The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Wow! That's some amazing information.

But again, I'm confused. I'll explain my confusion down below. It has to do with memory, disk access, and planning for the OS's and for the games.

The SSD is $350 - ok, not really that expensive. But it's only 80 gigs. (I heard the part about no need to defrag, since no head movement, but I didn't know that defrag was actually bad for the drive, lol. Thanks! I will never defrag an SSD.)

In planning the new build - i7 (I haven't yet looked into i5) - I am thinking 6 gigs of memory. Maybe I'll go for 12 gigs, let's see how much more expensive it is at that time. I'll use Vista if I have to - you said for quad CF I need Vista because XP won't really support it - otherwise I like XP. So I suppose the new games that are demanding and need the quad cf and can benefit from quad cf, will be installed under vista. But I suppose Windows 7 will eventually take over.

I like how you use separate drives for each OS. I have always done it that way in the past. If I did it how you do it, for planning, I guess I could have a separate drive for W98, XP, Vista, and Windows 7. That's 4 drives, why not?

Let me ask you this: You use two separate hard drives for dual boot - as I say that is actually the way I have always done it - but I have always done it with a boot.ini file on the windows 98 C drive, allowing me to choose my boot program without changing the bios boot order, which I never thought of.

So if one were to do it YOUR WAY, then by choosing the boot order in the bios, do you free yourself from dependency on a boot.ini file on the normal target C drive?


BOOT.INI ON THE D DRIVE MESSED ME UP
If your answer is "YES, you don't have to worry about boot.ini", that might be very helpful!"

I just went through quite a bit of frustration and actually learned about the syntax of the part of the boot.ini file that states: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn"partition(2)" which caused me major problems recently after cloning my broken 160 gig one-partition XP D drive, to my new 500 gig D drive with three partitions, XP still being D, but physically being the second partition on the disk because acronis lets me put space in front of the cloned partition, and in back of the cloned partition. I could have put a bigger space in back of the front D XP partition, but I don't know how to split that in half later - is that where Gparted comes in handy - does it let you take an unformatted piece of disk and create two partitions?

So the part that says rdisk(1) actually means the second disk, since disks are numbered starting with 0, but partition(2) actually does mean the second partition, not the third, since partitions are numbered starting with number 1. I find that inconsistency fascinating!

So until last week, not really knowing anything about the syntax of the boot.ini statement, I couldn't understand after the cloning process why my original drive wouldn't boot. I was able to use an XP startup floppy (which had partition(1) on it as I realized later) and then I used system restore to boot off the original, because it changed the boot.ini file on the C drive back to partition(1). Then of course the new cloned drive wouldn't boot, lol.

Finally google helped me realize what was going on. I now have two separate copies of the boot.ini, one is called boot-p1.ini and the other boot-p2.ini, and I overwrite the boot.ini with the appropriate one depending if I want to boot xp from partition 2 on the new cloned drive, or partition 1 on the original drive.

So my question is, Sam, by simply telling the bios which drive to go to, are you able to skip all this fussing around hassle with the boot.ini file?

That's my first question:

Here comes my second question:

WHERE DOES AN SSD FIT INTO ALL OF THIS?
Back to the $350 Intel 80 gig SSD. I believe you said that once you boot up - and let's say I have 6 gigs of RAM on the i7 rig - most of Vista is sitting in the Ram. Now let's say I open Crysis. Is most of Crysis, at least at that level, also sitting in Ram, or am I going to start getting a lot of disk access and maybe even paging?

If not, if everything is more or less in Ram, then where is the need for an SSD, or even for a VelociRaptor? In other words, if I am not really that concerned with OS load, nor with game load, nor even with level load - I just want it to run smooth once it starts up again - maybe the $350 for an SSD is better spent going for 12 gigs of i7 memory instead of just 6? Is that the kind of tradeoff one could make?

Rich

 

also its best no to install an OS into an SSD. first get a HDD with an 80GB partion, install the OS programs ETC on that and clone the drive to the SSD. itll loose less performance this way.

 

Hmmm. Is that so that you can defrag it on the hdd, and then clone over everything completely defragged to the SSD?

Let me ask, I see a $350 80 gig, and a $450 160 gig from intel. For the $450, you get twice as much - looks like a better deal. It sounds like you are recommending putting the OS's on the SSD, so how much space for each, XP, Vista, Windows 7, we said before 25 XP, 40 Vista, 35 Windows 7. That's 120 gigs - sounds like I should get a 160 gig ssd, so I have 40 gigs to install the most-used games.

