The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

High detail with 8x Anti-Aliasing and Depth of Field applied?

 

oh..No.

High detail with 2xAA and DoF off

Medium settings with 2xAA and DoF on.

i like my jaggies

 

Yeah the Depth of Field is what destroys the frame rate.
These are the thresholds, all max with 8xAA
Depth of Field on:

25fps at 1280x1024: GTX480, presumably some crossfire configs
20fps at 1280x1024: GTX470 or overclocked HD5870 (900Mhz+)
15fps at 1280x1024: GTX285 or HD5850
10fps at 1280x1024: GTX260 or HD4870

20fps at 1920x1080: overclocked GTX480 (740Mhz+), presumably some SLI/Crossfire configs
15fps at 1920x1080: GTX470 or overclocked HD5870 (930Mhz+)
10fps at 1920x1080: GTX280 or HD5830
8fps at 1920x1080: GTX260 or HD4870


and here's with Depth of Field turned off, but the other details still Max including 8xAA:

60fps at 1280x1024: GTX470 or overclocked HD5870 (875Mhz+)
50fps at 1280x1024: GTX465 or HD5850
40fps at 1280x1024: GTX280 or HD5830
30fps at 1280x1024: GTX260 or HD5770/HD4870
25fps at 1280x1024: 8800GTS 512MB or HD5750/4850
20fps at 1280x1024: GT240/8800GT or HD4830
15fps at 1280x1024: 9600GT or HD3870
10fps at 1280x1024: GT220/8800GS or HD2900 Pro/HD3850/HD4670/HD5570

60fps at 1920x1080: overclocked GTX480 (750Mhz+), presumably some SLI/Crossfire configs
50fps at 1920x1080: GTX480, presumably some SLI/crossfire configs
40fps at 1920x1080: GTX470 or HD5870
30fps at 1920x1080: GTX280 or HD5830
25fps at 1920x1080: GTX260 or HD4890
20fps at 1920x1080: GTS250 or HD4850/HD5770
15fps at 1920x1080: 8800GT or HD4830
10fps at 1920x1080: GT240/8800GS or HD3850/HD4730/HD5670
8fps at 1920x1080: GT240/8800GS or HD2900XT/HD3850/HD4670/HD5570

 

Official HD6 series Southern Islands Product Names:


Antilles (Dual-GPU): Radeon HD6990
Cayman XT (Flagship Single-GPU): Radeon HD6970
Barts XT (Top Midrange-GPU): Radeon HD6870
Juniper XT (Currently known as the HD5770): Radeon HD6770

Yup, that's AMD's first rebrand folks.
The reason being is that ATI want HD6 and HD7 to distinguish between 40nm Southern Islands and 28nm Northern Islands parts, and since the HD6 is a minor generation gap, not a full new architecture on a new process, they don't anticipate it lasting as long, or having any refreshes. Since the TDP of the HD6970 will be so high, the performance of the dual-GPU HD6990 will not be far above it (It will probably perform on equal levels of the 4GB HD5970 and Asus Ares), so it does not, according to ATI, belong in a separate number class.

 

Nvidia dropped prices on the GTX 460 768MB. OcUK has a palit for a week only for £112, but their OcUK version is £117 and ASUS £126.

how would SLI of them be vs a 5850/GTX470?

 

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=52316&tid=gsearch
Appeared earlier today, all sold out now, and hardlsy surprising.

Two GTX460s butchers both the 5850 and the 470.

 

says 2 left to order

how much of a jump from my single 4870 will that be? will it play bc2 at 1920 no problems?

 

2? ahaha, it was 70 when I posted it!

The GTX460 is roughly equivalent to an HD5830 or just under, so around 25-30% gain on an HD4870. Not a great deal, I wouldn't go buying one to replace a 4870, remember the 460 sits lower in the market price brackets than the 4870 did on its release.

As for no BBC2, depends on what you define as no problems. At 1920x1200 with 8xAA, I'd say you'd be getting a minimum of about 18-19fps, and an average of about 40. That's max detail with DX11, 16xAF and HBAO.
Turn HBAO off and you'll get more like a minimum of 25, average of 60. Turn the AA down to 4x and you might get a minimum of 30, average of 75. Turn the AA off completely and more like a minimum of 50 and an average of 110.

 

Shaff, you and Jeff have me going with all that talk about BC2. You want to upgrade from your 4870 to handle the game smoothly, and about BC2, Jeff says "Where have you been all my life?" LOL

I played a little Day of Defeat a couple days ago, and I really think I am much more into BF2 and COD4, which probably means I'll become a BC2 guy if I have a rig that can play it.

My excuse for this post, is that I am just coming off a gaming weekend with my new quad core 9450 (it's a new machine, used only two weeks, it has been sitting in a garage, broken, for 2 years) that I fixed on Friday, and I am very jazzed, so much so that I got carried away here, like one of my old style essays. But guys, think about it - Steam says I last played L4D on Feb 4th, that's seven months ago! The only gaming since then was when I started playing Condition Zero 2 weeks ago on my business desktop - that's what told me that I couldn't take it anymore - time to try something other than abstinence, like the gaming weekend idea. Coincidentally, late last week I finally got loaned the broken computer that Miles told me about early this year.

