The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Sam is right. About 70% of my games that are 2005 or newer have some sort of Crossfire compatibility. And most of the ones that scale at all are usually in the 80-90% range. Some do indeed scale 100% as well. CoD4 and Oblivion most notably. One card just isn't enough for a fully modded and tweaked Oblivion with 8xAA and 16xAF

I think I know my plan with the Phenom II. I'm going to sell the E6750 and P35 board and pair the Phenom with my 8800GTS. Maybe I'll put it in my Armor case with the 4870s if it clocks well.

 

Quick summary of recent PC game releases, reviewed for graphics/performance:

GRiD: Graphics 7/10, Performance 7/10 - high demand for graphics memory, but other than that reasonable performance, a single GPU can easily play the game on a 24" monitor. The fuzzy haze over the graphics is unwelcome, as there are some decent textures behind, a rarity for a racing game. Maxable on today's hardware (1GB VRAM required)

Left 4 Dead: Graphics 9.5/10, Performance 9/10 - stunning graphics, more than reasonable hardware requirements, a single GPU can easily play the game on a 24" monitor. Maxable on today's hardware (2 GPUs required)

Fallout 3: Graphics 8/10, Performance 6/10 - Beautiful outdoor textures but heavy performance impacts, indoor textures not quite so good. Acceptable performance, but to enable AA at any high resolution requires a top of the line card. Maxable on today's hardware (2 GPUs required), but 8x AA is difficult.

Far Cry 2: Graphics 9/10, Performance 8/10 - Possibly the best outdoor environment quality of any game yet, proper tree rendering makes this a landmark title for graphics. Performance is admiral for the graphical quality provided, a current-gen high-end single GPU can play the game on a 24" monitor. Maxable on today's hardware, just (2 GPUs required)

Crysis, High: Graphics 7.5/10, Performance 4/10 - Generally very high standard, motion blur effect isn't particularly welcome, lack of real AA is disappointing. Performance is scalable to run on reasonable PCs with lower detail, but graphical demand at high settings is unrealistic, and qualityerformance ratio is poor across the board. Only the best single GPUs can run the game on a 22" screen on High, AA or any higher setting is unrealistic without SLI or Crossfire. Dual graphics can achieve up to 2xAA for 24". 30" is yet to be playable with anything other than GTX280 or GTX285 SLI.
Crysis, Very High: Graphics 9/10, Performance 2/10 - Exceptional texture and shader quality, but terrifying performance requirement from both CPU and GPU. Lack of proper AA and mediocre leaf rendering still leave the experience lacking in realism. Dual graphics can achieve 22" resolution as long as AA is mild, or not applied. SLI performs well at 22" even with AA, and acceptably at 24" with reduced AA. Crossfire is essentially out beyond 24" with no AA. Only one combination can currently pull of 30", which is GTX280/285 triple SLI, and AA will be a long way off yet.

Crysis Warhead: Graphics 9.5/10, Performance 1/10 - Even higher graphical standard than Crysis, and finally some useful AA, unfortunately the improvement in performance is in fact the opposite. The game is far more demanding at higher settings than its predecessor. Not really playable at Enthusiast on any current CPU.

Call of Duty World at War: Graphics 8/10, Performance 6.5/10 - Same Call of Duty 4-esque texture quality, still holding strong in 2009, but no longer as amazing. Single GPUs can take this game as far as 24" with AA, and 30" with no AA, but competitive multiplayer performance will see those levels reduced by two notches. Crossfire still encounters image quality and performance bugs in this game. Maxable on today's hardware (SLI required)

Grand Theft Auto IV: Graphics 3/10, Performance 1.5/10 - Improved draw distance and slightly better textures is all that separate this from the console version, very poor by comparison to true PC titles. Performance is diabolical, unplayable at any setting without a very fast dual core, or a quad core processor, and a reasonably powerful graphics card. Will not be maxable for several generations.

Saints Row 2: Graphics 3.5/10, Performance 0.5/10 - As Grand Theft Auto IV for graphics, but unplayable on any current PC, at any setting.

Mirrors Edge: Graphics 4.5/10, Performance 2/10 - More crisp than many console ports, but overall fairly average graphics, performance does not in the least bit warrant the graphical quality, difficult to run beyond 17" resolution on any current system.

 

Personally I would give it an 8 for graphics. The textures are nice and the models look really sharp. I agree on performance though. Fine up to a 24" screen then extremely demanding in VRAM any higher than that. Runs very well for me with 4xAA at least, but bogs down quite a bit with 8x. So good enough for me. One of many reasons I'm not so tempted to buy a 30" display. I'd rather get a 42" HDTV and suffer with lower IQ than have to worry about running games at 2560 res Also agreed on the haze over the graphics. Without it the game would look much sharper. Same thing that happened to UT3, GoW, and Crysis(Core).