Another question, what if I have an SSD for all the OS's, with partitions, instead of Sam's idea of one drive for each OS? Then let's say I have one drive for the Programs. On that drive, I have a program folder for xp, another for Vista, another for windows 7. So do I create a "Program Folder-XP", "Program Folder-Vista", separate like that?

Or just one Program folder. I guess if I had just one, and if I had a program installed on two different operating systems, I could have a subfolder XP Version, and Vista Version, to keep them separated.

GTA4
Hey different question. I had loaded and tried San Andreas two weeks ago, and played it for a couple days. I'm a little stuck on the part about ramming the car and killing the Bawlers Gang after the stop at the Chicken place. I've gone through that about 10 times and my car always catches on fire. I don't mind keeping trying, but it's kind of boring to have to go through all that cut scene stuff with whats-his-name ordering 100 different menu items, etc.

But I loaded GTA4, and despite the heavy system requirements, I started playing it just to see what it was all about. I find it completely amazing!

I see tonight that it got super high reviews. I really liked the lapdances I got last night when I went over there with Little Jacob. Unlike last week, I liked the girl better this time, so I decided to let her keep going. I found that the dances got MUCH MORE erotic. Hahaha.

But now I am bored. I am wondering what to do between missions. Like there is nothing happening - Little Jacob has no more stuff for me - Roman can't even give me any more little taxi jobs because his other drivers are jealous. I'm bored waiting for the action to start up again. I don't know if I am just supposed to keep dating Michelle, keep hanging out with Roman and Little Jacob. What? So I went to google a bit ago, and I read all about the game - especially the wiki article.

They said I could get on the police computer and hunt down criminals.

Is there anything else I can do to wait for the goddamm missions to start again? I am really good at darts, in real life I am really good at pool, but in the game my stick doesn't push straight, so Michelle is raping me. I am so so at bowling in the game and in real life. I am bored with Michelle.

However, I also just found out on wiki that I can honk at hookers and they'll get in - I didn't know that!

So while I'm waiting, the wiki gave me two things - 1. steal a cop car and use the computer to help me hunt down criminals for cash, and 2. honk at hookers and they'll get in the car.

Anything else that you guys suggest, Keith, Kevin, Shokz - or Sam, Shaff and Jeff? Kevin, I know you're a big player - what can I do to start these missions up again, or at least while I'm waiting do something more interesting than running over hot dog venders on the boardwalk?

Rich

 

Honestly rich, I think I've logged MAYBE 15Hrs on GTA IV. I've played left4Dead more. Sounds like you could teach me a thing or two LOL! I was unaware of the vigilante missions. I imagined they existed, much like San Andreas. I just never tried it. I still haven't unlocked the other sections on the map. When I try to go west beyond the bridges, I get 6 stars, and they take me out. Unless i'm in the annihilator via cheat

I also am impressed by the visuals of the game. Although im also confused. I was averaging higher frame rates on the windows 7 beta, then I am on the RC edition. Isn't that weird LOL! I've made so many changes as of late, its hard saying though. And since my Boards going back to the manufacturer, I won't be playing for a few weeks Better log a few hours tomorrow I think im only 12% complete...

 

Put it this way, quad graphics is a pretty big burden - heat, power, motherboards, cost, drivers, and so on.

Top-end i7 PC with dual graphics (in the form of an X2 card):
650W PSU required
Any ATX Mid-tower sufficient for cooling
Relatively low noise with aftermarket coolers
3+ monitors usable at once
Windows XP or above required
typically 1.6-1.9x graphics scaling


Top-end i7 PC with quad graphics
850W PSU required (1000W if heavy overclocks)
ATX full tower required for adequate cooling
lots of noise from cooling systems
Only one monitor can be used
Windows Vista or 7 required
typically 2.2-3.4x graphics scaling


Personally, I'm absolutely amazed you didn't bin Windows 98 years ago, the total lack of stability, the outdated interface and so on would drive me mad these days. As for XP being D:\ - that has more disadvantages than advantages. Surprising though this may be to no, a large number of applications (including games) will not function unless they are installed to C:\. I found this out to my cost when trying to patch Supreme Commander - and don't for the love of god try and change the letter in the registry - the online solutions don't work, and only ruin your OS so it's not bootable.
By using two separate drives to "dual boot" there is no confusion - no ini files, no GPArted, no anything. Simply Delete, a few cursor and enter presses, and it's done. That's the way I like it.

