The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

welcome back

 

Uh oh...sams back LOL!

 

I was going to see about picking it up after I'd finished Split/second which I don't have because I discovered (on launch day, minutes before going out top buy it) that in the UK it's only available from Direct 2 Drive at £39.99 -more then a physical copy on PS3 which I won't buy regardless pf good the game looks because the penny pinching t*ssers don't deserve GAME Group PLC's (Sony removed an advertised feature which is against UK retail law) money.

So I'll be picking it up at launch (No pre-orders for me the £75 gift card is only redeemable in their sillily overpriced stores but it's only their money they're wasting (deliberate logic fail)).

 

Thanks for the welcome

Split/Second looks cool too, but if that's the deal, £40 only on downloadable, then I will be downloading it rather than buying it. Games have to be amazing to be worth that much money these days.

 

A few days old in the news, but I saw no comment here so I may as well post it.

It's had a lot of public attention that XFX have postponed their release of GTX400 series based products due to the fact that they consider the product so poor compared to nvidia's previous offerings, and indeed those of ATI who XFX have been focusing on increasingly since first producing for a year or so ago. They have yet to state clearly if/when they will produce GTX400s.

Well, following this, BFG have now decided to exit the graphics card business entirely. Main reason for speculation is the same, that the GTX400 series, and presumably, it's subsequent lower-end cards, is too weak.
BFG are now focusing on their PSU and Gaming PC sectors instead. Interesting stuff.
Besides the lower-end brands, that just leaves EVGA left!

 

Oh no! Not BFG LOL! I love my 260

 

evga, gigabyte, msi, asus, palit. Still a decent line up. Nothing on ati though.

 

I'm sure they'll re-enter the market when nvidia makes worthwhile gpus again.

 

That's good. I like the feel of the BFG 260. I look forward to buying more of their hardware. Though my 8600GT asus is also a solid performer Though it obviously doesn't do any modern gaming LOL! Playing GTA IV was pretty dire with it... It was almost unplayable. It was enough to push me to buy the 260

I want a larger monitor so bad. 24" is just not quite enough anymore LOL! I've saved up 500$ But the Dell as many of you know is easily two times what I have. I'll probably end up spending more on a successor model. Don't know yet. And actually, I've been wondering whether I really need the 2560 resolution. I've been thinking of getting 2 large 1920 X 1200 Monitors. Then I'll be happy LOL! Perhaps 2 28" monitors. Haven't really given it much thought

 

Two large monitors is amazing, but a bit of a waste as you can't use them both for gaming very well outside strategy games. You'd be better off with one large and one small monitor, one for games and the other for other applications, you'd be amazed how useful it is.

 

or a 27" 2560x1440 dell monitor. Get it in time for the world cup

i was playing split second on the xbox, and liking it, blur aswell. Not sure to go for either of them or modnation racers

 

Yah, I suppose 2 absurdly large monitors could be overkill. I think I just miss having 2 24" monitors. VERY nice LOL! 2 28's would be like a dream LOL! I tend to overdo things. Although I can't seem to overdo hard drives. I can never have enough of those

I think my next monitor/HDTV will be S-IPS. I love playing with photoshop, and I hate how the color values vary when I move around. I want perfect view at any angle. I mention HDTV, because I could definitely like playing games on a 40" or larger Of course I would only turn it on when gaming or watching intense movies. The heat it would put off, would no doubt offset my PC's temps.

 

Well, like I've said before, Kevin, 30" of Dell 2560x1600 is pure immersion - for gaming - but, as Jeff has pointed out - very demanding on all other hardware. But you should see how gorgeous those parrots are in Far Cry - yeah the old Far Cry! It's the only thing I can play on all highest settings at full res! Hahaha. But I stopped at the part where you drop down into that valley and you have to kill all those mercenaries, before you finally go down into the scary monkey caves. I am playing through this time on the highest hardness level - as I did before - but that means I have to have the patience of Jehovah, and it takes at least two to three hours - and there are almost no save points anywhere.

But the parrots! And those crazy insect that I never saw before! I'll go back to it in a year, lol.

And I see that Jeff is now making some nice BF scores! But then Shaff comes along, with his 35,000, proving that he is alone in his enemy-raping skills!!! Hahaha.

I'm like Jeff. If I see any fool jumping around, I'll blast him with everything I've got - cause it will probably be shaff!

SMGs - that's me! P90 to be exact! Silenced with red dot sight. So you're an AK SMG guy - lots of guys like those miniature AKs. Even though Red says you're despicable, I'll have to give those little AKs more of a try when I get back to COD4, or to Bad Company one day.

And Omega, speaking of HDTV, that's what's been going on for me for the last two weeks.

By the way, forget everything I said in the last post two weeks ago about the built-in media player with USB thumb drive input on that 1080p 47" Toshiba we just picked up. The TV Media Player running the usb input port won't handle above 720x480.

