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The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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8. September 2010 @ 21:06 |
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AfterDawn Addict
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8. September 2010 @ 21:44 |
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says 2 left to order :p
how much of a jump from my single 4870 will that be? will it play bc2 at 1920 no problems?
MGR (Micro Gaming Rig) .|. Intel Q6600 @ 3.45GHz .|. Asus P35 P5K-E/WiFi .|. 4GB 1066MHz Geil Black Dragon RAM .|. Samsung F60 SSD .|. Corsair H50-1 Cooler .|. Sapphire 4870 512MB .|. Lian Li PC-A70B .|. Be Queit P7 Dark Power Pro 850W PSU .|. 24" 1920x1200 DGM (MVA Panel) .|. 24" 1920x1080 Dell (TN Panel) .|. |
AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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9. September 2010 @ 07:11 |
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2? ahaha, it was 70 when I posted it!
The GTX460 is roughly equivalent to an HD5830 or just under, so around 25-30% gain on an HD4870. Not a great deal, I wouldn't go buying one to replace a 4870, remember the 460 sits lower in the market price brackets than the 4870 did on its release.
As for no BBC2, depends on what you define as no problems. At 1920x1200 with 8xAA, I'd say you'd be getting a minimum of about 18-19fps, and an average of about 40. That's max detail with DX11, 16xAF and HBAO.
Turn HBAO off and you'll get more like a minimum of 25, average of 60. Turn the AA down to 4x and you might get a minimum of 30, average of 75. Turn the AA off completely and more like a minimum of 50 and an average of 110.
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harvrdguy
Senior Member
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9. September 2010 @ 07:40 |
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Shaff, you and Jeff have me going with all that talk about BC2. You want to upgrade from your 4870 to handle the game smoothly, and about BC2, Jeff says "Where have you been all my life?" LOL
I played a little Day of Defeat a couple days ago, and I really think I am much more into BF2 and COD4, which probably means I'll become a BC2 guy if I have a rig that can play it.
My excuse for this post, is that I am just coming off a gaming weekend with my new quad core 9450 (it's a new machine, used only two weeks, it has been sitting in a garage, broken, for 2 years) that I fixed on Friday, and I am very jazzed, so much so that I got carried away here, like one of my old style essays. But guys, think about it - Steam says I last played L4D on Feb 4th, that's seven months ago! The only gaming since then was when I started playing Condition Zero 2 weeks ago on my business desktop - that's what told me that I couldn't take it anymore - time to try something other than abstinence, like the gaming weekend idea. Coincidentally, late last week I finally got loaned the broken computer that Miles told me about early this year.
So what follows is mostly game review content - I have tried to make it a good read - I hope you enjoy it.
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First of all, I have to say, Sam, what a kickass chart, post 6611.
The 3850 is at 100, 8800GTX is at 175, HD5850 at 375. So speaking in rough terms, the 8800GTX has now doubled what I had with the 3850, and I can double that again with a 5850! That is so awesome!! I know where my next $300 is going.
But wait:
Originally posted by sam:
Two GTX460s butchers both the 5850 and the 470.
Shaff says only two are left, and they are less than $150 each? Is that some kind of a special buy, or are the GTX460s the cards to get? (Oh, I get it, the 768MB version - it's a closeout. Yeah with 2560x1600 I need more texture memory, so that wouldn't work for me.)
Anyway, I'll push this q9450 as far as I can. I like the idea of the kama bay, providing some fresh front air, using a $40 portable optical drive to free up the 5.25" space. Under the snap open front cover of the Antec, I think I have room to add a pop-off filter in front of the kama bay just like I modded with the p4 case, making filter cleaning super easy. No screws to mess with - don't have to even open the case.
So I'll have some fresh air input, and with a stong enough fan - I'll use 1600 or 1900 rpm scythe - I want to make sure I have positive case pressure to keep the dust out. Giving this quad core some fresh air from the front just has to be a good thing, especially once I shove one or two 5850s in there!
Yeah, I lucked out, and the 8800 I have is the GTX model, 175 on the chart, making it the most powerful 8800 listed. Thank goodness!
It is easily handling the four games I have tried so far at full 2560x1600 resolution. Those games are Left 4 Dead 2, Day of Defeat, World at War, and Far Cry 2. I do not intend to try Crysis yet, and probably still won't even with a 5850. As Jeff said, it might take two 5850s before I mess with that game.
I found out how to get the on-screen display to work with Riva tuner, and there is a core 2 duo plugin that reads from everest, so I can get all the in-game statistics I had before with ati tray tools: cpu temp for all four cores, gpu temp, fps, and gpu fan speed.
The games are running smoothly, at full 2560x1600. I can't believe how nice L4D looks at full native resolution! The gun models are way better, and also Day of Defeat has much better gun models. The basic L4D handgun is much more impressive now - they had slipped in a simplified model before with my p4 rig - I never knew it. That's what is so great about Valve - you can make games work better on less powerful machines by having multiple gun models, for example, and by using the lower res models for the weaker rigs - fewer triangles per model, less computational power to render the scene. Miles has talked about gun models before. Your gun is in your screen most of the time - the model size is really important.
As opposed to the way Valve perfects a game, or how Infinity Ward perfected COD2, COD4 and COD6, then we have Treyarch. Haha.
TREYARCH, CALL OF DUTY 5, WORLD AT WAR
I'm talking about COD5, World at War. But despite its flaws, I actually like the game, diehard WWII that I am, but it has about a thousand bugs. Valve would have perfected it and released it about 3 months later. But like Jeff, I really dig the flame thrower - jumping in the trench and burning up the guys - you can see them turn to toast right in front of you! They did the fried black toast Japanese soldier models very nicely. Jeff and I must be a total sadists! Haha.
The deficiencies of the game are numerous - but still I like it. The graphics are pretty good. I don't if Jeff ever did one of his famous reviews on it, and I won't try to do that here, but I'll give a few highlights.
I have 4xAA on World in Conflict. It is smooth, except for one time when I threw 4 smoke grenades at once, having problems in taking out the last AA gun at the air base.
For about 5 seconds my computer almost shut down. I didn't know what was happening. Seriously, my frames must have dropped to about 8, because all of a sudden I thought - what the hell is going on? Then I remembered some of the forum posts from you guys, and I laughed to myself thinking, "Oh, it's all that damn smoke I just created."
That was the ONE AND ONLY time I have not had completely smooth play, so I am very happy with this new rig.
Back to the deficiencies of the game, has anybody heard of a map being called "sticky?" This game, World at War, must have some of the stickiest maps ever. That's just an example of rushing the game to market, before you clean up the models. Maybe they just don't playtest enough, so they don't get all the bug reports.
I got stuck so bad in the first map inside one of the Japanese huts - I could not get off the wall no matter what I did. I had to finally reboot. Since then, just trying to back up to avoid enemy fire, with a board behind me leaning up against a box, takes an act of Congress. I turn around - "What the hell is holding me?" and it's nothing at all. The board of course won't fall down, it's fixed with glue, but hey - you CAN'T GET STUCK LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE, haha.
Other than sticky maps, and artificial map walls that block you, in completely open space, there is also the whole tone of the game, starting from the beginning.
So the tough marine saves me from the knife, and I am very grateful, for about 5 minutes. He says, "Oh, Miller, thank god, you're okay. We're gonna get these bastards - we'll make them pay for what they've done." Okay, I'm all gung-ho "Yeah let's go get these guys."
I've been a prisoner, beaten and tortured, but I seem to have plenty of stamina, and he seems to expect great things of me.
Then he starts calling for me, as Treyarch clumsily tries to personalize the game for my character. They think it's very cool for the guy to transform himself into my boot camp drill sergeant.
He starts barking out orders, "Miller, get over here." He keeps yelling, "Miller, follow me." He's yelling because he went right, and I went left. I don't want to hang tight with this guy. He has the personality of the jap who just tried to slit my throat - he sounds like he's sorry he ever saved me.
I really felt zero connection for the guy - and when he got knifed and his body was shipped home, it was a total non-event. "Okay, what's next?"
By comparison, Medal of Honor - Pacific Assault, which in my mind ranks very close to the great Infinity Ward games, builds your feeling of being part of a team. I did all I could to keep those guys alive, calling for a retreat half the time so I could handle the advancing Japanese with my sniper rifle. I really didn't want to lose any of them.
That game was so well done - you've posted, Jeff, that it's one of your favorites too. During battle the skinny little medic with the glasses and pistol used to run around almost like a cheerleader, "Wow, did you see the way Tommy smoked that guy." "Way to go, Tommy got another one!" And he pumped the other guys up too, "Great shot Joey." Those are your buddies and you begin to feel that way.
Back to World at War, I'm playing the game at the hardest skill level. After trying that quite successfully with Far Cry 2, I decided just to continue that way. Sometimes that's a mistake. And World at War does not have Quick Save. However, the first 3 campaigns were no real problem.
SNIPER NIGHTMARES
Then I got to the Russian sniper fourth campaign, and I began to have serious doubts about having chosen the hardest skill level.
That's another thing about a Treyarch game - it isn't balanced. I understand you might put in some especially tough parts - like Valve puts in those crescendo events - but to go from quite hard, to "virtually friggin impossible" is a bit of a stretch. Too much in my opinion. I call that unbalanced.
Think of the sniper round on top of the silo in Call of Duty 2. Anybody ever beat that on hardest skill level? Anybody ever hear of anybody beating it at hardest skill level? A guy I used to work with told me he did. He had kept his sniper rifle from the beginning of the campaign, and so he wound up on top with two sniper rifles, meaning 10 bullets before reload. Given that there might be a lull allowing two reloads, that could have helped. But even with that, he had to repeat the round so many times that he knew exactly where and when the next mortar was going to be set up so he could kill the crews in time.
For me to beat that round, I had to drop down one skill level, which meant I had to restart the campaign. Then for the next campaign I increased it back up. That wasn't too bad, there are about 10 campaigns. On Half Life 2, you can change skill levels any time you want.
On this game, World at War, like a lot of games, you're stuck with your decision, or you just restart the whole game. So at the beginning of this fourth campaign, I'm thinking, so far so good. I have cruised through the first three campaigns, no problem.