When you load a game for the first time since startup, it is on the HDD. Vista does not preload any games unless you tell it to in the options, I don't think it's enabled by default (at least, not for games). Thus, you need the HDD performance. Where the game ends up once it loads, i.e. in either your HDD paging or RAM is down to how much RAM you have. With Vista64, 6GB isn't really going to be enough. With Windows 7, it probably will be. The difference that makes Crysis so special and why it will benefit tenfold from an SSD is sequential loading - not a common feature in games, but something Crysis uses. Since it would use 10-15GB to run the whole level scenes, what Crysis does is only load what you need to see for one particular scene, when you start moving, the game effectively streams all the new incoming textures off the hard disk. This has dramatic impacts on performance, especially if you have a slow (or worse, full/fragmented) hard drive. Since the main aim here is random read performance to minimise lag, the SSDs are truly ideal for this purpose. Crysis therefore, is one of the few games I will be installing to my SSD when I buy it.

As for defragging SSDs, it's not just bad for them, it's pointless! If you copy stuff over from a perfectly defragged HDD to an SSD, it wil still end up fragmented, but who cares! Because SSDs aren't mechanical (that is after all the meaning of the phrase 'Solid State') the read performance is linear across the drive. No matter if one file is one place or a million different places across the disk (i.e. fragmented), it will load in essentially exactly the same time, that is how SSDs work, and thus, why defragging is redundant.
Partitions are one way of using multiple OSes, but if you do that, then you DO still rely on the whole boot ini messing around, and to be quite honest, if you've enough money to buy a quad crossfire gaming PC, you've enough money to buy two hard disks instead of one to boot your OSes off. If you're booting Win7, you won't need Vista - honestly, there's no need to run all three OSes.

As for GTA4, I'm frankly astounded the PC version even plays on your hardware, I assume you must be very forgiving with lag to have stuck with it this far. GTA4 in itself is an excellent game, I can see that much though I haven't played a great deal of it myself yet. The fact is though, I would want to play it on the PC since I can, but I am put off by the fact that even my current PC can't play it properly. It is that demanding.
I've probably played about 3 hours of GTA4, most of it being annoyed by how badly the game runs at the beginning. I must have played that many hundreds of hours for Left 4 Dead at least.

 

Sam you really must look up the ini tweaks for Crysis. You can turn streaming textures off plus move physics to your third or fourth core and a few other tweaks you might like. Believe me they really help. I average over 40 with essentially all very high settings on DX9.

 

I didn't realise the ini tweaks disabled sequential loading. I would consider that, but really, I want more RAM if I'm going to do that.

 

Well it couldn't hurt to try it. Test a few of the ini tweaks. There's quite a bit to be done for performance with basically no impact on visual quality.

 

Right, probably the last you'll hear from me for a week - I'm off for a summer holiday, a little late, but it's quieter at this time of year anyway
Back Monday 21st - will no doubt have a lot of reading to do!

 

Amen to that!!!

My mate had already broken the side panel lock, the power/HDD LED connectors and scratched it pretty much everywhere twice.
The front is loose, the *top* USB cover is made of a slightly lower quality plastic then the stuff that is used in chocolate boxes, the front door is only slightly stronger then the catch, the 2.5" drive holders are 2.4" wide, the 3.5" drive holders are 3.6" wide so you needlessly need a special caddy and you cannot mount graphics cards because the approach angle is blocked due to the screwless catches meaning you need to remove and reinsert 4 screws to do what on my old not-screwless case was a 2 screw job,

It is *slightly* cooler then my Dabs case was with a 120mm in the back and an 80mm in the side and that's probably because the Soprano has a really LOUD 92mm in the side.

 

Hahahaha. I KNEW you would be surprised - and yes, you are right. I must be the most forgiving SOB on the planet regarding lag.

GRAND THEFT AUTO 4 IS A GIANT KICK!
Interestingly, the game is mostly a driving game (which can be boring at times) interspersed with killing people, or playing darts, or getting lap dances, or picking up chicks. Plus lots of cut scenes. It is surprising, but the lag doesn't factor in that badly on driving around town, even in running from the cops. It factors in when walking around, or in a gun fight. I have to be patient when holding down the right-click targeting system, and laggingly getting the crosshairs over the guy's head, or if I'm chasing him, dropping down in a crouch and targeting his back to hopefully drop him.

