The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

It's Anandtech though, and I don't trust Anandtech.
I was looking at the Hexus review. Hexus don't review things very well, but there's no game where the GTS450 even equals an HD5770 in their tests.

 

Ahh. Fair enough

 

i trust anadtech, they seem to be spot on IMO and one ofthe best tech review sites. when they review something, they go in deep. And bittech have basically said the same thing.

umm 4850 speeds? i thought it was 4870 512 speeds?

 

i don't really trust any review sites, if you look at any of them its hard to tell who's telling the truth they all seem to point to there biased opinion.

 

Did you read the Bit-tech review? Seems like it's behind the HD5770 pretty reliably to me.
Can't see the HD5750 because for whatever reason they decided not to include it, yet include GTX470...

 

Well time for another review. Mass Effect 2 this time No randomness just gonna score it out.

Graphics: 9/10

Easily one of the more polished looking games I've seen and one of the best for textures and shaders. They have heavily improved it from Mass Effect 1 including (thankfully) much better textures and better AA support. Also of note is that the "film grain" effect used in the first game has been removed entirely. Mass Effect 2 includes many new lighting and shading effects not used in the first game and the end result is quite pleasing. My only complaint is that the FMVs are SD quality and quite blocky and ugly. They could have easily made them full HD without affecting the overall data footprint much.

Sound: 9/10

Not much new here from the first game. DirectSound means absolutely no configuration which is a particularly pleasing trend I'm seeing in newer games. Very nice on both 5.1 and headphones. Much like the first game, the music is above average for the genre and the voice work is very well done.

Gameplay: 8/10

One of the few places where I feel the first game had a(very very) slight edge. First off, you can transfer over your old Mass Effect 1 save. You still start at level 1 but choices made in the previous game have an impact on the story of the second one. Namely you meet a few old friends and enemies and news reports reflect your choices to certain degree. Definitely not essential to enjoy the game but it does help the world feel a bit more cohesive and complete. The combat has been improved drastically(now very much like Gears of War) and managing equipment has been made much simpler. Global upgrades means you no longer have to manage every single item in every character's equip screen plus all the mods to every single gun and the armor. Now you just have a global loadout and simply select which weapons each character uses. Upgrades and buffs are now implemented automatically which takes a lot of the chore out of party management. Also each character now only has two weapon specializations which means no longer managing the 4 or 5 weapons for every single of the numerous characters. Conversations have been made a little slicker by allowing more seamless options. Exploration is where I feel the game suffers a bit. The first game let you simply click "Scan" to scan a planet for resources. Now you have to manually run your cursor over the planets surface and send down probes whenever your sensors spike. As well as more hands-on scanning you must move your ship manually including between systems to find Mass Relays and fuel depots to purchase more fuel and probes. This gets a bit monotonous after a while. Also the grand wide open expanses of the first game are gone in favor of more closed-in combat based environments. There is no longer some sort of rover for exploration, you simply land on a planet and it puts you at the mission location. So missions have been made much more entertaining but overall space exploration has lost the slick feel of the first game.

Performance: 10/10

Performance is my favorite part of the game. The first game was a direct console port and did not translate very well. It was not very well optimised and only had partial support for AA. Mass Effect 2 runs better while at the same time looking better with AA. Needless to say it is locked at 60FPS at all times maxed on a single 5850 at 1920 x 1200 with 8xAA. Also manages the same with 4xAA on a single 4870 though it does dip a bit at times. Crossfire support is nearly irrelevant.

Overall: 10/10

Mass Effect 2 is a perfect example of what a sequel should be. Everything from graphics to gunplay to interaction have been improved greatly. As previously noted a few parts of the game could have used some work but overall this is a very polished and well thought out game. The PC translation is much better this time and it feels a lot less like a port and more like it was made for the PC to begin with. Highly recommended.

Just a note: You WILL feel very very lost with the story and characters if you haven't played the first game. Though I whole-heartedly recommend this game, I even more heavily recommend you play through the first one and copy over your save beforehand. It's totally worth it.

Also, Mass Effect 2 is in my current standing for Game of the Year. Play it.

 

You'd be surprised how much using HD FMVs ups the disk space count. True, SD FMVs in this day and age is poor and games like Crysis I believe used HD FMVs, but still, a decent bitrate 720p FMV, let alone 1080, is around 4500kbps. That's 2GB for every hour of video. If you have an FMV-heavy game, that's more than enough to push it onto two DVD9s.

