The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Not really such a thing as overkill for 2560x1600 yet, unless you count the resolution itself Could use a UD9 board and go with three GTX580s or four HD6970s, but for £200 more for the board and £560 or £820 more for the cards, it's not really worth it for the extra 50% performance! Even so, I don't think that's really overkill for the resolution. Crysis might be almost smooth maxed out, not far off at least, but other games, probably not so much. Certainly not Arma 2, Cryostasis, Lost Planet 2 or whatever the other one was, I forget

 

Actually Lost Planet 2 is quite reasonable on my setup. As well as Metro 2033 which is maxed with advanced DoF turned off and AAA, scoring about 60FPS average which is near 100% scaling.

Cryostasis is a fluke and Arma2 is terribly coded, though retardedly good looking when cranked. My point being the few games I can't run I'm mostly not interested in so it's of little consequence to me. As far as my current performance needs its overkill for everything except BC2 silly maxed with 4xAA which it runs admirably at 50-70, sometiems much higher. Basically what I consider the sweet spot given my large CPU bottleneck in a lot of the game. I think it's about 60-80% scaling depending on the area.

 

oi vey. Whyy sam whyy? Such a LONG arse post. Will get back to it later. Or infact its so long i will just not reply right now. Must you extend it so much? Haha.

 

Jeff: Actually the scaling is 100% in Bad Company 2. The problem is that the single GPUs underperform, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. The 100% crossfire scaling is what keeps the HD6s competitive with the Geforces.

Shaff: You wrote a lot I disagree with, so I wrote a lot back

 

Okay, I hear you. With the 120mm 3000 rpm kaze blowing sideways at the board, and the new 80mm sucking through the 3 removed slot covers, to be more specific, the slightly overclocked geforce seems to hang right at 84 degrees. That will continue to be true, if the board holds out, for at least the next few months until the return of hot weather. But I only overclock it for Dragon Rising, and I am sure I'll have the game finished one of these days. (I hear a sequel is coming in the summer.)

Fascinating! May I ask, Sam, out of curiosity, how you are able to come across this kind of detailed inside information about the workings of a game?

Ah hah! I see what you mean. Quite different from a movie.

Then I suppose it all just comes down to my physiology - my reaction time, my visual sensitivity, etc. I guess that what seems "smooth" to me would be laggy for you. Now I understand more clearly why you like scenarios with frame rates in the 50s and 60s - I had thought it was only to have a buffer for when the action really heats up and the frames drop.

WOW! So then, isn't that what Fermi was supposed to do a couple years ago for the nvidia guys - run AA without a sweat? Are we saying then, that Ati has now figured out how to duplicate the advantages of Fermi?

Hmmmm. You know, you're right. If Warhead, on your machine, won't even load on enthusiast, because of the 4gb, so 8gb is a minimum, and 12 to 16 even better, and to top it off, my Q9450 will probably become a bottleneck - maybe I should continue to let Warhead sit in the closet until I have a couple thousand for all new components in the spedo case.

What about BC2? A multiplayer game like COD4, or BC2, could occupy me for literally years. If I thought just in terms of my present situation - Q9450, 4 gigs memory - but added to that a single 6970 and maybe later one more, plus windows 7 64 bit - what would it take for me to play BC2 at full 2560x1600, running at least 30-35 fps?

Rich

 

Well, you understand the risks, so it's your problem to deal with when you finally kill it off
As for the game engine, it's really as-and-when research when I look up what causes problems. Google is a powerful tool!
Nah, you'll notice I always make a point of finding minimum frame rates for games, as an average frame rate of 60 is meaningless if on several occasions it drops down to 9-10, whereas another game that averages 60 may only drop to 45.
Minimum fps, except in a couple of scenarios where autosave causes frame rate drops to 0 or 1, is a guarantee that if it's above 30, the game will be playable, and if it's above 60 the game will be smooth.
By far the best benchmark scenario uses a graph to show the frame rate throughout the course of the test, this way you can assess yourself if frame rate figures and drops are actually relevant.
This isn't actually that hard to do, it can be done simply using Excel and Fraps.

