The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

True true. The cell processor is yesterdays news LOL! Now bulldozer...

 

play it at 1024x600 wirh the low settings that they have and a 7900GTX. It prbably won't play at all. And if it does play it'll run at a horrendous frame rate. Consoles do soo much with what they have.

we had black ops connected up the other day. One on my pc, the other on the 360. WORLDS of difference.

but if you don't have it comapred, you are content.

 

I guess I'm spoiled and picky

 

Agreed, until I became a PC gamer, I didn't care much about graphics. Can you imagine that? lmao

 

i still don't, it can be pretty all day but if it aint got no soul, its just that. pretty. i prefer innovative which like the leap year seems to happen once every 4 years.

 

Just borrowed a PS3 myself to play with my new HDTV. I gotta say Metal Gear Solid 4 is both the most awesome and most disappointing game ever. In several scenes, the graphics are amazing, and in others, very flat and bland. Textures are a mixed bag. The characters and geometry generally look fantastic only to be marred by the mediocre foliage. Overall enjoying the game thoroughly though. Totally worth the wait to get my own TV to play it. I just thought it would look sharper than it does

Killzone 2 I would have to say is more graphically impressive overall. The geometry isn't generally as smooth but everything is beautifully detailed and the textures are kickass throughout. Would love to see it on PC. Would be an easy port too I'd think, FPS and all. Some of the setpieces and destruction scenes are amazing. The game is actually good and so are the graphics. Of course not near as sharp as the top of the PC gaming pile and the controls are soggy but for a console I was impressed. For the record, I've seen FPS controls done better on consoles. Halo and Call of Duty come to mind. Would have been easy to make the controls more responsive like CoD without affecting anything else. Even playing with the sensitivity settings doesn't work, only makes you less accurate.

So yeah that's my console gaming for the week. Up next, Ninja Gaiden Sigma XD Basically a PS3/360 remake of Ninja Gaiden/NG Black on the original Xbox. And so hard it makes pros cry.

 

Hmmmm. I pay close attention to anything Jeff is playing, in case another epic Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising game review is forthcoming.

By the way, I haven't gone back to that game yet - I'm still at the chapter where you start out sniping the guy standing at the top of the hill, from way down below where our boats have landed at the beach. I was very impressed that you had to shoot the rifle well above the Chinese soldier's head, to allow for the drop of the bullet. THAT is authentic gameplay that you don't see often - one of the nice touches in the game!

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Wow!

While it doesn't make any sense, in that case, to dump more into this P5E platform, it DOES make sense, I think, to pick up one single 6970 graphics card at $370, to tide me over, until I can build the new system.



That should allow me to get into the BF:BC2 world with Jeff and Shaff and whomever else is playing it. And with the new Vietnam maps, I should be set for the next 6-8 months.

By then my new rig would incorporate pci-e 3.0 with twice the effective bandwidth as today's 2.0 standard (8 instead of 5, but the 5 was really 4 after 20% overhead, as I understand it.)

And if I am talking mid 2011, I might even go high end with something like the ROG Rampage Extreme $380-ish motherboard.



There were a lot of negative Newegg reviews on the $180 gigabyte board in the suggested $620 build. My thinking is that, by the time I build my funds up, I might just set aside twice as much and invest in a high-end board like the Rampage Extreme x58, since, given my past history of huge time gaps between upgrades, lol, I'll probably own it for at least the following 3 years on into 2014.

Regarding Shaff's link on flashing the 6950 bios to achieve 6970 results - amazing. However, the $70 savings, from $370 to $300, probably makes it something I'm not going to try. If it doesn't work, you're stuck at 6950 performance, which while not shabby, is going to noticeably affect how well BC2 runs for me at full 2560x1600.

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I'm back into COD4 Multiplayer!!!



Shaff has probably long-abandoned this game after achieving mastery, putting him near the top of the Xfire roster. From some of your screens, Shaff, I think you were mostly an RPG guy. I have definitely had some great scores with the RPG (light machine gun) but in general the extra firing noise bothers me a bit.