So what follows is mostly game review content - I have tried to make it a good read - I hope you enjoy it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

First of all, I have to say, Sam, what a kickass chart, post 6611.

The 3850 is at 100, 8800GTX is at 175, HD5850 at 375. So speaking in rough terms, the 8800GTX has now doubled what I had with the 3850, and I can double that again with a 5850! That is so awesome!! I know where my next $300 is going.

But wait:

Shaff says only two are left, and they are less than $150 each? Is that some kind of a special buy, or are the GTX460s the cards to get? (Oh, I get it, the 768MB version - it's a closeout. Yeah with 2560x1600 I need more texture memory, so that wouldn't work for me.)

Anyway, I'll push this q9450 as far as I can. I like the idea of the kama bay, providing some fresh front air, using a $40 portable optical drive to free up the 5.25" space. Under the snap open front cover of the Antec, I think I have room to add a pop-off filter in front of the kama bay just like I modded with the p4 case, making filter cleaning super easy. No screws to mess with - don't have to even open the case.

So I'll have some fresh air input, and with a stong enough fan - I'll use 1600 or 1900 rpm scythe - I want to make sure I have positive case pressure to keep the dust out. Giving this quad core some fresh air from the front just has to be a good thing, especially once I shove one or two 5850s in there!

Yeah, I lucked out, and the 8800 I have is the GTX model, 175 on the chart, making it the most powerful 8800 listed. Thank goodness!

It is easily handling the four games I have tried so far at full 2560x1600 resolution. Those games are Left 4 Dead 2, Day of Defeat, World at War, and Far Cry 2. I do not intend to try Crysis yet, and probably still won't even with a 5850. As Jeff said, it might take two 5850s before I mess with that game.

I found out how to get the on-screen display to work with Riva tuner, and there is a core 2 duo plugin that reads from everest, so I can get all the in-game statistics I had before with ati tray tools: cpu temp for all four cores, gpu temp, fps, and gpu fan speed.

The games are running smoothly, at full 2560x1600. I can't believe how nice L4D looks at full native resolution! The gun models are way better, and also Day of Defeat has much better gun models. The basic L4D handgun is much more impressive now - they had slipped in a simplified model before with my p4 rig - I never knew it. That's what is so great about Valve - you can make games work better on less powerful machines by having multiple gun models, for example, and by using the lower res models for the weaker rigs - fewer triangles per model, less computational power to render the scene. Miles has talked about gun models before. Your gun is in your screen most of the time - the model size is really important.

As opposed to the way Valve perfects a game, or how Infinity Ward perfected COD2, COD4 and COD6, then we have Treyarch. Haha.


TREYARCH, CALL OF DUTY 5, WORLD AT WAR
I'm talking about COD5, World at War. But despite its flaws, I actually like the game, diehard WWII that I am, but it has about a thousand bugs. Valve would have perfected it and released it about 3 months later. But like Jeff, I really dig the flame thrower - jumping in the trench and burning up the guys - you can see them turn to toast right in front of you! They did the fried black toast Japanese soldier models very nicely. Jeff and I must be a total sadists! Haha.

The deficiencies of the game are numerous - but still I like it. The graphics are pretty good. I don't if Jeff ever did one of his famous reviews on it, and I won't try to do that here, but I'll give a few highlights.

I have 4xAA on World in Conflict. It is smooth, except for one time when I threw 4 smoke grenades at once, having problems in taking out the last AA gun at the air base.

For about 5 seconds my computer almost shut down. I didn't know what was happening. Seriously, my frames must have dropped to about 8, because all of a sudden I thought - what the hell is going on? Then I remembered some of the forum posts from you guys, and I laughed to myself thinking, "Oh, it's all that damn smoke I just created."

That was the ONE AND ONLY time I have not had completely smooth play, so I am very happy with this new rig.

Back to the deficiencies of the game, has anybody heard of a map being called "sticky?" This game, World at War, must have some of the stickiest maps ever. That's just an example of rushing the game to market, before you clean up the models. Maybe they just don't playtest enough, so they don't get all the bug reports.

I got stuck so bad in the first map inside one of the Japanese huts - I could not get off the wall no matter what I did. I had to finally reboot. Since then, just trying to back up to avoid enemy fire, with a board behind me leaning up against a box, takes an act of Congress. I turn around - "What the hell is holding me?" and it's nothing at all. The board of course won't fall down, it's fixed with glue, but hey - you CAN'T GET STUCK LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE, haha.

Other than sticky maps, and artificial map walls that block you, in completely open space, there is also the whole tone of the game, starting from the beginning.

So the tough marine saves me from the knife, and I am very grateful, for about 5 minutes. He says, "Oh, Miller, thank god, you're okay. We're gonna get these bastards - we'll make them pay for what they've done." Okay, I'm all gung-ho "Yeah let's go get these guys."

I've been a prisoner, beaten and tortured, but I seem to have plenty of stamina, and he seems to expect great things of me.

Then he starts calling for me, as Treyarch clumsily tries to personalize the game for my character. They think it's very cool for the guy to transform himself into my boot camp drill sergeant.

He starts barking out orders, "Miller, get over here." He keeps yelling, "Miller, follow me." He's yelling because he went right, and I went left. I don't want to hang tight with this guy. He has the personality of the jap who just tried to slit my throat - he sounds like he's sorry he ever saved me.