So I quite willingly accept the sniper rifle from the old guy in the trench - the two of us surrounded by all of our dead comrades. The first sniper event isn't too bad. It takes me about 10 tries to kill the 7 nazis and the dog. A dog is always lovely, I enjoyed that part from COD4. As he stands over you ripping you to shreds, the screen says "Melee the dog before he bites."
Right! I hit melee frantically and I never had it work - you are supposedly able to grab the dog. Really, has anybody had any success with that?
I think what the screen should say is: "Are you enjoying this? If not, then NEXT TIME SHOOT THE GODDAMN DOG before he leaps up and tears your throat out!"
Also I found out, that if you get too clever and shoot two of the nazis at once - which makes the old Russian chuckle - that's a mistake! Four bullets, six dead nazis. But immediately comes along the cop with his poodle to investigate the massacre. Okay, he's dead with bullet number five, now you're into a six second reload while werewolf is charging from 20 feet! YOU'RE DOG FOOD!
Anyway, 10 tries for that - about a half hour. I'm thinking, "This isn't too bad. I can do this."
They're setting me up for four genuine ball-busting nightmares in a row. Starting with sniper versus sniper. "Oh, yeah, I remember that from COD2 - piece of cake." But that was Infinity Ward. This is Treyarch, sloppy and also evil.
Screaming in my ear, the old Russian yells out "You just grazed him." Anyway, I get it. The fun part of this is that I have to hit the guy twice - no matter where I hit him, my first is a "graze" while his first means my brains are spread all over the room. And Treyarch pits me against the world's best AI sniper. No matter where I move to while he is hiding, even changing entire rooms, he is able to suddenly reappear, look around and see a corner of my head peeking at him from an entirely different room, a block away, sight out my new position, raise gun, scope in, aim and shoot, in about a quarter of a second.
Anybody ever heard of "Hand is quicker than the eye." This AI is forcing me to react down close to the limits of human reaction time. I went to Main menu, options, and dropped my mouse speed to minimum for optimum sniping.
All the while this is happening, the Russian is screaming at me "Find new cover, he's on to you." Or sometimes, "He knows your position, move to the window."
Thank you Sir, but could you please stop screaming? I know you're on my side. But which window would that be? The reason I ask, Sir, is that, in case you didn't notice, I AM ALREADY AT A WINDOW, SONOVABITCH!
And besides that, Sir, could you please be more specific? There are at least a dozen windows in these two rooms in three separate locations.
His yelling is getting to me. In fact he's driving me nuts. The same screaming bullshit round after round. I'm telling myself, "Ignore him and focus." But in fact, that's part of the Treyarch evil. They know the old fool makes it impossible to concentrate.
So what did I do? Well, the thing is, after all those rounds, I really didn't see that I was making any progress. So, actually, what I did, is that I quit. I quit the game. Two hours into that chapter, at least 50 repetitions, I made a simple decision that I couldn't beat it. It was around 4 in the morning, I had only slept 3 hours the night before, and while I didn't feel fatigued, it had to be taking its toll. I turned off the computer. Then, almost immediately - NEVER let it be said that Rich is not a total glutton for punishment - I became curious as to whether, if I ever DID decide to return to play the wretched game again, it would resume back to this exact spot.
The only explanation is that Treyarch, through in-game hypnosis, had planted that thought in my mind. So I turned the PC back on.
Sure enough. Here I am again, right back with my screaming Russian friend. We're having a party, and the third guest is the most highly skilled AI sniper ever produced, a two-shot kill who knows every move I make.
Ten minutes more of screaming, and suddenly I went to main menu and turned voice volume way down. I don't know where the idea came from. I resumed game and couldn't hear the old guy at all.
Oh joy. Now I can think.
All his advice was just bullshit anyway - just a bunch of crap that Treyarch invented to keep molesting me. I picked a window, and I stayed right there. The one I chose was the one directly ahead to the left which presented the most extreme sharp angle to the building where the sniper was, thereby allowing me to avoid line of fire with minimal movement. He had blown my head off plenty of times from there, but I reasoned to myself that it was likely the superior position.
I watched carefully when the bastard moved. I decided that to beat this, I had to simply assume that, rather than crawl on the floor which I would have done, the AI would most likely just reappear at the window he had last headed toward. So I watched him carefully, exposing myself, gaining knowledge every time he spread some of my brains around the room.
Wherever I caught a glimpse of him moving toward, I focused only on that one window, and by the way, I stopped trying to steady my aim. (That wasn't helping anyway because the evil Treyarch programming was working against me telling him exactly what I was doing - he always waited until after I ran out of breath and my gun started jerking spasmodically, before he appeared again.)
I shot him.
No doubt, I told myself, he had just taken it, if not in the head, at least in the chest. "I am very goddamn sure I hit him that time." The old Russian bastard, now mute, probably yelled out the famous "You just grazed him." He obviously hadn't fired at the exact same moment, which had happened countless times, our bullets whizzing past each other in the cool night air, because the round was still going.
Now, having been shot by my World War II vintage sniper rifle, while certainly no Arctic White Patrol, certainly no COD4 modern warfare that blows the guy's arm off, but still a powerful weapon, most Germans would have sought out a medic. Not this guy.
I waited and watched, shifting back and forth to try to protect myself. He appeared suddenly and headed in the other direction. I focused on the one window he had headed toward, exposing myself, focusing my gun sites on that one window only. His head appeared in the lower left corner and in an instant I fired and jerked to escape his bullet.
I seemed to still be alive. The screen said "Objective accomplished." The Russian said nothing. I had him muted. He was probably blathering all kinds of crap - we'll never know.
I just stood there in disbelief. Are you kidding me? The nightmare has ended? So the secret was just to shut the old guy up?
Jeeeez!!! Treyarch knows that nobody in his right mind can concentrate properly in the presence of a rabid screaming Russian lunatic.
Whew! I breathed a huge sigh of relief. LITTLE DID I KNOW. Three nightmares to go.
First it's time for Max Payne to get through the burning building. That's good for 15 tries, about a half hour. You have to kill the first german, but don't waste time killing any more than that, and don't wait for the Russian fool - beat it to the top of the stairs before him - the two germans will only hit you once or twice and they ain't shooting sniper rounds. Run like a rabbit and hook right. I did it. Then I got knocked down by a burning board, and I expected the round to start again, but miraculously, the Russian is helping me to get up. All of a sudden, I love this lunatic.
More fun to come. Now it's time to defend an entire battle from our position above, then as we progress forward, I have to kill 8 new nazis entering our building, followed by two more rabid German Shepherds - more throat-ripping joy. That delightful segment took one full hour. Before moving to the wall with the opening, I practiced jumping back over the inclined boards, and I found that I could accomplish that easily - I just sailed over those boards - that is, until the round started. Then suddenly, I could no longer jump that high. Evil Treyarch programming.
Okay, no leaving this room - but there is a table in the back. So after 30 tries, I found that by concentraing on the nazis who went to my right, I got rid of most of the grenade throwers. Several times I killed one dog, but not both. But I found that as soon as the first group of soldiers was mostly dead, before the growling, if I turned and high-tailed it back and jumped on the table, that gave me time to reload and scope back up. Miraculously I was finally able to kill both dogs.
Now it's time for sniper Nightmare number 4 - kill the General. By now I have voice back on, and he's screaming again, of course, but this time I need his voice clues.
Several times I shot the General as he ran out of the building toward the burning tank, surrounded by his bodyguards. He was exposed, and I got him. "You just grazed him" my lunatic friend screams. Yeah, I get it, superman sniper, superman General. Treyarch.
I'm learning the routine: Kill the general's sniper, or else more of my brains get spread around town. And then finally I get REALLY smart. The big problem has been the second half track. He's spraying so much fire at our window positions, I can't move anywhere and even see the escape car my Russian buddy is screaming about. Somehow I kill the machine gunner before the half-track rotates to directly face our building, when he becomes impossible to kill behind two steel plates. Now I understand why they positioned the first half track on the left, with the machine gunner totally exposed to my sniping, to teach thick-headed me how to handle the second half-track. Maybe Treyarch aren't as evil as I thought. Maybe it's just me - I'm stupid!
With the machine gunner dead for the first time, there's this car that he's been hollering about, and there's the driver that he wants me to kill. Okay, now he's dead, now what? I hear the Russian laughing, "The General is RUNNING! Get him." I look over and see that the highly decorated idiot has busted out of the car and is hauling butt down the road to the far right.
Big mistake. "Nazi, you should have just gone back to the burning tank, because that is one long road you picked, and I actually have time to reload." I fire and miss. "Furthermore, Nazi, you don't know what Treyarch has put me through over the last four hours, and I REALLY don't want to play this round again." I try to track the running and shoot again. The old Russian cackles maliciously. I can't see anything, but he sounds happy.
I find that I am no longer irritated by his voice, in fact I love him dearly. "Laugh all you want, you old fool. I know that cackling means your nemesis the General is finally dead, and I can move on with my life."
FAR CRY 2
Before I got into World at War, and began experiencing the Russian sniper campaign nightmare, I had first started with Far Cry 2. Unlike Far Cry the original, they give you Quick Save. With Quick Save, I would have been able to save right after the first time I grazed the nazi sniper.
Quick Save can sometimes make very impossible rounds manageable, but occasionally, fatigue sets in and I goof and hit Quick Save when I meant to hit Quick Reload, and I am now saved into an almost impossible situation. If I am really lucky the game keeps two quick saves for that event. If not, sometimes I manage to work my way out of the mess. Other times I have to restart the campaign, lol.
But anyway, here in Far Cry 2, I first started with the skill level called hardcore, just above normal. But the AI was too easy to kill - they shoot straight, but tactic-wise, they aren't much smarter than the AI in Far Cry. They don't pay attention - they look the wrong way - they are easily out-flanked. However, I was impressed once that they threw a grenade in my general direction, and another time blew apart my cover. That showed a little progress.
