The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

There you go straight from estuansis - he's used EndItAll for years - and he finds that certain background processes can slow you down no matter how many cores you've got. Sam, on the other hand, has it worked out that he doesn't have to do that. But Sam agrees that with my single processor, I have no choice. But the way I look at it, why not use EndItAll and shut everything down if you know you're gonna be in a gaming session for a couple hours. What will you have lost - nothing AFAIK. Christ, you can do a one minute boot later and bring everything back, right?

Haha, Kevin, no don't give Louis the pain pills - save those for - like Jeff says - "the heat of battle." And I agree with you, don't shoot Louis. I mentioned to one guy, "I have 1 life right now, I should have you guys kill me so as we enter the safe house here I'll come back after reload with 50 life." I wasn't really serious but promptly he auto-shotgunned me dead! Hahaha. But I do think that's a bad habit to get into - shooting teammates - the guys say "Kill the bot and get his health pack" and I always say "No don't do that."

However, here's what one esteemed forum buddy said on that subject:

LOL

On another note - did you guys read today's headlines:

Swine flu nothing - those chinese saw the l4d2 trailer and figured out that New Orleans is infected all to hell!

Wow, Sam, I didn't know that! Excellent info!

Rich

 

Well...it may have repaired something. Im not sure what. when it finished, it said finished downloading Left 4 Dead. I compared the the MAIN sound folder on XP, to the sound folder on Windows 7 and they're virtually identical. Whether they were in the right location, im not sure LOL! I imagine im just gonna keep the gaming to xp for now. Xp has been tried, tested, and marketed LOL! Windows 7 is merely short of perfection, but its still not approved.

Giving Louis the pills, when I have a medkit for him is like teasing LOL! Like I said, im trying not to do it now Ha ha!

 

Teasing the bot - Kevin you're out of control, lol.

Yeah it will be fun on Wednesday - I'll watch your back. Let's try to hook up.

 

Rich,
I may have to practice on my dual core tomorrow(Haven't played death toll much). I have a lot of computer processes to accomplish tomorrow. Im fooling with the x264 codec. And it would appear that even my quad is gonna experience long encode times But it seems to only average 60% cpu useage. Man I would love a Dual AM2+/AM3 socket motherboard LOL! But then, if the software doesn't support it, what would be the point? Ho hum, its never good enough is it LOL!

 

Well I'm about due for a somewhat fresh game review. Been playing Mass Effect a lot lately so why not do that one? No matter if it's been out for a while.

My first comment is that if you want to play Mass Effect on PC I strongly suggest you get the Fixed No-CD Crack exe. Not only does it eliminate the need for a disk(which I do own), it fixes a lot of issues with the game. The developers got a bit lazy with the port so it has some rather stupid problems. Namely you lose the capability to save the game at all after you reach the Citadel and you can't access the star map on the Normandy. The fixed crack fixes both of these bugs.

Graphics: 7.5/10

The game boasts some pretty nice character models and environments. Everything looks really good and generally "shiny". There are definitely a few ugly textures here and there but overall the game looks solid. Also, being an Unreal 3 game, it does not support AA at all. But this is mostly masked by the film-grain effect on the screen. There are a few jagged lines at 1920 x 1200 but not bad at all. They could have done a lot more as far as graphics but the whole game is still pretty pleasing to the eye. The lack of AA is the only reason this doesn't get an 8/10.

Gameplay: 9/10

The combat is standard shooter all the way. It works well but not much new here. The RPG leveling system is actually pretty nice and fairly intuitive. You wanna go through using only assault rifles? Put all of your weapons points into assault rifles. Wanna open new conversation options? Put points into your Charm stat. Which brings me to one of the best parts of the game, the dialogue. Every word in the game is completely voice acted and you have multitudes of ways to go through each conversation. You can be a total dick or you can be a saint. And let me tell you there's plenty of opportunity to be both. There are thousands of lines of in-depth dialogue in the game and your character is fully voice acted, word for word. There are even different romantic options depending on your gender.

Sound: 9/10

As I said there are literally thousands of lines of spoken dialogue in the game. Every single character is voice-acted and the voices are actually done quite well. The overall audio design is solid and the sound effects are appropriate for each situation. The music for the game is also quite good and gave me goosebumps at times.

Performance: 7/10

The performance is adequate but not great. The 9800GTX manages maybe 40-50FPS average at 1680 x 1050 with a minimum of about 30. It never gets choppy except in heavy scenes. The Crossfire rig, of course, is locked at the maximum 62FPS most of the time at 1920 res. Again, not great, but if you have the graphics horsepower it is relatively tame.

