The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Rich: The brightness fix for Russian vehicles was for Bad Company 2 - there was a bug that meant everything was much too bright when looking from the inside of russian vehicles, for some reason.
The HardwareCanucks report is generally regarded as one that 'bucks the trend' on results for games performance. It should also be noted that FarCry 2 behaves completely differently to any other game for performance. For a start it is unable to use any more than 2 GPUs, despite numerous driver patches. Secondly, it eats video memory at high resolutions with high levels of AA.
Remember, I've used a 4870X2 quadCF setup at 8x per card and 4x per card. If results like that were typically the case, I would notice. Nothing I play has really brought about that result, though. Whenever I measure the fps I get in games that have been benchmarked, it all matches up pretty well.
The performance discrepency in the HardwareCanucks article between the HD5970 and two HD5850s is that the HD5970 shares a 16x slot between the GPUs so they get 8x each, the HD5850 Crossfire gets 16x each (assuming they're using a 32x board which they will be)


Rich - did you notice the other two benchmarks on that page? You will see they mirror the results from everywhere else.

 

The changes to BFBC2 are very welcome. It seems they have addressed EVERY single issue I had with the game. It's nice that a developer can listen to their community and directly fix issues this quickly. I have yet to play the game since the new patch but rest assured I'll be checking it out extensively tomorrow.

I'm curious about the changes made to the weapons though. The AKS-74u is my current weapon of choice. I would be using a UMP45 but they only have a 25 round clip. It has better accuracy and penetration, but I find the extra 5 rounds in the AKS-74u make a bigger difference for me. Here's hoping they don't nerf anything too badly. Maybe drop the damage of the rifle grenades a bit. I can't count how many times I've been killed by guys spamming the noob-tube

Anyone who plays Bad Company 2 please add me in-game!!! Name is Estuansis currently level 12 engineer. I'm on for a 3-4 hour stretch a couple nights a week so let's hook up and get a squad going. I already have a very dependable medic lined up so we could use an Assault specialist for ammo!!! It's hard to be a tank-buster when you run out of recoilless rifle rounds XD

 

I'd join you but pings in Bad Company 2 are bad enough with other Europeans, let alone across the Atlantic :S

 

Yeah I know what you mean. Add me anyway and we'll see if we can't find an agreeable server. As I recall we have been able to play L4D 1 + 2 without issue but I suppose PvP play is a bit different than bot slaughter.

Anyhoo it can't hurt. I use a few very high speed servers and we get Europeans on from time to time and they seem to have reasonable pings. BC2's ping counter is terrible anyway. Up to about 200 ping I have perfect hit-detection even at long distance with an SMG. Any other game has terrible lag at the same ping.

Not that 200 ping is my norm. Usually hovering around 100-120 or so. 60-90 in most other games

 

http://www.hardware.info/nl-NL/articles/amdnampoZGCa/Clash_of_the_Titans_3way_SLI_GTX_480_test/1

a very well done test for 3SLI vs 3CF, vs 4CF.

shows basically, dual sli scales better than dual CF, but tri sli scales worse than trifire, and trifire is a better bet vs quad fire.

and tri fire (5870s) use under 650 watts, where as trisli (gtx480) uses under 950W!!!!

 

This is quite good, but NO MINIMUM FPS GOD DOMMOT

 

Wow! That 480 is a beast! I wonder what I could sell my 260 for, and put it toward 2 ati cards...

 

im waiting for a single GPU that will be double the power of my 2 4870s. then ill be content.

 

Single GPU you'll be waiting a while, not even an HD6 series will pull that off. Single card though, and a 4GB HD5970 will do that already, just about

 

haha, well considering im only at 512mb for each even a 5970 would work, but i meant single GPU. and yes i thought id be waiting till next gen

 

Well, "next gen" will be a relatively minor performance boost I suspect, due to the failure of 28nm, so you'll probably be waiting until 2012.

 

mmm thats true lol. well i shall wait then, or till im am forced to upgrade again

 

The Scourge Project (AA not included)

Minimal: Radeon X850XT/X1800 series/HD2900 series/HD3650/HD4550/HD5450 or above, Geforce 6800GT/7800 series/8600GT/9500GT/GT220 or above
Reduced: Radeon X1900XT/HD2900 series/HD3690/HD4670/HD5570 or above, Geforce 7800 series/8600GT/9500GT/GT220 or above
Moderate: Radeon HD3870/HD4700 series/HD5700 series or above, Geforce 8800 series/9600GO G92/GT240 or above
Good: Radeon HD4770/HD4850/HD5750 or above, Geforce 8800GT/9800GT/GT240 or above
Optimal: Radeon HD4850X2/HD5800 series or above, Geforce GTX260 or above
Extreme: Radeon HD5830CF/HD5970 or above, Geforce GTX260 SLI/GTX295/GTX470 or above

Nice lightweight one, this.

 

Just popping in to see if any of you were getting weird performance issues with the new L4D2 campaign? Whenever I try playing the passing my FPS dips quite a bit even right at the beginning.

 

Not really, ran about the same as usual for me.

 

Why do the 5850 and 5870 XF perform so poorly? They should at the very least perform as well as a single 5850/5870.

 

They run out of video memory in Crysis Warhead at this resolution, which cripples their performance.

 

The GTX 480 has 1536Mb of memory. The 5970's have 4Gb. The only reason the 480 beats the 5970 is because they overclocked the Shat out of it right LOL!?

 

Nope, the GTX480 has just enough memory to survive. You will notice the GTX470 at 1280MB falls to pieces, 1280MB clearly isn't enough. The GTX480s aren't overclocked, but notice that in order to do well there are two of them. In an nvidia-sponsored game like Crysis, to see what is effectively two HD5870s fare up so well against two GTX480s is pleasing.
The 4GB HD5970 will be cheaper than the GTX480s, use much less power, is ridiculously quieter (quieter even than a single HD5870, let alone a single 480, worse two) and comes up less than 20% short of the nvidia offering. In the UK, the GTX480s will cost quite a bit more as well.