The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

No. My transmission can go to H3ll LOL! I've still only drained it and refilled it(with new filter). Almost instantaneously, it was worse. I plan on driving it into the dirt. Saving my money for a newer vehicle. I've found if I pay very close attention to what the speed sensor is doing, I can avoid problems, where I have to reset the computer brain(shut it off and restart the engine). Suffice to say, the car is doomed, and I refuse to be nickel and dimed

I'm a little slow about things sinking in sometimes. Selective memory

Never played "The mafia game"

 

That's right Rich, crysis is limited to 3 gpus not four, as when it came out nvidia weren't doing quad sli.

 

hahaha - 1000's wouldn't believe me regarding: 1. I haven't been scolded yet? (actually I think I recall Binkie telling me to "watch it" one time) 2. I remember language issues? ... Or, 3. I can't figure out who "sh" is? LOL

Oh oh, ddp, more potential language issues

Hahaha. Sorry for laughing, Kevin - you must have loosened up some REALLY thick sludge on the inside. Yeah, just watch that speed sensor, and wait until it throws a rod through the head!

Well, that shows them! That was one bit of sneaky "product placement" that didn't turn out to work so well (it kind of worked for a few years, lol, but the game was so overpowered, even triple sli wouldn't run it at highest settings with the nvidia cards of 2007, haha!)

Rich

 

mafia 2 demo on the PC.

Q6600 at 3.3 currently, stock GPU clocks with a single 512MB 4870 and im getting 40 FPS avg with the benchmark. fully maxed out without apex (1920x1200). happy with that. while playing the demo i mostly see 45-55 aswell.

 

Must be a reduced detail setting then, or a different part of the game, as the benchmark indicates a single HD4870 gets an average of 27fps with a minimum of 19, at 1920x1080, without APEX.

 

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=982

Holy cow this is interesting.


BFG tried to sell ATI cards without becoming an ATI partner, buying wholesale products and having them manufactured by a third party, with a BFG label applied.
Needless to say, when ATI got wind of that they weren't impressed, and blocked them from selling the cards unless they became an ATI partner.
I imagine nvidia would have sued them into the ground if they tried to become an ATI partner. That's an astonishing bit of news. Gets me guessing if it had anything to do with BFG's demise as a graphics producer.

 

ill screen shot it when i get back on the pc. Minimum in single digits but when playing the game it was very smooth, didn't feel any

 

You didn't feel single digit frame rates being laggy? Lol

 

45-50 is what i got on my 5770, however i purposely piled up cars and got a semi truck shot the gas tank twice and my frames took a dip into the yellow around 18FPS and didn't even notice it didn't feel like 18. with Apex on my frame rates where constantly in the yellow 24~10 sometimes into the red from 10~1 during car pile up explosions.


in all honesty i didn't see a difference in Graphics or Physical interaction between Apex being on and it being off. the hood caps fly off the same the bad guys hit the ground the same. no Light contained in a volume, no godrays not even more realistic smoke volume.

its like i hadn't turned it on at all.

 

nop dont feel the "lag"

it only shows single digit minimums on the bench. who knows how accurate that is.

 

DX11 seems to have a big impact on the test as far as I can see, as the HD5830 would normally score 30% above an HD4870, but in Mafia 2 while it gets the same 30% boost for minimums, it scores 75% higher for averages.
Like DXR, gameGPU note that APEX is of little effect graphically, much like most implementations of PhysX. GameGPU have produced a bench for the Lost Planet 2 beta, this should be interesting. My PC can't even play the first one properly yet

 

So all you guys playing this Mafia demo - shaff, dxr, sam - is it any good? Is it another GTAIV - what kind of a game is it?

From what DXR said I guess you have a lot of cars crashing together - and ...?

Where's Estuansis with one of his great game reviews?

I noticed Crysis 2 coming next spring - set in New York City - CryEngine 3 - how stressful is that game going to be? And I noticed Medal of Honor coming out pretty soon about the War in Afghanistan - the multiplayer video looked pretty good - how does anybody feel about how it will compare with BC/2?

UPGRADE THIS YEAR, MAYBE
Miles the animator dude actually stopped by yesterday for about 10 minutes for the first time in years - he found himself in South Orange County on business - he lives in LA. I showed him my gaming/business trailer. He mentioned that I should pick up his "broken" tower the next time I came up - the one with the 9450/9550 (he can't remember which) and the Rampage board.

"BROKEN"

Now I remember - it started acting up - so the tech guys told him that they had been having probs with that motherboard, and they just shipped him the i7 tower that he's using now.

Well, I'll have a go at it and see if I can fix it. Miles is an animator whiz, but he's not into hardware. I might take it over to Mo's place and put it up on his bench while we chat - he probably can slip a spare used 775 mobo in it to help me see if the rest of the rig works: psu, cpu, memory, etc.

DDP is pressuring me to have at least 10,000 3dmark6 points by end of January

Hey Sam, I mentioned to Miles that you had posted about playing Alien Swarm, where you noted a few weeks ago that the game needed more content. Miles had been animating that game - remember a long time ago that I said I couldn't say much but I saw him working on a top-down coop? Anyway, Miles told me that the decision to release it for free might have been a mistake - he said everybody LOVES the game. So I suggested that Valve think about releasing a $9.99 expansion pack.