The lag IS bad, no question. Ok, I know you're wondering. I'm getting about 10 fps. LOL. Here's the thing - they have the textures dropped down to "low" and it is grayed out - I can't change it. Perhaps when I double my RAM memory in a couple weeks (I won't let myself do that or install the faster processor until I first finish my late taxes) maybe I can see some better textures. But I am running the game at 2560x1600!

Now I know you're really gonna think I'm nuts. But I tried it first at reduced settings, of course, and at most it I get 1-2 more fps. There is not that much difference between lag at 12 fps and lag at 10 fps.

But the game is very noticeably "prettier" at full native resolution. It really looks nice - and even though textures are on low - certain things like people's faces and neon signs, and other things that you focus on more, are quite crisp. So the "low texture" setting is selective, with high textures thrown in to keep the graphics still looking quite nice. For example, the street texture is very bland, but that doesn't seem to take away from the game that much.

Draw distance is silly - whole blocks disappear unless I get near - but I don't mind. I am surprised it will even run. At lower resolutions my graphics card was running about 40%, now it's about 70%, but the cpu is maxed out, as you had indicated it would be.

Why do I like it? For all the reasons it got such great reviews, according to wiki. I have played some racing games (you could consider this one mostly a racing game I suppose) and I have played some car games with running over people as standard fare - going all the way back to Carmageddon.

Anyway, some of what makes a racing game fun (you guys would know better than I do - I haven't played DIRT or GRID or the other games you guys have discussed) is a realistic environment - and the mock New York that Rockstar has put together boggles my mind. It has so much detail, and feels so authentic driving around - even though as I say, they have to tailor the draw distance for my weak rig.

When I am out on the street walking around, and I look at the faces (much better at full 2560x1600 than anything under that) while they are still somewhat cartoonish - they are very interesting and in my opinion well done. The hot dog cart guy "Take a bite of my Big Chihuahua dog." "Put my dog in your mouth." .... and lots of other thinly disguised fellatio references ... has a very authentic - probably Polish - visage. And the game is filled with weird satire - on the radio shows - and lots of sexual references of course. For example, I'm beating Ramon or Little Jacob at darts, and you can't turn around to watch although I would like to, and one customer says to the cute barmaid, "Are you Irish?" And the barmaid says "I'm sorry, I don't want to have sex with - what you say - Stranger?"

It's just a crackup. Those barmaids are cute. The one who says "You look famous!" no longer adds the insult "Eat up fatso!" She's nicer now, saying "Binge away" or something to that effect. Her eyes follow you as you walk around the restaurant.

The Russian is very interesting - the street conversations - the signage - the music. I took 1 1/2 years of uni Russian. I recognize some of the things they are saying (not much) even in the songs, like "ti lyooblyoo" which means "I love you." I can somewhat read the Cyrillic - for example on the Russian clothing store it says "Produsha" which I guess means "products."

As far as the game starting to get boring, by reading the wiki it got a lot more fun. I have picked up a couple of hookers and driven them around town. They don't always get in - usually they run off. It has to be the right car, or the way you drive up, or something. They are very picky. The game says "press E to give her a ride" when the girl occasionally actually starts to approach the car, after you honk the horn.

But once she's in, then it's fun to pan around the front and see her sitting next to Niko, and you feel like you have company. Lol. I had wondered if the type of driving would have an effect. For example, one time with Michelle, in the pouring rain, I pulled over and stole a motorcycle. She jumped right on the back like nothing happened, haha. But anyway, even when not raining, sometimes the cars are hard to handle and I get lazy and fatigued and start hitting stuff.

One girl was so pissed off at the awful way I drove, that when we pulled into Ramon's garage, she got out and yelled at me "I should bitch slap you for that!! Did that make you feel like a man!"

Hahahaha. That was so cool!!

The weather is awesome - the pouring rain!! It gets really hard to handle a car especially if you're chased by the cops. I now keep a convertible sports car in the safe house parking, along with a motorcycle. The sports car handles the best of all the vehicles - and it goes silly fast - you are f**king flying on the expressway!! I couldn't believe it - had to be 120 or so! Fortunately it brakes pretty well. Some of those cars handle so badly that I have had multiple multiple crashes trying to escape from cops, beating up the cars so badly I had to jump out and jack another one - usually I escape though.

