The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

I don't have too much recollection of how well the older SLI systems performed, but I have my doubts that a pair of 8800GTS 320s could keep up with an HD4850 in that many titles, plus that's quite a lot of power consumption, especially when added to the hothouse that is an nforce SLI chipset.

 

unless he has an x58 or skull trail lool

 

Somehow I'm doubtful either of those chipsets use any less power...

 

Well if you're not worried about power consumption so much, then it's at least a fair deal. They perform really well in a lot of stuff OC'd. I don't know if on-par with a 4850 or better or what. But anyone who bothered to invest in a decent SLI board has a lot of cheap performance options. I would personally SLI 9600GTs or 9800GTs just because it would be cool

I also wanted to SLI XFX 8800GTS 320MB XXXs. That IMO, would've been a sweet SLI setup for fairly cheap back when it was new.

 

Just upgarde to vista Ultimate and installed new nvidia driver 180.48 WHQL and what a speed boost my card got running crysis @ 1440 X 900 and high setting with 8600gts doing the physX and i get a solid 35FPS.

About the PhysX i notice that in some of the games i play there is a jump in FPS around 10 or 15. Think that would be due to a lighter load on the 8800gts. So all round i think that its work just as good as sli but not as good.(didnt know how word that lol) Also the all the Geforce 8 GPUs can run any game the has PhysX.

Ran 3dmarks06 and found that i got a better score aswell probaly down to the extra card agian since i installed i have found my system runs a hell of alot better.

I am open for some testing at your request if you like.

Some info on the new Nvidia Driver. (from nvidias web site)

Boosts performance in numerous 3D applications. The following are some examples of improvements measured with Release 180 WHQL drivers vs. Release 178 WHQL drivers (results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and game settings):
Up to 10% performance increase in 3DMark Vantage (performance preset)

Up to 13% performance increase in Assassin's Creed
Up to 13% performance increase in BioShock
Up to 15% performance increase in Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
Up to 10% performance increase in Crysis Warhead
Up to 25% performance increase in Devil May Cry 4
Up to 38% performance increase in Far Cry 2
Up to 18% performance increase in Race Driver: GRID
Up to 80% performance increase in Lost Planet: Colonies
Up to 18% performance increase in World of Conflict


EDIT: 3dmarks score was 8551

And for the power consumtion you need a 500watt PSU for Single Card And a 700watt for sli with 28amps on the 12V rail.

@sam
i only live about 30 mile from aria and scan, but i have never had anything shipped from eather of the companys.

 

Several thousand acres - for crying out loud, booze, you guys own a whole county!!! Contribute to the food thread, are you nuts, what --describe how to microwave a potatoe, or make scrambled eggs?? My cooking skills are non-existent lol. Actually, I'm trying to get healthier - running almost every morning now. So I'm also trying to vary my diet a bit - fresh lettuce and cucumbers and green bell pepper chopped up in a salad - what else goes good in a salad? radishes? - not onions, right? These are giant steps for me. I'm the master of steaming some frozen vegies and adding a couple of micro-waved potatoes, so all this other stuff is a giant stretch lol.

"Tiny screen" - HOLD YOUR TONGUE KNAVE!! Actually by comparison it is probably pretty tiny, Sam, compared to yours, but I was gaming before with my brother's old mac cinema at 1280 x 800?? on a 22" from 2000, before it died, and this is not that much smaller - three inches less diagonally. When I'm playing of course I'm sitting way up close - in fact I'm so close I have the keyboard up on the front stand legs, on top of another keyboard, Lol! But the picture is BEAUTIFUL! Remember, the closer you sit, the bigger the screen is!! Hahahaha.

Like you say, estuansis, it is serving me well for the present time. My rationale was that I will use it on one of my business computers when I upgrade past the p4. Yeah, your 6x more in price is about right, estuansis, I only paid $168 for it total to my door, brand new (refurbished) from Dell. I can pick up a 3007-HC for about $950 - but that's gotta wait until I have the horses. LOL

Wow Nav, some pretty good reporting on the results from the PhysX card - what cpu are you running out of curiosity - I see your 1440x900 res is the same as mine so I suspect 19" lcd (which I LOVE despite sam calling it "tiny" lol)

Hey Shaff, I haven't read a peep from you about how you are beating Sam on 3d marks.

Did you install XP yet? Hahahaha

So how is the water doing?

-Rich

 

You should be concerned about power consumption. Addign a more powerful card ups the load power usage, but using two ups the idle power usage considerably. If your pc is on 24/7 (perhaps CPU folding, or downloading) the idle GPU power usage will cost you up to $100 per year.
Navskin: As I stated before, PhysX does not increase your frame rate. The performance boost will be from the new driver revision. Your 3dmark vantage score will probably change due to PhysX, however.