Overall: 8/10

Mass Effect is a great game and is fun to play. The story is good and the universe is appealing. There are some really stupid bugs with the PC version but, thankfully, they can be fixed with an 11MB crack. The graphics are good but disappointing at times. Overall a solid game though and highly recommended if you're into action RPGs or Sci-Fi.

 

Jeff - interesting review:

Sounds like something I've never done before - you get to tailor the conversation any way you want it - total saint or total dick. Sounds imaginative. Good advice about the patch/crack.

 

Rich, the conversation option is pretty much how any RPG has ever worked ever, perhaps that's a genre we need to introduce you to... Granted, your dialogue isn't usually voice acted, that's a nice addition but still, voice acting + different response options, very common.

 

Wait a second. I'm FPS, then I tried a bit of World in Conflict - that's RTS - all hell breaking loose - command of the entire battle. I'm holding off on that and I might get Company of Heroes instead. Now there's RPG - role playing? I think that's too many genres for me. I am not Shokz, lol - just one thing at a time. There's only one day a week, and there's still 6 fps games in the box that I haven't played yet.

(It does sound kind of cool, though. It reminds me of terminator one, where the robot, as he was repairing the damaged skin above his eye, was trying to sort out the best response to the guy pounding on the door - from "F**k you! Jerk-off", to "Excuse me, I can't answer the door at this moment." hahaha.)

 

Yup that's three genres. Then add racing, simulation, puzzle and arcade and platform to the mix as well!

 

played doom 1 for the first time today, on xbox arcade.... simply AMAZING!

i <3 that game!

 

Hell yes, but why didn't you play it on the PC like a man...

He says that with utter hypocrisy. I started off playing Doom on the original Playstation. That said, it had upgraded graphics (640x480 vs 320x240... zomg!) and much better Audio, so I don't regret it. To this day I still play Doom 2, but to relive the experience, I use a custom .wad file patch to get the sound effects and music back to how they were. I strongly recommend you try something like GZDoom or Risen3D to bring the graphics up to slightly more tolerable standards. There's also a world of third party level design out there to be had...

 

I don't know what cracks me up more, all those genres that you just talked about, Sam, (and the fact that you guys play these arcade games that are older than jehovah) or Shaff's "i <3 [love] that game."

Shaff, is that what I think it is?? Hahahahaha (ohhh loco, ohhhh creaky, ohhhh binkie, ohhhh dtx...)

Doom 1 - for heaven's sake!! Anybody up for a really stimulating Donkey Kong! At least Sam is all the way up to ... Doom 2. OMG

(Kevin, is the first part of your steam name, omega? It has to be you - just let me know.)

 

To go off on a slight tangent, I do love World In Conflict What a game... I got into the beta for that way back in 2006 or whenever it was... 2007 maybe... Also, although it's getting a little old now, Command and Conquer Generals (and Zero Hour) was a damn awesome game to play with friends over LAN

 

Actually, ive seen multiple Omega's across the web. But you may be right. Its, "omeganega." I was trying for something a little more original LOL!

Doom, just happens to be the very first PC game I ever played. Im not sure what the specs of his system were at the time. Im sure by todays standards though, it ain't SH*T LOL!

 

nop, its THE sh!t

 

Now that I think about it, I remember hearing something about 66Mhz. Whether that was Ram, or Cpu bandwidth, im not sure LOL! Wow, when you think about it, we've come A LONG way indeed!

 

It wouldn't be that high I don't think, the original Doom came out in 1993, and I'm pretty sure 66mhz is about as fast as it got back then.

 

The Internet had barely been invented back then

Why can't I be old like you guys? Not that you're old old Just that the first thing I can remember about computers is throwing away an 800MHz (that I played Half Life on) to get a new one that was 1.8GHz with a whole 256MB of RAM and a 5200FX That thing even managed to play FarCry if I remember correctly

 

hehe, well I'm certainly a relative newcomer, my first PC was a P3 450mhz. That's very modern by a lot of people's standards...

 

My granddad has a Pentium II Dell workstation and complains it runs slow *facepalm* my 4850 runs faster then his CPU.

Got Test Drive Unlimited the other day I always wanted it but didn't get it.
Its shoddy as hell. The graphics are appalling, (your cars REALLY shiny and everything else is flat)the physics makes everything drive like a barge and it starts you with the choice of about 3 crap cars when you can afford a nice one.