Anyway, I didn't think much of it when I saw him working on it (come to think of it, I didn't think much of Left 4 Dead in development either - I sure can pick 'em, right?) but now I'll definitely have to download it and check it out on my gaming weekend.

Rich

 

its not in any way like GTAIV, mafia is more mature and not to mention the story is much better. if you haven't played the original mafia you should it was a great game on its own.

one of the things i like about mafia 2 is that they added a simulation style to the cars mechanics you can feel the power as your 57 chevy spins out of control, or those long car drives leave your gas tank empty or when you can stop the enemy with a well placed shot to the gas tank it wont blow them up, but they'll run outta gas soon enough.

Classic cars,dark gritty storyline, and playboy center folds ready to collect. i like it all but you might not, grab the demo play it yourself.

 

I've not played the game myself, I just posted a benchmark result. It sounds a lot like another game that can wait until I get a graphics upgrade. Games that I'm not losing out by not playing multiplayer I will treat as single player games, and SP games can wait until I can play them smoothly on high detail. Judging from the benchmark, Mafia 2 is certainly going to be on the waiting list.
Crysis 2 is seeing a console release I believe, so it will be more scaleable than the previous Crysis games. However, they were already pretty scaleable by comparison to most games. I'd imagine that maxing the game out would still be a bit more demanding. A few games have surpassed Crysis in different areas of hardware demands, so Crysis 2 could potentially put the series back at the top of the list.
An Asus board with problems, go figure! lol - if it already has a GPU in it, a new board swap-in should work fine, assuming it is the board that's at fault. No need to spend anywhere near as much as the Rampage.
I'd say personally that Alien Swarm is considerably more demanding than the Left 4 Dead games, I'd imagine the most demanding game Valve have released. Whether that's due to some dodgy code they'll fix later or if it is a genuinely demanding title, I'm not sure. Either way it gets pretty laggy on high settings on both my Q9550/HD4870X2x2 system and my friend's i5 750/HD5870 system. Disabling AA seems to have little effect on the frame rate, so we're thinking it's perhaps a CPU issue. Not promising for your P4 I'm afraid.

 

Nice review - I never heard of the first one - I WILL check it out some day, thanks.

Yeah, Sam, they say that Crysis 2 will hit xbox and ps3, as well as PC.

Hahaha. Asus is now living up to its new bad rep, huh?

Yes, it has a graphics card with it - I think he had mentioned originally, a few months ago, something about an 8800. How would that stack up versus the 500 mb 3850 I have right now, just out of curiousity?

In terms of isolating just the motherboard, I have my old p4 3.2 ghz 775 to test it with, and a really old but working pci video card (my info says the rampage has two pci slots) from an ancient 200mhz that I keep under my test bench table for whatever. If I can prove that it is definitely just a bad motherboard - then I'll be asking for mobo advice, and later, how soon I should upgrade the nvidia card depending on my finances.

Well I guess I won't be doing much playing of alien swarm - maybe just a quick look-see at low res since Miles did a little work on it (like I say I was wayyyy not impressed when I saw what he was working on, but me being unimpressed during development is now almost a certain sign that the game is great, lol.)

Valve picked up the game when they brought a new guy on board, decided to work on it, then changed their minds and decided to give it away for free, and as I mentioned before, now Miles says that people LOVE it. Do you like it Sam?

The fact that it is a power hog for what you get, may indeed be the result of lack of the normal optimization that Valve would have done to the product, to maximize the ability to run on weaker platforms.

(By the way I don't think I'm breaking any rules - I certainly hope not - by recounting that one of the guys responsible for the gorgeous facial models on the movie Avatar recently joined the good folks up there in Seattle, so we should ultimately see the benefit of that on future Valve releases.)

Rich

 

Depends which 8800 it is. If it's an old GTS (320/640) or a GS (384), then it's not really much better than your current 3850. If it's a GT, it's a reasonable improvement. If it's a newer GTS (512) or a GTX (768) then it's quite a sizeable improvement.

 

The slowest 8800 ever made would bend your 3850 over the table. No question at all. The entire system would be roughly twice as fast as your in games with he slowest 8800 and a CPU upgrade..Put it this way, you stand to improve vastly from any CPU upgrade you could make. Even with the 3850 your framerates will double instantly.

 

That's not true at all. The AGP interface doesn't harm the HD3850 much, and the 8800GS and HD3870 were roughly comparable so the HD3850 isn't exactly far behind. The CPU upgrade would make all the difference in the world, but not every 8800 is going to give him a huge leap in graphics performance.

 

Yes but no matter what he still stands to gain. I know the 8800GS isn't hugely faster but it is an improvement. I meant that any 8800 plus a CPU upgrade, will be an amazing improvement.

Also, Alien Swarm is graphically impressive. It uses a differed lighting system like Metro 2033 so I would imagine it is demanding. In middle of downloading it as we speak. Will be back with more on it later.

 

Alien Swarm I find very consistent. Some areas I can get as much as 440fps and others I can get as little as 14, with seemingly little to differentiate the scenes in terms of graphical demand. Either way it looks stunning, shame it's not as well optimised as other Valve titles past. It's also a severe shame they aren't developing additional content for it, as the game would be excellent with a wide variety of campaigns, as it stands it's like the DLC for Left 4 Dead being the entire game, i.e. a great game ruined by lack of content.