Agreed 100%. The graphics are up to the same quality of Episode 2 and the performance is stellar. I still have the multi-core processing bug that causes terrible hitching and really bad mic issues with my Creative sound card though. And turning off multi-core gives a big performance hit(though still playable). So I would give it a lower overall score. Like a 7/10 average. But when (or if) these issues are patched, I'm willing to give it another try. I honestly tired quickly of it due to the near game-breaking nature of these bugs.

Agreed on graphics but I'd also have to give it an 8/10 for performance. It looks good and runs beautifully on my machine all maxed. Might be a completely different story at 2560 though. But, TBH I really haven't had a lot of time with it because it doesn't really appeal to me. It's like Oblivion, but more complicated and visually extremely boring. And to be honest, I like Oblivion BECAUSE of all the cool castles and swords and armor and horses and magic and deep forests and wildlife. Fallout 3 is just a bunch of wasteland with like 5 interesting places and some mutated robots and stuff. Good game though if you can get into it.

No arguements here. Runs awesome, looks great, plays great. Excellent example of what a PC game SHOULD be like.

I'd give it an 8 for graphics. Very visually stunning title with loads of detail and lots of really nice effects. Even if you don't play very high it beats most games quite handily graphics-wise. Also, it's actually scaling well with newer PC hardware so I give performance a 5. Good example of a game DESIGNED to scale with hardware.

Agreed on IQ here. The graphics aren't so overwhelmingly better than high that it's a whole new experience, but it really brings the game to life and makes it feel more "organic". The performance is MUCH worse than high though, like half the FPS easily. But I still give it a 3 because it DOES scale quite nicely if you have the horsepower to do it.

Agreed on both fronts. They brought in a LOT of really cool shaders and better combat/action to up the ante. But performance is worse than the original. At lower settings they did quite a bit to optimize it and made it MUCH easier to run on slower systems. But high and above get some ugly FPS numbers in the more intense parts.

Disagreed on graphics but agreed on performance. 7/10 for graphics. The game is nowhere near the level of visual polish that CoD4 had. There are quite a few "thrown in" elements that just kinda ruined it for me after CoD4 was so flawless. Still looks good though. Performance wise, doesn't look as good as CoD4 and doesn't perform near as well. Whereas I might see 60FPS in CoD4, I would see about 35FPS in WaW, for example. Not a bad game and a good improvement from previous Treyarch CoDs. But Infinity Ward polishes it to a high mirror shine while Treyarch takes some window cleaner to it and says "eh, good enough."

Agreed on both fronts. It looks mediocre at best and downright sloppy at worst. And the visuals come no where near the pain of seeing ANY game run below 20FPS at ANY setting on a 3.7GHz Quad and dual HD4870s. At least Crysis scales well and medium settings look miles better than GTA4 maxed.

LOL. My friend bought it, installed it, started it up, uninstalled it, then he took it back. 'Nuff said. I can't believe they even cleared it for release. Didn't they even test it? Basically a pretty box and some pieces of silk-screened plastic for $50.

I thought the graphic style was actually pretty cool so 5.5 from me for originality. Agreed on performance though. I got it playable at 1680 res, but just barely.

 

You're absolutely right about UT3 and Crysis in the Core. I don't see it as much with Gears of War, if I'm honest. It's just all brown.
The lag I only usually encounter once per session right at the beginning, and since as of the HD2900 series ATI graphics cards have had that in every game, albeit to a lesser extent, I'm kind of used to it. It doesn't affect me when I'm actualy playing at all. The big bugs are the problematic dedicated servers, all the glitchable areas, and odd little gameplay bugs. Graphics/performance wise, the game is nearly faultless.
Check out the benches for Fallout 3, the numbers are lower than most other games in its class, mainly due to the minimum frame rates. The AA also has a heavy impact.
With regard to Crysis, I give performance score on scalability. The game can be run at very high if you use a teeny resolution AND have SLI, but the end result is that it doesn't look amazing enough to justify outrageous hardware demands. The most powerful graphics system currently available, GTX285 Triple SLI, can't get a playable frame rate when the game is maxed with AA.
Crysis Warhead basically exacerbates everything that was Crysis. Very High graphics are now even higher, with even higher hardware demands. The difference between Gamer and Enthusiast is vast performance-wise, but it's also vast graphically to.
COD:WAW is saved by its nice textures, but overall it is not COD4, I will agree there. The reason for your low performance is poor Crossfire support which still plagues the game as of 8.12.
The reason you drop below 20fps is you only have a 65nm Quad. Realistically you need at least a 3.7Ghz 45nm Quad to see a half playable frame rate, preferably beyond 4Ghz. When you think about that statement, and what the game is, it's ludicrous.
I am going to change my Saints Row 2 score. The graphics quality is to reduce to 2.5, but the performance increase to 2. I have discovered that if you leave off the HDR and Shadows the game is playable at a high resolution - whereas with them enabled it was unplayable at 640x480. Quite a landmark difference.
Mirrors Edge is unique graphically, and I really like it, which is why its so disappointing the implementation of the graphics is very mediocre. They aren't crisp or blurry, somewhere in between.