I really felt zero connection for the guy - and when he got knifed and his body was shipped home, it was a total non-event. "Okay, what's next?"

By comparison, Medal of Honor - Pacific Assault, which in my mind ranks very close to the great Infinity Ward games, builds your feeling of being part of a team. I did all I could to keep those guys alive, calling for a retreat half the time so I could handle the advancing Japanese with my sniper rifle. I really didn't want to lose any of them.

That game was so well done - you've posted, Jeff, that it's one of your favorites too. During battle the skinny little medic with the glasses and pistol used to run around almost like a cheerleader, "Wow, did you see the way Tommy smoked that guy." "Way to go, Tommy got another one!" And he pumped the other guys up too, "Great shot Joey." Those are your buddies and you begin to feel that way.

Back to World at War, I'm playing the game at the hardest skill level. After trying that quite successfully with Far Cry 2, I decided just to continue that way. Sometimes that's a mistake. And World at War does not have Quick Save. However, the first 3 campaigns were no real problem.


SNIPER NIGHTMARES
Then I got to the Russian sniper fourth campaign, and I began to have serious doubts about having chosen the hardest skill level.

That's another thing about a Treyarch game - it isn't balanced. I understand you might put in some especially tough parts - like Valve puts in those crescendo events - but to go from quite hard, to "virtually friggin impossible" is a bit of a stretch. Too much in my opinion. I call that unbalanced.

Think of the sniper round on top of the silo in Call of Duty 2. Anybody ever beat that on hardest skill level? Anybody ever hear of anybody beating it at hardest skill level? A guy I used to work with told me he did. He had kept his sniper rifle from the beginning of the campaign, and so he wound up on top with two sniper rifles, meaning 10 bullets before reload. Given that there might be a lull allowing two reloads, that could have helped. But even with that, he had to repeat the round so many times that he knew exactly where and when the next mortar was going to be set up so he could kill the crews in time.

For me to beat that round, I had to drop down one skill level, which meant I had to restart the campaign. Then for the next campaign I increased it back up. That wasn't too bad, there are about 10 campaigns. On Half Life 2, you can change skill levels any time you want.

On this game, World at War, like a lot of games, you're stuck with your decision, or you just restart the whole game. So at the beginning of this fourth campaign, I'm thinking, so far so good. I have cruised through the first three campaigns, no problem.

So I quite willingly accept the sniper rifle from the old guy in the trench - the two of us surrounded by all of our dead comrades. The first sniper event isn't too bad. It takes me about 10 tries to kill the 7 nazis and the dog. A dog is always lovely, I enjoyed that part from COD4. As he stands over you ripping you to shreds, the screen says "Melee the dog before he bites."

Right! I hit melee frantically and I never had it work - you are supposedly able to grab the dog. Really, has anybody had any success with that?

I think what the screen should say is: "Are you enjoying this? If not, then NEXT TIME SHOOT THE GODDAMN DOG before he leaps up and tears your throat out!"

Also I found out, that if you get too clever and shoot two of the nazis at once - which makes the old Russian chuckle - that's a mistake! Four bullets, six dead nazis. But immediately comes along the cop with his poodle to investigate the massacre. Okay, he's dead with bullet number five, now you're into a six second reload while werewolf is charging from 20 feet! YOU'RE DOG FOOD!

Anyway, 10 tries for that - about a half hour. I'm thinking, "This isn't too bad. I can do this."

They're setting me up for four genuine ball-busting nightmares in a row. Starting with sniper versus sniper. "Oh, yeah, I remember that from COD2 - piece of cake." But that was Infinity Ward. This is Treyarch, sloppy and also evil.

Screaming in my ear, the old Russian yells out "You just grazed him." Anyway, I get it. The fun part of this is that I have to hit the guy twice - no matter where I hit him, my first is a "graze" while his first means my brains are spread all over the room. And Treyarch pits me against the world's best AI sniper. No matter where I move to while he is hiding, even changing entire rooms, he is able to suddenly reappear, look around and see a corner of my head peeking at him from an entirely different room, a block away, sight out my new position, raise gun, scope in, aim and shoot, in about a quarter of a second.

Anybody ever heard of "Hand is quicker than the eye." This AI is forcing me to react down close to the limits of human reaction time. I went to Main menu, options, and dropped my mouse speed to minimum for optimum sniping.

All the while this is happening, the Russian is screaming at me "Find new cover, he's on to you." Or sometimes, "He knows your position, move to the window."

Thank you Sir, but could you please stop screaming? I know you're on my side. But which window would that be? The reason I ask, Sir, is that, in case you didn't notice, I AM ALREADY AT A WINDOW, SONOVABITCH!

And besides that, Sir, could you please be more specific? There are at least a dozen windows in these two rooms in three separate locations.

His yelling is getting to me. In fact he's driving me nuts. The same screaming bullshit round after round. I'm telling myself, "Ignore him and focus." But in fact, that's part of the Treyarch evil. They know the old fool makes it impossible to concentrate.