I have never lived back East, but a close relative lived in Manhattan for four years and I visited several times. From what I read on Wiki, the game is pretty authentic regarding streets and locale.

And also per the wiki, stealing cop cars turned out to make the game much more fun. It's fun to drive with the siren on - everybody gets out of your way on the expressway, except for "another" cop. Haha.

I found a good local police station where 3 squad cars are always parked out front - I know just where it is on the map and I can fix the locator and drive right to it now. Also there is one parked two blocks from the safe house. There may be some cops on the sidewalk who get annoyed when you break the glass and hotwire their patrol car, but since they are on foot, the wanted circle disappears pretty quickly by the time I make the right turn at the Expressway and jet down the road for a mile. The veteran black cop standing outside at the other precinct usually turns around and I can kind of hear him saying "What is this?" when I break the glass, but usually if I drive away and go park, before I get into the police computer, he doesn't even bother to trigger the alarm. That's a convenient location also for the hot dog stand across the street where I can recover my health if I got shot a lot on the last vigilancy run. LOL

Chasing down the criminals, I actually wiped out all the Most Wanted Criminals in the City, haha. I'm a one-man Dirty Harry. But there will always be "current crimes" to keep me busy. I tried a few of those at first. On those, you get targeted by both the criminals and the cops, which sometimes happened with the "most wanted" but not so much.

Anyway, the fact that the game runs at all on my rig, even at 10fps, but at full resolution, impressed me. And believe me, I can drive all over town, and you don't feel the lagginess that much while driving, it seems. Before I got shot to death, I went to the airport and chased down a 747 taking off, driving under the wing. I plan to do that again with a Big Rig truck that they keep parked at a gas station on the way to that upper section with the strip club. This time I want to see if I can actually crash a plane and kill hundreds, before the Swat teams spoil my fun, haha.

Hey Kevin, if you have only played for a few hours - how did you get the helicopter? I guess there is a place at the airport where you can steal one?? I suppose the answer must be yes - I thought it would just come in a later "mission" of the game. I'll have to fly one!

Also, Kevin, regarding the "forbidden areas" I tried to get over there one time also. I had a little car and I squeezed through between the concrete barricades and pushed a cop car out of the way, on the bridge to Chinatown. I managed to evade the police for about 5 minutes at a shopping center - but there was no way of outrunning them - every cop walking around had my mug shot I guess! It's interesting that even though you aren't allowed to go there, the map is still populated and filled with stores and restaurants, etc. when you do.

I will say, that at the very beginning, when I tried playing it, I couldn't even see the street - the car was in a sort of fog where the outline of the street model was there - I wondered how I was going to be able to drive home from the airport. I thought it would be absolutely unplayable. But then it cleared up. Occasionally that still happens, and I have to reload the game. I think it has to get Windows Live out of memory, and give that back to the textures. But for the most part, once I have been playing for a while, everything is there, but as I say, with limited draw distance in regard to the city skyline. For the most part they have actually done it pretty well, similar to Left 4 Dead when I don't see a fire extinguisher on a wall until I get close - or I might see one of the crooks I'm planning to kill with a red chevron above his head and as I get closer it fills in and he's behind a fence.

When I finally get the new rig, it will be interesting to try the game again - but I might be bored of it by then. But I don't want to ruin a very special game like Crysis by playing it now with severely reduced settings.

CRYSIS FOR THE NEW RIG
By the way, speaking of Crysis, thanks for explaining the "sequential loading."

That was a terrific explanation - I had no idea.

I note that Jeff is saying there are some ini tweaks that can turn that off - but of course then I assume the game would have to stop from time to time to load those textures - I see what you mean when you say you would want to have lots of memory so that wouldn't happen. The DFI board only supports 12 gigs of memory - the Biostar supports 24. You said that 6 gigs would work better with Windows 7, but wouldn't be enough for Vista, so I suppose 12 would make more sense. But then you said that using Windows 7 would obviate the need for Vista. So I guess it will be Windows 7. But anyway, if the SSD essentially can handle that type of streaming fairly seamlessly, then that's the tradeoff - SSD versus a lot more memory.

(And for Crysis, the 12 gig limit on the DFI wouldn't work for a whole level load, with 10-15 gigs as you say for everything, plus the game itself, and the operating system - what does 24 gigs of DDR3 cost - a small fortune?)