 

My lag isn't just "wait a sec while the level renders" hitching. It's more like "here's a ten second freeze every 30 seconds". I have to turn off multi core rendering to clear it up but this means my FPS will actually drop quite low in heavy scenes. This happens on both PCs and is extremely frustrating. And I'm not the only one either. Look it up and you'll find it's common across a wide range of hardware.

Also, on my 8800GTS I get lots of frequent CTDs with the latest Nvidia driver(also not the only one). And before that the game wouldn't render properly at all. It played fine for like 10 minutes and then the screen suddenly went really dark(also not the only one). Like I could barely see my flashlight and I had trouble navigating in even brightly lit rooms. And no matter what settings I tried, it wouldn't go back until I completely sweeped my video drivers and installed the newest ones.

And the mic problem was the real game breaker for me. Roughly 50% of the time when I start a game, the mic starts transmitting extremely loud static even when turned off and the PTT button isn't being pressed and everybody kicks me right away. I've even been reported for it a few times and it's getting frustrating. And the mic works excellent in SteamChat and Skype and BF2 and TeamSpeak and Ventrilo and all the great uses for a mic. Again I've seen this reported elsewhere.

In its current state, L4D is an extremely buggy mess. It has all the workings of an excellent co-op shooter, but I'm having a hard enough time just getting it to play properly. And both systems are 24 hour Intel Burn Test stable with completely clean driver installs for all the hardware.

With Crossfire disabled or even on my 8800GTS, the game performs like dump compared to CoD4. I mean absolute dump. And it doesn't even look as good. I'm talking CoD4 maxed with 4xAA and 16xAF on the 8800GTS is silky smooth. But the same settings in WaW produce borderline choppy framerates in a relatively calm scene. I have to drop it to 1680 x 1050 w/ the same IQ settings to bring the minimum above 30. Otherwise it will hover around 26-30 in an intense firefight whereas in CoD4 I think the lowest I saw was like low 40's on the Tanker Ship in the Prologue(think I saw 38 for a weird minute behind the gas station before you set up the ambush for Imran Zakhaev's son.)

Then why can we enable HDR, soft shadows, specular AND antialiasing in Oblivion? And not only will Oblivion run a lot better with way higher settings, it looks miles better than both GTA4 and SR2 could ever dream of.

Well if it could actually run at a semi-fluid framerate, then the graphics would be miles better. Why? Because running along a rooftop is much more exhilarating than just watching a slide show of a rooftop. The graphics are perfect for the game. But the performance kills the whole experience.

 

Weird, I heard other people moan that they had lag as often as you do and solved it by turning off multicore rendering. Since they're neither quad core or dual graphics users, that seemed the logical thing to do. As far as I know I still have multicore enabled and don't suffer the problems you do. I think it's probably because you only have 2GB of RAM.
My housemate plays the game with an 8600GT and doesn't encounter many graphical bugs. However, I will admit he has had problems with the tank not being rendered before, which is understandably a handicap...
I have never even heard of the mic problem, none of the dozen plus people I play with have encountered it. The biggest bug we have apart from the crappy servers is the 'no steam logon' bug.
I haven't played much COD:WAW, clearly not enough to fully analyse the performance. Apart from corrupt graphics (another crossfire bug) I didn't have any issues in the first level or two with regard to performance. The lowest frame rate I get in COD4 is around 30 (1920) or 22 (2560) which is in multiplayer on the map 'Wet Work', when AA is enabled. The frame rate is well over 100 in both cases when AA is disabled.
With SR2, you'll note I haven't given it any more than a 2, for this very reason, but to be honest, the textures are so bad I couldn't really care about lighting.
I agree with your comment about Mirrors Edge 100%, it's a game that would be really fun if it ran well, but it's nothing without smooth performance.

