The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

its been known since the days of the Geforce 1,2,3 and 4 series that the nvidia drivers silently kill picture quality to gain FPS

many found out about it when FarCry hit shelves it was so bad you could see the rainbow effect fly off the walls in an intensive scene.

Nvidia like's to hide the fact that the premium you pay just isn't worth it. PhysX is nice but havoc can do the same job 10x better. BFBC2 is a proof point, which i have 122 hours in.

i just played Mafia 2 demo, game ran smooth as silk on my new 5770. turned PhysX on and watched the horror happen went from 50-80 FPS to 8-24 fps.

Kick ass gun fight 80FPS, Giant monster that takes up half the Screen 60FPS, Multiple explosion Scene 50FPS, Smoke 20FPS. ATi and smoke don't go well together i've noticed.

 

It was long truth, until the GTX200 series, and since then, with the exception of Metro 2033, I've not been able to verify a single case of it.

 

I've seen pictures comparing Nvidia and Ati before. I really couldn't tell the difference. Not that I'm siding either way. Fact of the mater is, taking a still shot of graphics doesn't always illustrate a point too well. Now a video clip...that's another story. I'm not liking what I'm hearing about nvidia. I've heard it all before, but now it's really sinking in. What's funny though, is the tables could turn one year from now. Funny how the tides change. I guess the only way I'm gonna see it for myself, is to take a chance. Buy an ati next time. The reason I didn't last time, is because the Drivers at the time, were extremely dire. As bad as Nvidia is being mouthed right now, ati's drivers were being mouthed at that time

Remember, I'm a completely neutral party. Believe it, or not...

 

ATI's drivers are still abysmal, but so are nvidia's, and they have always been. Unless you're running Linux, there's little to differentiate between ATI drivers and nvidia drivers outside multi-GPU setups, and that's when catalyst falls apart.

 

How much do you think the HD6870 will retail for. Probably an insane amount

If they release it before christmas this year, I could definitely be a potential customer

 

probably around $680+ or you could pay them in body parts Right eye, left testicle, 1 kidney and your left hand.

 

ATi drivers are horrid,no doubt. i prefer to use modified drivers whenever possible, however the lack of 64bit optimized drivers leave me with slim picking.

 

Actually, given the current price of the HD5870 and GTX480, I expect the HD6870 to release at £440/$600, thereabouts, same as the GTX480's initial release price.

 

i was close considering i just puled a number outta the hat.

 

So when do you guys think the 5870 will come down to ~250 ish USD I have a feeling by the time I can afford a 5850, a 5870 will be the wiser choice for upcoming games

 

Not for a long time yet, the HD6 series would have to have been long prevalent, and in that case, buy one of those.

 

Mmmm, indeed. Sucks to be poor LOL!

 

YOU DON'T KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD POOR!! (Did you ever get those metal fragments out of your transmission? LOL)

(He meant - NOT!)

hahahaha
That was in regard to a prior post - like the only thing that would finally get me to upgrade was the threat of being banned from the forum, lol. (and by the way, what happened to that scary looking animated skeleton sig of yours - or was that somebody else?)

"Soak up the damage." That is a powerful indictment! I'm wondering if a lot of things work like that - "resting on their laurels" is a phrase that one hears a lot of.

Wow! I broke my gaming fast - jumped on Condition Zero on my desktop business computer finally - I couldn't stand not gaming for so long. What followed then was about 29 hours of gameplay on expert against the bots - finally was kicking their asses pretty good and jumped on regular Counter-Strike 1.6 (condition zero) and played against a whole team of Shaff's and got WASTED! Hahahaha!

But compared to my gaming rig, the monitor is an old 17" crt, with only 1280x1024 resolution. Very hard to see the bastards on the other side of the map!

So, I decided to remove all local content from my business desktop, to avoid the temptation, and only play on my main rig with the bright 30" 2560x1600. I can't just jump on the main rig, which shares a table with another LCD monitor that I use for everyday phone calls. I have to give more thought into a gaming session, which requires me to go through the whole hassle of rotating the little trailer table around on the metal post it sits on, and moving some of the cables.

My new idea is one gaming weekend a month, starting on the first Friday of the month. Anyway, those CS die hard guys are way too good for me - they're all on shaff's skill level - but at least the extra resolution and more screen space will help whenever I jump on CS again. That's why I like the idea of a whole weekend - I can cram about 30 hours in over the three days, and cover CS, Left 4 Dead, and when I finally upgrade I can finish Hells Highway.

