The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Certainly looking forward to Episode 3. Not sure I want to comment on the whole cancer debate but realistically, any chance you can get to keep yourself alive a bit longer sounds worth it to me

 

Yah...honestly, I would not mind at all living to be 100+ yrs old. As long as im still capable of accomplishing something. I dont wanna be an old man who cant even...eh hem, take care of himself!

The eyes were on my storage drive. No doubt from an email I once received. I saved them, because I new I might use them I dont usually toss good pics out. Especially good .gif files!!!

 

Thats EXACTLY how we smoke shisha i love making rings, propper thick fluffly hoops

 

Kevin, I went back there to look - Kevin's eyes:
... and I saw something about hating bees! What!! Do you know what I flavor my two cups of coffee daily with? Take a guess.

Furthermore, do you realize how many plants and flowers and trees would not be able to reproduce if bees were not pollenating them?

So anyway, why do you hate bees? Been stung once or twice??

Ya! Good old smoke rings, lol!

Hey, back to L4D, it's 1:15 pacific coast time, 9:15 London way-past-tea time. I'm on Left 4 Dead if anybody wants to join! (I couldn't sleep - woke up at 4:00 this morning - so went to the trailer/office and started right in - I am wayyyyy warmed up, lol. Tried to hook with shaff - he was up playing 'til about 8:00 my time - I have a feeling he pulled another all-nighter, hahaha.)

Rich

 

I dont like bees, because there tiny vicious little bastards LOL! There size doesn't bother me of course. That they're vicious AT that size is completely wrong! LOL! Don't worry. I dont go out of my way to kill them anymore. If they leave me alone, I leave them alone.

 

LOL

You better not endanger those flavorful honey-sweetened cups of coffee!!!

Hey if you're playin - harvardguy - join in. I'm jumpin on right now!

Rich

 

But bees are the nice ones Guarantee you'll never be stung by one unless you scare it or piss it off

And hmm, I got L4D at release but got kinda bored of it, should I try get back into it?

 

Agreed, and bees aren't vicious. Wasps are.

 

Well...they are to me! I think they can sense hostility LOL! Yellow jackets especially.

 

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=18636

Where did this suddenly appear from? I want one. 4GB of memory to near-completely resolve nvidia's memory management issues, and GTX285 SLI performance, the only Dual pair able to take on 4870X2 Quad Crossfire and beat it in more than just one or two games.

 

Holy crap... I'm almost scared thinking about the price-point

 

Finally an Nvidia card to beat the 4870X2, too bad it's limited production and going to cost a small fortune.

 

Not even a small fortune I don't expect.

 

the 295 beats the x2.....

 

I want one
Although buying one would make a MASSIVE dent in my savings for a car.

Finally got portal. Such an awesome game although I (think) I've nearly finished it in one sitting.

 

We've discussed that before...

 

Portal is awesome except of it's lack of difficulty and length. If/when portal 2 comes out I hope it's longer and harder then the first.

 

Here's Sam:

And here's Kevin:

Kevin - don't mean to interrupt your tirade, lol, but Yellow Jackets are Wasps!!! (as in, they aren't bees!!!) Hahaha.

And back to Left 4 Dead:

Well, it's addictive, and you're a certified After Dawn Addict! So I don't know. How much extra time do you have in your week, lol.

Shokz, do you have a microphone? If not, maybe that is why you didn't get into it more.

I couldn't sleep yesterday, woke right up at 4:00 am. I was having L4D dreams like Kevin. (Or is that LSD dreams like Kevin? Hey Omega, is there something we should know about your choice of poison?) Seriously, I was dreaming about Uzis, getting ready for Gaming Day Wednesday! So I finally gave up sleeping any more, got up, and after coffee and breakfast, was on for fifteen hours straight, with a couple of food breaks, from 5:00 am to 8:00 pm. Jeff joined me the last two hours.

Shokz, I would say to you, "Yeah get back into it and see why it didn't work out the first time." Perhaps it's not your cup of tea, like Hidden is not mine, or maybe you didn't give it a fair try. You might also want to check out the Developer's commentary under Extras. Maybe knowing more about how the game was developed - more about the intricacies of the experience you are having - might add to your enjoyment. It did to mine.

