The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

My degree will (hopefully) be Environmental Science. As for a career, I'm not sure yet. My aim is to get a normal boring desk job for income first, and then start looking for something more specific once I'm settled down.

 

Well, since you're studying for all those exams, maybe that's why you haven't upgraded your post 7351 for specifically 30" 4XAA gaming, lol. Here, I'll throw it in for your convenience. (My question was that I think the post understated the relative performance gain, for this type of gaming, from the new 2 gig cards, per your prior posts.)

If you don't have time to mess with it due to exams, I forgive you.

In that case I would say I'm glad you have your priorities straight. Congratulations at being so close to your degree. What about becoming a professor? I believe you'd be quite good at that. What's an Environmental Science boring desk job like anyway?

And what about you, Shaff, are you similarly about to graduate? And if so, what's your field? You're right, Sam's a noob for not considering dual 6990s, haha.

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The picture below is the PaperPort Deluxe 8.0 "visible page web capture" of Estuansis' two-week old comments about gun porn and the Chernobyl game, Stalker, forum post 7389. The game is beginning to sound interesting, and I might want to play it sometime, and use the Complete mods to improve the graphics.

So I realized that I should "web capture" his post.

Then, as soon as I captured the web page, I got the wild thought that maybe I should present PaperPort one last time on this forum, because I think it is so useful for everything that all of us do regarding buying hardware, games, software, any internet purchase, as well as storing vehicle registration info, etc. It is just such a great way to organize information and paper.

But if you have no interest in this subject, just skip down to the next set of red dashed lines:

PAPERPORT
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I wasn't using the web capture feature of PaperPort when Jeff reviewed Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, about two years ago, and when I later wanted to play it, I had to google all around for a while before I found it. So now, with web capture, it's all right there for me. It works up to IE7, but not IE8, so when I discovered that "web capture" had stopped working when I upgraded to IE8, I dropped back to IE7, with tabs, that's good enough for me.

I stumbled upon the web capture feature, maybe about a year ago, quite by accident "What is this?"

What you are looking at below may not make much sense at first.

As you can see, there is a simple folder structure, with the folders and directories on the left. In the main open area you are looking at my thumbnail of Jeff's post 7389. That thumbnail can be expanded to full size at any time. In this case, since the thumbnail is a "web capture," I can "view" it full size, write notes on it, draw arrows, etc., or I can double-click it and it will take me right to the web page.

In other words, you are looking at a very fancy, very informative bookmark.



Other than being a bookmark, a PaperPort thumbnail could be a document, it could be a picture, it could be highly detailed for later printing directly from PaperPort with as much as 600 dpi, or it could be 300 dpi which is usually the setting I use, or only 120 dpi like these very fast web captures.

Back to bookmarks, I find creating a folder like this, a huge improvement to creating a web browser bookmark folder - much easier to work with - faster to get to - more information of course in the actual "bookmark" or what PaperPort calls the "web capture." Anytime I am thinking about a purchase, I will capture the internet web pages about the product, maybe from newegg, maybe from ebay, maybe both, in a folder dedicated to that product. I can go to the product review in Newegg, and instead of just the visible page, if I wanted, I could capture the entire page, 200 reviews per page, in about a 60 page PaperPort thumbnail, for off-line reading and annotating and yellow highlighting.

The PaperPort tool is sooo useful, I find I use this program more than any other.

Note: This is PaperPort 8.0, released about 7 years ago, when XP first came out, back when ScanSoft owned the product. It is an absolutely fantastic bug-free program.

Now PaperPort is owned by Nuance, and they are up to version 12. I have read some poor reviews - some of the reviews say that up to versions 9 or 10, when it was still a ScanSoft product, PaperPort was great, but now with Nuance, it is kind of buggy.

If anyone were interested in the product, I did some quick googling, and found ScanSoft PaperPort 9 deluxe for $20. That is a 55mb download. I did some more googling and found ScanSoft PaperPort 10 for $25. That is a 108mb download. I would be suspicious of the small size of version 9, since my version 8 is about 85mb. The version 10 size sounds right. Maybe more googling would turn up a free evaluation download. (Strange, I can't find a cheap copy of version 8 below $60 from amazon.)



Just as an example of what you can throw into a PaperPort folder, this above picture is one more paperport folder called Troubleshooting - see it highlighted way down on the bottom left? I had a major virus problem recently on my business desktop machine, the one I am typing on now.

