I was doing great finally learning how to get through Mall on expert - hugging the walls (keep your back to a wall at all times is my motto, which was working pretty well for Jeff and me when we were left with two bots.)

Then last night Anubis, a "deep south accent guy" (he out-souths Ellis by a huge margin - I can barely understand him half the time, lol) jumped in on Mall, and had us rushing through it.

Jeff - that happened right after you left.

So for the Mall rush, we just kept going, shooting anything in front of us, and not worrying about what was behind us. I jumped into the room on the right not knowing where the other guys were, after climbing the broken door, and promptly got incapped by a huge horde that I wasn't expecting. Anubis came back, got me up, and after healing we caught up with the rest of the guys who had already run the alarm and were waiting outside the safe room.

I thought I was so great learning, after hours and hours, to do it the slow plodding way - but the rushing was almost too easy by comparison. I think I'll try that a bunch more times, haha.

Oh my god - I don't even see 2560x1600 anywhere on the chart!!

Kevin, what are you talking about? Haven't you heard about all those Xbox 360s that Al-queda has ordered for training purposes?

LOL

ditto me on all of that!

HAHAHAHAHA!!

Yeah, I know you're a hardcore Dragon Valley chinese sniper, Jeff, lol.

 

Let's not forget, the sort of frames cards are pushing in the BBC2 Beta are no worse than they are in Crysis, but most multiplayer FPS games require a higher frame rate to run smoothly than Crysis. The specs I've stated are for a minimum 60fps in the game, i.e. it running absolutely smoothly. In Crysis we can live with a lot lower than 60 in parts, sometimes as low as 28 without much incident, which is the tolerance that allows dual 5970s to pass the 30" Max detail settings, and that's without AA. The BBC2 benchmark is including AA.

 

If I can find decently high settings that let me keep a minimum of 30 I'll be ecstatic. I prefer over 60 if possible but I can make exceptions for monsters like this

The graphics do look amazing by the way. I'm excited to see it up and running on my own rig.

 

At 4xAA, assuming 80% crossfire scaling (about standard) you should be able to pull off around 30-31fps minimum at 1920x1200. But ew, 30fps in a game like Battlefield?

 

Anyone know a good low profile card, has to be nvidia (not fanboyism) due to a particular board(Chipset) not meshing well with ati. And above all, it has to have an HDMI output. How much am I looking at?

Sam, you know my dilemma. Rather than run a vga to Hdmi adapter, a card could be a better route. Especially since BD files, and discs will be played on this HTPC. Is there a sweet Nvidia Low profile card out there? Gotta run cool and quiet too. No gaming/light gaming.
Thanks in advance

currently looking at these.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...mpareItemList=N82E16814143208,N82E16814143203

LOL! never mind the 9400. No hdmi...

 

there is a GTS 250 low profile, though will take 2 pcie slots.

 

This is essentially what I'm working with. Though the board is in an HTPC case now.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167009

 

Well this one is certainly cheap.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125289
I wonder if it's a good idea though. The HTPC currently has its stock HEC Power supply. And we all know what kind of power GPU's demand LOL! From the reviews I've read about the HEC PSU, its not a question of if it will die, it's simply a question of when. The PSU is doomed. Sure wish Corsiar or another PSU manufacturer would make a respectable HTPC PSU.

I really should wait though, and see how the VGA to HDMI cable does. It might be within reason.

 

I'm kind of like Jeff - if I can get 30fps I'm halfway happy, lol.

Speaking of Estuansis, the Dragon Valley chinese sniper dude, I went back to a full day of BF2, to see what effect the 2 gigs of Ram would have on the several-second skipping I used to get (making flying the helicopter not practical, lol.)

NO MORE SKIPPING! I'm doing a lot of helicopter flying - not that good but you should have seen me a couple years ago, lol. I even tried a couple rounds on the jets, but I suck worse than a couple years ago - I'll have to get back to the rhythm of gentle left turn banking. I see these guys flying loops - there are some really good jet flyers out there (who dominate the game with massive bombing runs.)

MISSING TEXTURES, AND MISSING SERVERS ON BF2
But there were only two servers on my servers list - hey everybody - has the entire world installed the 1.5 2 gigabyte patch - which is maybe why there are no servers? I am downloading that patch right now, which provides new maps and also widescreen support, and fixes some connection problems - maybe like the one I was experiencing.

But I am missing textures on some maps - is that because at 2 gigs I still don't have enough memory (I have 512mb on the 3850 card) or is it because I was trying to run too high of a resolution at over 2400 x 1400 - something like that in 16:12 format. I decided to drop down to 1920x1200 and then I noticed no widescreen support, which is when I found out about the patch. At 1920x1200, that is much fewer pixels than I was trying to run, so I am hoping the missing texture issue will get itself solved.

COD4 TOO MANY SERVERS
Speaking of servers, I had never backed up my COD4 ranking folder (I just found out on google where it is) so because my hard drive was wiped out, I now have to build back up again from private - I was a 5 star general before like shaff!

As you see, I decided to started playing COD4 mp again, and the first weapon they give you is a 3-round-burst M16a4. Man, that is deadly! I remember two years ago hating that weapon, and being very surprised when on some YouTube videos it occasionally popped up as a favorite weapon on some lists.

But I'm giving it a fair run this time. The L4D2 SCAR rifle has given me a new appreciation for 3-round burst rifles.

The COD4 M16 doesn't repeat the bursts however, so you have to keep hitting the trigger, but if I can get used to it I think I will have a nice weapon for one of my weapon classes.

The main problem with it is the iron sights - terribly small and you can't see sh*t! One of the worst iron sights in the whole game! Until you are able to upgrade the weapon to a red dot sight, that makes it a bad weapon for hard core servers, which don't give you a cross-hairs.

So to make things simpler for myself, and allow me more easily to stay away from hard core servers until I am back up to general ranking, I just uninstalled the game (and did not remove the settings, so my new small increases in ranking from a couple days ago didn't disappear.) At the same time, I didn't install any patches.

That leaves me with 800 or so servers, instead of over 10,000 - much easier to refresh and not so many hard core servers in that bunch. I lose the beautiful new Creek map, which I liked a lot. (I also lose broadcast and chinatown, which are okay but nothing special in my opinion, and killzone which I can't remember but I have the feeling it's another terrible Shipment type of sheer pandemonium.) I am pretty happy with the original complement of 8 or 9 very nice maps (except for the abominable Shipment) that come with the unpatched version.

So a year from now I'll be a 5 star general again, haha. I know that when I finally get it, I'll be a P90 spraying mad man again - but I'm also going to see if I can truly take advantage this time of the M16 3-round burst rifle.

Rich

 

hehe rich, upgrade to the 1.7 patch. PS you can use a patch to level up to 55.

PS hit me up on xfire when you play so ill play with you

 

Question: Will EVGA GeForce 9800 gtx graphic card fit into an HP Pavillion M7590D CPU? Coz I'm planning to get it but at the same time, worried that it won't fit inside my CPU. Here's an inside look of my CPU:



As you can see, the inside of my CPU is pretty cramped. So guys, do you think that the EVGA GeForce 9800 gtx graphic card will fit?

Thanks in advance