The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

So Sam you are finally fed up with the heat and noise of quad Crossfire eh? I hate to be one of those people but I told you so a long time ago when we both got our 4870s

As far as 2 cards yeah the noise is higher than one, but as they seem to effectively partition my case they haven't affected cooling much if at all. My PSU and case exhaust do get a bit hotter during gaming though. Sometimes I like to turn off the heat in my room and let all of my machines start folding. They can get it pretty muggy in here in a few hours XD

 

Not really. I rather like the chalk and cheese of my two PCs, one that isn't audible at all, and one that is clearly audible. I actually increased its noise level by installing a 1500rpm 140mm rear fan to help keep the chipsets cool, and to make the noise a bit smoother, to cover up some of the complex acoustics of the X2 fans.
The fact is, I can't really afford to have absolutely no money and yet a huge asset sitting here in the form of my gaming PC. The one thing that puts me off selling any of it is finding out the fact that next gen hardware has been pushed back to october by Win7's release.

 

Well if I were you I'd sell one X2 as you really don't need it all that much. Not only would that cut down on noise, it would cut down on all the problems you're having with quad Crossfire and power consumption.

I mean, one X2 is fine. But 2? It's just not meant to be...

 

Well it works, and it has been very helpful in smoothing out some games I play at 2560 res. Ultimately when the next gen comes out I don't really see the need for four GPUs because ultimately, the most demanding games of all never support multiple graphics properly, or if they do it's usually SLI. The games I play right now benefit from Quad CF, but come next gen, two GPUs will be enough unless the tech level of games rises substantially. At the moment it doesn't like that's going to happen just yet. Ultimately I want to get a full bandwidth board again, one with two 16x lanes, and will consider the prospect of using three GPUs in the future in an X2+Solo configuration. That seems to have produced some good results in the past. I'll start with the X2 at first, if I need more before there's a better X2 out, I'll consider adding a third GPU, if there's a new X2 out by then, I'll swap out for that. I'm trying to stay at the top end of the hardware spectrum perpetually.

Catalyst 9.6 finally fixed powerplay for Crossfire, and Catalyst 9.3 fixed all the stability problems of it too, so Quad CF is actually pretty solid now. My gaming PC makes no more noise than most people's normal PCs still, and the power supply can cope fine, it just makes my room get mega hot during the summer if I game all day.

 

dont you love not having money.

including my OD i have £8 in my bank.

 

Damn you just beat me, I have £11. My Abbey account still has a £75 balance, but that's before the £336 rent and bill payment at the end of the month. Fun fun fun.

 

i got a £1250 rent payment july 6th. i cant pay it. uni can *** them selves

 

I think you'd probably best adjust that post. Even asterisks aren't very welcome here. Why are you being charged for rent after you move out? Is the rent system done at the end of the term now?

 

i got a 51 week rent for UPP

if i a mod doesnt liek it ill take it off, other wise id liek to keep my discontent lol

 

I also noticed that a lot of the bugs with Crossfire disappeared with the new driver releases. I've gained massive performance improvements in a few games.

 

Yeah man it's goin pretty good, still not completely stable at 4ghz even though I have bumped up every voltage on the board - the sli is putting too much strain on it. But I won't settle for anything less than 4ghz! Well to be exact I can't really settle for anything lower, because I found an FSB hole around 185-195bclk so it won't boot if I drop the clock to 3.8ghz.
My realtek manager thing doesn't have that test on it for some reason But it's starting to annoy the sugar.honey.ice.tea out of me. I have used the windows media center setup wizard, and when selecting 5channel speakers it plays a Dolby DTS stream from each channel, which no suprise my amp picks up and says "DOLBY DTS 3/2.1 CHANNEL" and decodes the positions correctly. The same test cannot be run when you select 7 channel speakers Music sounds plenty fabulous, but that's only because by default the computer is outputting 2channel and the amp is emulating to ProLogicII so it comes out all channels. But using ProLogicII for games doesn't work because they output more than 2ch sound, so when it gets to the amp it screws up and I lose half the sound :S

And how is everyone else doing anyway?

 

Toms Hardware has rather handily added a benchmark of cards on Left 4 Dead:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-2009/Left4Dead,1184.html

The links to the version epically maxed out as it should be

Not quite sure what's going on with the 4850 on it the Sapphire 1GB cards worse then the 512MB one.

 

As usual, Toms Hardware being completely damn useless for benchmarks. Why only 1920x1200 when testing cards like the GTX295? I loved the VGA charts when they first came out as it was awesome to have such a diverse range of cards tested in the same environment. However, ever since the site redesign, toms' charts have been completely useless for one reason or another, they just don't know how to bench any more it seems. Note the lack of quads in there, the lack of the 4830, but both the 1GB and 2GB 4870, at 1920x1200 Man, it makes me rage.
Keith: 0.6fps is enough variance between different cards to be dismissed.

 

I didn't look I just saw the 1GB was lower then the 512MB.

FUELs been put back again! I pre-ordered it before all the reviews came out saying how crap it was. I just want to see for myself. Seems strange for codies to release a game with the flaws I'm informed FUEL has.

 

Yeah, says here it's been pushed back to 06/30 (NA) and 03/07 (EU).

 

Yeah, Codemasters has always let a bug or two past, but it sounds like they got lazy with Fuel. There are apparently quite a few problems with it but I want to try it before I make my judgment.

 

I'm looking forward to having a go at it. Of course if I was desperate I could always just get it for 360, since that's already out. As a racing game, there doesn't seem much to lose by doing that to be honest.

 

Im beginning to dislike this monitor in some ways. Gaming is awesome! But when it comes to authoring imagery, well...it just doesn't display enough colors at some angles. For instance, I find myself ducking under the monitor to look up at it, so I can see imperfections/color variations. Perhaps im just being picky. But I doubt that professionals employ this monitor for photo editing. For future reference, what types of displays/monitors would be best suited for such tasks? Because I do A LOT photo editing, image authoring, etc. Simply put, im a Photoshop junkie LOL!

2433BW by the way

 

Not a TN panel. All TN panels show substantial colour variation and degradation with angle. S-PVA, S-MVA and M-PVA are better at this, but the best of all are S-IPS screens.

 

Yeah most racing games are just less BS to play on consoles. You don't get hardware compatibility issues and install errors ala DiRT. You end up using a joystick anyway. And you can still play it in HD if you have the TV. And HD is pretty decent.

Speaking of which have you guys played Killzone 2 in HD? I hate to say it but it beats Crysis badly in a lot of aspects. It has some of the highest quality graphics I have EVER seen in a game.

Oh yeah I agree on getting something better for photo editing. TN panels are just fine for gaming or movies but for image work they are mediocre. They don't have the best colors or clarity. My Acer 22" has bad color degradation at an angle and it was a bit difficult to get the contrast and colors right. But when you've got it adjusted just right with the dynamic contrast and whatnot it beats the crap out of most other TN panels. My Dell 2407WFP is an S-PVA if i recall correctly and it still demolishes the Acer for image quality.