So what did I do? Well, the thing is, after all those rounds, I really didn't see that I was making any progress. So, actually, what I did, is that I quit. I quit the game. Two hours into that chapter, at least 50 repetitions, I made a simple decision that I couldn't beat it. It was around 4 in the morning, I had only slept 3 hours the night before, and while I didn't feel fatigued, it had to be taking its toll. I turned off the computer. Then, almost immediately - NEVER let it be said that Rich is not a total glutton for punishment - I became curious as to whether, if I ever DID decide to return to play the wretched game again, it would resume back to this exact spot.

The only explanation is that Treyarch, through in-game hypnosis, had planted that thought in my mind. So I turned the PC back on.

Sure enough. Here I am again, right back with my screaming Russian friend. We're having a party, and the third guest is the most highly skilled AI sniper ever produced, a two-shot kill who knows every move I make.

Ten minutes more of screaming, and suddenly I went to main menu and turned voice volume way down. I don't know where the idea came from. I resumed game and couldn't hear the old guy at all.

Oh joy. Now I can think.

All his advice was just bullshit anyway - just a bunch of crap that Treyarch invented to keep molesting me. I picked a window, and I stayed right there. The one I chose was the one directly ahead to the left which presented the most extreme sharp angle to the building where the sniper was, thereby allowing me to avoid line of fire with minimal movement. He had blown my head off plenty of times from there, but I reasoned to myself that it was likely the superior position.

I watched carefully when the bastard moved. I decided that to beat this, I had to simply assume that, rather than crawl on the floor which I would have done, the AI would most likely just reappear at the window he had last headed toward. So I watched him carefully, exposing myself, gaining knowledge every time he spread some of my brains around the room.

Wherever I caught a glimpse of him moving toward, I focused only on that one window, and by the way, I stopped trying to steady my aim. (That wasn't helping anyway because the evil Treyarch programming was working against me telling him exactly what I was doing - he always waited until after I ran out of breath and my gun started jerking spasmodically, before he appeared again.)

I shot him.

No doubt, I told myself, he had just taken it, if not in the head, at least in the chest. "I am very goddamn sure I hit him that time." The old Russian bastard, now mute, probably yelled out the famous "You just grazed him." He obviously hadn't fired at the exact same moment, which had happened countless times, our bullets whizzing past each other in the cool night air, because the round was still going.

Now, having been shot by my World War II vintage sniper rifle, while certainly no Arctic White Patrol, certainly no COD4 modern warfare that blows the guy's arm off, but still a powerful weapon, most Germans would have sought out a medic. Not this guy.

I waited and watched, shifting back and forth to try to protect myself. He appeared suddenly and headed in the other direction. I focused on the one window he had headed toward, exposing myself, focusing my gun sites on that one window only. His head appeared in the lower left corner and in an instant I fired and jerked to escape his bullet.

I seemed to still be alive. The screen said "Objective accomplished." The Russian said nothing. I had him muted. He was probably blathering all kinds of crap - we'll never know.

I just stood there in disbelief. Are you kidding me? The nightmare has ended? So the secret was just to shut the old guy up?

Jeeeez!!! Treyarch knows that nobody in his right mind can concentrate properly in the presence of a rabid screaming Russian lunatic.

Whew! I breathed a huge sigh of relief. LITTLE DID I KNOW. Three nightmares to go.

First it's time for Max Payne to get through the burning building. That's good for 15 tries, about a half hour. You have to kill the first german, but don't waste time killing any more than that, and don't wait for the Russian fool - beat it to the top of the stairs before him - the two germans will only hit you once or twice and they ain't shooting sniper rounds. Run like a rabbit and hook right. I did it. Then I got knocked down by a burning board, and I expected the round to start again, but miraculously, the Russian is helping me to get up. All of a sudden, I love this lunatic.

More fun to come. Now it's time to defend an entire battle from our position above, then as we progress forward, I have to kill 8 new nazis entering our building, followed by two more rabid German Shepherds - more throat-ripping joy. That delightful segment took one full hour. Before moving to the wall with the opening, I practiced jumping back over the inclined boards, and I found that I could accomplish that easily - I just sailed over those boards - that is, until the round started. Then suddenly, I could no longer jump that high. Evil Treyarch programming.

Okay, no leaving this room - but there is a table in the back. So after 30 tries, I found that by concentraing on the nazis who went to my right, I got rid of most of the grenade throwers. Several times I killed one dog, but not both. But I found that as soon as the first group of soldiers was mostly dead, before the growling, if I turned and high-tailed it back and jumped on the table, that gave me time to reload and scope back up. Miraculously I was finally able to kill both dogs.

Now it's time for sniper Nightmare number 4 - kill the General. By now I have voice back on, and he's screaming again, of course, but this time I need his voice clues.

Several times I shot the General as he ran out of the building toward the burning tank, surrounded by his bodyguards. He was exposed, and I got him. "You just grazed him" my lunatic friend screams. Yeah, I get it, superman sniper, superman General. Treyarch.

I'm learning the routine: Kill the general's sniper, or else more of my brains get spread around town. And then finally I get REALLY smart. The big problem has been the second half track. He's spraying so much fire at our window positions, I can't move anywhere and even see the escape car my Russian buddy is screaming about. Somehow I kill the machine gunner before the half-track rotates to directly face our building, when he becomes impossible to kill behind two steel plates. Now I understand why they positioned the first half track on the left, with the machine gunner totally exposed to my sniping, to teach thick-headed me how to handle the second half-track. Maybe Treyarch aren't as evil as I thought. Maybe it's just me - I'm stupid!