I like the M60 - the one that makes that low-pitched Poof sound every time it fires - almost like it is silenced - but . . . . .



the iron sights of that light machine gun are THE ABSOLUTE WORST. The above picture does not show you actually sighting in through those sights - when you do - all the extra metal around the hole eliminates half the screen! Hahaha.

But if I can force myself to play long-range on the other side of the map, and get by on the M60 until I achieve my marksman certificate, then I would get the red dot sight.

Here's what the red dot sight looks like, actually sighted in and ready to shoot:



What a difference!

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I was heavy into COD4 MP until the beginning of 2009, when I picked up the 30" Dell. I then started trying to play it at higher than 1400x900 resolutions, and the performance of course dropped on my p4. And then I discovered Left 4 Dead and got hooked on that. But I was already a COD4 5-star General, and I had unlocked virtually all of the perks. My mistake was in not saving my rankings profile - I wiped my hard drive before I realized my big mistake.

But because I loved the look of World at War so much, due to digital vibrance, and all you guys said COD4 looked as good if not better, I went back to the single player version, and now also multiplayer. You guys were right - damn fine looking game - especially with digital vibrance at medium setting!

So within the past 30 days I have started all over again. I have advanced from buck private, finally up to Major. And I just unlocked the G3 - single shot assault rifle



which I pack with magnum rounds (Perk 2: stopping power) making it a one-shot kill!

And best of all, using it for several hours, I finally made marksman, and opened up the red dot sights, which is a helluva lot better than the little round iron sights that come with it. That's important, because for some reason most of the servers have eliminated cross-hairs, so you have no choice - iron sights, or red dot when you finally achieve marksman.

Just prior to the G3, I was forcing myself to "like" the M16, which delivers a very deadly 3-round burst.



I never really liked it two years ago. I usually prefer a gun that keeps spraying. But more lately I have grown to appreciate guns that fire a 3-round burst - they are more powerful, and more accurate - because of the burst mode.

For example, some guys hate the SCAR, the desert assault rifle in L4D2,



which fires a 3-round burst, and then another, and then another, as long as you squeeze the trigger. You can go through a lot of rounds if you aren't careful, but I have grown to appreciate it as the most accurate and the most deadly automatic weapon in the game.

Take the concert finale - the last chapter in the Dark Carnival campaign, where you have to get through two tanks, and then jump on the helicopter which dramatically flies in to carry everybody out of the stadium. It's a lot of fun with boxes of fireworks that kill zombies like gasoline, and heavy metal rock music from pre-recorded tapes of past Midnight Riders bikers concerts!

"Every lady's crazy when her daddy's not around" belts out the Coach on the stadium mic while the rest of the team is getting set up!

I usually volunteer to be the one who takes out the specials. Sometimes I'll choose the hunting rifle, and zoom in, but if not, the SCAR is incredibly accurate, full standing up, and even moving, due to using a repeating 3-round burst firing mode. So unlike the M16 or AK, I don't have to crouch for extra accuracy, I can track the specials from a hundred yards away, and every round that hits a charger is more powerful than from an M16 or AK.

Similarly, I remember that years ago, I used to hate that French counter-terrorist assault rifle, the Famas with the 3-round burst.



But when I started back in Condition Zero, the offline version of Counter Strike, a few months ago, with the added appreciation of burst rifles from L4D2, I realized that you can usually kill a terrorist with one burst, from far across the map.

Anyway, back to the M16, which is one of the first rifles you get on COD4 MP, this is basically the same gun you get on BF2 in Assault class. The burst aspect makes it more deadly than most other weapons, except of course for the sniper rifle.

So on COD4 I finally opened up the red dot sight for the M16, and those 3 rounds fire very quickly - it is almost as powerful as any of the light machine guns, except for not being able to penetrate concrete as effectively.

But back to the G3 - I am pretty happy with that coupled with the red dot sight. I had it before - a couple years ago - and liked it for a while, but at that time I totally converted over to being a p90 guy once I made General. My style two years ago was more - "spray like crazy" - and I miss my P90. Occasionally I pick one up - but most of the guys don't have the Perk 2 set at magnum rounds (stopping power) and the gun is not really very powerful with ordinary munitions.