For you maybe

 

The game has a fair amount of FMVs but over the entire course of the game it's only maybe an hour of video max give or take. The actual game is around 14GB and it comes on two DVDs so I see no reason why HD video is out of the question, even if they had to make one of the disks dual-layer. Every single new game I have seen in the last year or two uses HD FMVs and Mass Effect 2 is as new as they come. Really seems out of place when the game itself is so high fidelity like it is. What really gets me is a large amount of these SD FMVs are video of stuff rendered in-engine. Certainly it was unnecessary to even make those into FMVs, let alone SD. Really it doesn't kill the experience, but it's extremely noticeable when the actual game looks miles better than the FMVs. It's supposed to be the other way around...

I would imagine the game has Crossfire support but I have yet to find a spot where a single one of my video cards can't max it. I would guess my 4870s in Crossfire could manage the same feat at 2560. Basically, even at your res, you should be able to utterly max the game with a minimum of 60FPS. So yeah quit your bitchin'

 

Wow, I posted this before I realized I missed the whole next page, duhh.

Yeah, Kevin, I knew damn well you had a HAF!

Okay, I'm back - so all that stuff about the ceiling 140mm exhaust was for your non-gaming case. Good, I'm finally straightened out.

(That reminds me, helping a guy get his laptop wireless working today at my house - I found his ipconfig putting out some strange addresses and then I checked his TCP/IP properties and noticed - "Ah hah - whoever sold you the laptop had a fixed address - probably his IP guys at his corporation had him set up that way - just press that little button that says get address automatically!" - feeling very proud of myself. When 10 minutes later the damn thing was still not working, I asked him to type ipconfig /all, and saw a crazy DNS address of 10.0.1.0, whereas the gateway had a 1 at the end, then we went back to the same TCP/IP properties, and I neglected to notice the second choice 2 inches lower on the page, that now says "automatically select the DNS address." DUHHHHHHH)



BUT MAINLY I MISSED the duel between DXR and ddp, with shaff on the sidelines saying "Yeah, he'll watch his mouth next time!" Meanwhile, DXR is feeling lucky, 'cause he's all in for the lightning, with a little "sure, if that's what you feel like doin - just check your ban button before you press it"

Now what the hell did DXR mean by that? "You better check yourself before you wregedy wreck yourself." Did he forget he was talking to DDP?

LOL

Crysis performance index of 30-35, versus COD4 at 5-6!! Holy crap! Where do you get that fantastic information? That is the first time I've seen you talk about performance index, and I LOVE IT!

THAT right there puts everything into perspective.

But I thought on your 4870x2 cards, that you DID run crysis - (well it only supports 3 gpus so your second 4870x2 wouldn't be fully utilized.) But maybe you just did some testing and then put it off - so you and I are definitely in the same camp on that one!

Duhhh, sorry Sam. I neglected to inform you that I have venting on the bottom rear of the case. I would guess that I have roughly 1 1/2 inches X 7 inches high of venting, roughly 10 square inches. That is the only venting I have, other than venting out the bottom front, which will cool the hard drives but which probably won't help the gpu card cooling much if at all.

I totally agree with you - without that bottom rear venting, air would just circle around.

But now that I have filled everybody in with that vital piece of information (I don't know why I neglected to mention that - I guess I was assuming that all cases have some venting in the lower rear - bad assumption on my part, lol) NOW let's restart the discussion.

FIRST - that is my gaming PC. It stays OFF for most of the month - in fact the table is turned around and I can't really sit next to the 30" monitor - there is no place to sit. So when the table gets turned back around, the gaming PC is turned on, for one reason only, and that is to play games. I REALLY don't ever run it in idle, and I will not be adding a fan controller, lol, so I don't care how nasty these high-pressure beasts are in low rpm mode - they will always get full 12 volts and blow the doors off of everything!

I am already making plans to pull the kama bay out of the P4 - so are we back ok on the Ultra Kaze?

Remember, in my opinion, it will push air down past the gpu card, and out past the 10 square inches of venting in the bottom rear of the case, supplying the gpu card with air from the front of the case. Although unfortunately, some of that air of course will be heated air from the cpu, the overall air temperature, in my opinion, of that big rush of 133 cfm pushing past the gpu, assuming the kaze can overcome having to twist the air from the top kama bay, down and out the rear exhaust fan and then bottom venting (probably will be reduced down to 90cfm with all the back pressure) will be substantially lower temp air, than if I do not add any kama bay intake fan at all.