 

Wow, another kill session on cod4. Let's face it, I rule. Hahahaha.

Half the time I spend yelling at the screen, "You f**ing as*hole, you godd*amn idiot - and I'm talking to myself!!" Hahahaha.

I get so mad at my stupid blunders. Then after about 6 hours I start to get the rust off again and actually start doing pretty well.

I suppose this is OT. I should start a thread called "let's all kill each other in virtual space" and force everybody on the builder thread, creaky, russ, gm, sam, abuzar, me, sophocles, ddp, loco who refuses to "participate in the crap" etc. etc. to play, and get all their frustrations out. LOL Just like boozer did a while ago in that demo we briefly played, before my idiot client took me off line for a half hour - I would have pawned all you guys! LOL!

I just read through 10 pages of bulder thread to get caught up, and russ promised to never come back, then was back in a week, rob said WTF doesn't anybody have an original idea, which came out of nowhere I guess cause Russ was quoting somebody with sandra benches, and then he also refused to ever return, but is also back. Greenie is always in a good mood, and is now afraid to be humorous - creaky hates shaff - shaff doesn't care - soph got mad at boozer who is always able to find killer deals that nobody else can find, and called him a liar, which is the worst kind of bullshit - sam is the diplomat but actually got "pissed off" at rick who asked what he should order, then ordered in the next 5 seconds, meanwhile sam spent honest time and effort finding a better choice, which was "frustrating" as makes perfect sense to me - rick apologized.

I'm just glad nobody discusses politics on that thread because all hell would really break loose, Hahahaha.

Shaff, sorry to have laughed at your attempts to beat sam, I didn't know your cpu had fried - very scary - almost took out sam's server board. Nice of you sam to take the risk and test out shaff's cpu almost to the point of ruining your equipment.

My question is, since I have the feeling this thread is slowing down, and I WILL be eventually building a nehalem rig, what thread should I hang out at. Should I hang at the builder thread - everybody is there but navskin and estuansis. Should I hang at the overclocking thread?

Back to my killing spree, until creaky comes over and tells me to stuff it: I played the same Just in Time server, to 2000 points, after an all-night session - it takes me about 6 to 8 hours to warm up I guess. I led an 8-man opfor team to a razor tight win over the 8-man marine team, at 2000 to 1940 - we were behind many times. Often while my fellow opfors were on the other side of the gorge, I was the only one in front of the machine gun building where the marinies were hanging out, and they all came out to greet me, and they must have wondered what brand of crack I was hopped up on (hyper booze says) as I ran around mowing them down left and right until they finally got me in a crossfire Hahaha. One time the whole damn team just kept coming up the stairs where the machine gun is and I got a helicopter just from all that action - where the hell is the rest of my team? I kept wondering.

(In case you're wondering, I don't always play opfor - I like to play on the side that's getting trounced. That's more challenging. But sometimes if we're REALLY getting trounced I get tired of the constant bomb runs and the damn helicopters every five minutes Hahaha) My weapon of choice seems to be the p90 red sight, ammo, jugg, and steady aim. The red dot helped me a couple times. When I'm tired of the loud sound, I drop down to p90 silenced - and the hard sights helped a couple of times with distant shots. I have one class with the navy (mp5 submachine gun) which hits harder than the p90 and takes them out quicker, but also runs out of bullets much faster - only 25 or 30 to a clip - however does reload faster. I like how it sounds - I have it only in that one weapons class - silenced - because it is useless on red dot - the steady aim feature for some reason stops working, which makes it not versatile enough for close range.

To be slightly back on topic, I tried what I had talked about, adding 4xaa on the 3850, and performance died - constant stuttering. I took that off, rebooted, still not so great, took off a couple of features like water effects to low, rag doll off, got the performace back, now at about 50% gpu and 95% cpu utilization. If it stays smooth I might add the water and the rag doll affects back - they probably didn't matter anyway - well, maybe they did - the computer has to calculate the physics of the rag doll doesn't it - or is that all done on the gfx card?

