The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Oh, sorry Shaff, I wasn't talking about my p4. I'm strictly speaking new build.

The p4 went back to a 160gig ide drive (and I have another 500 ide hard drive available) so I could mess around with a tiny 5% overclock on the p4 which however causes me to lose my sata controller.

But the new build is another story. I expect to invest at least $2,000 or more, beyond what I already have in terms of $200 case and two sata 640 and 750 gig drives. Actually I might get rid of that case and pick up a Lian-li, because I like the way the front compartment opens and allows you to remove the fan filters from the three front fans. Plus the all-aluminum will be a lot easier to mod and make cuts in than the steel that I have been trying to work with on my present case, for adding additional fans. The Lian-li, last time I looked, was around $400.

I have the same 30" dell as Sam that I picked up early this year, and I want to run Crysis at high quality, 4M pixels per frame. So if the velociraptors, at $220 each = $440, can be set up in Raid 0, for fast read throughput, since Sam says you need at least 150 Mb/sec to run crysis at decent settings, then that's what I'm looking at - next year's new build.

There is no redundancy with Raid 0, but I have two sata drives that each are bigger than the 600mb Raid 0, so I could clone the Raid to one of those from time to time for backup.

Rich

 

Rich: As far as I can see. Of course, the frame rates I got aren't remotely playable beyond the initial area of Crysis, as Warhead proves (13-15fps versus the 30 from the intro scene of Crysis - remember, Warhead is rather like the second half of Crysis in that regard). For the final boss levels to be playable, the fps at the intro needs to be around 60-75. That would leave you enough performance for the game to stay above 15fps when the penultimate monster fires its laser (the most demanding part of Crysis) - Having never found a suitable balance for Warhead, I've not played it through to the end yet. I imagine I still won't until I'm running at least two DX11 GPUs and probably an SSD to boot, maybe more than 4GB of RAM as well ideally.
RAID5 will work with any drives, SSDs, and mechanical drives anywhere from 3600 to 20,000rpm. 7200 is of course the most popular as it is not prohibitively expensive. The downside is that RAID is yet another demand on your system's CPU in software. The performance benefits overall are astronomical if you upgrade to a genuine hardware RAID controller, in effect a miniature PC on a PCI express card. Large RAID5 or better yet RAID6 arrays can produce excellent read speeds (over 400MB/s) and while they suffer a little for write speeds, they're no slouch there either. RAID6 also adds the benefit of offering redundancy. The kicker of course, is that they eat PCI express bandwidth - something that if you're a dual graphics user, will hurt.
On the basis of the reliability of the current Seagates, you'd probably be better off getting Samsungs or WDs for your future disks - Me mentioning RAID was rather speculative, I can't really use it in my main system (though I eventually plan it to be part of my file server). If all you need is extra space, buy a WD15EADS, there's 1500GB of storage in one cheap, quiet and trouble-free drive.
I don't recall any of the DFI boards offering triple 16x bandwidth - am I wrong?

Shaff: On what grounds? EVERY problem, literally every single problem I have had at 2560x1600 since getting a single HD4870X2 has not been curable by cutting the res to 1920x1200, or even 1680x1050. The resolution just simply isn't an issue. Games that don't run at that res run so badly they won't work well at a lower resolution either. Games that have bugged driver support also aren't going to be helped by a lower res. Seriously, I used to check on a regular basis what effect cutting the resolution had, and since I ousted my HD3870, never once has it yielded any significant benefits.
Rich: The Velociraptors are awesome drives, a sort of 'halfway' between SSDs and normal HDDs. They offer more space per GB than SSDs (1.4-1.9 GB per £ versus 0.45GB per £ for the new Intels) but far less than regular HDDs (16GB per £ for the WD15EADS), and offer considerably higher performance than the old raptors, but again fall shortof the SSD. The difference comes in the fact that SSDs use a tenth of the power, and produce no noise or heat at all...
Avoid RAID0 at all costs, it might seem a good idea at the time, but it has no effect on loading times, and is downright risky.
I think going for a top end Lian Li for your new build is a great idea. I'd be a little concerned about cooling performance if you go with more than 2 GPUs, you may need to get more powerful fans than the stock ons, but apart from that, they're great cases.