I'm spoiled by Condition Zero. The best AI are the bots that Mike Smith with TurtleRock Studios created for Counter Strike 1.7 single player. Set them to Expert, and they are HIGHLY skilled, difficult to beat, not easily out-flanked, with fast reaction times, and very aware of their surroundings, at all times.
Anyway, playing the round several different ways, after 7 months of not shooting anybody, other than the little bit of condition zero on the business desktop crt screen, I was having a great time with the action. But ultimately, it was just too easy to kill those guys at the lumber yard. I was enjoying the game ambiance, I was in no rush, and I wanted the challenge of a tougher fight. So I decided to increase the skill level from hardcore to the maximum setting, and I restarted the game.
Far Cry 2 reminds me of Grand Theft Auto IV. You go around and play missions, like when I was stealing cop cars and getting on the police radio, then ridding New York of the Most Wanted list.
I found out after a while that the AK rifle is more powerful than my SMG, after I started getting seriously damaged going toe to toe with the AK guys - their distant shots were hurting me more than before - and I had never heard that strange whining sound as the rounds passed overhead. I knew the AI guns had changed. So I picked up some of their AKs, and I learned about gun jams. Now I understand, find diamonds and buy new guns.
When I left the game to take a break, I believe I had just completed a convoy destroy mission that unlocked the AK for me. When I get the money, I'll buy one.
For that particular mission, I first had to go around trying to find 10 diamonds so I could buy IED explosives. I had to take out a convoy for the gun dealer - rid him of a competitor. I positioned the IED near a rock so I could see when the lead vehicle has passed the rock, meaning the center truck was right next to it. Then I pressed the trigger. THAT WAS FUN!
An hour before I had completed an earlier "Stop the convoy" of the "Ukranian weapons competitor, with his cheaper but inferior product." I found the Ukranian's convoy circling around on narrow jungle roads. I tracked their route, and planned my attack. For that mission, I had only the machine gun, having unfortunately gotten rid of the rocket launcher quite a while before that.
So I tried to come up with something clever. I took my car, and blocked the road at one point where it narrowed down and was bordered on one side by a huge rock. Then, as they approached I tried to machine-gun the lead jeep to slow it down a bit, maybe get lucky and kill the driver.
The machine gun is very hard to control and doesn't really have as much kill power as one would think (same as the jeep-mounted 30 caliber machine guns - well maybe they are 50s, but they are sure weak.) Anyway, the jeep kind of got a little hung up trying to go around the car, just as I had planned, which momentarily stopped the convoy.
From my position up on the rock, I quickly tossed down both molies followed by both frag grenades. BOOM! GIANT EXPLOSION! How gratifying, haha. I don't know what blew up, and I didn't care. The convoy blew to hell, flipping the truck over and also incinerating the lead jeep! The fire burned for a long while. I say that because I had to high tail it out of there for a while - the trailing jeep with mounted 50 was mad as hell. I came back in a while to get the Save Game picture, so I can load the save game before that, and grenade that convoy again some day!
I am not sure whether I have 4xAA turned on for Far Cry 2, since it seems to exhibit some aliasing to my untrained eye, but I'll double-check next time. But all in all, I am so impressed with the world of Far Cry 2, that I'm running around that map with jaw wide open in astonishment!
How do you like those zebras, and those antelopes. Also the goats, and the chickens! What about the somewhat destructible environment. Shoot and palm branches start dropping. Nice!
It's so nice to be on some modern games, and it's so nice to be finally in full native mode on the beautiful Dell 30". Thank you Miles. My birthday is coming up later this month - how did you know?
Rich
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 9. September 2010 @ 08:43
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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9. September 2010 @ 08:01 |
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Holy hell Rich, 5044 words. That's long even by your standards!
I think you'll enjoy Bad Company 2 if you enjoy Battlefield 2, the game seems quite similar, but with vastly improved graphics. I quite enjoy the game, though like all shooters it's infuriating sometimes :P
Re: Graphics upgrades, you may want to wait. The HD6 series is being released in November, which may spur some price drops across the board. An HD5850 may more than double the 8800GTX for $300, but when the HD6 series comes out, you may be able to double it for a lot less, or nearly triple it for a similar price.
Yeah sadly the 768MB GTX460s really aren't suitable for 1920x1200, but for everything else they're fantastic cards, because they don't have the full power of the 1GB cards, but they're only 10% behind, and they were 20% cheaper, now I imagine that gap's even wider.
As it stands right now, the GTX460 was £150, is now £115, meanwhile the HD5830 which competed similarly was still £160 until recently. However, ATI appear to be pricedropping the HD5830 to £125 to compete which is good news.
The 1GB GTX460 is down a little to £170 right now, but it'll need to get cheaper than that! HD5850 seems to have dropped to £200, which is welcome, but in my opinion, a little insufficient if the 1GB 460 drops further.
The 8800GTX isn't quite the most powerful 8800, that goes to the 8800 Ultra, which was the same card overclocked by about 5-7%, and was 30% more expensive!
If you want to run Crysis at 2560x1600, two 5850s might do OK, but to be honest, I think you'll best wait a fair few more years unless you want to cut corners. 30" Crysis is more the domain of three 5870s (not four, remember Crysis, unlike Warhead, only supports 3 GPUs - Warhead though, uses the fourth because it's more demanding, ho hum)
Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 have very nice textures. I mean, considerably nicer than is typical for games as demanding as they are. You may be disappointed when you load up badboy games like Crysis, Cryostasis and Aliens vs Predator.
Bad Company 2 however has among the best textures I have yet seen in a game, clearly above those of Left 4 Dead games.
Call of Duty 5 was the first of the Call of Duty games to not support Crossfire properly, and COD5 did it in a big way, rather than COD6 (and presumably COD7) where you just get terrible performance in parts, COD5 has severe texture problems, flashing water and so on. It's very much a single GPU or SLI game.
Quote:
Back to World at War, I'm playing the game at the hardest skill level. After trying that quite successfully with Far Cry 2, I decided just to continue that way. Sometimes that's a mistake. And World at War does not have Quick Save. However, the first 3 campaigns were no real problem.
I watched one of my housemates play WAW on highest difficulty. Haha, just you wait, the lack of autosave is going to grate soon :P
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harvrdguy
Senior Member
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9. September 2010 @ 09:15 |
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Originally posted by sam:
I watched one of my housemates play WAW on highest difficulty. Haha, just you wait, the lack of autosave is going to grate soon :P
Please tell me you were referring to the WAW sniper rounds (which you probably didn't notice that I already passed, haha.) Please tell me it's those awful sniper rounds! (Well, I'm not afraid, how could anything be any more tortuous that what I just went through!)
Originally posted by sam:
30" Crysis is more the domain of three 5870s
Yeah, I remember clearly that to really play it at highest texture settings where it really starts to look great, you need that much power.
Well then, Sam, if southern islands is going to cause 5000 series prices to drop, what will happen to the 5870 prices? Maybe I really should be thinking of the 5870 - 430 on your chart versus 375 for the 5850. Maybe the extra power will help. What about the regular 2 gig 5970? I could get a 5870 for now, meaning end of year, then a 5970 later, and eventually enjoy Crysis. I know it's clocked like a 5850 for tdp reasons, but I could overclock it back up and put a nice cooler on it. About that time I'd have to slide all the components over to the spedo, and pick up a new psu.
Also, is there really any special reason that I would ever want to pick up another gpu and play Warhead. It's more demanding - but is it better in any way? Same basic game, right?
Quote:
Bad Company 2 however has among the best textures I have yet seen in a game, clearly above those of Left 4 Dead games.
Wow! And you really like Left 4 Dead textures. So what graphics card do I need to display those textures nicely at 30" native resolution - is that pushing me to the 5870 for sure?
Rich
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9. September 2010 @ 09:57 |
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The only aftermarket cooler available for the HD5970 is the Arctic Accelero, which is a truly dreadful cooler, it has an 80%+ failure rate for destroying the card when it is installed, even when done exactly by the instruction book.
It's also worth mentioning that HD5970s are not guaranteed to clock back to HD5870 speeds, and may not last as long if you do so (well, there's no may about it!)
The HD5970 is probably not such a great idea until it drops considerably in price. It's far more expensive to buy an HD5970 in the US than it is in the UK.
For example:
Newegg XFX Radeon HD5870: $381.98 (£291.50 after tax)
Scan XFX Radeon HD5870: £281.87 after tax ($369.36)
Newegg Sapphire Radeon HD5970: $649.99 (£496.03 after tax)
Ebuyer Sapphire Radeon HD5970: £434.98 ($569.99)
Meanwhile
Newegg XFX Radeon HD5850: $279.99 (£213.67 after tax)
Scan XFX Radeon HD5850: £199.26 ($261.11)
US:
HD5970/HD5870: 0.88-1.76x performance. 1.70x price
HD5970/HD5850: 1.02-2.05x performance. 2.32x price
HD5870/HD5850: 1.16x performance. 1.36x price
UK:
HD5970/HD5870: 0.88-1.76x performance. 1.54x price
HD5970/HD5850: 1.02-2.05x performance. 2.18x price
HD5870/HD5850: 1.16x performance. 1.41x price
As you can see, the HD5870 makes for a very unattractive proposition in the UK, whereas the HD5970 makes for a more unattractive proposition in the US.
Crysis Warhead is like Crysis in terms of gameplay, but the graphics are, in my opinion, considerably improved. There's a lot more all-round nice effects going on in Warhead, and I'd say some of the textures are better too.
As for Bad Company 2 at 2560, it's not easy. My pair of 4870X2s can't max the game out even close to smoothly, I have to leave HBAO and AA disabled. 2xAA I can get away with in some maps, but in others the frame rate is far too low (high 30s low 40s at best).
Fortunately the game actually runs faster in DX11 than it does in DX10. Even so, you won't be running 8xAA with HBAO on anything but a flagship setup.
There are various Bad Company 2 tests out there, some good, some not so good. Techreport's is OK but only considers 1920x1080, and even there, the HD5870 can only pull off an average of 60fps, with a minimum of 53, and this is with AA at 4x, not 8x. 2560 would be a real struggle.