As I researched my problem, I put everything into this PaperPort folder. I put articles in there, complete page captures on microsoft information - see the thumbnail that is 174 pages - and in fact the actual program, a zip called tdsskiller - which is made by kaspersky labs, and which was the only thing that could find the google redirect virus that was hiding on the C drive, in my bootup sector, for my D drive XP (on this computer I am running dual boot the ide way, whereas on my sata drive gaming computer, I do it Sam's way through the bios.) The zip was only 1 mb, and runs in 70 seconds, and looks in just a few key areas, for just that one type of virus. And yes, I bought spyware doctor for 3 PCs for $40, and gave it to two other family members who were having problems. But maybe next year I'll try Kaspersky labs, I was so impressed with their TDSSkiller. Anyway, I just wanted to show one more way to use paperport.

END OF PAPERPORT
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LOL I swear, I do not own stock in Scansoft nor in Nuance.

Now that extremely valuable information from Jeff, is what made me "web capture" his post 7389, in its entirety. I have it offline and I can reference it in a flash - I like that.

Well, I found PhotoShop to be somewhat intimidating - I do have it installed, but I use an easier program called PhotoImpact - I think they now have a Photoshop lite, that might be easier to learn. I only keep the full photoshop for rendering a background transparent if I need that feature.

So my point is, that if you can self-teach PhotoShop, that is impressive. Some people do not have your skills at researching and finding answers on google. So, yes, if you can start helping people, and making money on it, as a "tech", that might be a good way for additional income.

Rich

 

After all that PaperPort stuff, here's a few game notes.

COD4 MULTIPLAYER
Wow, I finally built back up to General in COD4 multiplayer. I am religiously saving my backup Players folder - at one time I was five star general. I see that they give you one of my favorite world war 2 german assault rifles at top level - I have picked it up in the game a few times and it is GREAT! I was never into it before - so in love with the P90 was I, lol.



In this new incarnation of COD4 MP, I am no longer so much enamored with the P90 as before, I see now that even with the stopping power perk, (magnum bullets) it's kind of weak, as guys have told me. The Crossfire map I'm playing the most has a lot of players, and during the time I'm killing one guy, by spraying like mad, somebody else comes along and kills me during slow reload. The SMG I am starting to favor is AK74 (not full AK which shoots slower, and long-distance, bounces too much) and I like Navy Mp5 - the one you get on the first boat raid in the single player game. Also G36 is a good assault rifle - pretty good in close encounters - almost as good as an SMG - and not bad on distance. Good, powerful firing sound too, and it DOES seem powerful. I have tried ACOG scope on several guns and I must report that I hate it - it bounces way too much. Yes you really zoom in - maybe it's good if you can go for the pure head shot. I have found it bounces so much you can't get kills - they have time to move after the first shot. Red dot, not so much bouncing, you can place effective bursts without much effort.

Maybe I should force myself to try it out once more and focus on head shots. I also kind of don't like the way it looks when you're running around with it. Picky ain't I, lol.

That M60 light machine gun, in my post of a month ago, with the terrible iron sight, offers a grip feature.



I guess they all do. I forced myself to try the grip, and I love it, but then you give up the red dot as well as perk one, they consider it so special. So on that gun, you get about a 150% zoom, but that "worst ever" iron sight fills much of the screen.

The first time out with the grip I got a helicopter right away - not a bad start. So I am kind of trying to look around the iron sight a lot of the time. I added stopping power and deep penetration, so it REALLY goes through walls. I like the throaty "WHOOF" sound it makes best of all the light machine guns. I much prefer that sound to the metallic, high pitched scream of the RPG for example. It begins to grate on me - affects the pleasure of the game play. Too damn noisy! Haha.

That's another thing I dislike about P90 - it's also too noisy. With silencer it's ever so much nicer, very pleasant in fact, I could listen to that all day. Like the silenced uzi in Left 4 Dead 2. But then you're back to iron sights.

I'm trying out all the guns - except shotgun, and sniper. I'm not very good in either of these categories. I should force myself more. Shotgun is terrific in close encounters, of course. I know Shaff is a big shottie guy. The shotgun guys usually get me in head-on situations, if they fire at the same time as I do. In the open, I strafe sideways when there is room, and I usually succeed.

Lastly, the single-shot G3 on the post of a month ago, with magnum bullets (perk: stopping power) was a one-shot kill. No longer. I don't know if all the players are using Juggernaut, which means extra health, but the G3, at least for this server, has turned weak. Very strange. Maybe they are tweaking the server settings if that is possible. So for that type of killing power, I have gone back to the proven killing power of the M16 3-round burst with magnum bullets. Outfitted with the perk: "deep impact" which is concrete wall piercing ability, it is a good alternative to sniping.