 

We're getting somewhere at last. I'm certainly seeing the evidence of the improved Quad CF performance (supposedly as much as 70%) in Warhead. The disk loading issues are still there, but the overall frame rate outside the disk lag is 45-70fps, 1680x1050 all enthusiast, 4xAA. Who knows, with 4 DX11 GPUs, maybe 1920x1200 will be playable

 

What's with 9.8 not actually being available on the ATI site...

I win the tiniest OC competition mines 4% as opposed to Rich's 5%. Talking of Rich, any reason you downloaded and re-uploaded my image to your Imageshack, what was wrong with copying the url? I ought to sue your ass (even though Imageshack probably own it now).

I'm now concerned as to how well I can run Crysis or can I simply turn the settings down a bit (I'm blind enough to hardly notice whether AA's on anyway).

Enter sig 2.1

 

I think catalyst drivers get released internally for final testing before release, usually they get leaked to websites during this period. ATI only release them to the public once they're happy with them.
I don't know whether you were serious or not about the image, but without any form of copyright applied on it, it's not yours to own legally anyway.
Crysis on high shouldn't be too bad, but a more powerful CPU would be advisable.

 

I'm very rarely serious so believe it or not I won't be taking legal action (they should really make it easier to gauge emphasis and so on over text I don't want to re-write the English language just tweak it to include this feature).

I'll buy one when I pop out to the shops for some milk (what is it with milk today?) (I'm not serious!!!!!!!!!!).

EDIT: That's how your post read by the way. Its not meant as vindictive or anything like it looked when I just read this

 

Yeah it can be difficult to convey emotion over text. I usually resort to smilies for that purpose

 

Would there be any advantage in installing Crysis to a Seagate Barracuda ST380011A 7200RPM IDE drive rather then my SATA that also contains Windows?

I was just pondering because you said about the lag from your drive.

 

Nah, unless the S-ATA one is really fragmented, the IDE will work out slower.

 

All of my photos and pictures that mean anything to me have an attribution non-commercial creative commons license

Basically it means anyone can use them as long as they attribute them to me and they're not making any money off them

 

Did anybody spot any of the Thermalright stuff at Computex? WANT.
http://img.hexus.net/v2/internationalevents/computex2009/Thermalright/DSCF9083-big.jpg
http://img.hexus.net/v2/internationalevents/computex2009/Thermalright/DSCF9074-big.jpg
http://img.hexus.net/v2/internationalevents/computex2009/Thermalright/DSCF9069-big.jpg

The cases are quite nice, but I'd be happier if you could get the coolers separately. The purple case's CPU cooler looks like it could be seriously powerful.

 

Nice pics VERY serious potential LOL!

 

@keith1993

Your system should run Crysis just fine. The pauses Sam has are due to his vast resolution and system-intensive need for the best graphics available. Your system should run it smoothly at high settings maybe some of the hacked very high settings too. Sam is right though that a faster CPU will help. But it wont make a large difference to your average framerates.

Crysis is much more GPU bound with lower-end hardware setups and will only show a prohibitive CPU ceiling with very fast single cards or multi card setups. Your HD4850 is a mid range card and wont be held back too badly by your 6000+.

 

What is it with case manufactures putting PSU's in increasingly weird places?

Omega stop stealing my new sig thunder...

 

Once again, the pauses have nothing to do with the resolution, they are to do with the level of detail set (all enthusiast) - drop back to high and that is much reduced. Crysis isn't too CPU bound, but Warhead is absolutely critical on CPU performance.

 

LOL! Im sorry! The gold look was beginning to look Dull. I still haven't quite found that sig that will...STICK.

 

I just completed Portal again that makes it the first game I've ever completed twice!!!

 

Not too hard to do, it's quite short (but awesome)

 

Yeah well normally I lose focus about 3/4 of the way through a game and move onto something else but Portal kept my attention (that and the way you can complete it in one sitting).

I will now disappear for several days while I play Crysis.

EDIT: well I would if I wasn't plagued by stability issue's GAHHHH.

Black screen audio makes that REALLY annoying noise then cuts out and I have to reboot. possible cause? I've got a few ideas myself but wanted to see what you guys thought.

 

PSU or motherboard fault. That was the reason my Maximus II Formula went back.