By the way, I did mention to Miles when we saw Inception, that one day I have to take one of his 2 old towers, like he mentioned. He laughed. "Yeah they're just sitting out there in the garage." But I'm serious. I'll just tell him one day - "Ok, dude, it's time for you to give me one of those towers before ddp bans me!"

Amazing review of three games, Sam. "Might as well come with an nvidia-only sticker." Wow. To hell with that Mafia game! "Arma II belongs in the chart of needlessly demanding games." No Arma for me either, lol.

It's official: Adolf Hitler is alive and doing well as nvidia marketing manager - remember, green is the color of puke.

Like I said, to hell with that mafia game.

Good points Sam, and Shaff. It all comes down to the games that one plays regularly. It reminds me of product placement in movies. Nvidia has the money to create "product placement" in video games, by, as Sam mentions, bribing developers. I guess the most famous example of that is Crysis.

Regarding nvidia's tweaking of the physx programming to limit the amount of cpu load - when they detect that physx is running on the cpu - that does certainly seem a bit more than just "product placement" and more like plain and simple dirty pool - why do I keep being reminded of the way the Nazis took over post WWI Germany?

Well, I certainly will try to support ATI all I can - no reason to let the Nazis gain complete control and attempt world domination again. (Rich sees life through WWII glasses, lol.)

Man, Jeff, that's what I am talking about. What was I thinking throwing 29 hours away on Condition Zero, on my non-gaming business computer with 17" crt? Haha.

(I'll bend Miles' arm before the end of the year and you'll see me above 10,000 3dmark6 points by end of January, maybe.)

Wow! Now that is definitely not fan boy thinking!

Pretty courageous analysis - I DO see your point. Shaff's arguments have gained some ground.

Jeff does not like the new Sam "hard think" one bit. I too feel pretty much the same way - do we want the greenies to achieve world domination?

On the other hand - some games just won't run on Ati hardware - and everything will run on nvidia hardware! Goddamn those nazis!!!

DXR weighs in:

And sam brings us up to date:

Hahaha! Now what are you innocent about? Sounds like a guilty conscience to me, you might as well ban shaff again.

We believe you Kevin. It's interesting that in the give and take of the last few weeks, you mention that "it's really sinking in" regarding things you've heard before that you don't like about nvidia.

Not so fast! That was sounding tempting until I figured out that wasd won't work worth sh*t if I have to keep taking hand off mouse - sorry not interested!

Rich

 

Skeleton sig was Nephilim, Rich, not ddp Never seen ddp with an animated sig, just Nephilim and Creaky.
Asus are far from alone in that quality exploit. Sony and Mercedes-Benz are two other prime examples in other fields.

You cite Crysis as an example of nvidia bias - it was to start with, but actually, save multi-GPU scaling, is effectively neutral now and has been for a long time. The game's legendary status for being needlessly demanding means so much focus has gone into ATI's drivers that all the bias that may have been present has been overcome. Crossfire scaling though, not so much. It's not terrible, but SLI still leads.

 

playing the mafia II demo, and loving it. though playing on the ps3. might end up buying this for ps3, (due to its nvidia chip) over dlding it for the 360. i would like to get it on PC though, the lack of decent (or any) AA is REALLY REALLY annoying. going to dld the PC demo and see how it runs.

 

Crossfire scaling has improved a bit in Crysis. As far as I've seen my 5850s are enough to max it at 1920 x 1200 with 45+FPS at almost all times. Nvidia still has a slight bias for sure but the gap has closed considerably. Warhead is still much more demanding(around maybe 40 average) but dual 5850s help keep the averages up even in more CPU limited situations. The game is still needlessly demanding but it seems the better it runs the better it looks XD

Also hell yes I know what it means to be poor. And a hearty "LOL" to you if you don't believe me.

 

runs awesome just don't turn on physX

 

. Oh, right! I was thinking later that maybe it was loco - but for sure it was creaky! That weird animated skeleton sig of his - very strange - does he still use it?

Good for Ati's drivers. Then the only ultimate truth about Crysis - correct me if I am wrong - is that, unlike Warhead, it will not support a 4th gpu. So in other words, Crysis would benefit from a 5870 coupled with a 5970 - am I right?

Hmmm. Well, if a hard-core fps'er like shaff likes the mafia game - I shouldn't write it off so quick. Is it another GTAIV? What's the take on it. Jeff - have you tried it? Kevin?

hahaha - yeah I was thinking of creaky's really "creepy" sig, lol. Well, actually I have never had a sig either, so I've never been scolded about overdoing it - but I DO remember about language issues with somebody whose name starts with "sh" but I can't remember who that is right now.

Rich