The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Well generally, mixing video cards of different brands isn't a good idea. PhysX is over rated and almost completely useless in most games. If Mirror's Edge is the only game you're using it for, you'd be better off not messing up your drivers. Though some have done it, I wouldn't personally try it.

More graphical issues in Grid with 64 bit Vista. The reflections on cars are being rendered as completely black. Again during the 24 hours of Le Mans. WTF my Nvidia rig does not like that game. Oh well, glad I have a clean install of XP 32 bit on it

I am coming around to the Vista side of things though. The OS itself is just as stable and functional as XP. Though I heavily recommend 4GB of RAM. 2GB was sluggish at times and generally unresponsive. Using my AMD X2 machine with 4GB of RAM is actually much better than my Quad Intel with 2GB. The OS can perform well, but it needs lots of RAM to be as fast as XP. That and the file management is much better. It's a lot quicker to move large files around and it generally takes better advantage of the bandwidth SATA 3.0Gb/s offers.

 

I was actually considering upgrading to 8GB of RAM, that's how bad the game is...

 

Estuansis, are you talking about vista 32bit or 64bit? I have both vista and xp 32bit and vista is extremely buggy and unstable. It's locked up, crashed and randomly shutdown on more then once occasion, where xp has been rock solid since the day it was installed. Though it could always be just me....

 

Those might be issues with your own install. I myself use 64 bit. Crashes and lock ups are usually hardware issues and not software. One thing is that Vista is EXTREMELY sensitive to overclocking. I've had 24 hour Orthos stable OCs in XP bluescreen in Vista doing fairly simple tasks. With a stable OC though, Vista has never just crashed or locked up on me.

Also something different. PS3 vs 360... I hate both. All of my friends are on at least their second 360. Totally unacceptable for a $400 piece of hardware to fail regularly. And the graphics on the PS3 are absolutely terrible. I played Battlefield Bad Company on both. And the PS3 version is like playing in black and white with the "extra jaggies" option ticked and the contrast turned all the way down. The colors are all washed out and the pop-in is excruciating. At least when the 360 works, it actually looks good and is fun to play. Even with both in HD, the PS3 has terrible jaggies vs the actually somewhat nice 360. Nuff said.

 

Well...I'll be installing the BFG 260GTX here shortly. Wish me luck LOL!

I noticed the same thing in windows 7. About the better sata 3.0gbs transfer rates. AWESOME! I like Windows 7 quite a bit. Still not sure I want to employ it when its released though. Im still not done tinkering though LOL!

 

I haven't had any problems running the game in 64bit with my gtx 260. Maybe its your drivers. you should also try patching the game.

Sam, I'm considering upgrading to 8gb just because it is nice to be able to have alot of things open in the background while playing games.

 

Vista is running on my laptop so I certainly there aren't any hardware issues and OCing is out of the question lol. With some of the things I've been hearing about win7 (and things I learned about older versions of m$ OS's) I'll be trying a couple linux distributions before trying win7.

Have fun with the new toy oman7

 

The game is patched to the newest version and my drivers are up to date. Maybe it's because I'm using an 8800GTS 512MB vs your GTX260? AFAIK the drivers for the two are slightly different. Anyway, no problems on either my ATi machine or XP 32 bit. I really should be playing on my Crossfire machine anyway seeing as it's like 3-4 times faster in games. But then I feel so guilty about all that power doing nothing but seeding torrents. I'm gonna reinstall Folding at Home tonight so I can use Crossfire without guilt XD

Hmm. No idea. Try reformatting with XP? It's still better anyway. My only motivation to use Vista is that it works better with Crossfire

Good luck with the GTX260 Omegaman. Awesome card. I wish you many FPS and multiple kills

 

All cards do that AFAIK. My old X850XT was especially bad. Sounded like a jet taking off. When the drivers load it lowers the fan speed.

I'm not sure about PSU fan speed though. My 620HX is just as quiet as when I had one card. It only gets worse when I run F@H XD

 

So folding will utilize quite a bit of its potential huh?

 

Folding at Home is one of my favorite stress tests as it not only stresses the CPU much more than most other applications, it stresses the video card as well. I'm not sure about real time temps as I've got it set to only kick in when my PC goes into sleep mode and I'm usually away at that point. It's a good overall stability test though and will quickly highlight most hardware problems.

