The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Rivals to the GTX280 will certainly come in time. Not so sure about i7, the 940 is a long way off beating anything but the i7 920.

 

Sam and Estuansis, nice to see you guys cranking on your new hardware. Sam do you need a bigger case?

(By the way, CCC - are you guys talking Catalyst, or a crysis hack I should take note of when I finally get the new rig built - lol)

Rich

 

CCC Custom Crysis Config. Comes packed with the ToD mod. Google it.

 

Thanks - and - just curious - is that ToD mod the same one you used to like a lot - made the sky a little rosier in crysis?

 

LOL... rosier... it actually changes the entire lighting scheme of the game. And yes it's the same one. Basically makes the lighting more dynamic and natural. They change the time of day settings for all the levels.

 

Niiice - ToD - Time of Day - thanks for explaining that part too. I'm sitting here with this big monster - wait til I post a shot of it next to the little one - remember that Schwarzenneger movie "Twins" with Danny DeVito? All I can do with the P4 is maybe go back and play COD2 - Maybe. No point in playing anything else if I can't turn the settings up.

Well, if I finalize this next transaction and get paid this month, I'll start toward the $1500 new build.

Just to check one last time, so we're sure, guys, core 2 duo quad (and Phenom quad) beats i7 quad, for gaming? Right?

For high resolutions 22" and above, the greek-translated benches proved it - but any other benches agree?

I mean I'm getting all new mobo and everything - I could go i7 for about $200-300 more. But I'm only interested in gaming - not video editing or anything else, lol. So nehalem may be great for all kinds of other stuff, but I just want the best rig for gaming. Core 2 duo quad, right - Q9550 oc'ed to 4 ghz. (I'm not quite ready to join you in Phenom, Estuansis - maybe next build.)

Rich

 

Well for all intents and purposes, Intel will still give you a faster, better OCing, and more refined product for your money. Phenom II as-is is a bit too power hungry and still doesn't OC near as well. They will have to work on it before Intel should be seriously worried. But I suspect that will change soon when AMD starts expanding on AM3. Maybe next time, eh?

The Q9550 will serve you well for years and will be awesome for gaming. I would, in fact, recommend one over i7, just because of the extra cost. i7 is faster in games, but it really is only worth it if you see yourself needing every ounce of power you can get. Which I don't think you will. i7 would be more suitable for heavy duty multi GPU rigs like Sam's. It's super overkill for anything but.

Monitor-wise I recommend a 1920 res display. Good balance of visuals and speed. 2560 requires ungodly power and constantly updated hardware, while 1680 is more for the mid range gamer.

 

The Core 2 and Phenom 2 don't beat the i7, the i7 just isn't any better, and more expensive, and therefore not worth having (for gaming, at least)
As far as monitors are concerned, 24"s are more suitable, but the versatility of 30" screens is wonderful if you can afford one. You don't have to use native res, you can scale up and sit back, or you can 'centre box' to the same effect as a 24".

 

(Another long post - damn Ray's gonna complain again!)



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " Jiminy Cricket, meet King Kong! "



Lol.

This is something that Sam probably knows, but maybe nobody else noticed:

There is a Russian girl in the early sections of Call of Duty 2.

I went upstairs in the Stalingrad apartment building, entering the short hallway where the Germans waited in ambush around the corner, and there she was, in brown uniform and tight pony tail, two more of our comrades grouped just beyond.

I have played through this part several times before. I said to myself, "Where did she come from?"

I went back. Crouched down on the floor near the wall, looking straight ahead, she moved her head slowly back and forth, pausing to create a bit of warmth by rubbing together her cold, partially gloved hands, her breath a thick fog in the sub-zero winter chill.

I forget her name, Zilda maybe. She was immediately killed by a grenade when she joined the fight. I was also killed later before finishing the round, and passing her the second time through I was much more aggressive - dead nazis don't toss grenades. She survived that time, and she surfaced again when it was my unit's turn to go out and repair the telephone line.

I'll be damned! A Russian girl soldier! Sam always talks about "gorging on pixels." The newegg reviewers mention "more immersive."

You simply notice more things in 30 inches!