I used to love to strafe sideways and spray a p90 at anybody within 30 yards who dared to come around a corner at me. People say the P90 is weak - but like I say, when you use your Perk 2 to select magnum rounds - it knocks people over! But I won't unlock the P90 until I make General later this Spring or Summer.

So for now - the G3 is my new weapon of choice. It's very different working with a one-shot kill, versus a sprayer. But lovely it is! Just before I turned off the gaming the other night, I had a half hour of blissful G3 action on the Crossfire map and on the Downpour map, action which reminded me of my best COD4 days in 2008.

If you guys remember COD4 single player, when the tank that was stuck in the mud, the "Warthog," gets out and goes into the town - well, Crossfire is that town. Both of the M60 light machine gun pictures, above, with the iron sights and then with the red dot sights, are at the beginning of that town. When you get to the end of the first street, it turns right and heads down a hill, looking like this:



None of the pictures do justice to the map. Let me just say that at full at full 2560x1600 4xAA, with digital vibrance on medium, this is a very beautiful map with textures much prettier than anything I had remembered - and again - it really helps that I discovered digital vibrance. (Wow I am so glad I figured out how to go to Ati Catalyst digital display, avivo color, and jack up saturation and adjust display color temperature, to match Nvidia digital vibrance! A sincere thanks, green guys, for waking me up to the possibility of adjusting my games for richer, brighter colors!)

As I said before, since all of you guys said COD4 was just as good-looking as World at War, I have started playing the single player again, and also the multi-player - but this time I am backing up my ranking files on an external hard drive, in case I ever have to wipe this drive again.

Anyway, the other night, all the enemies were holding out on the right side of this street above, as you look down the hill. It was almost impossible to advance on the right side, down below the first store right there on the corner, the one with the black and white diagonal tile flooring.

So I finally just got annoyed, and said to myself "to hell with this!" and I advanced out into the middle of the street and started walking sideways down the hill, with my red dot sights pointed to the right. Obviously nobody was manning any of the sniper positions at the very bottom of the map. So I stood out in the street all alone, just strafing back and forth in the middle of the street, picking off targets - Boom, ... he's dead - boom, another guy dead, boom, that's one more - 5 key turn on our radar - don't really need it - there they all are. Hahahahaha. I told myself - "This is completely ridiculous that I can last more than a few seconds out here in the middle of the damn street." It was very funny. (I used to do sh*t like that two years ago! It reminded me of the good old days with the P90.)

I was constantly moving back and forth - shaff probably would have added some jumping motion - but the steady strafing was enough to keep most of the guys from drawing much of a bead on me, inasmuch as they were also pre-occupied with guys attacking them from more conventional positions within the buildings.

I worked up and down the street like that, picking them out in the alleys, in the buildings, everywhere - bang bang bang, kill kill kill - whoops death - then bang bang bang, kill kill kill, lol.

The game ended too quickly. We were victorious. The map switched to Downpour.



Magically, the killing bliss continued. I was "in the zone."

Usually I move from defensive position to defensive position, but this time I just "floated" around the map picking off targets. The secret was constantly changing positions, without "running" which disables your weapon for a half second. Walking this way on HIGH ALERT, like Dirty Harry, I picked out a light brown camouflage suit - Boom - there's one - Boom - there's another! I was able to spot most of the targets a couple tenths of a second before they spotted me.

(Sure, occasionally, the guys who were "dug-in," crouched and mostly hidden and covering a particular path, would nail me a micro-second before I saw them, but the kills were coming about two to one over the deaths, and that was fun, lol.)

The peak state ended when the fatigue of 12-hours-straight of game play all of a sudden ratcheted my reflexes down to the dirt. But it was a good half hour run while it lasted - reminded me of the "good old days" of COD4. Luckily I had enough sense to quit and go to bed!


- - - - - - - - Thanks Shaff! - SEARCH AND DESTROY!!

I owe a note of thanks to Shaff.