But that's okay. We hooked up my brother's HP Phenom with its 3650 that happens to have an HDMI video out port, to which the on-board Realtek is able to port the digital sound.

So one 12-foot white HDMI cable turns the whole 47" into a beautiful 1920x1080 computer monitor, with total control of those avis, m4vs, mkvs, and mp4 files, using DivX Plus, VLC, Media Player Classic-HC, MpStar, or Quicktime. Come to think of it, Windows Media Player is missing from that list - we'll have to at least give that a try one day.

My favorite player is the new DivX Plus player, with free trial on the EAX sound (I don't know what they are going to want for it when the trial ends, but it's worth at least $20 in my opinion.) But it won't play some of the HD264 avi files - maybe I don't have it installed correctly. Have any of you guys seen the Earth video. That's straight DVD quality - and it makes it look almost high res! And when you turn on that EAX soundscape - those birds chirping in the jungle come from all sides of the room, off the two built-in TV speakers!

After setting the PC resolution to 1920x1080, I changed the Icon text from segui to tahoma, increased size from 9 to 13, and took off the text shadow - so now finally I can clearly read the screen from 12 feet away.

It takes a while to figure out where Vista has hidden all those settings.

I have a question for you geniuses. Does anyone know how to turn the Vista icon text background from translucent to solid? Google wouldn't tell me.

My favorite thing about Vista - actually probably the only thing I like - is the built-in screensaver. I like the 15 or 20 different ways it has of displaying photos - especially the one where it flips each photo toward you - Gates is using all the apple tricks he can steal from Jobs! Of course half the time the screensaver won't activate. I suppose we should load the most recent Vista service pack - how many are there if anybody knows?

Anyway, I have now convinced my brother that he didn't make such a big mistake by picking up the Phenom 1 (he now knows how much better the Phenom II is) - because his silent Phenom is a perfect Home Theater PC!

In fact, I told my brother to forget all about ever fooling around with the TV usb input port ever again. First of all, it takes forever to load - 30 seconds in some cases. The PC loads NOW!

I did a test comparing a set of 720x480 low res avi videos playing on the TVs thumb drive input, versus playing on the DivX Plus Player on the PC. Night and day!

The PC DivX Plus Player upscales the 480p, and the picture is SHARP - plus as I mentioned, they're letting us test the EAX surround sound and HyperBase feature - and I think it's worth whatever they decide they're gonna charge us when the test is over - as long as we're talking in the $20 range, lol.

We haven't played a blu-ray movie yet. I see now that sony blu-rays are only $110 at costco! My plan is to pick up one of those, and throw a $200 Pioneer blu-ray burner on the HTPC, for backup copies as we build the blu-ray library. Some of those backups could find their way up to LA where I bought a relative a little blu-ray home theater system a year ago. And ultimately I think I'll pick up a little 5.1 sound system, like the one I bought for LA.

Not that my brother cares - he is deaf in one ear - literally. I turned the EAX on and then off! "Oh, I don't hear that much of a difference, and the TV itself will do all the same things." I said "Oh, no it won't - I know exactly what the TV will do surround-sound wise, and it is extremely limited in its scope." (He can't really argue with me because the physicist/engineer in me tests something to death until I know its capabilities inside and out!)

But now, in addition to being deaf in one ear, I think he's half blind. We took the cable company up on a three month HD-box trial offer, at $5/mo, which unlocked about 50 channels of 1080 HD.

My brother said today "What's the big deal, we have all those channels without the box." I said, "Yeah, but not in HD - don't you see the difference!" He said "Naw, you're the only one who cares about that!"

As Shaff would say "F" me! Sam and Jeff would've fallen down and died, as I almost did. Have you guys ever heard of a connoisseur? Well, a connoisseur, my brother ain't!

Rich

 

1200$ is a lot of money JUST for the monitor. If I wanted to experience gaming at the monitors peak, I would have to spend a bit more

Rich, My brother loves his HTPC. 42" of full HD. Though with the overscan issue, I guess one couldn't call it TRUE HD LOL! I've had to knock its resolution back to 1768 X ??? something. Don't recall the exact resolution. It is close to the full screen though. BluRay rips look very good. We watched Avatar on it a few weeks ago. Highly Fluid. Best bluray I've seen to date.
Apparently, I've been reading that the overscan could be some kind of nvidia issue. I find that most displeasing...

 

Right. The image quality and amount of detail are amazing. Absolutely stunning. But the simple fact that it's so demanding puts a lot of games out of reach. Sometimes even when you have the hardware, games are so poorly coded they absolutely die at 2560. Not to say I wouldn't consider a 30" display, but I'd be more apt to get another matching 24".

Ha I'm not an amazing player but I do have my moments. My K/D ration in particular is atrocious, but I get loads of pins due to actually doing my job instead of lone-wolfing. I usually work best in a squad with a good medic for heavy fire support and an assault for ammo. Kinda hard to be a tank-buster when some sucka pops you in the head while you load another rocket.