So you're saying that with Windows 7, no point in Vista. Great! Then if I get a 160gig SSD, at about $450, for Windows 7, that's plenty of space, assuming - what did you say? - 35 gigs for the OS? - to install several games that also do sequential loading. I could test a game I was unsure of - regarding sequential loading - to see the performance difference between being on the SSD, or being on a regular drive.

Keith, your computer case review was great:

Hahahahaha!

Rich

 

Actually, to get the annihilator (Helicopter), I dialed a phone number CHEAT. If you use cheats though...DON'T save it when done playing. It'll cause problems with multiple future missions. It does warn you You can find the cheats on multiple sites

 

You know every-time you do that a tiny piece of my soul dies. And for the record it *was* spelt like nathan with jo at the beginning (see how I came to despise it??).

Damn I just quoted myself calling myself jonathon thus causing a massive paradox and destroying everything except everything humans know to exist

My legend 3.32GHz OC has returned.

 

Hmmm. I never thought of that. "Jo Nathan." Two names in one. Not a thing wrong with that - not that I can think of.

In fact Nathan Hale was a particularly proud American Patriot.

And you have the God-given right as a red blooded American to be called anything you want. And Keith is a fine name too. And you're British. Well, isn't being British just another form of being an American?

Now, please help me, all you red-blooded Americans, like Shaff and Sam (on vacation) and Shokz (from down under) figure out how to get a helicopter.

Kevin, for crying out loud, don't tease me. What is the goddamm helicopter phone number? Is it a big secret? (I won't do a game save I promise.)

Rich

 

Rich,
The annihilator HELICOPTER code is: 359-555-0100. You'll notice, that most if not all of the codes have the 555 code in the center. VERY handy LOL! Easy to remember. A lot of them end in 0100 and 0150 as well.

By the way, you have to have the second phone or better for cheats. You should have it by now.

 

The problem was I had to explain this every-time and in the same way as you have people would go hmm interesting...

Ahhh patriots America way of hiding the fact they have about 4 actual historic characters.
As an atheist I have the science-given right.

On a lighter note I'm off for a cup of tea and a game of cricket.

I'm sooooooooo going to have to get round to buying GTA IV

 

Finally got Red Faction Guerrilla and having an absolute blast! The gameplay is a bit repetitive and the performance is questionable but it is a damn fun game. Expect a review in the next week.

Boy oh boy am I glad I went quad core. This is another game that practically NEEDS it. At least 3 of my cores pegged at 80% most of the time. The physics make everything before it look sick.

 

Wow, a week away and this thread isn't as bad as I thought, only one Rich-essay and only half a page of replies.
Rich: Your performance in GTA4 doesn't surprise me at all - the main limit of the game is the CPU, not the graphics, and your P4 is so slow, even the HD3850 will be able to keep up, 2560x1600 included. The game options are forced to minimum as you don't have enough graphics memory, or so the game says. You can edit the config file to remove that restriction to experiment as you please - just be advised if you do genuinely not have enough texture memory on your card, random textures just won't appear and stuff will be see-through. GTA4 is one of the few cases where you can see a 4Ghz i7 and a solo HD4870 actually being worthy companions.
Most of the graphics details have little to no effect on graphics or performance, you'll soon find out which these are as they don't increase the 'used graphics memory' counter at all, or by very little.
The main things the game takes issue with are resolution (to a much lesser extent than it should), but primarily view distance and texture quality (which does make sense).
I don't have anything against GTA4 as a game, but I haven't played much of it yet due to the hardware silliness, so I won't really comment on subjects about the game itself.
Haha, I remember Carmageddon, I mainly played the second of the games - often enabling the cheats to get pinball mode and opponent repulsificator - didn't really care about playing the game seriously - that combination was utterly hilarious.

That i would more attribute to your frame rate than any engine realism on the game's part. The driving dynamics are good for a GTA game, but play a proper driving game and your standards will be set somewhat higher.
I haven't actually seen 4GB triple channel modules for DDR3 yet, so as of yet, there is no way of getting 24GB RAM into a board, hence why a lot of boards don't support it.

Sorry what?
Jeff: Isn't "looking sick" meant to be a good thing? lol

 

yep, sick = awesum

 

Haha welcome back from break. Yeah I dunno what kind of lingo you damn Brits use but in proper American sick means bad

Oh and I agree on everything you said about GTA4. I'm surprised Rich has found it playable at all. Even with an excessive tolerance for low framerates that must be grueling :S