The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Hmmm...if it an't broke, dont fix it huh. At least thats what im thinking LOL.

 

Rubix - I didn't know you were an aussie!!

And krj, thanks for showing that method of sorting products at newegg based on reviews - I never looked closely at that before - could come in handy some day.

Nine inch nails!!!!!!! Kevin, you bought nvidia! But I guess you got one of the best cards for GTA4. (And three posts before that you said you were going 4870 - traitor, lol!)

Well, do you have it installed yet?

Yeah, with that card, when you're not terrorizing the citizens of new york, you can balance things out by using cuda and benefit mankind!

I just bought GTA4 - so I guess I'll be going through install hell. And I also have the other "kind" of GTA4 if you know what I mean. And ESA wasn't thrilled about that and told my isp all about it. So I guess I'll just stick to ebay for now, lol.

Sam, does GTA4 have a p90 - or should I send it back - there's gotta be a p90 somewhere in that game, lol. (I know what you're thinking - no I'm not gonna try it on the p4.)

Rich

 

LOL, yes...im somewhat a traitor. Traitor to you fine people, however not to my game, or past luck. Ive had a pretty smooth experience with Nvidia. And quite honestly, the driver issues people have been having with Ati, is worrisome to say the least. My main concern was definitely GTA! I love the game more than I love myself. LOL, ok...thats an exaggeration! Nah, I do like the game a lot though. Such a shame about the bad port though. Im sure they'll sort it out given time. I must admit, for running the Bare Bare minimum, the 8600GT fares OK. I turned the res down to 1440, and that seemed to be the sweet spot. Though during the daytime, there seemed to be a grainy kind of effect. especially with the shadows. Im sure that the new card that I get FRIDAY, will correct it. Or, a new gta patch. But I think its more hardware than anything. I think im running a faulty driver too though. But see...it corrected a rivatuner problem.

Kevin

 

Haha, by the book nvidia fanboyism. Rule #1: Insult ATI's drivers because they don't work.
In all fairness there've been some issues recently, but overall for single cards they're fine, and indeed in Vista64, you're a lot better off with them than nvidia's drivers.

Grainy shadows is part of the GTA4 engine, they always look like that.

 

Really? Ehh...cant comment on that. Never ran Vista or Vista 64 for that matter. However, windows 7 64bit is running extremely well! I will probably be purchasing it on release day. Though I dont know. If linux and wine can do what im reading about...

I do find Cuda quite interesting. If what ive read is correct, a GPU could put a CPU to shame! However, my understanding is quite limited LOL! I'll be sure and run my own bench's and small OC's on friday or sunday. Friday I get it, but im going out of town for Easter. So...we'll see
What I was reading was, that a GPU could encode/Transcode several times quicker, given the right coding

 

They can and do. ATI promised hardware video decoding but never really put it to proper use. CUDA is a more advanced implementation of it. Outside folding though, it's of no use for anyone but budget card and CPU users (i.e. low end dual cores, mainly AMDs, and 9500s or less)

 

Haha all this talk about gta4. It's so much better on PS3. But I must admit, I just put the controller down one day, and I haven't played it since. Just didn't really find it all that great.

so I bought an atx depinning tool the other day... and I can't get it to work. I'm using it on a semi-transparent connector so I can see it pushing the pins down but it just doesn't come out I emailed the place I bought it off and the guy said some manufacturers mould the plugs around the pins so you can't get them out. Is this true?

 

Better? Only because you can't run it!
I like PC crisp graphics, even if the console ports are bad. They have to be truly dire to make me buy the console version (e.g. Splinter Cell Double Agent)
That sounds possible about the connectors, but that won't be why they do it. It'll be for more secure connections, and I welcome that. I'm tired of the terrible wiring in connectors. You can de-pin most molex connectors by plugging them in.

 

Well that sucks ass, what the hell am I going to do with all this sleeving and heatshrink I bought? Lol. I emailed Coolermaster, let's see what kind of response I get.