With the machine gunner dead for the first time, there's this car that he's been hollering about, and there's the driver that he wants me to kill. Okay, now he's dead, now what? I hear the Russian laughing, "The General is RUNNING! Get him." I look over and see that the highly decorated idiot has busted out of the car and is hauling butt down the road to the far right.

Big mistake. "Nazi, you should have just gone back to the burning tank, because that is one long road you picked, and I actually have time to reload." I fire and miss. "Furthermore, Nazi, you don't know what Treyarch has put me through over the last four hours, and I REALLY don't want to play this round again." I try to track the running and shoot again. The old Russian cackles maliciously. I can't see anything, but he sounds happy.

I find that I am no longer irritated by his voice, in fact I love him dearly. "Laugh all you want, you old fool. I know that cackling means your nemesis the General is finally dead, and I can move on with my life."


FAR CRY 2
Before I got into World at War, and began experiencing the Russian sniper campaign nightmare, I had first started with Far Cry 2. Unlike Far Cry the original, they give you Quick Save. With Quick Save, I would have been able to save right after the first time I grazed the nazi sniper.

Quick Save can sometimes make very impossible rounds manageable, but occasionally, fatigue sets in and I goof and hit Quick Save when I meant to hit Quick Reload, and I am now saved into an almost impossible situation. If I am really lucky the game keeps two quick saves for that event. If not, sometimes I manage to work my way out of the mess. Other times I have to restart the campaign, lol.

But anyway, here in Far Cry 2, I first started with the skill level called hardcore, just above normal. But the AI was too easy to kill - they shoot straight, but tactic-wise, they aren't much smarter than the AI in Far Cry. They don't pay attention - they look the wrong way - they are easily out-flanked. However, I was impressed once that they threw a grenade in my general direction, and another time blew apart my cover. That showed a little progress.

I'm spoiled by Condition Zero. The best AI are the bots that Mike Smith with TurtleRock Studios created for Counter Strike 1.7 single player. Set them to Expert, and they are HIGHLY skilled, difficult to beat, not easily out-flanked, with fast reaction times, and very aware of their surroundings, at all times.

Anyway, playing the round several different ways, after 7 months of not shooting anybody, other than the little bit of condition zero on the business desktop crt screen, I was having a great time with the action. But ultimately, it was just too easy to kill those guys at the lumber yard. I was enjoying the game ambiance, I was in no rush, and I wanted the challenge of a tougher fight. So I decided to increase the skill level from hardcore to the maximum setting, and I restarted the game.

Far Cry 2 reminds me of Grand Theft Auto IV. You go around and play missions, like when I was stealing cop cars and getting on the police radio, then ridding New York of the Most Wanted list.

I found out after a while that the AK rifle is more powerful than my SMG, after I started getting seriously damaged going toe to toe with the AK guys - their distant shots were hurting me more than before - and I had never heard that strange whining sound as the rounds passed overhead. I knew the AI guns had changed. So I picked up some of their AKs, and I learned about gun jams. Now I understand, find diamonds and buy new guns.

When I left the game to take a break, I believe I had just completed a convoy destroy mission that unlocked the AK for me. When I get the money, I'll buy one.

For that particular mission, I first had to go around trying to find 10 diamonds so I could buy IED explosives. I had to take out a convoy for the gun dealer - rid him of a competitor. I positioned the IED near a rock so I could see when the lead vehicle has passed the rock, meaning the center truck was right next to it. Then I pressed the trigger. THAT WAS FUN!

An hour before I had completed an earlier "Stop the convoy" of the "Ukranian weapons competitor, with his cheaper but inferior product." I found the Ukranian's convoy circling around on narrow jungle roads. I tracked their route, and planned my attack. For that mission, I had only the machine gun, having unfortunately gotten rid of the rocket launcher quite a while before that.

So I tried to come up with something clever. I took my car, and blocked the road at one point where it narrowed down and was bordered on one side by a huge rock. Then, as they approached I tried to machine-gun the lead jeep to slow it down a bit, maybe get lucky and kill the driver.

The machine gun is very hard to control and doesn't really have as much kill power as one would think (same as the jeep-mounted 30 caliber machine guns - well maybe they are 50s, but they are sure weak.) Anyway, the jeep kind of got a little hung up trying to go around the car, just as I had planned, which momentarily stopped the convoy.

From my position up on the rock, I quickly tossed down both molies followed by both frag grenades. BOOM! GIANT EXPLOSION! How gratifying, haha. I don't know what blew up, and I didn't care. The convoy blew to hell, flipping the truck over and also incinerating the lead jeep! The fire burned for a long while. I say that because I had to high tail it out of there for a while - the trailing jeep with mounted 50 was mad as hell. I came back in a while to get the Save Game picture, so I can load the save game before that, and grenade that convoy again some day!

I am not sure whether I have 4xAA turned on for Far Cry 2, since it seems to exhibit some aliasing to my untrained eye, but I'll double-check next time. But all in all, I am so impressed with the world of Far Cry 2, that I'm running around that map with jaw wide open in astonishment!