So would you guys say it's a good idea to hang around the builder thread? Just as long as boozer doesn't say everybody is a 12 year old girl? Hahahaha. Which sam says is not as cool as it sounds. Hahahaha. I agree, why pick on 12 year old girls? Girls are very cool at all ages, and always make things fun. Will shaff ever stop talking back to creaky? Hahahaha. Or daring him to ban him? Will creaky ever stop complaining about how you guys have highjacked the thread, not to mention the whole forum, and loosen up and start appreciating shaff's weird sense of humor? MUHAHAHAHAHAHHA! Despite the fact that greenie doesn't like my f**king f**oul mouth, I actually like greeny's style a lot - keep it light - add a little humor - don't attack anybody - "have a good time lads." He'd be a good one to follow into a nazi-killing battle. Will I ever stop reliving World War II? (Reliving - I never lived it - but I bet I got killed on D day and was re-incarnated.) LOL
- Rich

 

To be honest, that's 'a week in the life' of the PC builders thread Rich, not much new there at all...
Glad to hear you're enjoying COD4, the bad performance with AA is probably because the AGP 3850 only has 256MB of memory.

 

lol

Lots of touchy people around here haha.


We SHOULD play Fear again though. I think my laptop can handle it.

 

Yeah the FEAR multiplayer was quite fun.

 

Meh, I enjoy online RTSs better though. I like to turtle up and ride it out until I have all my best stuff built

FEAR was fun, but the fast pace for that kind of multiplayer throws me off. There's no point in that graphical style if combat is happening constantly. No ambiance for me.

Anyhoo, I'll have GTA IV on PC soon

 

Don't... It doesn't run too well on my PC at 1920x1200...

 

Yeah but at what settings? Maxed settings will do that. Even the consoles don't go that far for the settings. I'm gonna get it no matter what. You'll also notice that most of the detail settings have no real differences. So we'll see how it is. I'm quite certain that I can find a happy medium that lets me enjoy the game, bad port or not.

Besides, I'm not buying a 360 or a PS3 and that's final

 

No actually Sam, the agp 3850 that I own has 512mb of memory - the sapphire - I think they all do actually. I have another question to ask you, in terms of cpu and gpu utilization. I was running just the firefly forest part of 3dmark6 just now to see what my cpu temps were, since I dropped bios from 60 to 50 degrees before fan starts revving up, and I noticed that cpu and gpu utilization were both around 50%, yet my frame rate was only about 13. So my question is, why wasn't I getting frames around 25, at 90% utilization - it seems that I had plenty of power left to do that? Is that just something that 3dmark6 does?

Anyway, you're really going to laugh, AGAIN, but I love my case so much, I am thinking of sliding a cheap dual core board in it with a cheap processor, cheap 2gigs memory, 4850, and sell my 3850 for $100. I'm back to where I was last time!!! The new build is going to run me around $3000 by the time I spring for the big 30" screen and at a minimum the 5870x2 when it comes out. But in the meantime I can't even max out on my 19 inch - and I'm buying two more heavy games - hells highway, and cod5. Anyway, don't anybody do a build for me yet, but in about a month I'm going to see what you guys come up with - I still haven't been paid for my three sales - missing paperwork - so I'm holding off a little. In about a month I'll have boozer start scouting out those killer used deals he finds - or maybe I'll go on craig's list myself, or look at some special bits on newegg.

I'm going to post pics of my case pretty soon - I finally took the pics of all my ventilation and fan mods. It's a custom "tempest" almost - a lot smaller mid tower. I'll post the pictures soon.

"A week in the life of the builder thread?" Hahahaha. A lot of touchy people is not the half of it LOL!

Yeah the FEAR was good. If we ever do it again, I'll just turn the phones off.
Rich

 

Hmm, actually you're right, it may simply be a bus bandwidth limitation then. Either way, the HD3850 PCIe 512MB can take AA at 1280x1024 at least, if not higher resolutions like 1600x1200.

Estuansis: It takes about an HD4670 / 9600GT to run the game at the same settings as the consoles (1280x720 mostly minimum), with a CPU at least equal to an E6600. I'm running the game with medium render detail and high textures, with draw distance on low, and even in daylight, busy traffic sees me with 21-25fps and big macrostutter, which is inherent to the game even when your frame rate is high.

 

I think we can all agree that it is just a HORRIBLY coded game.

 

Indeed. It has several bugs outside the performance issues, it's the first game that requires Service Pack 3 for XP (for no reason at all), it's also the first game I've seen to beat Crysis for hardware requirements outside the FPS category (STALKER: Clear Sky and Crysis Warhead being the two others)

 

Apparently, the actual system requirements aren't quite as harsh as Crysis, but the game heavily favors Nvidia. Also, maybe there are some underlying problems with the game that future patches will fix.

 

From what I've read, there are big problems affecting users of both cards. Also, bizarrely enough, most of the graphics are CPU rendered, so the processor is an integral part of the system performance - the game uses nearly 70% of my CPU to run the benchmark, which is quite high, considering that a stock E6600 maxed out equates to barely 30% of it. I hear people with Quad cores, but lowly HD2900s doing quite well, but people with X2s and HD4000 cards not doing so great.