 

Hahaha, since we're still talking about GTA4, even though rubix got tired of it on his ps3 (aussies fight alligators and sharks - they don't mess with petty crime like mugging, murder, or car theft, lol) I have to ask you sam.

You say you like the crisp graphics of the pc for GTA4 - but whenever I asked before, as I recall, you were never running the game full-screen. However, lately, maybe on the hardops benches for the 4890, I have seen a lot of graphs showing GTA4 at 2560x1600 - frames maybe around 30. I know your new favorite past-time is blowing zombies to bits, haha, but when you do play GTA4, are you ever running it at 2560x1600?

Rich

 

LOL hell yes! And, there's no such thing as cars, we go to work in a kangaroo's pouch! Haha

Edit: Oh, and I managed to get my connectors off - it just required a huge amount of brute force, which ended in holes in my fingers. Lol.

 

Ouch!! I hate when that happens

But that's nothing compared to what a 'gator can do, not to mention a great white, so I know - no prob for you! LOL

 

Haha, too right mate - just slap some beer on it and she's all better.

 

Yeah, it's the what cuda is used for mostly. You can find more info here if you're interested http://folding.stanford.edu/ It runs in the background whenever I'm not doing anything gpu intensive (or I forget to turn it off). It's actually pretty interesting to see how well some games run while folding...sometimes I couldn't even tell.

LOL

 

I would hardly say I was insulting Ati. Ive never owned/used their equipment before. I have no right. I was merely stating what ive read/seen throughout the web. That several Ati drivers, were having trouble(9.2 and several before it). That was not the deciding factor however. Sam mentioning that the Nvidia GPU's would fair better in GTA 4 WAS! That is the game I am currently interested in. And since ive owned several nvidia chips/cards, it wasnt a hard decision to make.
One day, I will give Ati a shot. I do like AMD a lot. Their processors have been nothing short of perfect! JUST an observation!

Thanks Eparker For the Cuda info.

 

I am, and the last time I did I got about 10fps with heavy lag, but the game was trying to use nearly 6GB of RAM and I only have 4. I'm going to try and streamline some of the processes I have open, but it may just be that GTA4 uses 3GB of RAM just for itself. If that's the case, it's going to run a lot better on 6GB i7 systems than Core 2s. I'm not really interested in going 8GB even with DDR2 as cheap as it is because that will harm overclocking severely.

Omegaman: There's no harm in buying the 'tool for the job'. If you'd have been a fan of HAWX you would have bought a 4800, if you'd been a fan of Left 4 Dead a 4800, if you'd been a fan of Crysis Warhead it'd be the Geforce, STALKER the Radeon, GRID the Radeon, Far Cry 2 the Geforce, Call of Duty World at War, the Geforce.
There are a lot of games with significant swings in one manufacturer's favour. Not so long ago nearly every swing was in nvidia's favour. It was the HD4800 that brought competition back.

 

I'm actually more of a fan of the Nvidia supported games. But I find my HD4870s still get great performance

The ATi drivers for Vista 64 are indeed a lot better too. Nvidia has numerous little bugs in quite a few games. Comparatively, ATi has almost no bugs.

Weirdly, I find myself gaming on my Intel/Nvidia machine a lot more lately. It's been sitting so long I feel like I'm neglecting it XD

 

Don't tell me that! I've always used x64 vista and I am getting gtx275s... I don't want to second guess my decision again! Lol

 

How are you guys monitoring your hardware WHILE your gaming? Is there a utility that presents itself ever so slightly into gameplay? What I mean is, a little tiny number for Cpu temp, GPU temp, FP/s etc? Cause I think all Riva tuner can do is create a log. I would prefer a real time solution...you know.

 

There's not really anything that is a deal breaker. Just infrequent quirks. You'd probably do just fine. It's just the fact that ATi drivers have almost NO problems at all. And that's with me using Crossfire.

I use FRAPS to see my frames per second. And as far as in-game temps, try running one of your more intensive games in windowed mode(if it supports it). Crysis and the like work pretty well for this. I use Speedfan for temps on all of my hardware and it works well.