Another problem with Bad Company 2 is this:
That drop hurts. I certainly felt it on my system when playing the start of the single player. A grenade or mine, I forget which, goes off almost in your face, it cut my frame rate far worse than in that graph, perhaps due to the use of QuadCF or perhaps the higher res. The drop in frame rate from 92 to 71 is bad, but for me it was more like from 47-50 down to about 8 or 9, for only a couple of seconds, but either way, truly unpleasant.
Having reviewed UK prices, I may recommend more people buy crossfire HD5830s. Two HD5830s cost less than an HD5870 at the moment, quite a lot less!
Just spotted they do 2GB GTX460s for £187 now, that's quite tempting, for two of those :P A lot of dual-GPU scaling potential and no memory limitations for that sort of money, given that one 2GB HD5870 card costs the same amount as two of those, they'd have a good 45-50% advantage most of the time. Shame about the 320W power draw though!
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 9. September 2010 @ 10:40
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harvrdguy
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9. September 2010 @ 11:32 |
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Quote:
There are various Bad Company 2 tests out there, some good, some not so good. Techreport's is OK but only considers 1920x1080, and even there, the HD5870 can only pull off an average of 60fps, with a minimum of 53, and this is with AA at 4x, not 8x. 2560 would be a real struggle.
Hmmm! Well, Sam, let me throw this at you. Some of us are more tolerant of jaggies than others - myself maybe being one of the more tolerant. I just stumbled across Techspot, running 2xAA, and indicating, in this review, more potential for a single or crossfire 5870 system, handling the 2560x1600 resolution, at what they say are the high preset settings. Now maybe 2xAA is automatically no good for you, but with crossfire, maybe 4xAA, and 50 fps, and some stutter at some sections.
Here's their chart. They probably have HBAO turned off too.
Rich
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9. September 2010 @ 11:36 |
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All well and good Rich, but remember, that's average frame rate, not minimum, which is important. In DX11, the minimum frame rate is only about 40% of the average at times. Multiplayer it's largely around 80%, but that depends on the map - the more demanding maps have half the frame rate of others.
Those two 5870s may have 74fps average with 2xAA. Turn it up to 4x and it might be 68-69. The minimum frame rate could therefore be as low as 28.
Jeff ran Bad Company 2 with two 4870s, and then two 5850s at 1920x1200. Now remember a 4870 at 1920x1200, is near enough the same as a 5870 at 2560x1600, in terms of performance. He noticed a considerable improvement going from the 4870s to the 5850s, so that must mean there is considerable room for improvement above the 4870s, else he wouldn't have noticed anything :P
It's worth mentioning that enabling AA slams performance in Bad Company 2, worse than most games. The Fermi architecture is exceptionally resilient to overdemands like this, so they are far, far faster with AA applied.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 9. September 2010 @ 11:38
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harvrdguy
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9. September 2010 @ 14:15 |
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Originally posted by sam:
It's worth mentioning that enabling AA slams performance in Bad Company 2, worse than most games. The Fermi architecture is exceptionally resilient to overdemands like this, so they are far, far faster with AA applied.
Wow - well where does that take us then, to dual 460s at 1 gig each? If that is the game to gear up for - the multiplayer game that together with Left 4 Dead and eventually L4D 3 will be the bulk of my gaming for the next year to two years, basically just putting off crysis for a couple of years like you mentioned, then is Fermi the right architecture for me to think about at this time?
What do you think two 5870s will cost by early next year. Let's say we were running 4xAA, or even 8xAA - forget about HBAO for now. Would two 460s conceivablly be as fast, on that game, as two 5870s - for 40% less investment?
On a side note, I just got my OSD working with Riva tuner - all four core temps are displaying, gpu temp, fan speed, and motherboard temp. So now at least I'll get a handle on what is going on. The 8800GTX is running around 85 degrees, and fan duty cycle is around 71%. I almost have a desire just to crank it to 100% fixed, to cool the board as much as possible since I won't hear the whine with headphones. I'm running around 35 fps - it seems smooth. I haven't been throwing smoke.
I am beginning to grate the lack of Quick Save. Grenades everywhere! Did your roommate ever finish WaW? LOL
Rich
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9. September 2010 @ 14:23 |
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I don't think either architecture is right for you to think about at this time. I don't think it's right for you to think about graphics cards at this time. Wait for Southern Islands to appear and see how prices change, then make your mind up then. Should only be 2 months or so by the time that happens.
I couldn't possibly estimate how things will change next year.
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harvrdguy
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9. September 2010 @ 21:51 |
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Yeah that sounds about right, Sam. Good advice.
This whole system is new and majorly more powerful for me, so I'll just play the games that run okay on it the way it is. Later I'll mildly overclock the Q9450 and add the kama bay - I'll probably just take the kama bay from the p4, since the ventilation on that is overkill - it was a good practice case. I'll hold off - look how long I stayed with the p4. I'm pretty content with all this increased power.
The onscreen display is working fine - a few hours ago WaW crashed - the screen froze. The 8800GTX showed 85 degrees. The fan was about 71% duty cycle.
I had thought about this earlier, so I went ahead and adjusted fan speed in riva turner to fixed speed, 100%. Since then the temp has stayed at 82 degrees or less. I'm getting about 32 fps at 4xAA.
The graphics are unbelievable - best I've ever seen. That must be due to the 4xAA. I'm giving Treyarch just a bit more credit now, since I am so impressed with the look of the game. It is more beautiful than Hells Highway - actually more beautiful than anything I've ever seen before. That must be because of the full native resolution of 2560x1600, the smoothing of 4xAA, and some nice texture rendering. I am very impressed and willing to overlook the flaws I posted about before.
And I have to give Treyarch credit, now that I am back on the island hunting the Japanese soldiers. The animating is pretty good - the dying animations when you burn them to a crisp with the flame thrower, are quite gratifying - they scream and suffer horribly - it's really quite ghastly. Good job with that, Treyarch, lol.
The russian campaign took a long time, grenades everywhere, but it was okay, the burning trees glowed a beautiful red. The water flowed through the streams very nicely - I didn't notice any glitches but I am sure there were some - everywhere I looked the textures were detailed and colorful. I have been super impressed with the look of Far Cry 2, but I am just as impressed, if not more so, with the look of WaW.
I don't believe I've ever seen such nice graphics.
Rich
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10. September 2010 @ 05:54 |
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That case's cooling must be terrible, an 8800GTX shouldn't be anywhere near 80ºC at full fan speed.
To be fair Rich, you're giving the wrong company credit for the graphics. COD4 Modern Warfare in my opinion looked every bit as good, and came a year earlier.
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10. September 2010 @ 06:11 |
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World at War is impressive, yes. But there are many much more impressive looking games than that. Treyarch games are very shoddily made. Modern Warfare 1 & 2 even look better.
To really impress yourself try these games:
FEAR 2
Mass Effect 2
Just Cause 2
Crysis
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Dead Space
All of these games are technically better looking than World at War. The IW Engine simply does not support complex lighting and shadowing. It has no lighting engine. All the lighting effects are done with specular mapping, which is not from a light source. It's a shader effect applied directly to the models. Nor does it support detailed water simulation(such as Crysis).
For sure the CoD games are technically impressive. I'll give them credit for models, textures, performance and image quality. But it doesn't have very many shader effects, and the ones it does have are fairly simple.
If you want beautiful lighting, realistic shadows and water, depth of field, motion blur, refraction, and other eye candy, give Crysis a try. I'm sure you can't max it at native resolution, but with an 8800GTX(I think that's what you said) you could definitely give the first game a try at a lower resolution. With some tweaking, it can be gotten quite playable on a single 8800GTX at 1920 x 1200. At least enough to get an idea of what it looks like.
Bad Company 2 is another example of a game that looks miles better than World at War. Textures and models are similar, but the shading effects make all the difference.
Again, I will give IW and Treyarch the nod for models, textures and art direction. The the first scene in the WaW Russian campaign where you are laying in the dead bodies is an excellent example of what I mean. The actual image quality is very impressive. But there are many other games out there that look just as good, but with complex shaders.
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 4GHz(20 x 200) 1.5v 3000NB 2000HT, Corsair Hydro H110 w/ 4 x 140mm 1500RPM fans Push/Pull, Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5, 8GB(2 x 4GB) G.Skill RipJaws DDR3-1600 @ 1600MHz CL9 1.55v, Gigabyte GTX760 OC 4GB(1170/1700), Corsair 750HX
Detailed PC Specs: http://my.afterdawn.com/estuansis/blog_entry.cfm/11388 |
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10. September 2010 @ 06:22 |
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Yeah I'd agree with that. FEAR 2 probably gets the award for the best designed game engine. I played that on my system with only one of the four GPUs working, maxed out at 2560x1600 with 4xAA, and didn't really notice. When I checked the frame rate it was about 40. "This is 40fps?" I asked myself, "I haven't noticed!"
I haven't played Mass Effect 2, but I am recommended it, so I can't comment on that.
Just Cause 2 does have some decent graphics, but it's one of those games where you need a PhysX card to turn up all the eye candy, bah. Amusingly, without PhysX the game actually runs better on ATI cards.
Crysis is of course the obvious one. It was the most demanding game of its day (thankfully!) but it was also one of, if not the best looking game of its day. Half Life 2: Episode Two gives it a run for its money though. In my opinion, at max detail Warhead looks far better, not sure what they did. Warhead also supports 4 GPUs not 3, and actually has proper AA, not one that just anti-aliases the enemies and the floor!
Bad Company 2 is no-contest the most beautiful enjoyable multiplayer game I've seen yet, it's essentially Crysis graphics, but with not quite as much hardware demand, and the game is actually good for multiplayer on top of that, if frustrating.
One thing I also have to give Bad Company 2 credit for is sound. I have yet to play a game that has sound as good as BFBC2.
Dead Space I'd also agree with. Different sort of graphical effect, but it's done quite well, and it runs pretty well too. Due to a bug with the port from the consoles, you have to leave VSync disabled. This does create an excessive GPU strain as the CPU ceiling for the frame rate is vast. My PC runs the game at around 90-250fps, and full graphics fan speed!