There is a lot to the game. Earlier in the day, when we jumped off the roof onto the train tracks, I said "I think there's a tank gonna show up soon" because that tank had wiped out last week's team 3 times in a row. The other guy with a mic says "You're right, he's coming." (All these guys can tell there's a tank coming - way before the big vibrations. They hear some kind of noise, or a change in the music, that I am not picking up yet. We were in a building and a guy says, I'll go get the tank started and see if I can molotov him. I said, "What tank?" He said, "I hear the growling." Well f**k me! I don't hear any damn growling! In fact, I'm the last to know - usually not until the big ugly sonovabitch is beating the crap out of me, haha. One time, a little low on health, per Jeff's instructions, I charged up the ladder, sprayed just a bit, heard Jeff say to keep going, ran into the hospital grabbing a quick health pack from the ambulance on the way, and did a split-second check for a health pack in the little side room, to turn around and find myself face to face with a tank - there wasn't even time to get one round off - and he got Jeff too! Where the f*** did the overgrown sneaky bastard come from? How often does the Director pull THAT sh*t!)

So, as I said, Estuansis and I played on Advanced yesterday from about 6:00 pm until just after 8:00 pm when we both hung it up. Just the two of us and bots.

We tried three defenses that were new to Estuansis. We defended the second story office above the blown-up gas station in No Mercy - it was very effective. In fact, the first time through it was stocked with weapons, molotovs, and pipe bombs. And we tried two other new defenses that Jeff also had not known about.

One guy way earlier in the morning had asked the team, "Do you guys want to defend field?" We were at the airport. Field?

So I showed Jeff. He was skeptical. He said, "This rope area works?" I said "Yeah, they don't come from behind the rope." He said, "Well, there's a bunch of them behind the rope right now." I laughed. "Yeah, but they don't spawn back there. Working dual pistols, we can take down most of the horde and save our M16 bullets for the tank, in case we don't have enough time to get back for ammo and/or to grab the auto shotgun."

That rope defense was awesome - we both boarded the escape plane and flew out feeling pretty good about that. The bots didn't make it. LOL Then we played the airport closet defense. It would have worked okay with two real teammates. We got as far as the second tank, but the bots were dead and I think we got smokered.

The guy last week who showed me airport closet, was enthusiastic also about the airplane defense - the broken plane near the closet. I actually had jumped up on it before and I had wondered about using it for defense. Like everybody, I like being up high as long as there's no tank beaning me with a luggage cart. He said it's a good defense. He likes to get way up on the wing, but not to the top - he said the smokers get you if you're all the way up.

Those finales are tense - they don't allow for mistakes at critical moments. One good team player made the mistake of trying to heal me as the ramp was dropping - I had virtually no life left after surviving a tank. That 5 seconds of frozen time cost both of us our lives - it is possible I could have hobbled on board and made it - I wasn't all the way to black and white.

The attempt to heal me was quite a generous gesture on his/her part, Windiver I think was the player name, and he had proved what a good team player he was throughout the campaign. He was trying to help out, of course, but it was a dangerous tactical mistake at that particular moment. Another good player who also didn't quite make the ramp on an earlier campaign made a possible tactical mistake through a bad molotov toss at the end. In this scenario, he had thrown the molotov to help with the final horde, as he typed out during the credits, with the game dedicated TO HIS MEMORY, but I proposed that next time maybe better to light up the area closer to the ammo and more distant from the ramp. As he explained, he said the flames being so close had concealed a hunter, who grabbed him right at the last instant as the rest of us were charging into the middle of the plane.

When we took off and saw IN MEMORY OF, and realized that we had lost a buddy, it was a letdown. When you go through hell together, it's disappointing when all players don't escape, whereas it's exhilarating when everybody DOES make it out.

So, Shokz. Get in the game! Hahaha!

Sam Morris - you're gonna swap out your 4870x2s and pick up one or two of those GREEN dual 285's, with 4 gigs per card??!! Down below the link you posted, I noticed that guys were commenting "But will it run crysis ultra high? One guy posted, "Yes of course. No don't be silly" - all in the same post, lol. I bet we're looking at $700 a card! Still, crysis at ultra high???!!

And Sam, did you really say that dual 285s at $750 already beat quad crossfire - at $650-900 - on a bunch of games? (I've seen 4870x2s go for as little as $325 each on ebay.) Shaff said the 295 beats the 4870x2, but you said "Shaff, we have already discussed that."

What did you mean - I forgot the discussion you guys had - and I never know when shaff is just blowing a fluffy shisha smoke ring, lol. And finally, does quad sli work - two of the new monster cards?