WORLD IN CONFLICT
Jeff has me seriously thinking about getting Stalker. I'll probably pick it up. I trust his judgment after Dragon Rising. He mentioned RPG. So I finally started playing the RPG game, World in Conflict, Russian campaign, that I have owned for more than a year, but my 6169 point 3dmark6 P4 couldn't handle it. I don't think it's quite as good as Company of Heroes, but it's fun, and I love the graphics.



My 14000 point 9450 and 8800GTX can just barely handle it, at full 2560x1600 where it looks gorgeous, especially with medium digital vibrance. The game benchmark shows average fps at about 25, from 13 to 49. That works for me. You start as a Russian, cross over into West Berlin, and then the game quickly moves to the American defense of the invasion of Seattle.

Now that I know how to match nvidia digital vibrance, with ATI saturation and color temp, I miss the ATI Catalyst feature, vpu recovery. It detects when your gpu stops rendering and gets you back to your 2d desktop, so that you can alt tab back into the game where you "crashed." That would have saved me from many reboots these days, even though I am not overclocking the 8800, and it is running cool at well below 70.

So, I'm thinking about $370 for a 6970, as soon as Sam restates his Post 7351 performance chart for 30" 4XAA gaming. Well....that, and I need to save up the money also, lol.

Rich

 

World in Conflict is RTS...good game if your into RTS, story is a bit confusing.

 

Yeah Stalker is an FPS with RPG(Role Playing Game) elements. World in Conflict is an RTS(Real Time Strategy) game.

 

so the GTX590 turns about to be a flop! Though good thermals and noise. The 6990 has to have the dreaded leaf blower fan. But its not even the king of GPUs. Which is pretty shocking. Nvidia nornally come out guns blazing for the top card. Be it single or dual gpu. But ofc yo clock the 590 to 580 speeds the card literally melts and stops working. Ati wins the performance per watt.

still i don't like either card. Why not just unlock 2 6950s to 6970s and have better performance for alot less money?

 

on the other hand the Gigabyte 480s are at a rreally bice price with excellent quiet cooling at around 200. Really good performance for that pricepoint now.

 

£225 for a GTX480 that uses 250W+, £215 for an HD6950 that uses 150-170W. They basically perform the same. The 6950s are also, for now, still unlockable to 6970 shaders. I still see no reason to buy a 480, other than for CUDA/3D.

I should also add that for 1920x1200 users or below, 1GB HD6950s are down to £180. Quite the buy.

 

all the 200 quid options seem really really good. Kind of hard to pick and choose. Its a good thing though.

 

Oh, yeah, thanks guys for straightening things out. Well, before Company of Heroes, I was strictly FPS, so you guys have stretched me out a bit in this other RTS genre, and with Stalker we'll have some RPG thrown into the mix, lol.

I like the World in Conflict game more and more. It's like Company of Heroes, another RTS, but about 40 years later, taking place in 1989 - attack of the Russians.

Here they are, in one of the many dramatic and very interesting cut scenes that move the story along. This Seattle scene started with a little fender bender, causing a couple of the neighborhood fathers to get excited almost to the point of fisticuffs while being restrained by other men, while the little girl bicycles past, and then drops her bike to stare in wonder at the skyline filled with Russian troops parachuting into her city. What does this all mean?



The graphics are amazing. Just like Company of Heroes, you can bring your commander camera right down on the battlefield, and actually hear the soldiers talking to each other. You can come down and look inside an open trunk of a stranded car, and see the garment bag they had meant to haul away before they abandoned the car in their rush to get out of the city. I am quite impressed with the graphics.

A lot of the scenery is quite beautiful - particularly the farms and rivers and covered bridges, and rural roads of Eastern Washington State. Here is a scene where a Russian tank is blasting at an American fortification on a farm. Notice the tranquil river to the left of the farm.



I have found, for this game, that the anti-tank infantry are the most powerful force on the battlefield, in many instances.

For example, on one map you had to clear three main areas in a small city, where the Russkies had set up some defenses, consisting of some strong tanks, and some fortifications that fired anti-tank weapons, possibly including TOW missiles.

It was a setting very similar to this one, and we were coming in from the right, just outside the city center.



I had about four strong tanks to work with, but I pretty much got clobbered several times in a row. That's when I got the idea of sending my anti-tank infantry to occupy buildings close to the Russian defenses. From various firing positions in the buildings, they eliminated all the Russian tanks and fortifications rather quickly - that was cool!

It appears that troops inside a building are invulnerable to the enemy, as long as the building is standing. When you see that the building is about to fall, you better get your unit out, or they'll all die in the collapse.