One of the things that ended up pulling me back into COD4 mp, is the type of game-play that Shaff had told me about two years ago, "Search and Destroy" which I tried for the first time about 30 days ago. (Usually I play Team Deathmatch, where you spawn very quickly after being killed.) The Search and Destroy maps are like the Counter Strike bomb maps. Whoever has the bomb plants it, and it takes about 20 seconds to go off. But the other team can defuse it before it blows. When you get killed, you don't respawn until the new round. Each round lasts about three minutes.

Even with the limited weapons I was able to choose from as a private, the MP5, or the M16 with iron sights, I found that I very much enjoyed the Search and Destroy gameplay. I enjoyed it most on a server where each team was no larger than about 6-8 players. At that size, but not much larger, everybody seems to play with a certain degree of caution and cunning. Most everybody camps - with some minor changing of position as time starts running out and you have to plant the bomb or lose the round. I found that these games were VERY exciting, and filled with suspense!

Later, when I decided that I needed to get back on a Team Deathmatch server with quick re-spawn, and also instant replay, called Death Cam, so I could better re-learn the maps from two years ago, and avoid exposing myself so much to enemy fire (Death cam - which you can turn off by hitting the use key, replays the 10 seconds surrounding how you just got killed from the killer's viewpoint) I found a good server. It didn't have cross-hairs, but now that I have the red dot sights, it isn't too bad. I put it into my Favorite servers folder.

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CONSOLES VERSUS PC (no contest, natch)

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Omega: I guess I'm spoiled and picky
DDP: yep!!!!


Check it out! As his first official act of the New Year, DDP breaks moderator radio silence for a micro-instant to let Kevin know how much he concurs!

Hahahahahaha!

WTF!!!! NO I CANNOT IMAGINE THAT! (sorry for shouting)

Hmmmmm. DXR, with all due respect, I beg to differ. (Or, are you out of your friggin mind????!!!!!!)

Since I have discovered digital vibrance, and its CCC counter-part known as avivo color, if it aint pretty - you aint gonna get me to even consider playin it - once a leap year - or once a decade!

Actually, I confess, it's purely hypothetical, I don't know any game like that since I only play a very limited selection of games, all of which are very pretty.

By the way, I just finished Medal of Honor, single player, and I have to say, it was okay, but I see why it scored under 80 on the Eurogamer rankings. It had a few maps that were awesome, but like the boss over there at EA said, and I paraphrase: "We were a little disappointed - these days you have to have something REALLY special" and by "these days", he is obviously referring to the COD franchise. He went on to promise that the next MOH would be better - sounds good. (The very first MOH with the assault on Normandy was epic - and MOH Pacific Assault remains one of my favorites, but MOH Airborne was weak - I started to replay it at full 30" resolution but lost interest. They let the franchise deteriorate, and this attempt to revive it didn't quite pass muster.)

I finished MW2 also, single player, and it was SOOOO astonishing that I am speechless. Oh, I think I already mentioned playing that in a prior post - playing through the city of - where - Arcadia? Somewhere up there near Glendale just north-east of LA - not to mention fighting it out with the Ruskies in Washington DC. Just totally awesome. (Hey you guys - is the multiplayer of MW2 worth getting, compared to COD4? I mean, before I bust my butt to make General, should I just drop that and jump on MW2?)

All in all, for multiplayer, despite enjoying COD4 again, and discovering very fun Search and Destroy gameplay, I am pretty sold on the original Left 4 Dead as being the best multiplayer game of all time. At the present moment I have returned to it - I like it better than L4D2 for some reason - the mood is more somber - the music is more serious - the gameplay (expert only) is more intense in some way. (Plus you rarely find anybody playing L4D2 in expert.) I will say, however, that, all in all, Left 4 Dead 2 has more interesting maps.

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I must have missed something, Jeff - what did you pick up?

Happy New Year!

Rich

 

Since we know a GTX480 only loses 4% of its performance running at 8x versus 16x, and you're unlikely to be using any more than two HD6970s, PCIe 3 really won't give you any advantages for games performance at all.

Don't go for something like an Asus ROG board. They're a lower specification than almost any other board out there despite being the most expensive, and are just as unreliable as the rest of Asus' product lineup. If you buy a Gigabyte board you'll probably have it for the three years before your upgrade. If you buy an Asus ROG board, you'll probably have to RMA at least once, possibly twice or more, before the three years is up. You don't gain any performance or extra features by owning one either.