'A couple of years ago' - it may not seem like it, but it's actually only been 9 months (as of boxing day) since Fermi first launched. Essentially, the HD6900 duplicates most of the Fermi-style architecture, lots of power, lots of memory and brute force. Not so much actual processing power at low-end, but immense staying power for high filter levels and high resolutions.
Of course, the new Radeons still can't handle excessive polygon scenarios like HAWX 2, but such games are rare, and will be for many years to come.
I would say at least try Warhead, as with all the background applications closed, and a massive page file, Warhead will play on Gamer level, albeit with long pauses every 2-3 seconds, but it just isn't fun like that.
The game is heavily CPU bound as well, maxed out even an overclocked i7 won't permit beyond 50fps (A pipe dream frame rate at 2560x1600, but nonetheless highlighting lower frame rates for weaker CPUs)
Multiplayer games, Crysis Wars excluding, are generally more forgivable than single player campaigns, as they have to run well for the game to be fair.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is the most demanding popular multiplayer game released to date, yet at 2560x1600 with 4xAA and max settings (including the infamous HBAO) even two HD6850s can manage a respectable minimum of 50fps in lighter scenes. Two HD6870s achieve 60, and the 77 achieved by two 6970s allows extra room for either 8xAA or more demanding scenes.

 

Only 9 months! Yeah, it seems forever! Well I sure am glad that ATI got that worked out!

Well, okay then. Maybe I'll soon be joining Jeff and Shaff out there on the battlefield - and on the Vietnam maps too.

So at 2560x1600, what do you figure I'll yield with one 6970 at 4xAA. From the 77fps you mentioned with CF, sounds like (except perhaps in situations of lots of explosions) I might get frame rates in the 30s - would you agree?

Is a 64bit OS still mandatory with only 1 6970?

By the way, it took me a while, but I finally found saturation, and color temperature, in CCC. It isn't in the Color tab, where one would expect it to be. Going to Display properties - there is an avivo color subsetting. I tested it - one forum guy said he used saturation at 140 and temp at 6700. I ended up with sat at 150 - just a bit more - and it added immeasurable quality and charm to a demo of BIA - Earned in Blood, out in the sunroom where the p4 is, on a 20" Dell LCD. My god - the game was so flat before I found the avivo color setting. This sounds crazy, but I will be forever grateful to Nvidia for turning me on to digital vibrance, and enhancing the game playing experience with deeper richer colors!!

The one thing I did not find, however, was anything close to the nvidia wizard for adjusting monitor color, one color at a time, across the entire screen, adjusting the gamma of each primary color band to match a dithered reproduction of the color. This apparently is what caused nvidia to juice my digital vibrance to max - producing shockingly gorgeous shades in World at War. If you are aware that Catalyst has something similar, one color at a time, please let me know and I'll dig into it again on the p4.

But I do have to say that I feel so much better having apparently found the equivalent to digital vibrance in CCC - and the forums say that the ability to adjust color temperature, from 4000 to 10000, about 400 adjustment steps, can yield some nice extra nice customizing even beyond digital vibrance.

 

Yes, as to get 2GB of video memory, you'd be limited to 2GB of system memory. In reality this means that you'll get about 3GB of system memory - not enough to run most recent games, and 1GB of video memory being used - not enough to max a fair few games out at 2560.
You can't weasel out of buying RAM, or more usefully, upgrading the system, by buying one card, it needs replacing if you're going for any high-end card.
For colour adjustment I assume you mean this:



and for vibrance I asume you mean this:

 

Hahaha. Rich the weasel! I've been called worse, lol.

Well, ok, to ask if I could get by without going to a 64 bit O/S was foolish - I will promptly put in Windows 7. I don't know what I was thinking.

Now, with windows 7 64 bit, once I do that, my system will see all 4 gigs of system Ram, plus all 2 gigs of video ram - I assume I am correct on that - but please let me know if there's something I don't yet understand.

So, now, other than the OS, yes, I'm weaseling out of a full upgrade, by just installing ONE 6970 for now, for a very reasonable $370 expenditure.

One bench I spotted yesterday suggested 42fps in BF:BC2 - it might have been the same bench you were looking at - I think I did see the 77 with 6970 CF.

So with 42fps average, unless I have the misfortune to have Jeff or Shaff blasting me at the particular moment before I get the drop on them, which undoubtedly would reduce my frame rate, I think I could get by on that. Sure there would be some lagginess in situations of lots of explosions. But I could probably handle it. Meanwhile, Warhead stays up in the closet as unplayable for now, until I pony up and do a real system upgrade at the tune of a couple of thou.

Does that all make sense?

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Well, here's the section I found for saturation and color temperature:



It's not exactly what you found, which I see is under the Video section - for playing videos I guess. I tried the video section at first, thinking that was the correct spot, and the settings did not carry into the BIA EIB demo.

But as shown above, when I went to monitor properties, there I found the avivo color subsection that the forums told me about, and those settings DID carry into the demo. In fact, logging onto the p4 just now to pull the chart over from that computer, my "red hair" icon was unusually bright - so the settings have certainly stuck!

Regarding the other catalyst you posted, showing settings by color, yes I found that also on the p4. BUT - how do you do the setting?