I do love popping off jumpers though. They may be able to dodge snipers but they can't dodge explosives

The beauty of the AKS-74u is its accuracy and rate of fire. The only other SMG worth considering IMO is the UMP-45. And only because its lower rate of fire equals more accuracy equals using magnum rounds instead of the extended silencer like on the AK

The idea is flexibility. With assault rifles you have to take carefully aimed bursts or you'll miss entirely. This works both long range and close quarters. With SMGs you can still do long range with burst fire but they are so lightweight you can draw a bead point blank and unload the entire clip.

Another of my current favorites is the SPAS-12. Unlike the automatic version in L4D2(which are very rare) the one in BC2 is a proper pump-action. Extended magazine and extended ammo capacity and I'm off cracking skulls point blank

Hands-down the best media player ever made is Media Player Classic. Very powerful and lightweight with the best video quality you can get. With the right codec pack(K-Lite Standard) you can play every single media format available. And because it uses the FFDShow engine like WMP, you can enable DXVA on almost any type of video. I have confirmed it working with MKV, Ogg Vorbis, H264 AVI, etc.

Oh and about EAX. Instead of paying for a slightly beefed version of a free media player, you can just get a Creative sound card. I can use EAX for any sound source I want. Though I'd much rather not because IMO it drops the quality a smidge. Much better to play it on all 5 speakers or just the two if only a stereo setup. Expanding your audio signal without having speakers to expand it to equals muffled sound IMO.

LOL I almost rofl'd. My dad was the same way until I showed him Saving Private Ryan in high-bitrate 1080p vs the DVD. He just about keeled over when he saw the difference. I quote: "That's un-f**king-believable!!"

@Omega

I think we've already made it painfully clear that ATi pwns hard for any sort of video acceleration. Nvidia use cheap tactics and focus on pushing fake numbers. ATi focus on the quality of the product. ATi has held the lead in both quality and utility since the beginning.

Example: Nvidia, two dead 7600GTs, a dead 8600GTS. ATi, an X1800XT and an X850XT that still both work flawlessly and see regular gaming AND hop systems about once a month

 

Rich, I know plenty of people like that, who insist HD makes no difference. Must save them an awful lot of money!
As for the whole ATI vs nvidia issue, seen another issue of an 8800GT go bust on a forum (and it was an RMA replacement for a 7600), and one of my friends' cards, an 8800GT, apparently had a broken fan, so now has a homemade fan attachment to it, which causes artifacts when the room gets hot. Given the temperatures he reports, I'm pretty sure it's not his cooling arrangement to blame.
My old X1900XT was still in perfect working order when I last used it despite not having any RAMsinks. I would credit my X800 Pro for surviving the PSU apocalypse, but I'm pretty sure that was a 5V shorting to 12V, so it wouldn't really damage 12V components anyway, and I didn't use that card much as a result of said apocalypse forcing me to PCI express prematurely.
The HD3870s were a bit of a sore subject, but the reference card worked fine until Arctic cooling broke it, the non-reference cards were the real pains, so I place the blame for that on Sapphire and Asus' head.

 

Should have bought an ati...

 

I was just getting on him for using the gustav against non-armor targets, although now that I've played the engineer class for a bit I can see why. IMO the smg's are terribly weak and short of a headshot I find it difficult to take out targets with them.

That's what I want, a pair of matching 20-24" monitors.

Personally I prefer assault rifles over smg's, mostly because I use a sniper for long range stuff and the rifle for close range so the accuracy doesn't matter too much. Plus they don't pack enough of a punch for me lol.

 

I find quite the opposite. There was one kill streak where I dropped 4 guys in a row on a single 30 round clip with the AK. It's all about accuracy. If you need a more accurate weapon to be effective, use it. As previously mentioned I use the red dot and the extended silencer with the AK. I use the red dot and magnum rounds for the UMP 45. I tend to take an assault role though taking checkpoints so I get into lots of close quarters engagements. Plus wherever there's a control point there are bound to be vehicles. Engineer is easily my best class by far for almost any situation.

As far as the Gustav well not much better way to blow a guy out of a window Good for ambushes too. Fire the Gustav to startle and confuse them then jump in and finish them off with the SMG.

So I'm tactical and stealthy, shoot me

Oh yeah, snipers are cowards

 

In my opinion, a 30" high quality display could be worth it, JUST for photoshop usage And watching HD files would also be a plus. I could treat a 30" display like my secondary. Or even better yet, treat it like my primary for everything, EXCEPT gaming LOL! I want one...but 1200-1500 dollars is quite a bit of money. I notice that LG has a similar display to the dell monitor. Getting pretty good reviews too
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824005115
The only downfall is no HDMI That very likely is a deal breaker...