Also agreed on the COD lighting engine, it's very primitive. Great textures but no lighting make it exceptionally good looking for how demanding it is (More games like this please!) But the texture models are still 3 years old now, and they're starting show without any fancy lighting effects on top.
If you want to get a sample for the graphics fidelity of games like Crysis without the GPU power, disable image scaling in your graphics driver, so it will show up on the monitor as a box of the appropriate size in the middle of the screen (I'm pretty sure the 3007WFP can do this).
1920x1200 stretched may ruin the cripsness of the graphics, but a 23" box in the middle of the screen will keep it as if you were just using a smaller monitor.
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10. September 2010 @ 06:39 |
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Agreed with Sams's post every word. You might not be able to run Crysis maxed at native res, Rich. But try it in an unscaled box which I believe is called 1:1 Pixel Mapping or Aspect Control on a friend's ASUS monitor. My 2407WFP can do it which is a godsend for older games which can't be modded to use widescreen, namely Star Wars Battlefront 1. Even without 2560 and with the steep hardware demands, Crysis is still an excellent example of what modern games should strive to look like. It literally uses every single shading and lighting effect ever put in a video game. From HDR to Ambient Occlusion, Water FFT(mathematical calculation for realistic waves), Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Transparencies, Refraction, etc. You name it, the game uses it a LOT.
Will definitely agree on Half Life 2 Episode 2 as well. Something about the image quality, textures, and art direction all rolled into one makes it stupidly good looking. Image quality it important for good gaming and Source Engine takes the cake for sheer image quality ie overall art direction. Source produces a very clean image.
Also I will totally vouch for Bad Company 2. Looks extremely similar to Crysis, even a bit better, and runs better to boot. One of my favorite games of all time both technically and gameplay-wise. The multiplayer is absolutely fantastically fun. Hands down beats the crap out of any other game I've ever played in every aspect. Nothing even comes close for fun except Left 4 Dead and it's less repetitive. L4D I got bored of fast. BC2 I just broke 100 hours on and I'm still playing it daily. PvP is miles better than PvE IMO.
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 4GHz(20 x 200) 1.5v 3000NB 2000HT, Corsair Hydro H110 w/ 4 x 140mm 1500RPM fans Push/Pull, Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5, 8GB(2 x 4GB) G.Skill RipJaws DDR3-1600 @ 1600MHz CL9 1.55v, Gigabyte GTX760 OC 4GB(1170/1700), Corsair 750HX
Detailed PC Specs: http://my.afterdawn.com/estuansis/blog_entry.cfm/11388
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 10. September 2010 @ 06:55
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AfterDawn Addict
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10. September 2010 @ 07:03 |
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In other news, it's going to be a difficult time ahead for PC hardware in the UK. The Pound is forecast to crash against the dollar from current 1.54 to 1.35, and a VAT rise from 17.5% to 20% takes effect on 4th January.
Currently a 100USD product costs £76.02. If that forecast is right, it'll be £88.89. :S
Official price for the new GTX460 seems to be £115-£130, though this will rise given the above scenario.
Official release price for the GTS450 is £105-£110, so once again nvidia are competing with themselves.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 10. September 2010 @ 07:11
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harvrdguy
Senior Member
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10. September 2010 @ 22:49 |
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Wow Sam - maybe a big reason for you to hold out and really watch the gpu market - maybe even southern islands is not for you - maybe the new 32nm die 7000 family will be when you make your move.
GRAPHICS EVEN MORE STUNNING THAT WAW
Originally posted by sam:
To be fair Rich, you're giving the wrong company credit for the graphics. COD4 Modern Warfare in my opinion looked every bit as good, and came a year earlier.
Originally posted by estuansis:
World at War is impressive, yes. But there are many much more impressive looking games than that. Treyarch games are very shoddily made. Modern Warfare 1 & 2 even look better.
Sam and Jeff - Wow, you guys are both saying that COD4 looked better - but not to me - so the only thing that can account for that is the 8800GTX allowing me to play at full native resolution, of 2560x1600, and smoothing everything out with 4xAA! (When I played COD4 - twice through the single player - yes I was on the dell 30", but not at native resolution, and I bet I had AA turned off.)
That makes a lot of sense! So Infinity Ward deserves the credit then - Treyarch was just handed the COD4 development stuff by the publisher who owns the game, when they started on COD5.
Then I'm going to add COD4 to my playlist on the next game play weekend in October. If what you guys are saying is true, and I bet it is, then that will only confirm how important it is to have a powerful machine that can fully display the beauty built into the game - like why I won't be playing Crysis anytime soon, and also why I guess I won't be playing BC2 anytime soon - at least not with the 8800GTX. (haha - that makes me think of the nvidia logo - "the way it's meant to be played." Putting aside whether one likes or dislikes the company, the LOGO is meaningful. What it means to me is: Why even play a game if you can't play it at high if not ultra high settings, and REALLY get full impact of the graphics?)
8800GTX COOLING ISSUES
Originally posted by Sam:
That case's cooling must be terrible, an 8800GTX shouldn't be anywhere near 80ºC at full fan speed.
It IS terrible - it has only one fan, the 120mm exhaust, at full speed (I'm guessing about 2500 rpm.) But I'm concerned, Sam, about a kama bay - THAT will send in air on top, helping the cpu more than the gpu, although with 1900 rpm or maybe more, I can possibly push the fresh air down to where the graphics card can get to it. Maybe that's the answer - a REALLY strong fan.
In that case, Sam, and Jeff, and anybody, since the machine is on loan to me and I am not allowed to cut holes in the case, and the kama bay is my only opportunity to feed fresh air in, forgetting about how much noise a 120mm fan makes, or how long it will last, what fan should I get?
Which 120mm kama bay fan would you recommend - a Kazi or whatever - that may not have the life of a scythe, and of course not the low DBs, but will push a lot of air - maybe at 2500-3000 rpm or greater. I don't care how much noise it makes.
Jeez, look at this Delta jet-engine fan. It's a fair bet that it isn't the kind of fan (you can hear a pin drop) that Sam would normally choose, but maybe it's the one I need, since I can only install one intake fan, and that's it! For $25, it puts out 220 cfm, at 4500 rpm. (It only last one week before the eardrums of the gamer are blown, and he gets put to rest in a sanatorium, lol.)
Seriously, what do you guys think? I found another at 3300 rpm - but why not go for crazy cfm? - what harm could it do? I won't hear it through the headphones.
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
Newegg carries these fans, but they are out of stock on an earlier, slightly less powerful 4000rpm model. Here's one guy's feedback:
Originally posted by newegg delta 4000rpm fan buyer:
If you even think you have heating issues just buy ONE of these and your problems will instantly vanish.
GAMES WITH BETTER GRAPHICS THAN WORLD AT WAR
Originally posted by estuansis:
To really impress yourself try these games:
FEAR 2
Mass Effect 2
Just Cause 2
Crysis
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Dead Space
All of these games are technically better looking than World at War. The IW Engine simply does not support complex lighting and shadowing. It has no lighting engine. All the lighting effects are done with specular mapping, which is not from a light source. It's a shader effect applied directly to the models. Nor does it support detailed water simulation(such as Crysis).
Bad Company 2 is another example of a game that looks miles better than World at War. Textures and models are similar, but the shading effects make all the difference.
If you want beautiful lighting, realistic shadows and water, depth of field, motion blur, refraction, and other eye candy, give Crysis a try. I'm sure you can't max it at native resolution, but with an 8800GTX(I think that's what you said) you could definitely give the first game a try at a lower resolution. With some tweaking, it can be gotten quite playable on a single 8800GTX at 1920 x 1200. At least enough to get an idea of what it looks like.
Wow, Jeff, that gets me even more excited! I am so jazzed by how great WAW looks with my new hardware. If you and Sam are both saying that I'm just beginning to appreciate great graphics, then that just blows me away! Fantastic!
Believe it or not, I did actually try crysis. I played the demo. I was not much struck by the graphics. I liked the AI and fooled around fighting the Koreans. I even stopped using the fancy features of the suit, and confronted a patrol, and used stealth to see if I could beat the AI. The Koreans, even if they're behind you in a wooded area, always give out a little yell before they kill you, lol. When I heard that - my directional 5.1 headphones are pretty good, and the default suit setting is armor - I ran like hell, but not with the suit setting. Other times I laid in the road, waiting for the Koreans to come to me.
Regarding the graphics, I was not playing at high res, nor at highest settings - this was even before the 4 ghz 670 p4 with twice the L2 cache, and it may even have been shader 2.0 on the x850xtpe - your old card, Jeff. And since it was the demo .... It was the same time that Waymon (Ray) got his water cooler for the x1900 Tec card, before he got his Christmas money and bought his new rig.
I own the full game, but my feeling is, why ruin it by playing it at other than native res? But, I do have to admit that 1920x1200 runs pretty nice on the dell 30" - the in-monitor graphics scales it very nicely as proven by how nice Left 4 Dead looked when I first played it. But still - when I jumped on Left 4 Dead 2, for a few hours several days ago, on this new equipment, and cranked it up to 2560x1600, I was blown away by the graphics! The very same game (well to be accurate, I've only been playing L4D2 at 1440x900 - that's all the P4 would handle.)
Do you see what I'm saying? I have kind of gotten myself stuck by the Dell 30" investment, and I would almost rather put off jumping into those gorgeous games you mentioned, until I can do it right, even if that is 6 months to 2 years away.
Maybe my logic is perverse. It's like somebody saying "Hey, let's go to the Bahamas - we'll go on the cheap and stay in a youth hostel." Somebody else says "No, I realize the island itself is beautiful, and the water is gorgeous blue, and clear, the snorkeling is fantastic! But I want to save up so then when I go, I can stay in the Grand Nassau hotel, and be surrounded by luxury, as well as by the beauty of nature." Hahaha - that's more what a chick would say!
Hahahaha!
TEST THE BEST GAMES WITH 23" BOX IN MIDDLE OF SCREEN
Sam and Jeff - first of all, great suggestion regarding putting the 23" 1920x1200 box in the middle of the screen. Crispness of image and tightness of pixels is of course a plus, and the 23" versus normal 24" will even make those pixels tighter. I will definitely try that one day and fool around fighting the Koreans. I remember that Jeff provided a patch - I did download it - that provides very-close-to-ultra-high graphics, at closer to high system load. Also I take note, Sam, that Warhead looks even better than Crysis - I DO own that game already, also - maybe again on the 23" box with a patch.