That is thick - 25.4mm is one inch, so we're talking virtually 1.5". But no problem, the ultra kaze will be sitting inside the kama bay - where it can be 3" thick, it doesn't matter. I have the whole depth of the 5.25 optical drive bay to work with - if I can figure out how to mount the kama bay in there since I only have access to one side, and then if I can figure out how to mount the kaze in the kama bay. I'll use my blow torch if I have to, lol.

What do you think?

Regarding my second post - which I think was about image quality and using the nvidia control panel to optimize the gamma on individual colors - yes, I REALLY want to know that the Catalyst Control Panel gives me the same level of color adjustment! Again I cannot emphasize enough what a night and day difference it made to how I like my image to look. (Jeff do you care to help out in this subject of image quality and screen color adjustments, since I assume - as you had/have the same card, 8800 - that you ran the same color optimization routine that I did?)

In any event, thanks much as always, and I will be eagerly awaiting that response!

Rich

 

Having played the original ME on my 360 I really missed not being able to use my saves. If I ever get around to modifying the ammo capacity in ME2 I'll grab some one's saves from online and do non-stock playthrough, which might be well worth the time (not that the game is long or anything).

 

DDP is alright. Don't mind given em a little bit a trouble now and again.

 

I hate to disappoint Rich, but those are specified values based on an individual benchmark that I've calculated. They won't cross reference with other titles, nor is there a big list of them for all to see
Indeed, I ran crysis on the X2s, but haven't played it all the way through.
As for airflow, the Kama bay - good idea. Using a fan far more powerful than your rear, silly idea. A bit more powerful - fine. A 2000rpm fan woiuld be OK, but 4000 is just plain nuts, and won't improve your temps at all.

 

I generally turn the brightness and contrast up. There is a fine line between the screen being too bright and washed out, and being too dark to see things properly in dark games. I like bright colors, but I like rich contrast as well, so my own screen has a bit of a vivid hue to it. Other than that I can't offer much advice because everyone's personal tastes are different.

 

We have similar tastes I see - except that, although I turned contrast to 100% in the nvidia control center, something they had said when I went through it the first time, caused me to actually turn the brightness a bit under 50%. The most important part of their color correction seemed to be a gamma adjustment - there was a large band of red, then another of green, and another of blue. You had to look at it out of focus, they recommended, then slide the middle of each band horizontally back and forth, until the part inside a box, seemed to merge with the part also inside the box, above and below the band you were moving. It seemed as though that gamma (gamma are the mid-range tones and shades, right?) of the red, green, and blue bands, were the most helpful in creating vivid colors in the game.

Do any of you guys know what I am talking about, lol?


Rich

 

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

i usually visit that site to correctly calibrate my panels.

 

3008WFP is too bright to leave contrast on high, so I settle for 0% brightness, 40% contrast most of the time, default gamma with default blue colour profile.

 

Hey, DXR and Sam, thanks for those tips.

Well, all I can say is, that I guess I didn't know what beauty was in store for me, and the little automatic color correction routine that the 8800 came with (nvidia control panel) turned the images from okay, to UNFRIGGIN BELIEVABLE!!!

By the way, here's the bookmark that DXR just gave me, bottom of last afterdawn page:



What you're looking at is paperport - I have the version 8.0 for xp - it's about $80 for the program, and it keeps me organized.

You know how bookmarks can get out of control - well not this way - not with the ability to create folders, and subfolders, and each bookmark is a thumbnail. I was using PaperPort for a bunch of other stuff that it does really well, at least for 5 years, and I just discovered this bookmark feature, lol.

It's the greatest tool!

So I went to the link that DXR gave me on his post at the bottom of the last page - the monitor calibration site looked GREAT. So I just went to my system tray, and told Web Capture to take a pic of the visible window (it will capture the entire page if you want - which I do for motherboard articles where I want the whole thing saved offline) took a web shot of the page DXR sent me to, and placed it in a new paperport folder, LCD calibration.

I can open it within paperport and add annotations and comments, or I can just double-click it and it will go to the internet page - notice on the properties information shown here, that it has captured the url.

Rich

 

I can't say I do find bookmarks get out of control, and $80 seems very expensive!

 

HAHAHAHA!

Somehow I knew you would say that! (It may be more like $65 - I bought it so long ago - and I use it on every computer - it is just about the most useful piece of software I have ever owned.)

Ok, as I'm getting ready to PROVE to you that I need a very powerful kama bay front fan, here's a photo of the Antec 9450 with 8800GTX and 750 watt PSU.



I took about a dozen more with doors open, side panel off, back showing venting, to illustrate my point. I'll save those for a later post. Here's one more shot of the back.



Rich

 

Heh, that's obviously a CWT-based PSU in there