What I mean by that, is: what guide do I have to help me adjust the contrast and brightness color by color? I can change the image, and I get an image that appears to have some dithering on it - but I can't really see how to work with that? Do you see what I mean? The tools are there to adjust my constast and brightness, color by color, but I have no graphic to work against, unlike with the nvidia wizard, which puts one color up, fills the entire screen, and lets me adjust to match dithering with the adjusted color - and tells me to first unfocus my eyes a bit to make it all work, lol.

Maybe that catalyst page you found would work, if I picked up a color chart and displayed it on my screen - something with some dithering on it I suppose. Would you have any idea where I could get a chart like that - and do you think that would help me?

Well - off to a Christmas eve family event - Happy Holidays Sam and Shaff and DXR and Kevin and Jeff and Red and DDP and Binkie and Russ and everybody else!

Rich

 

One HD6970 performance-wise is fine. It's still a capable card on its own at 2560x1600, but it won't be maxing out every title out there with 60fps at that res.
I only referred to 'weaseling out' for using one because doing so doesn't solve the problem of needing more memory, and a 64-bit OS. If you only buy one for financial reasons that's fair, but if you only buy one to avoid buying more memory or a new base platform, you're wasting much of the talent of even one card.
It's 38fps for one 6970. The scaling is 100% for minimum fps, thankfully
The actual system upgrade need not be that much actually. Of course, at $740 the pair of HD6970s is a lot, but an i5 760, a P55A-UD4P and 16GB of RAM need only cost $620, and that's all you need for gaming, save the cooler.
Don't pay much attention to how your catalyst looks, the windows XP and the windows 7 catalyst layouts are completely different.

 

Indeed, merry christmas everyone.

 

I hope everybody had a nice Christmas, and a nice Hannakuh earlier this month, as well as a nice Ramadan earlier this Fall, and .....(??)

Happy New Year coming up.

(The party I went to lasted until 4:30 in the morning, and then it was back to LA for a much shorter birthday party at 5pm the next day - just enough time to sleep and make the 1 hour drive! Things will be back to normal tomorrow, starting with a two-mile jog in the morning.)

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There is no way I'm going to dump $230 into my current platform after this news from Sam:

Wow! Well, when you put it like that, I think I see your point.

As nice as this P5E is, and as much as I am enjoying the 14000-point 3dmark6 performance, from the 6000 points I had with the p4, sticking to this platform limits me to a max of 8gb DDR2 Ram. DDR2 used to be cheap - I might be wrong but now it's hard to find and therefore pricey, lol.

Increasing my memory from the 4 gigs I have now, to the max of 8 gigs supported by the board, would cost me $230. Or, taking your suggested system above, I could invest just an additional $390, for a total of $620, and upgrade into an i5 with twice as much memory - a full 16 gigs.

Now that makes sense!

Rich

 

DDR2 was cheap for a while, whilst they were clearing the stock after DDR3 production was ramping up. Now almost nobody buys it any more as it's not used in new builds, it's produced in much smaller quantities, and thus is more valuable.
The massive investment in moving to DDR3 means that DDR3 memory is absurdly cheap now, with 4GB sticks already costing less than 2GB sticks of DDR2 cost in their prime a year ago.

 

oh my!

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159

 

Yeah I heard about this a few days ago. Interesting idea, though for 10% performance I'm not sure how viable it is. Dual BIOS switcher is really handy though, a true enthusiast feature that.

 

My brother finally got a PS3 for Christmas. He was playing call of duty Black ops last night. He also has GTA IV. The video quality looks nothing like My computer screen. My screen looks lifelike by comparison. His shows lots of jaggies. He says it looks wayy better than the PS2. I definitely agree, but in my opinion, it looks dire compared to my PC version. Can't seem to find performance settings in the game either. Does the PS3 version simply not compare to PC? The PS3 says that it's signal is indeed 1080p, so I'm uncertain what the heck is going on LOL! I think I'm spoiled to PC's...

 

you also have to remember the PS3 is running on a modified 7900GTX GPU, turn everything graphics related to low on your pc version and you'll more than likely end up with what the consoles can do.

PC's have retained graphics dominance since the 80's and they always will.

Also LCD TV's have very big pixels and there refresh timer doesn't operate on the same principle's as a lcd Computer Monitor. try hooking up the PS3 to a Computer monitor you'll notice jaggies tend to blur out more, and the blur effect while looking up and down really fast tend to disappear.

 

Oh heck yah! PC's design the damn consoles. I just thought that the PS3 was generally equal at 1080p. Obviously Sam and Jeffs, setup could smoke it though

 

why would you need performance settings on a console? Everyone's running the same hardware!

remember that the ps3 is 4 years old, the 360 more than 5.
what were baseline gaming pcs like back then? 7600gts, x1800gtos at best.