Estuansis - with your love for the graphics - your photographer's eyes' appreciation for the subtleties of the artistic rendering - you may seriously want to reconsider your position on 30". Yes, as Sam says, 24" is more suitable. At that resolution it's easier for the hardware to keep up with the games. Your arguments are valid - 2560x1600 is too much of a load on the system - big monitor investment - and beyond that it forces one to always invest in the latest and greatest hardware!

However, beyond the initial one-time investment, Sam promotes the versatility of the monitor - run it in a 23" letterbox in the middle of the screen if the game is unbearably burdensome, like GTA4 or Warhead. Run it in full, glorious 30" size, for the more reasonable titles, like Call of Duty 4 and 5, and Hells Highway. And to those arguments I can only add: Estuansis, I never before noticed the COD2 Russian girl! Lol And I confess, even without makeup, she's kinda cute! Hahahaha.

I am getting 44-48 frames a second, 2560x1600, with all settings maxed, no AA. My on-screen ati tray tool display - tiny up in the right top corner of the screen - I never even notice it - shows virtually 100% gpu load, and about 80% cpu load. My 3850 is performing brilliantly - maybe it's time to try 4x AA. I'm so glad I never got the gecube - I'm sure the 512mb vram is helping a lot. Everything is as smooth as silk - no stutters at all!

It's funny. When I first brought the 30" home, I wasn't so sure about the screen sharpness - my wallpaper didn't look all that great. As I found out later - webshots was fully stretching some of the lower resolution 16:9 photos, whereas none of the higher res photos I was trying out had that aspect raio. Anyway, two nights ago I got some time to really check things out, before playing COD2. As I saw by tiling, resolution-wise, none of my screen wallpaper is 2560x1600 - every picture is less - the maximum on a few is 1600x1200.

In stretch mode, Webshots was not even trying to stretch those, maybe because of the 4:3 aspect ratio, but was instead displaying those largest 1600x1200 pictures as wallpaper with the picture in the middle of the screen, as Sam was just talking about. They did look fantastic, that is true - I see what letterbox gaming will look like when I have to drop back to 1920x1200, and I see that it will look great! You don't really notice the border - it blends in with the black case finish.

For my desktop wallpaper, I didn't want the border, so I decided to try tile mode, instead of stretch. The result was amazing! Absolutely gorgeous, crystal clear pictures, including some family shots that partially tiled with half of the picture again, still looking great like that, and some other shots that create amazing full-screen wallpaper effects with 10 colorful tiles. I took a couple hours to go through all 2000+ wallpapers and pick out the best 200 to cycle through for daily wallpaper, and for 10-second screensaver images when I let the rig sit for a while. Sharp and stunning! (By the way, if anybody wants the free webshots program, I have the old version before they messed it up - only about 1.5 mb. Let me know.)

Then, after all that wallpaper selection, I turned on Call of Duty 2 and was up all night of course! LOL

So, the 4800 3dmark6 p4 3.2ghz, and the 3850, encounter no problem at all at 2560x1600 on COD2 (of course - it's a three year old title!) I can't wait to replay my favorite game from the Medal of Honor series - Pacific Assault - with the bombing of Pearl Harbor in that fantastic opener - I hope they also support the 2560x1600. (If not no reason to replay!) And I know that Half Life 2 supports that resolution. I'll be going back through that one too, and all the episodes. I'll see how 2007 Episode 2 works out!

I'm probably good on the two earlier Band of Brothers titles too. The 2008 title, Hells Highway, which destroys me in cpu-generated rain about 2/3 of the way through the game, might work too, even if quite laggy, with low settings - before the rain, that is. I supose I really should wait for the new build on that one, but just for the fun of it I might try to go to the mission with the beautiful farmyard with the windmill, to see what it looks like in 30 stunning inches. I might turn everything up and see if I can get 10 fps, lol. Four days ago, I briefly tried the 2008 Medal of Honor Airborne - with all settings low it runs slightly laggy around 25 fps or so. Best not to play that one until the new build. I think best not to play anything that I can't maximize the settings, or at least very high on crysis with the dual 4870x2 boards.

Speaking of New Build, I have made some progress! I bought the computer case!