Good luck saving for your car, Keith. From what you and Red_Maw said about the game, maybe I'll have to play the full Portal. I've heard a lot about it, and I played a little demo a year or two ago that I think Steam let me download. The song is - well it's hard to explain. The song is, in some way, unnerving. It's kind of nice, in a way, and kind of sad, in a way, and kind of twisted, in a way. It gets under your skin - I absolutely can't explain it. The game is so original - unlike anything ever done - well not exactly since it was taken from the portals in the first Half Life. But very unique. I wouldn't recommend it for Kevin - then he'd be having portal dreams on top of the lsd, and who knows where that would lead.

Rich

 

LOL! No no. Just alcohol here Although every once in a while, Mary Jane is good. I dont like it as much as I once did though. Probably my own fault.

On another note, im almost ready guys. Ive had a mic for quite some time, it comes in handy with both windows 7, and Dragon naturally speaking, (for voice recognition programs). And my skills have advanced greatly. Im not sure if I already posted it, but I discovered a way to defeat a horde single-handedly(on expert no less)! It doesnt seem to be full proof yet, but it does work quite nicely. Next Wednesday...i'll be ready rich. Im playing on the 50" plasma this weekend <-----VERY big smile! Though it will be of a lesser GPU. I dont expect any problems. The 8600GT is a solid runner. It even ran GTA IV. A little on the rough side, but it tried pretty hard

EDIT - I stand corrected! Yellow-Jackets are wasps touche!

 

Haha Rich it was fun. If I'd realized it was Wednesday I'd have been on earlier in the day. By the time I saw your post I thought crap I might as well show up for a few matches

Man my ping was really suffering that night. It was either Rich with like a 55 and me with a 150 or me with a 50-60 and Rich with a 120. Apparently his internet connection is a lot more tolerant of lag. I was getting long pauses for of like 10 seconds very frequently until we found a better server. It was never that bad before even playing with Sam in the UK!

A 64 player match of Battlefield 2 sees me with a 40-75 ping and perfect accuracy at long range even.

Haha my favorite Battlefield 2 map is Dragon Valley. Ocean on the north end with high mountains at the coast opening into a huge river valley. The Americans always start controlling an aircraft carrier and a base on the shore at the foot of the mountains. The Chinese start controlling everything else, including the mountains!

It looks like this:



See how there are mountains dividing the coast and the valley? They are forested and there are roads snaking through the woods that the Americans use to move their armor into the valley. Steep cliffs over the base on the coast. Almost immediately they have tanks moving into the mountains.

Haha I start in the mountains with a silenced rifle and a ghillie suit. You have some time to get in place before the American players can make it to vehicles and up the mountain road to attack your control points. There's forest and grassy fields all over the top of the mountains and surrounding the roads with cliffs overlooking the American base. And here I am sneaking through the woods in prone and dashing across the roads when it's clear. Jeeps and tanks come rumbling along the road and I barely escape discovery by diving into the trees and going prone. Helicopters and jets from the carrier buzz overhead as they cross the peaks into the valley below. Diving into the grass and remaining perfectly still as they pass overhead, hoping they don't turn around and make a pass at you. Picking your way down the cliffs a bit into a forested position with a perfect view of the base. Crawling in and out of cover to keep unexposed on the steep mountain face. Lining up that shot and popping a guy as he gets into a jeep. TENSE AS HELL!

EDIT:

Interesting note on the memory inefficiency of Nvidia cards. Running the techpowerup Call of Duty 2 timedemo 1680 x 1050 maxed w/ 8xMSAA sees me with an average of 75FPS on the 9800GTX. But just turning it to 16xMSAA drops the average to 45FPS. Like it's starting to run out of memory! I've noticed this with quite a few games so far. Handles everything fine maxed, but turn the AA too far and the FPS dives. My 4870s, even in single mode, barely take a 5FPS hit by turning it from 8x to 16x.

Nvidia has always had cheap/weird AA though. 16x in the control panel is more akin to real 8x on an ATi. And 16xQ is more akin to real 16x on an ATi. To get full 16xAA you actually need to set it to 16xQ or you might as well use 8xQ because it still looks better than regular 16x!

All the more reason I went ATi. Quality antialiasing is paramount especially in highly detailed games. CoD4 and Source games with AA look markedly cleaner and crisper on the ATi cards.

It's kinda like this:

Nvidia - ATi
2x = 2x
4x = 4x
8x = ~6x
8xQ = 8x
16x = ~8x
16xQ = 16x

These are from my own personal experience. But from what I've seen and done you need to turn Nvidia's AA to Quality MultiSampling just to match the stock AA for ATi. And this isn't even taking into account all the custom AA modes over 16x ATi cards can use.