That idea will of course also work for BC2, and I'm astounded that you say, Jeff, that the graphics are a bit better than Crysis! High praise indeed! I'll have to buy the game, no doubt, and maybe sooner than later with the 23" box idea. As for repetitiveness, that is interesting that you got kind of bored with L4D, and have logged 100 hours on BC2. I had 186 hours on L4D2, before I moved to the new machine per Steam a few days ago, and now 13 hours more, that's 200 hours. I am sure I have as much on L4D.
I am going to have to see why you're raving about BC2, Jeff. But it may be a simple matter of play style. What I mean is that I jumped on Day of Defeat a few days ago, and it was nice - REALLY looked better than at any time before at full 2560x1600. But the L4D games fall into a special category of their own, with coop against monsters. The personalities of your teammates comes out - helping the weak - everybody making it through very difficult situations together - improving one's skill set as you go along.
That, to me, puts the game above all others that I have ever played - similarly to how Medal of Honor-Pacific Assault is so far above everything else in its ability to create a bond with your platoon - above COD2, COD4, all 3 Brothers in Arms, above them all, in my opinion, regarding that one aspect of team identity. (I'm not saying it's a better game than those others.)
(The funny thing about L4D, even though Sam talked about it in 2009 as being the game he played most regularly, I wasn't even going to try it - and I can get Valve games for free, because of Miles. They gave it away for a one-week test - it appeared in my games list suddenly, I couldn't figure out how it got there, and I was immediately captivated by it, as by no other game.
I was even thinking, a couple days ago, to help Gabe Newell, (this is a hysterical thread on Gabe Newell, showing his sense of humor) by proposing another way to market the game, with more emphasis on the bonding teamplay. I would change the main graphic they use for the game - I would put that zombie hand up in the corner - and place the teammates in main center, with some quotes about teamplay "Intense coop teamplay that builds friendships like no other video game you have ever played." Something like that. Maybe Kevin could help me with that graphic. I think they could get a few more millions to play it if they altered the marketing angle slightly.)
I RESTARTED WORLD AT WAR - BASICALLY SAM'S FAULT
Wow, another horribly long 3500 word post. I really can't post these essays about games this much, because then I want to play some more. Since I didn't yet turn the main table around, the one that has the two monitors, business and gaming, I'm gonna jump on one of the games right now, haha, just because of this post. Then in a couple of hours, I'll turn the tables back around, and wait a month.
I just want to add, Sam, and for sure, you're laughing by now, just like you warned me, the game started to bug me and I restarted it, dropping down from max skill setting to the one below it, hardcore, which is just above regular, and then I blazed through the first 3 chapters, and now I'm back with Demetri in Russia about to do the sniper BS again, but that won't be anywhere near as difficult this time. And there were a couple of fun things I got to do at hardcore that I couldn't do on super high skill, like jump on the upper AA gun, and blow a lot of the reinforcements up before they killed me. Finally I jumped off just before the part where I died, and the planes came and finished off the tanks - or I could have called for rockets.
I like to play at max skill, because I like to be as close to reality as I can, within reason, meaning until the game turns BORRRRING. On the real battlefield, you have only one life. Unless your survival or that of your teammates depends on it, you don't go charging into situations that get you killed. Gaming of course - we're all invincible - with unlimited lives. So I like the realism of max skill level, except when it becomes stupid.
The Russian sniper versus sniper was a huge test of my patience and perseverance, but I finally beat it when I changed the sound settings by turning off voice, so I couldn't hear the Russian guy screaming at me. Hahahaha. But it was realistic - more or less.
But I restarted WAW, because they put me in an unrealistic position, just to create something REALLY CHALLENGING. The setup was at the beginning of a cave where the Japanese were dug in. The room started as a narrow corridor, opening to a bigger room, then from that branching off to the right, was a larger room where they were all defending, with automatic weapons.
I had used all my smoke, and perhaps I should have restarted the level to save my smoke, and at the same time save all my BAR ammo. I tried the sniper rifle, then laying prone with the Garand, then the Japanese 99, the 100 model, the trench gun, all of them, because I was down to only 18 rounds with the BAR. But the unrealistic setup finally ticked me off after a couple hours and 50 tries.
The only soldier with me who knew what he was doing was the sergeant, who from time to time, leaned out from the first corridor, and blasted away at the one Jap who had entered the large room, and was behind the big box, peeking out from time to time firing ferociously. We could kill him with a grenade, and then get a little rest before his replacement would jump to that box in about 10 seconds. During that lull, I tossed several grenades and moved in, and turned on fire, but the room was large and the room to the right was wide, and there were at least a half dozen auto weapons guys in there firing like mad.
Several times I was able to get close enough to the main room to burn 3 of the auto weapons guys, before a couple of others would shoot from a flanking position through the flames and kill me. Nobody from my side was in there by then to help while this was going on - especially the grizzled sergeant who should have been covering me. Obviously that is not real life.
The guys who DID run into the main room, while I was in the corridor planning my next move, were rookies who were quickly killed - their bodies littered the floor. That is bullsh*t and is not how the marines work. I know there were a bunch of fresh recruits in the Pacific, called "7 day wonders who don't last very long" from Medal of Honor-Pacific Assault, with the attack on Makin. But still, give me a break. The way the Marines really work, is more like in the Band of Brothers games, with fire teams and assault teams - it's more real life.
There is something called "covering fire." Every friggin guy who was ever in a battle since the Civil War knows that. Even COD2 and COD4 give you more support from teammates - and their max skill situations aren't so unrealistically contrived.
Several guys should have helped out at the mouth of the main room and provided covering fire, and even better, grenaded the hell out of the right angle corridor to give me support. There should have been several guys shooting like hell when I was burning the three guys who jumped out.
WAW CROSSED THE LINE BETWEEN CHALLENGE AND BOREDOM
Challenge finally turned to total boredom, and the ridiculous setup - watching those rookies rush in and get their heads blown off - finally me pissed off. That, plus I had been up all night again, and I was cranky, hahaha.
And the other stupid thing, is that by then I had realized that friendly fire was turned off - the guys would rush right into my flames in earlier sections. At first I turned off the flame, which got me killed lots of times. Finally I said to myself, "If these idiots are so stupid as to rush into my flames, let them be burned up too." That's when I saw that the fire had no effect on them, only killing the Japanese.
I do not like games with friendly fire turned off, because it builds very bad habits. That's why L4D and L4D2 on expert are so good - friendly fire is catastrophic, the way it should be - more realistic!
So basically I had lost respect for the integrity of the realism of the game, and had become super bored with this new challenge, and the graphics in that cave did not inspire me to put up with any more pain. I restarted at less than super high skill level called hardcore. I know you're laughing Sam, because you said it would "grate," and you were right.
My final thoughts were - "The game doesn't have quick save - so I can't save my best initial effort, and build on that. Even if I get through this, and probably I can figure it out in another 3 hours, or restart the level and save a couple of my smokes, how many more unrealistic situations are they going to try to put me in to maximize my boredom?"
And on top of that, I thought - "Sam warned me about this game, having watched his housemate. Am I having fun any more? What am I trying to prove? I already beat the sniper at highest skill level, that was proof enough that I can get through just about any goddamn thing if I am so bullheaded that I refuse to give up."
Hahahaha.
Plus while the Russian main battle offensive was very difficult, grenades everywhere, the scenery was unbelievably gorgeous. But by contrast, the scenery in the cave was friggin horrendous. I don't mind you laughing, Sam, you saved me from hours and hours of sheer boredom - I can just imagine what more crap they had in store for me. The way you had described it kept coming back to me and I thought, "Oh no!"
Originally posted by Sam cackling evilly a couple days ago as he remembered his housemate pulling his hair out:
I watched one of my housemates play WAW on highest difficulty. Haha, just you wait, the lack of autosave is going to grate soon :P
Now Sam, if you have read this whole post, and if you just read that part there - tell me now. Does your housemate know the spot I was talking about? - and did he beat that one spot I was just describing? - and did he get all the way through the game on highest skill level?
If he actually did, if he actually suffered through all the hours of "grating" you warned me about, well then by God, you can tell him from me that he's a better man than I am, and I'll buy him a beer next time I swing by. LOL
Rich
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11. September 2010 @ 00:43 |
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Hell Rich, if you ALWAYS play with headphones on, go for that beast of a fan. But make sure you can control it when you're not gaming ;) I've thought about those powerful fans before, but I wouldn't use them now. I've had 1900Rpm fans that sound like blow dryers! I can only imagine what a 220Cfm fan sounds like. "Jet engine" indeed ;) My secondary PC loves how I have it set up. A 140mm fan on top exhausting at a LOW rpm, a 120mm intake at 1200Rpms(Scythe), and the stock exhaust fan. It's more quiet than my primary and OC'd to 3.5Ghz, it never breaks 47-50C. This is a mid tower full to the keel mind you ;)
Oh! That could be merely the Northbridge(Mobo) temp too! The cpu is generally lower on my PC's...
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11. September 2010 @ 08:47 |
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I think the shaders were slightly better in COD5, but I think that owes more to location than the game itself. 'Wet Work' on COD4 was a good looking map, but it was the only part of COD4 that dropped out of crossfire (same problem that's prevalent with COD5 and COD6). Turning AA on dropped the frame rate from 140 to 25.
I get what you're saying about 'The Way it's meant to be played' but as it happens, it's merely an indicator that nvidia have had some hand in the game's development. In many cases, though, games that aren't TWIMTBP run better on ATI hardware, and those that don't display the TWIMTBP logo are a Geforce owners' club.
If that single exhaust fan you had was 2500rpm, you'd know about it. Very few systems are specified with 120mm fans that fast.
The best thing you can do for a graphics card is install a side fan low down in the case.