How do you like those zebras, and those antelopes. Also the goats, and the chickens! What about the somewhat destructible environment. Shoot and palm branches start dropping. Nice!

It's so nice to be on some modern games, and it's so nice to be finally in full native mode on the beautiful Dell 30". Thank you Miles. My birthday is coming up later this month - how did you know?

Rich

 

Holy hell Rich, 5044 words. That's long even by your standards!
I think you'll enjoy Bad Company 2 if you enjoy Battlefield 2, the game seems quite similar, but with vastly improved graphics. I quite enjoy the game, though like all shooters it's infuriating sometimes

Re: Graphics upgrades, you may want to wait. The HD6 series is being released in November, which may spur some price drops across the board. An HD5850 may more than double the 8800GTX for $300, but when the HD6 series comes out, you may be able to double it for a lot less, or nearly triple it for a similar price.

Yeah sadly the 768MB GTX460s really aren't suitable for 1920x1200, but for everything else they're fantastic cards, because they don't have the full power of the 1GB cards, but they're only 10% behind, and they were 20% cheaper, now I imagine that gap's even wider.
As it stands right now, the GTX460 was £150, is now £115, meanwhile the HD5830 which competed similarly was still £160 until recently. However, ATI appear to be pricedropping the HD5830 to £125 to compete which is good news.
The 1GB GTX460 is down a little to £170 right now, but it'll need to get cheaper than that! HD5850 seems to have dropped to £200, which is welcome, but in my opinion, a little insufficient if the 1GB 460 drops further.
The 8800GTX isn't quite the most powerful 8800, that goes to the 8800 Ultra, which was the same card overclocked by about 5-7%, and was 30% more expensive!
If you want to run Crysis at 2560x1600, two 5850s might do OK, but to be honest, I think you'll best wait a fair few more years unless you want to cut corners. 30" Crysis is more the domain of three 5870s (not four, remember Crysis, unlike Warhead, only supports 3 GPUs - Warhead though, uses the fourth because it's more demanding, ho hum)
Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 have very nice textures. I mean, considerably nicer than is typical for games as demanding as they are. You may be disappointed when you load up badboy games like Crysis, Cryostasis and Aliens vs Predator.
Bad Company 2 however has among the best textures I have yet seen in a game, clearly above those of Left 4 Dead games.

Call of Duty 5 was the first of the Call of Duty games to not support Crossfire properly, and COD5 did it in a big way, rather than COD6 (and presumably COD7) where you just get terrible performance in parts, COD5 has severe texture problems, flashing water and so on. It's very much a single GPU or SLI game.

I watched one of my housemates play WAW on highest difficulty. Haha, just you wait, the lack of autosave is going to grate soon

 

Please tell me you were referring to the WAW sniper rounds (which you probably didn't notice that I already passed, haha.) Please tell me it's those awful sniper rounds! (Well, I'm not afraid, how could anything be any more tortuous that what I just went through!)

Yeah, I remember clearly that to really play it at highest texture settings where it really starts to look great, you need that much power.

Well then, Sam, if southern islands is going to cause 5000 series prices to drop, what will happen to the 5870 prices? Maybe I really should be thinking of the 5870 - 430 on your chart versus 375 for the 5850. Maybe the extra power will help. What about the regular 2 gig 5970? I could get a 5870 for now, meaning end of year, then a 5970 later, and eventually enjoy Crysis. I know it's clocked like a 5850 for tdp reasons, but I could overclock it back up and put a nice cooler on it. About that time I'd have to slide all the components over to the spedo, and pick up a new psu.

Also, is there really any special reason that I would ever want to pick up another gpu and play Warhead. It's more demanding - but is it better in any way? Same basic game, right?

Wow! And you really like Left 4 Dead textures. So what graphics card do I need to display those textures nicely at 30" native resolution - is that pushing me to the 5870 for sure?

Rich

 

The only aftermarket cooler available for the HD5970 is the Arctic Accelero, which is a truly dreadful cooler, it has an 80%+ failure rate for destroying the card when it is installed, even when done exactly by the instruction book.
It's also worth mentioning that HD5970s are not guaranteed to clock back to HD5870 speeds, and may not last as long if you do so (well, there's no may about it!)
The HD5970 is probably not such a great idea until it drops considerably in price. It's far more expensive to buy an HD5970 in the US than it is in the UK.
For example:

Newegg XFX Radeon HD5870: $381.98 (£291.50 after tax)
Scan XFX Radeon HD5870: £281.87 after tax ($369.36)
Newegg Sapphire Radeon HD5970: $649.99 (£496.03 after tax)
Ebuyer Sapphire Radeon HD5970: £434.98 ($569.99)

Meanwhile
Newegg XFX Radeon HD5850: $279.99 (£213.67 after tax)
Scan XFX Radeon HD5850: £199.26 ($261.11)

US:
HD5970/HD5870: 0.88-1.76x performance. 1.70x price
HD5970/HD5850: 1.02-2.05x performance. 2.32x price
HD5870/HD5850: 1.16x performance. 1.36x price

UK:
HD5970/HD5870: 0.88-1.76x performance. 1.54x price
HD5970/HD5850: 1.02-2.05x performance. 2.18x price
HD5870/HD5850: 1.16x performance. 1.41x price

As you can see, the HD5870 makes for a very unattractive proposition in the UK, whereas the HD5970 makes for a more unattractive proposition in the US.