I had never heard about Microcenter - but they are online - plus 21 retail locations spread around the United States. You can order online and have them ship, or you can tell them what store you are planning to stop by, and then they only show you items in stock for that particular store. I needed the Linksys for yesterday's visit. So I stopped by Microcenter Saturday evening, having ordered everything online. Nice store, and a big sign inside near the motherboard section says "Better prices than Tiger Direct and Newegg!" I don't know about that - but I was trying to use up my Paypal $250 credit, so while I was online I took a look to see what computer cases they carried. They didn't have NZXT, but they do carry Antec.

Yes, there were 17 Antec 1200 cases in stock in Tustin, - for only $129 - $40 less than the $169 price at Newegg! Holy Cow!

I have bought from Tiger Direct a couple times - they have the advantage of no California 8% sales tax. But now I swear I will always compare Microcenter prices to Newegg before I buy from now on. In my visit to the store, I met some pretty nice salespeople - some of them fairly knowledgeable. I told one guy in the motherboard section that the 1366 gigabyte boards wouldn't work for me because we found out that high res gaming needs core 2 duo quad. He was asking me about that - and then he showed me me the P45 Gigabyte UD3 board. I told him I needed the X48 for the two 16x pci-e slots - when he came back after checking he said that when you put in two boards, even the 16x drops down to 8x - you have two 8x slots in crossfire! (That's what he told me, but that's not what the product literature says - hmmmm.)

Anyway, we started talking about cpu architecture, and he took me over to the cpu section. One of his friends over there was really knowlegeable, and he started talking about the re-introduction of hyper-threading on the i7, which is what I have on the P4. He said that the nehalem quad pictures show 8 little engines. (Now that I think about it, I wonder if that works against them for gaming.)

He showed me on google photos that my P4 is actually two separate cpus, with the ability to maintain two separate threads. What keeps it from being called two "cores" as in the two distinct cores of core two duo, is that each little P4 cpu has to share execution path and memory access. So I have to admit, the Microcenter visit was a very nice experience.

I hope I don't have problems with their return policy - all the reviewers say that Newegg is great to work with in that regard. Another thing that is really great about Newegg, is that they have a vastly superior product search engine. Microcenter online is very weak in that regard, with limited product photos, and no reviews.

But Microcenter is relatively close by for me, and for anyone who lives near their other centers - only 21 in the US. And, at least occasionally, as I discovered with the Antec 1200, they have KILLER prices!!

Rich

 

Rich - glad to see things are going well with the 30".
visit http://interfacelift.com for some 30" wallpapers.
One of the first things you learn when you get a monitor like this is how to hack games to support the resolution, usually you can just stick 2560x1600 in the config file and it will work, even though the game doesn't list 2560x1600 in the options. Google 'widescreen gaming' for some help on those.

 

Don't say that, man
You know I like you posts [sometimes ]

@ sam thanks for the link I was looking for a site with good wallpapers

 

Nice going on the 30" screen. But I stand by what I said. And if I shrink the image down it's not using the whole screen so what's the point? I'd be better off using the 24" in the first place , purely IMO.

And on 30" monitors, AFAIK the routine is the same for most widescreens. A lot of newer games have no widescreen support at all without hacking the settings or patching.

 

What's up guys? How much did I miss? LOL

 

Oh, Ray, you know I was just kidding!! Lol

Okay, Sam, I'll try to stay on top of that config business - hacking the config file. For sure I'll try to educate myself - or ask you if I get stumped. Thanks.

But - let me ask, what does that do exactly? Doesn't the game actually have to have the texture depth at 2560x1600? If they didn't put that much detail into the textures - is the picture going to look all that good? Or, rather than bitmap, are they using vectors that will scale fine at the full 30" - with no loss of detail?

Yeah Estuansis, I remember you talking about widescreen hacking - there was a site you mentioned called Widescreen gaming or something like that. Sounds good - I'll have to become adept at that.

To begin to answer your question, Estuansis, for the times that you run the games in a 1920x1200 letterbox on the big screen, the border around the 23" image in the middle of the screen, in my opinion (but not yet having done it) will blend in nicely with the black Dell case color and the border should not be much of a distraction. That was what the 1600x1200 wallpaper images in the middle of the screen seemed to indicate.

But, to directly answer your question:

..... the point is - to take directly from Sam's post about versatility, for the games where you can run full screen - you won't play the game and not notice the beautiful Russian girl soldier, like I did the first two times through COD2, lol.

You are a photographer, Estuansis, and a connoisseur of fine graphics IMO - if there ever were one. Sam too.