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eez, look at this Delta jet-engine fan. It's a fair bet that it isn't the kind of fan (you can hear a pin drop) that Sam would normally choose,
Lol, perhaps you forget I'm using six (well, now five) 1900rpm Slipstream fans? They put out a hell of a racket, but QuadCF demands it. Well, it does when you use a chipset, and when you have a GPU cooler that appears to be blocked by dust :S
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what harm could it do? I won't hear it through the headphones.
1. You need to run it via a molex, if you hook it up to anything that uses a 3-pin, you will melt it in a matter of hours.
2. You will hear it through the headphones.
3. The amount of air that can go in the case is limited by how much air can get out. If your rear fan isn't this powerful, its a waste.
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Originally posted by newegg delta 4000rpm fan buyer:
If you even think you have heating issues just buy ONE of these and your problems will instantly vanish.
He has absolutely no idea what he's talking about :P
Crysis is absolutely devastated by reducing the detail, it looks very mediocre if you play it how I did (low shadows, low shaders).
According to Steam I've played 103 hours of Left 4 Dead 2, I think the monitor came into being shortly after L4D2 came out, so I suspect it's more like 120-130.
Left 4 Dead 1 I'd hazard a guess at around 200 hours playtime, maybe 250-300.
I've only played 15 hours of Bad Company 2 so far, along with 12 hours of Modern Warfare 2 (lol, got my money's worth there, didn't I? :S) and 12 hours of Half Life 2 Deathmatch (again, monitor system, I suspect this is more like 30-40)
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"Intense coop teamplay that builds friendships like no other video game you have ever played."
Apart from the fact that Left 4 Dead doesn't really need any additional marketing, I'd probably hazard against that, it's too complicated. A game that is obviously about killing zombies will earn more sales than one that has a lengthy sales pitch like that. Remember, not all gamers make their decisions like we do!
Heh, I don't live with Nick any more, and though I do speak to him on occasions, I don't know if he finished the game, I'm pretty sure he did.
All I know is the section that was causing him so much grief was in a sort of trench structure, with you in the trench and enemies in front and on both sides.
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harvrdguy
Senior Member
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13. September 2010 @ 02:32 |
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Originally posted by omega:
My secondary PC loves how I have it set up. A 140mm fan on top exhausting at a LOW rpm, a 120mm intake at 1200Rpms(Scythe), and the stock exhaust fan. It's more quiet than my primary and OC'd to 3.5Ghz, it never breaks 47-50C. This is a mid tower full to the keel mind you ;)
Kevin, that sounds very good. I thought you had a HAF like Sam and Red? Am I confused?
Originally posted by sam:
Heh, I don't live with Nick any more, and though I do speak to him on occasions, I don't know if he finished the game, I'm pretty sure he did.
All I know is the section that was causing him so much grief was in a sort of trench structure, with you in the trench and enemies in front and on both sides.
Yeah, you don't live with him any more cause he died trying to get through that game. Jeeez - you scared me off - and it was the trench part, which comes BEFORE the terrible cave? Hahahaha. Yeah, that was hard, at first, then I threw extra smoke, and it made it easy.
I went back to the cave that was giving me fits - of course this time on hardcore, not on the HARDEST setting, and it was still hard. But they give away two 99s - the Japanese automatic rifle with 2/1 scope - and it is a very damaging gun - the blood flies through the air when you hit - must be a big bullet. Anyway, they give that away at two little caves just before the BAD one - so sometimes that's a clue. Anyway, with that again, and again in prone, I finally managed to get through the difficult section, and of course I hit it with a full night's sleep - I think that made a lot of difference. So it really wasn't as terrible as I was telling myself.
Surprisingly the sniper versus sniper was pretty hard the second time, at reduced skill setting. Not a walk in the park at all - but the next sniper nightmare did not have the two dogs - but I could have handled them on that back table - I was ready. So I could tell things had been slightly tweaked down - they basically give you more health, and reduce the amount and intensity of grenades. And I even did not kill the driver of the General's getaway car - for some reason he started out just as I finished reloading. But I took a couple shots as the car went down the road, and I killed the General, hahaha. The Russian says "GOOD SHOT, HEH HEH" It WAS a goddamn good shot - he was right! :P
I saved up my smoke this time, and I saved the BAR, but like I say I didn't even go back for the BAR - I ended up using the 99 on the horrendous cave, and I got to like it (that zoom is nice) and I used it many places later in the game. It has a real solid feeling to each shot - probably an AK heavy shell, low rate of fire, very damaging kill, coupled with slight zoom - monster weapon. The blood flies!! Haha!
So are you guys saying that COD5 might be somewhat optimized for nvidia, and that's why it's looking so good to me right now - I mean I have to tell you - it's friggin GORGEOUS!!!
By the way, I wasn't saying "The way it's meant to be played" as if I had just converted to an Nvidia fanboy - don't get me wrong. I was just saying that the logo itself has meaning to me - like you just said, Sam, Crysis turned down goes to sh*t in terms of the quality of the image - so my point is Why even play it if it doesn't look good?
I mean, if you have the future potential to be able to play it maxed, then play it at that time, that's what I'm sayin. I remember Sam when you told Jeff, "Crysis doesn't look that good." Well, you had a more powerful machine than he had, but you were pushing twice as many pixels, so he was running it at higher settings.
I remember he told you that you had to crank it up to higher quality. Later you got your monster hardware, then you started to appreciate the game. So I guess I'm saying - it's not Nvidia - but it's a good logo. I like the meaning of the logo - and I guess I'm giving nvidia a little break, because the 8800 is working so well form me right now - and I recall that Jeff has a fondness for that card as well. But for sure, I am loving the graphics of WAW, and Far Cry 2 as well. And not just the graphics of Far Cry 2 - I like the zebras, I like the antelopes, I like to drive around in the middle of them running, although I really don't like to accidentally hit one, and have it lay there dead in the road, lol. I swear, it was an accident. Ok, one time only I did it on purpose. :P
Originally posted by sam:
Lol, perhaps you forget I'm using six (well, now five) 1900rpm Slipstream fans? They put out a hell of a racket, but QuadCF demands it.
Actually yes, Sam, I knew that the old days of "Silent Sam" as they used to call you, were well behind you, hahaha. But the reputation lingers anyway. Hey, I don't fault you one bit with all the turmoil you went through making quad cf work - you deserve a break today! MacDonalds! Great slogan! Reminds me of another one: "Coop teamplay that builds friendships like no other game!" Haha.
I know that you can no longer hear a pin drop.
Okay, the 4500 rpm is probably overkill - although I disagree with what you said about if I don't have an equally strong rear exhaust it will be waste. Even if I have no fan at all - it will blow air out the back, then it will blow the sides off the case!!!
And I guess the rear exhaust is probably more like 1200, or 1600 tops given the whoosh sound - I believe my 1900 is noisier. So what kama bay fan will I NOT be able to hear through the headphones while the Russian is screaming at me "He knows where you are, change locations!" hahaha. What about 3300 rpm?
I just looked up best cfm/db ratio, and they said scythe kaze - I know you also like that fan Sam. The 1900 rpm puts out 37 db and 110 cfm. Are you thinking that's more like what I should do? But in regard to your suggestion about a side case fan for the graphics area - remember it's a loaner case.
Won't a REALLY strong front fan, something on the order of 150 cfm, say, and 55 db, say (1/10 as loud as 65 db, right?) blow enough air that it will slip down past the gpu card (my case is 8" wide - a full inch wider than my old case) and help with the lower part of the case?
Alright, HERE'S THE ULTRA KAZE. Now maybe this is the ticket. Drop another 10 db, down to ONLY 45, lol. It's not quite 150 cfm, but it is almost 134 cfm, and only 0.6 amp, or 7 watts, so no need for a molex - nothing's gonna melt. Sam, you have 5 fans at 1900 - you must have at least 45 db of sound by now, right?
Come on, I know you like Kaze. I know you like this fan, confess!
Hahaha - you don't think it's time for me to get into marketing? You are not all that impressed with my "builds friendships like no other" L4D2 or L4D3 campaign? Hahaha. Watch out - I sent the email to Gabe anyway, he'll probably hire me.
The only problem is that I identified myself as trouble maker Sam Morris, who makes guys reduce their skill level and replay the whole first part of a game, as soon as the going gets tough. My marine training (which I never had) failed me - I should have said "No way am I going to quit, Sam, remember, 'When the going gets tough, the tough get going!'" :P
LOL
Actually I think it's maybe a good rule to play the game first, and one level under max, then later when you want to come back to it - ok go for max. That way, if there are any ridiculous tests in it - like the silo sniping game in COD2 - you can be ready. For COD2 you could select your skill level for each chapter. So when I got to the silo, I went back and dropped the skill level down one click - I didn't feel like spending an hour trying to get past that one point.
But for a game like Far Cry 2 with Quick Save - it's not such a bad idea to try for max skill level - I already tested out the lumber yard and no problem.
For example, Half life 2, it wasn't so easy shooting down both of those combine fighters at the jail - but Quick save allowed me to get one finished off, then go for the other.
Hey, speaking of Half Life 2, the other real hard spot was in the crazy turret test, where you have 3 turrets, and you need 4. You guys remember that spot, just before Alyx hooks up with you again, and says "It must have been brutal" Yeah, bit*h, were you getting your nails done? Haha. I kid. I would NEVER talk that way to Alyx. Anway, I digress - So I read a guide that said "carry the turret with you" all the way through two sections, just for that one part. Half Life 2 lets you set your skill level anyhere in the game, at any time. I actually had to drop to easy to beat it with 3 turrets - before I used my brain.
There are boxes everywhere. I got the brilliant idea of stacking them all on the back wall to block the view of the combine. It worked! The idiots didn't even try to shoot the boxes down, somehow I knew that they wouldn't do that. So I beat that on full skill level with three turrets.
I should send an email to the guy who wrote that guide - "Hello idiot!" Just kidding!
So Sam, you only played 12 hours of COD6 - Miles told me the same - actually he only played 6 hours of it (probably on easy) and then took it off his computer (he gets all steam games for free) to make room for other stuff. But he sounded pretty impressed when he told me about it - he doesn't really play games normally. I'm sure you'll revisit it several times again. Play it at max hardness next time, like Shaff and I did with COD4, or maybe you already did.