Crysis Warhead is like Crysis in terms of gameplay, but the graphics are, in my opinion, considerably improved. There's a lot more all-round nice effects going on in Warhead, and I'd say some of the textures are better too.
As for Bad Company 2 at 2560, it's not easy. My pair of 4870X2s can't max the game out even close to smoothly, I have to leave HBAO and AA disabled. 2xAA I can get away with in some maps, but in others the frame rate is far too low (high 30s low 40s at best).
Fortunately the game actually runs faster in DX11 than it does in DX10. Even so, you won't be running 8xAA with HBAO on anything but a flagship setup.

There are various Bad Company 2 tests out there, some good, some not so good. Techreport's is OK but only considers 1920x1080, and even there, the HD5870 can only pull off an average of 60fps, with a minimum of 53, and this is with AA at 4x, not 8x. 2560 would be a real struggle.
Another problem with Bad Company 2 is this:

That drop hurts. I certainly felt it on my system when playing the start of the single player. A grenade or mine, I forget which, goes off almost in your face, it cut my frame rate far worse than in that graph, perhaps due to the use of QuadCF or perhaps the higher res. The drop in frame rate from 92 to 71 is bad, but for me it was more like from 47-50 down to about 8 or 9, for only a couple of seconds, but either way, truly unpleasant.


Having reviewed UK prices, I may recommend more people buy crossfire HD5830s. Two HD5830s cost less than an HD5870 at the moment, quite a lot less!


Just spotted they do 2GB GTX460s for £187 now, that's quite tempting, for two of those A lot of dual-GPU scaling potential and no memory limitations for that sort of money, given that one 2GB HD5870 card costs the same amount as two of those, they'd have a good 45-50% advantage most of the time. Shame about the 320W power draw though!

 

Hmmm! Well, Sam, let me throw this at you. Some of us are more tolerant of jaggies than others - myself maybe being one of the more tolerant. I just stumbled across Techspot, running 2xAA, and indicating, in this review, more potential for a single or crossfire 5870 system, handling the 2560x1600 resolution, at what they say are the high preset settings. Now maybe 2xAA is automatically no good for you, but with crossfire, maybe 4xAA, and 50 fps, and some stutter at some sections.

Here's their chart. They probably have HBAO turned off too.



Rich

 

All well and good Rich, but remember, that's average frame rate, not minimum, which is important. In DX11, the minimum frame rate is only about 40% of the average at times. Multiplayer it's largely around 80%, but that depends on the map - the more demanding maps have half the frame rate of others.

Those two 5870s may have 74fps average with 2xAA. Turn it up to 4x and it might be 68-69. The minimum frame rate could therefore be as low as 28.

Jeff ran Bad Company 2 with two 4870s, and then two 5850s at 1920x1200. Now remember a 4870 at 1920x1200, is near enough the same as a 5870 at 2560x1600, in terms of performance. He noticed a considerable improvement going from the 4870s to the 5850s, so that must mean there is considerable room for improvement above the 4870s, else he wouldn't have noticed anything

It's worth mentioning that enabling AA slams performance in Bad Company 2, worse than most games. The Fermi architecture is exceptionally resilient to overdemands like this, so they are far, far faster with AA applied.

 

Wow - well where does that take us then, to dual 460s at 1 gig each? If that is the game to gear up for - the multiplayer game that together with Left 4 Dead and eventually L4D 3 will be the bulk of my gaming for the next year to two years, basically just putting off crysis for a couple of years like you mentioned, then is Fermi the right architecture for me to think about at this time?

What do you think two 5870s will cost by early next year. Let's say we were running 4xAA, or even 8xAA - forget about HBAO for now. Would two 460s conceivablly be as fast, on that game, as two 5870s - for 40% less investment?

On a side note, I just got my OSD working with Riva tuner - all four core temps are displaying, gpu temp, fan speed, and motherboard temp. So now at least I'll get a handle on what is going on. The 8800GTX is running around 85 degrees, and fan duty cycle is around 71%. I almost have a desire just to crank it to 100% fixed, to cool the board as much as possible since I won't hear the whine with headphones. I'm running around 35 fps - it seems smooth. I haven't been throwing smoke.

I am beginning to grate the lack of Quick Save. Grenades everywhere! Did your roommate ever finish WaW? LOL

Rich

 

I don't think either architecture is right for you to think about at this time. I don't think it's right for you to think about graphics cards at this time. Wait for Southern Islands to appear and see how prices change, then make your mind up then. Should only be 2 months or so by the time that happens.
I couldn't possibly estimate how things will change next year.

 

Yeah that sounds about right, Sam. Good advice.

This whole system is new and majorly more powerful for me, so I'll just play the games that run okay on it the way it is. Later I'll mildly overclock the Q9450 and add the kama bay - I'll probably just take the kama bay from the p4, since the ventilation on that is overkill - it was a good practice case. I'll hold off - look how long I stayed with the p4. I'm pretty content with all this increased power.

The onscreen display is working fine - a few hours ago WaW crashed - the screen froze. The 8800GTX showed 85 degrees. The fan was about 71% duty cycle.