I also learned a great thing about the tanks - especially the light tanks, with the TOW missiles. You can lassoo the tanks, so you are directing all three tanks at a time. Then you can hit the Tow firing command, left click the big bad Russian tank in question, hit the Tow command again, left click the Russian tank, and do the same thing the third time, resulting in each tank firing its Tow missile - three of those TOWs in quick sequence will take out any hardened tank, or fortification.



I didn't realize in earlier game play that I could do it that way - I thought I had to highlight each tank, one by one, and fire its tow - much less effective and I couldn't remember which tank had already fired, so I was hitting tanks that were still in refresh - seconds count in those situations!

I also learned to keep the repair tank at a slight distance from the main battle tanks, because lassoing the entire group then gave me repair commands, not Tow firing commands.

The game is pretty good about following a few main characters. Since I am playing the Russian expansion, the game goes back and forth between the Russian side, and the American side. In this cut scene, the younger guy on the right is a very patriotic and head-strong Russian tank captain, whereas his uncle, the commander (not in this picture) has some major misgivings about the wisdom of the entire invasion.



Getting back to my new fondness for the anti-tank infantry, I was thinking about it later, because I had used those troops, taking cover in the trees, to wipe out a whole rebel (GI) camp located on a beautiful farm bordered by a ring of trees and large wheat fields. However, in my opinion, that's a little unrealistic, unless the camp commander were a true idiot. Tanks can do damage from a distance, and it would be foolish for a tank commander to send his tanks face to face against anti-tank infantry. In other games I have played, you hold your tanks back - you can't advance until your ground troops take care of the anti-tank threat.

So if I had been in charge of that farm rebel camp, with the 9 AA (anti aircraft) implacements, I would have said:

"Hey, men, listen up. There are a bunch of Russians who have infiltrated the tree cover just above our camp - they probably parachuted into the wheat field just behind the trees. I want all tank commanders to move their tanks to the far side of the farm, out of anti-tank infantry range. Then start shelling the hillside - use the AA guns also if necessary.

There's also at least one damn sniper up there wreaking havoc on our troops. So order all ground troops to take hard cover until the shelling commences. During shelling, move all ground units around the tree line to the left and right, and also directly behind in the wheat field, with a small contingent down here on the farm.

On my signal, stop shelling, ready tank machine guns on any enemies moving out of tree cover coming down the hill into the camp, and all ground units rush the enemy from left, right, and wheat field in rear. Tanks can shell troops moving out of tree cover coming down the hill into the camp, only on direct order, when spotters verify they are Russians. Watch your friendly fire and kill all those Commie basta*ds!"



That's what I would have done.

But instead of doing that, those stupid GIs just fed me more tanks to be destroyed, and more ground troops for my sniper to eliminate. That sniper was the best 500 points I ever spent.

I was able to advance out of the forest and move to the first row of buildings - watching closely as GI tanks shelled the building, and withdrawing my troops before any building fell.

I was playing on the Hard setting, but I eliminated the camp without losing one man. On one hand, I totally kicked ass, on the other hand I felt bad because I was killing Americans. But later I switched sides and got my revenge on myself, lol.

Rich

 

Any of you guys check out Sim City 4 deluxe? Man does it run rough on my system! Artifacting like mad! I wonder if it has to do with my inputting a custom resolution into the shortcut exe. See, I did that because the game itself does not give me my full resolution option. only 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, and 1600 x 1200. The thing is, it'll run fine for a few minutes, then start artifacting. It seems to happen more around sunrise/sunset, and when I'm zooming in and out of animals.

This game appears to use a bit of hard drive cache...

 

Artifacting, especially after some time in the game, is most likely your video card overheating. Give everything a good blowing out and make sure nothing is blocking the fan or the airflow. Otherwise, if it runs fine without the custom resolutions, Google is your friend

 

Interesting...
I was pretty sure my hardware wasn't the culprit
http://gametipcenter.com/simcity-4-runs-slow

 

There's a big difference between running slow and artifacting. Artifacts, almost by definition, can never be the game, only your graphics hardware. If it is the game, then you're probably mistaking artifacts for something else.

 

Very well. I'd like you to try and run it maxed on your godlike hardware In a way, it is hardware related. It seems to be very demanding. I greatly lowered the settings, and have no problems now.

 

you've got artifacts because of the powerdraw/heat level. lowering your setting lowered overall power consumption and reduced heat.

when you get artifacts take a print screen of the image affected...you'll notice it wont capture your artifacts

 

I ran Fraps, and got the video artifacts...

 

that's because fraps runs on the hardware level. print screen does not.

 

i got artifacts with BC2, xfire captured them:







i put it down to bad drivers/bc2 install.

 

http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-011-HO
http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-010-HO

what does everyone think about these two monitors, both a hell alot cheaper than the dell equivelent.