I'm gonna buy it - it will be cheaper by the time I get around to it - just because it's the latest from the group that used to be Infinity Ward, so it's pretty much a must-have game, if you're into shooters. I have heard that it's short - but great - so of course I'll get it.
Hey, I was able to enable a monitor in the middle of the screen at 1920x1200. The other day I thought I would have to report failure, because my nvidia kept rejecting the "no scaling" choice. But today I loaded new graphics drivers. They came with some incredibly huge 130 mega byte Nvidia performance measuring program which was a prerequisite to a gpu-load riva tuner plugin. The plugin never worked, and gpu-z can't even read the gpu load from that card, so all the extra nvidia programming got removed. But now the driver "do not scale" button works, so the pain of the last 3 hours was worth it!
So soon I will most likely take up the suggestion from you guys to try some of the harder programs, most especially BC2 that you guys are all in love with!! I guess that's the one I'll start with - does that sound like a good idea?!!
Rich
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 13. September 2010 @ 08:49
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13. September 2010 @ 03:46 |
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Rich, here's a side shot of my secondary PC. This is my workhorse LOL! It does most of my BD/avi-dvd encoding. My primary is exactly that. Gaming, browsing, etc. It does everything that my secondary does, however faster ;)
Here's a top shot of its light. When the panel is on, I have a 1200Rpm Scythe drawing the air into the case. Even running at 90% cpu usage right now. Its barely louder than my primary. Since It's doing such a good job cooling the CPU, the stock CPU fan doesn't need to do 4,000+ rpms. I've seen it do 5500. Which is why I modified the case. Best move I've done to it, was to install the 140mm fan on top :D Pulls heat out of the case quite nicely!
To delete, or not to delete. THAT is the question! This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 13. September 2010 @ 03:47
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harvrdguy
Senior Member
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13. September 2010 @ 08:48 |
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Hey Kevin, you did a pretty good job on that top hole - it looks better than most of the holes I have made. So your ceiling exhaust solved the cpu heat problem - I read some case reviews and ceiling exhaust cases had the coolest cpus. So that is your secondary - you DO have a HAF, right? The HAF is your gaming machine?
I am just finishing up several hours of testing, and that's probably the end of my gaming until the next gaming weekend.
By going to Mission select to get missions where the graphics had impressed me, I found out that COD5 has a chapter by chapter skill level. Instead of just selecting continue, choose mission select, and I think it even gives you the very mission you are on - and then set the skill level. So after Sam faked me out by getting me all worried, now I'm back to veteran, which makes it more challenging. If I ever get to a crazy part, I can go to mission select, and just shift down to hardcore.
The reason I was choosing missions, is that I found, that with the new drivers, which fortunately made it possible for me to run the 23" monitor in the middle of my screen, somehow the game didn't look as good as it did yesterday. Then I remembered that when I first got the 880GTX board last week, I had opened the nvidia control panel, and ran the optimization routine.
So tonight, remembering that, I went in, turned contrast to max, slightly reduced brightness, increased saturation just a little, and then went through their gamma adjustments on red, green and blue. Then I went back into the game, and the image was unbelievable again, just like I've been raving about in the last couple of posts. Without the color adjustment, and the gamma adjustment, I never would have been talking about the great unbelievable image quality.
Maybe those same adjustments have been available all along through the ati control panel, but I just never knew about it. I always thought the L4D colors were great - but I never was all that much impressed with COD4 - it looked good of course - but I don't remember it looking this good.
The gamma for colors is a way of lining up what you see so it approximates what is dithered - they say it's best if the image is slightly out of focus - you're trying to get the same hue as the dithered.
Anyway, I was really impressed with what happened to the image when I messed with the the color adjustments, so I spent a little time playing around with it, then going back into the game, then back to the adjustments, back and forth. I intentionally overdid saturation a bit, saw how that looked, then toned it down, and I liked the toned-down version better - leaving it still somewhat more saturated than default.
I found that the smaller 23" image, 1920x1200, also at first did not look good. That was disappointing. But it also didn't make sense, because I wasn't stretching the image, just using a subset of about 55% of all the pixels that the monitor has. But then I did the adjustments, and it looked great! Just like the full screen 2560x1600.
I played WAW for a couple hours, stuff that I have already done, and I got totally used to playing in the 23" monitor space. I see it's going to work perfectly for BC2. I doubt the 8800GTX will handle BC2, at 1920x1200, from what you guys have said, but a 5850 or 5870 probably will.
That is a certainly a great idea you guys came up with. I'll play the stuff my hardware runs now in 2560x1600, or in 1920x1200, and I won't expand the pixels - no question the sharpness suffers greatly, and the crispness of the image is a big factor in overall image quality. No wonder Left 4 Dead 2 looks so good now - I can play it 2560x1600, but I've been playing it 1440x900, on the same size screen stretched out! The screen does a great job of expanding it, the colors are great, but the crispness suffers.
This way I won't have to wait forever to play the great games - BC2 being the main case in point - the next graphics card should get me there.
Lastly I just learned a huge lesson: When I go back to an ati card, I'm going to have to make sure that I figure out how to enhance the image, the way that I just did, through contrast, saturation, brightness (less bright) and most of all, gamma on the three primary colors, red, green, and blue. Thank you 8800 card for teaching me that.
By the way, even though I couldn't get the gpu load to show up in the On Screen Display (OSD) the way that you get it with ATT - I'm sure I don't need it, we pretty much know the 8800GTX is running at near 100% because I'm running less than about 35 fps most of the time. So what I'm saying is, I'm sure that the gpu load is 100%. But I can see all core utilization, and cpu load runs around 35% on pretty much each of the cores - I wasn't looking at it too closely, but it looked like all the cores were working.
Anyway, it looks like for sure the Q9450 has lots of head room on the cpu - and I haven't even overclocked it yet. So after southern islands hits, you guys can help me figure out what kind of big step up in gpu power will make sense for first or second quarter of next year, keeping in mind that it's an x38 crossfire board and that I should plan, eventually, to run two gpus.
Rich
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13. September 2010 @ 08:58 |
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No, I didn't say anything about COD5 being optimised for nvidia. Indeed, the 8 series was renowned for cutting corners to reduce the image quality for the sake of performance.
All I said about COD5 was Crossfire doesn't work properly.
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Crysis turned down goes to sh*t in terms of the quality of the image - so my point is Why even play it if it doesn't look good?
Is why I haven't played it since my original runthrough on the 3870, I'm waiting until I can max it. Same for Warhead, though that will no doubt take longer.
I'll explain why I said "Crysis doesn't look that good" - and it's not because I couldn't run it maxed.
I say it because it is largely inconsistent (Warhead is better for this) - certain textures are great, others are awful. The fact the game essentially doesn't support AA doesn't help matters either.
The main argument though, is despite having a performance index of about 30-35, versus the 5-6 of COD4: Modern Warfare, it doesn't look anywhere near 5 times as good, it's too demanding for how good it looks.
Remember I also played Crysis for a bit on my X1900XT, maxed out, at 800x600. The same comments hold true there.
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Actually yes, Sam, I knew that the old days of "Silent Sam" as they used to call you, were well behind you,
They aren't, I still focus silence for my gaming PC at idle, as do I with my fileserver. I just need to get some more fan controllers.
I'd hold it up that, depending on what mood the Samsung drive is in, my gaming PC is quieter than anyone else's in this thread, when it's idling.
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Okay, the 4500 rpm is probably overkill - although I disagree with what you said about if I don't have an equally strong rear exhaust it will be waste. Even if I have no fan at all - it will blow air out the back, then it will blow the sides off the case!!!
Lol. Seriously Rich, unless your case has several air vents in it, it will literally just wear the fan out, and do nothing.
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I just looked up best cfm/db ratio, and they said scythe kaze - I know you also like that fan Sam. The 1900 rpm puts out 37 db and 110 cfm. Are you thinking that's more like what I should do? But in regard to your suggestion about a side case fan for the graphics area - remember it's a loaner case.
No, I dislike the Scythe Ultra Kaze considerably. It's got the highest CFM output, but it is a high-pressure fan, which you don't need for a case fan, and it's CFM/dB ratio is awful compared to the SlipStream.
Ultra high speed fans also do not scale. That fan will grind and buzz and annoy the hell out of you even at such a slow speed it doesn't push any air at all. You can't run really high speed fans at low speeds and them be quiet, it just doesn't happen. Is the same reason why SPCR never reviewed a Delta.
Think about how airflow works Rich. Why is air going to go down towards the graphics card, when it has no way to get out? It'll bumble around in there, colliding with turbulence, which will cause everything to actually get warmer and just be a really terrible way of cooling your PC.
You have three real options:
1. Cut a hole and add a side fan
2. Live with high temperatures
3. Use something that's less hot and heat-sensitive than an 8800GTX (Say for example, an HD5850 :P)
Also remember Rich, Ultra Kazes are 38mm thick fans. They interfere with big heatsinks etc.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=I2NSKSE1
Here's a link to me playing around with the noise levels of my PC, and two files demonstrating the noise of my server from different microphone positions (front: against the front intake fan. Side: against the CPU-side wall)
Note: the cheap mic I use picks up a lot of background noise, so it may be difficult to determine how quiet the PC is.
At the end of the 'noise testing' file I switch the A/C unit on. So that should highlight the differences :P
Coming up next, my response to Rich's second post! :O
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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13. September 2010 @ 09:05 |
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That's interesting to see Kevin, as a friend of mine has a similar looking case and has performed a near-identical modification to it, though he used two 120mm fans and placed a mesh grille over the top of it, it looks really professional.
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Maybe those same adjustments have been available all along through the ati control panel, but I just never knew about it.
They were. Colour control, Saturation and Hue have been in Catalyst for at least 5 years.
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The screen does a great job of expanding it, the colors are great, but the crispness suffers.
The 3007WFP has no scaler remember, it's the graphics card doing the scaling, not the monitor.
Considering I'm still using a Q9550 in my gaming machine until I get round to swapping the i5 back (will probably do it once I've moved back to York), you're fine with a 9450 for a while yet.
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