I am getting more and more excited about having this beast, now that I see I can actually successfully run some of my older games with my current system!

Maybe, just maybe, I am starting to get what all the hype is (things Sam has talked about - reviews on newegg) about 30" total immersion.

C'mon Estuansis, in your heart you know you want it! Hahahaha

Rich

Boozer, where'd you go - china? Go back one page and look at the Jiminy Cricket picture (near the bottom) - my brand new 30" sitting next to my newish 19".

 

Sometimes I think you're just bitter about not having a 30"...
The reason why upscaling games that don't support 2560x1600 to that resolution is this:
Game textures are a fixed resolution (or multiple fixed resolutions, with draw distance). Consequently, when you stand right next to a texture in a game that only allows up to 1600x1200, it will never look totally crisp. However, as soon as its a slight distance away from you, it will look nice and sharp, sharper than using a low resolution to cover the whole screen. That make any sense?

 

Ohhh DAMN NICE man. Did you also upgrade your computer? I'm too lazy to read back.

I've not been checking back here. Idk just been doing stuff and I kinda lost interest. I'm mostly back though... I think.

 

For the record Rich, I would probably advise against using Quad crossfire with your PC. You have no idea how unimaginably difficult it is to get it stable. I'm up to about 8 or 9 minutes before a BSOD in a game now, and no longer get any at the desktop, but I've a long way to go yet. I'm shortly going to order my third new power supply, will probably reinstall vista a second time, and maybe even order a new motherboard. As far as setting up technology goes, this is probably the biggest challenge I've faced so far, and by the end of it, will have cost me quadruple what I paid for the second card alone.

 

LOL maybe I am a bit jealous. But I'm not hurting not having one. My 1920 display puts out a crisp, sharp image but lets me play the more demanding stuff. I may have a decent budget for parts but a 30" display is just too expensive and too much of a performance killer to justify the cost right now. I never said I didn't want one. I just meant that 90% of gamers would be better off with the smaller monitor.

 

Thanks man.

Boozer, I've been wondering about you and shaff - like where'd they go? But I know what you mean - I've taken some absences too. How's the boat club? hahaha. Really you should do that man.

Anyway, yeah, booze, I upgraded! NOT!! Well, I started. I bought the case - that's as far as I have gotten!! Hahaha.

Once Sam figures out the technology, I'm pretty convinced I'm gonna run dual 4870x2s like he is doing. So that will result in some heavy system components, like 16x on each gfx slot. I see that Sam is maybe going to pick up another motherboard. If Sam continues to face major challenges, I may just settle for what I have now and see where ATI goes this summer with the 5000 series.

But I purchased the big 30" Dell monitor (the one that estuansis is bitter about that he doesn't have - to quote Sam - lol - just kidding estuansis) to get past the monitor issue - I had just read too much about how immersive the big monitor experience is, and Sam has always talked about gorging on pixels, so I just plunged ahead. But I really don't want to run anything that I can't come close to maxing out - so that will force me to wait to run the latest games until the new hardware.

However, with my present p4 and 3850 and 4800 3dmarks, I found I can run Call of Duty 2 (yeah 2, not 4) at full 2560x1600 max settings and about 45fps, so right now I'm happy - I just noticed a cute russian soldier girl that I never saw the other two times I played the game. I'm about to get on the big Dell for an all-day session again today.

Sam - I think I follow you on the game textures - if they were built for max 1600x1200, then when you get back a hair so that the texture is 1:1 pixel match - then it's crisp. That does make sense if I am understanding it right.

Wow Sam - you are facing some challenges!!

Another power supply - maybe another motherboard!! I won't do anything rash until you have figured this out. I bought the case and it will just sit on the shelf in the garage for now!!

Rich

 

For the record, the single 2 has been an absolute doddle, and runs a great deal of games at 2560x1600 already. The extra X2 just adds a bit of needed horsepower for games like Crysis.
As it stands right now, I believe the problem lies with my X38-DS4, as the stability issues I'm having now mirror the ones I had with the HD3870s last year exactly, which at the time I suspected at heat - then promptly destroyed the second card trying to install that damn cooler, so never found out. By the looks of things it may be the PCI express on my board that's the issue, but to be safe, I've also ordered a Corsair HX 1000W in case that is needed.