 

Well my RAM is double the recommended spec... so maybe... but I doubt it. I've never had any problem with it in any other game. And I still primarily use XP(basically for everything because Vista sucks balls in quite a few ways), so I really don't need anymore RAM ATM. Definitely a thought for the future though. Good 4GB RAM kits are dirt cheap. I'm hoping to find a 4GB kit similar in specs to my Mushkin XP, but no dice so far.

It's specifically due to my Creative sound card. The mic works absolutely perfectly in Left 4 Dead with the onboard Realtek. But the sound quality is really ass after 2 years of nothing but X-Fi.

There aren't really any major problems with it per se. The performance is still fairly good and a single 4870 can handle it nicely at my native res. But it just doesn't measure up to CoD4 in any way, shape, or form. Most notably the game actually has some extremely frustrating try-and-die trial and error sections. And I'm playing on normal difficulty. Still worth the purchase though. The water effects are simply fantastic and there are lots of really cool moments.

LOL agreed.

 

I use a Creative sound card too, though not for input I grant you, as the Realtek has noise cancellation, the Soundblaster doesn't.
4GB RAM is a necessity for a lot of games these days if you max their settings, I would recommend upgrading, it's so cheap to do so.
I agree about the try and die sections, I watched someone else play it on hard difficulty. Painful. Then again, some people enjoy that.
While Saints Row 2 is a terrible game for graphics/performance, it's a lot of fun, I can't deny that.

 

Precisely why my friend got the 360 versions of both Saints Row 2 and GTA4. Both good games at the very core but horribly broken on the PC. Also, I actually prefer SR2's graphics to GTA4 and it does look pretty decent in HD when its actually working properly. GTA4 looks pretty good for a GTA game but still has every telltale graphical bug, anomaly, and glitch that every GTA game has had. Almost like they recycled the engine again. SR2 has a more refined, cartoony look about it that I find oddly satisfying. Don't ask me why.

All I know is that the Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Music works excellently for everything else. It gives me EAX and surround headphones and awesome music and crystal clear mic support and the like but it has an issue with L4D. It's the only game that has ever given me a problem with it since I've owned the card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146726

This is the closest I can find to my own RAM. I prefer Mushkin and a CL of 4. I suppose that'll be in the order when Phenom comes knocking on my door Yeah pretty much set that I'm going to keep my X38 and Q6600 and sell off the E6750 and P35 board. They lived a long life with me. Time to send them on to the next life

Either way I seriously intend to buy a Phenom II. They are quite good if a bit late in coming. Every bit the equal to my Q6600(+/- ~10%).

 

id disagree witht he graphics for GTA, id place it at 6/10. i think it looks fantastic for a GTA, and for me runs smooth. i get no slow downs, and since day one i havent seen any textures disapearing

but i love using a pad for it, so i have bought it for the PS3. now i have a bought it for the PC and PS3. might ebay the PC version.

 

I find the bad graphics in SR2 less painful because I designed a stupid character In GTA4, the character is meant to look realistic, as is the whole game, and the bad graphics and errors marr that totally.
You don't seriously think GTA4 merits a 6/10? Play it, and then go straight to a source-based game. The difference is astronomical.

 

source games bore me, so there is no need for me to do that.

as i said, its the best looking GTA game, and IMO driving around, it looks fantastic.

same thing can be said about sourcebased games. go play crysis DX10 and see the diference

 

Yeah but either way Source will be better because today's average PC gamer can easily max most Source games. Crysis and GTA4 run like dump on my fairly high end PC. And Source is a graphical rival to Crysis. Especially Episode 2 and Left 4 Dead show this point. They may not be as shiny, but they maintain a much higher standard of graphical fidelity and artstyle neither Crysis nor GTA4 can match. Not to mention it actually has effective AA, which I think neither of the other two can really do at all.

 

You haven't tried Left 4 Dead, you don't know what you're missing.
As for GTA4 graphics, I disagree. Then again, since you used to play COD4 at minimum settings, you're not really the best person to judge...
Estuansis is right about the AA, GTA4 basically can't do it, Crysis' is pathetic. Warhead's is better, but since it can't really be run beyond 1280x800 on any current system, who cares?

 

sam these are my opinions, why the hell am i not qualified to judge about games with my own preferences? not all of us push out opinions as facts!

 

He said he disagrees. He never said you weren't entitled to your own opinion, just maybe biased because you haven't seen in-depth the kind of fidelity a good 30" monitor can produce. But if you think GTA4 looks nice, then awesome for you. You have found a game with a graphical style you like.