I had thought about this earlier, so I went ahead and adjusted fan speed in riva turner to fixed speed, 100%. Since then the temp has stayed at 82 degrees or less. I'm getting about 32 fps at 4xAA.

The graphics are unbelievable - best I've ever seen. That must be due to the 4xAA. I'm giving Treyarch just a bit more credit now, since I am so impressed with the look of the game. It is more beautiful than Hells Highway - actually more beautiful than anything I've ever seen before. That must be because of the full native resolution of 2560x1600, the smoothing of 4xAA, and some nice texture rendering. I am very impressed and willing to overlook the flaws I posted about before.

And I have to give Treyarch credit, now that I am back on the island hunting the Japanese soldiers. The animating is pretty good - the dying animations when you burn them to a crisp with the flame thrower, are quite gratifying - they scream and suffer horribly - it's really quite ghastly. Good job with that, Treyarch, lol.

The russian campaign took a long time, grenades everywhere, but it was okay, the burning trees glowed a beautiful red. The water flowed through the streams very nicely - I didn't notice any glitches but I am sure there were some - everywhere I looked the textures were detailed and colorful. I have been super impressed with the look of Far Cry 2, but I am just as impressed, if not more so, with the look of WaW.

I don't believe I've ever seen such nice graphics.

Rich

 

That case's cooling must be terrible, an 8800GTX shouldn't be anywhere near 80ºC at full fan speed.
To be fair Rich, you're giving the wrong company credit for the graphics. COD4 Modern Warfare in my opinion looked every bit as good, and came a year earlier.

 

World at War is impressive, yes. But there are many much more impressive looking games than that. Treyarch games are very shoddily made. Modern Warfare 1 & 2 even look better.

To really impress yourself try these games:

FEAR 2
Mass Effect 2
Just Cause 2
Crysis
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Dead Space

All of these games are technically better looking than World at War. The IW Engine simply does not support complex lighting and shadowing. It has no lighting engine. All the lighting effects are done with specular mapping, which is not from a light source. It's a shader effect applied directly to the models. Nor does it support detailed water simulation(such as Crysis).

For sure the CoD games are technically impressive. I'll give them credit for models, textures, performance and image quality. But it doesn't have very many shader effects, and the ones it does have are fairly simple.

If you want beautiful lighting, realistic shadows and water, depth of field, motion blur, refraction, and other eye candy, give Crysis a try. I'm sure you can't max it at native resolution, but with an 8800GTX(I think that's what you said) you could definitely give the first game a try at a lower resolution. With some tweaking, it can be gotten quite playable on a single 8800GTX at 1920 x 1200. At least enough to get an idea of what it looks like.

Bad Company 2 is another example of a game that looks miles better than World at War. Textures and models are similar, but the shading effects make all the difference.

Again, I will give IW and Treyarch the nod for models, textures and art direction. The the first scene in the WaW Russian campaign where you are laying in the dead bodies is an excellent example of what I mean. The actual image quality is very impressive. But there are many other games out there that look just as good, but with complex shaders.

 

Yeah I'd agree with that. FEAR 2 probably gets the award for the best designed game engine. I played that on my system with only one of the four GPUs working, maxed out at 2560x1600 with 4xAA, and didn't really notice. When I checked the frame rate it was about 40. "This is 40fps?" I asked myself, "I haven't noticed!"
I haven't played Mass Effect 2, but I am recommended it, so I can't comment on that.
Just Cause 2 does have some decent graphics, but it's one of those games where you need a PhysX card to turn up all the eye candy, bah. Amusingly, without PhysX the game actually runs better on ATI cards.
Crysis is of course the obvious one. It was the most demanding game of its day (thankfully!) but it was also one of, if not the best looking game of its day. Half Life 2: Episode Two gives it a run for its money though. In my opinion, at max detail Warhead looks far better, not sure what they did. Warhead also supports 4 GPUs not 3, and actually has proper AA, not one that just anti-aliases the enemies and the floor!
Bad Company 2 is no-contest the most beautiful enjoyable multiplayer game I've seen yet, it's essentially Crysis graphics, but with not quite as much hardware demand, and the game is actually good for multiplayer on top of that, if frustrating.
One thing I also have to give Bad Company 2 credit for is sound. I have yet to play a game that has sound as good as BFBC2.
Dead Space I'd also agree with. Different sort of graphical effect, but it's done quite well, and it runs pretty well too. Due to a bug with the port from the consoles, you have to leave VSync disabled. This does create an excessive GPU strain as the CPU ceiling for the frame rate is vast. My PC runs the game at around 90-250fps, and full graphics fan speed!

Also agreed on the COD lighting engine, it's very primitive. Great textures but no lighting make it exceptionally good looking for how demanding it is (More games like this please!) But the texture models are still 3 years old now, and they're starting show without any fancy lighting effects on top.

If you want to get a sample for the graphics fidelity of games like Crysis without the GPU power, disable image scaling in your graphics driver, so it will show up on the monitor as a box of the appropriate size in the middle of the screen (I'm pretty sure the 3007WFP can do this).
1920x1200 stretched may ruin the cripsness of the graphics, but a 23" box in the middle of the screen will keep it as if you were just using a smaller monitor.