 

Gonna have to keep that in mind

But for now...GTA IV!!! If I dont respond anytime soon...its because im having too much fun terrorizing people LOL!

 

Bah, I liked it better on the 360. Have fun man

 

Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner! This card seems to be good with it. Most of the settings are set at high, and the texture at very high, and there is no stuttering, it looks good, running smooth. Gonna run a few tests to see what I come up with.

 

Performance Test 6.1 BY THE WAY

This software must be outdated! I had the Asus 8600 OC'd and hitting the same COMPLEX score! The 3D simple score is astounding though. So simply put, according to the software, the 260 is 3 times as powerful as the 8600! I suppose it would need to be atleast that ehh.

Windows 7 index score jumped from 5.3 to 6.4(OVERALL). 7.9 Aero, 6.4 Gaming!

 

HA!!!!!!!!!!! The GTX260 is WAY more than 3 times more powerful. Remember you're using *ahem* Windows to do the *ahem* "test." I'd put it at 5 times plus. Even more so in the newest games. My 8800GTS is more than 3 times as powerful. And the GTX260 rapes the 8800GTS violently and mercilessly. Take it from experience. I used to have a 7600GT which performs identically. Don't believe me? Run a game at the highest resolution possible with maxed AA and AF. The difference is so huge it's stupid.

Also, don't use a heavily CPU bound game like Half Life 2 and such. Try something really recent like Lost Planet, Dirt, Grid, Crysis, CoD4.

 

Agreed, Vista is quite OC sensitive, and therefore hardware sensitive, but usually it's alright.

Estuansis: The Xbox 360 uses higher quality textures, higher resolution and occasionally AA. The PS3 uses more advanced lighting. Overall, I'd take textures, res & AA any day over lighting effects.
The oldest Xbox 360s were unreliable, but the newer generation are much better. Not defending that appalling track record, but at least it's not as bad as it used ot be.

Krj: I have loads of things in the background when playing games. It's never usually a problem, but for GTA4, I don't even think closing every non-essential system process would be enough.

Estuansis: I've never heard of coruption in GRiD with that card and Vista. I know lots of people who play GRiD with that GPU (8800GTS or 9800GTX) and no issues, all with XP though. I also know someone with a G80 8800GTS that can play GRiD fine in Vista.
My motivation to use Vista was that you can't run Quad Crossfire without it! Haha, I remember the X850XT fan, my X1900 had the same. The 4870X2's isn't so pleasant, but it only spools up to 60% initially, not 100%. It only runs to 100 if there's no power connector. It's immediately obvious if you've forgotten it!
I never had any noise out of my 520HX other than idle fan speed, even with a 4870X2 and 3.8Ghz Q9550 playing an intensive game. Same goes for my ZM850-HP with the Quad rig. Three hours of Left 4 Dead at 700W load, stick my ear behind the back all I can hear is the faint electrical buzz.

Agreed on the GTX260 being more than triple the 8600GT, funnily enough I made this chart the other day for the fragsoc forum.

Rough comparative performance index (numbers are arbitrary, but linear)

8600GT: 100%
HD4670: 280%
HD4830: 360%
HD4850: 450%
GTX260 216: 530%
HD4870: 550%
HD4890: 620%
GTX275: 660%
HD4870X2: 1050%
HD4870X2x2: 1650%

 

Vista itself is a good stability test IMO. If you can get an OC stable in Vista it should, in theory, be perfectly 100% stable under any other OS.

Again, there are many fundamental reasons I became a PC gamer ;P

It must be a freak occurrence with my own system then. The GPU is not OC'd and the CPU is Orthos and Vista stable. Mind you the Vista install is brand spanking new with a virgin driver install and a fully updated game.

Haha good memories! My X850 is still going strong too. It's currently serving in a friend's system for HD video and some light gaming. He plays WoW and Half-Life 2 at 1440 res. He was quite happy to replace his brand new 8400GS with my 4+ year old X850XT after I showed it running some games

Same here. AFAIK, a PSU fan only starts winding up near max load. When I took my mine to get tested, both the StealthXStream 600W and 620HX didn't start to get noisy till about 600W with heavy use on all the rails.

Haha my guess wasn't far off. And you can watch that gap grow even bigger as more newer games come out.

 

LOL, I did say the software must be outdated. I'll run some other tests today. FRAPS, 3Dmark, etc.