But I think Sam may not always be the best judge either. He is biased because of his 30" screen whether he thinks so or no. Absolutely having to have 2560 res maxed and playable is a lofty goal for many games and most PC gamers don't have a 30" high end LCD screen. When Sam finds a game he can't max with his high end hardware, he might dock it a few points. Kinda like when you knocked Crysis' graphics, eh Sam? Your opinion was swayed when you upgraded to better hardware.

Personally, I think we should focus on performance on more common 22" and 24" displays. It represents what most serious gamers are using and thus a wider range of the demographic.

All sides have valid arguments but no participant has a bullet-proof statement.

 

Let's be clear on this, the actual graphics scores I gave are solely based on the quality of the game, not the resolution you could or could not use. The textures themselves are bland in GTA4, which is the main reason it gets knocked points. Coupled with numerous lighting errors, it just isn't nice. Regardless of its horrible performance, Crysis is.
The reason I disliked Crysis' graphical quality was that as an XP user I was limited to high. To this day, I think high looks very good, but not beyond what several other games now achieve (and with less requirement too). The mediocre foliage rendering in many areas is the main problem, and the lack of any usable AA knocks it down further. Note, I hardly gave the game a poor score, especially compared to the console ports below it. Very high is much improved (and no, the image quality hacks aren't everything), and is why the very high score is separate. With regard to performance, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a good looking game to run at 2560x1600 on an HD4870X2 and 3.7Ghz Quad, certainly at least when AA is disabled. I would happily make an exception for the games that look the best such as Crysis Warhead, but really, even at 1920x1200 you're way off playable performance, and that is what's important here. So what if I can't max a game at 30" resolution? There are several cases of this. Thing is, maxed out even at 22" resolution, GTA4 doesn't run that well (not as good as it does on the xbox 360 at least, and that is far from perfect, though I recognise the graphics quality on the consoles is worse, albeit not by that much). Mirrors Edge does not run at all smoothly at 1680x1050 even with AA off, Saints Row 2 runs badly with all settings on even at 800x600. Crysis Warhead can still lag at 1680x1050, as can the original Crysis if you enable AA. 1680x1050 is less than half the pixel count of 2560x1600. Do you think I'm being unfair criticising games that don't run on an average size monitor using well above average hardware?


As for my comment about you Shaff, I hardly said you weren't qualified to comment, that's not what I meant. Your opinion is your right. However, the fact that the single game you play on a regular basis is Call of Duty 4, and you refuse point blank to play any of the numerous Source engine games shows you have a very limited knowledge of what there is out there as far as PC games are concerned, especially graphically. Consequently, while your opinion is still valid, claiming that x game looks awesome holds less credibility than for those who have seen a greater proportion of the PC games spectrum. I am no judge on PC games as a whole as there are a large number of older games I haven't played. However, albeit not necessarily for that long, I have played the majority of current titles and have a good idea how they look. We need not look at 2008 to consider how good games look compared to GTA4. Here is a short list of titles from a while back that in my opinion far surpass the graphics quality of GTA4 (and for the record, also run better)

STALKER - 2007
Supreme Commander - 2007
Unreal Tournament 3 - 2007
Half Life 2 (yes, the original) - 2004
Prey - 2006

 

You are right. The IQ hacks are about 85% of true very high, lacking Dx10 motion blur and depth of field. But all the other eye candy is there 100%, so it makes for an exceptional substitute with better performance.

If the game is famous for crap framerates then don't go in expecting to max it or native res it. It's buggy and won't perform well and that's usually what it's stuck at. I've resigned only a few PC games to this fate.

Agreed on all those titles except for Stalker. I didn't think it was really anything special. The HDR was quite nice but that was about it.

 

The game wasn't ideal but it looked good for when it was produced. It was still far superior to GTA4 which is 18 months ahead of it.

 

How do you know I don't play other games? Yes I play cod4 but I do try out other games. I found halflife 1&2 boring so I don't play them. Haven't tried l4d yet. Stalker was too scary lol. I did like bioshock, and I will buy that as soon as my grant comes through.

Also is anyother game on the scale off gta. There are no loading times, so everything has to be renderd as it loads. I am yet to see pop ups. The story is fantastic, thus far, and it's fun. Personally can't say the same thing for crysis on a lot of those points. And as I have been saying, Compared to the other gta's it looks amazing and runs brilliantly maxed out for me at 1920 x 1200. I'm sure others can aswell with lower hard ware, just turn down the draw distance.

Whynot compare FIFA to it or pro evo? It looks better than them and they came out later. And on the of they are always slowing down randomly for no reason at all. They don't have aa/af. Compare another sandbox 3rd person to it ala sr2.