 

That is by far my favorite OPR mission. When you get to the main mission objective try to snipe one of the guards at/near the complex; that was probably the most fun I had the game lol.

 

Wow, Red, since the game has been pretty amazing so far, if I have just started your favorite mission - then I'll have to start right in on OFR next gaming weekend!!

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Sam, I duly note your advice regarding motherboards. And you are probably completely right about the whole thing - but the reviews scared me! And I think back to the frustration you had trying to run the dual 4870x2 boards, when a couple of the ROG guys I found on newegg seemed to not be having any problem.

All I noticed is that, when I went from the $180 board, to the $380 board, the Newegg reviews changed noticeably - the tone seemed to shift from what I perceived as "lots of problems" to much more favorable "lots of satisfaction."

Yes there were high-end board reviews where the ROG board immediately failed and had to be RMA'd back, or even arrived DOA - but overall, as I say, the reviews had a far different tone, almost like you get what you pay for. Maybe it isn't true - but all the negativism scared me.

When I finally do get my money together for the new build - I'll have to go through all of them again and get my sense of things at that time. I'm also going to pay attention to the kind of customer service experience those users had. Gigabyte had lots of mftr replies starting out with "We regret the problems you are having with ...." I saw that again and again. Yes, I appreciated that the manufacturer was concerned and involved - BUT STILL...

I would rather overpay a bit, if by doing so I can reduce some frustration. It goes without saying that I have neither your savvy nor your patience. LOL - scaredycat rich

(Regarding the issue of pci-e 3.0 - I'm sure it will be out in force by this summer anyway, available on most of the boards I'm certain. My thoughts are, as graphics cards continue to get more and more powerful and denser on the 32nm die that we should see in a year or so, especially with dual gpu cards, why take a chance on any kind of possible pci-e bandwidth bottleneck if I can pick up pci-e 3.0 mobo for maybe a $50 premium over pci-e 2.0 at that point in time?)

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I AM NOW A BF:BC2 MULTIPLAYER!!!!!!!! WAIT UP JEFF!!!!!!!

I took the plunge!!!!

I happened to look up the price of BF:BC2 on ebay. I don't know why. It was cheap. Then I was shocked that they only wanted twenty bucks for it on steam. So I took the plunge - I bought BF:BC2 and the fifteen dollar Vietnam maps.

I already had the computer table turned around, set up for real estate business use, so I couldn't play more than just shoot the gun a little, standing up next to the tower, just to make sure the game was starting and my cd codes were working. But amazingly, the game default set me out at full 2560x1600 - on what they call Advanced settings.

I was amazed they were giving me full resolution - although I could see jaggies, so probably not much AA going on. Also they weren't giving me much field of view - small hills popped up out of nowhere as I got closer. (This is where a 6970 and 64 bit O/S are going to help a lot!) I went down a hill and across a stream on one of the Vietnam maps - I didn't have Riva tuner statistics server activated, so I had no on-screen display, but my frames seemed at least in the 30s - fairly smooth.

Again, the jaggies and limited field of view wouldn't be acceptable to any of you guys with more powerful rigs, but ...... the 2560x1600 graphics were gorgeous!!

Rich

 

You're still not receiving your Pm's are you sam? Or at least not the email about such

 

Rule 1 of newegg reviews, all newegg reviewers are idiots. I wouldn't pay much attention to the general attitude of people there.
Trust me, paying twice as much for an Asus board will cause you more problems, not less.

Omega: yeah I did, didn't have a chance to reply to it. To be honest, I'm not really sure what they're worth. The only helpful response I can give is 'not much!' - peruse ebay and see what they're going for.

 

Thanks, I'm currently watching the exact models sell. you're right, they're not going for much. Looks like I'll be lucky to get 100$ of my 130$ back. Not bad though

Ebay is a useful tool, but the prices are erratic. Across the entire web! LOL! Some people think they can get a lot of money for stuff...

 

and they're right, some of the time. Plenty of suckers out there

 

LOL! I've noticed. I should watch for the ones in which I benefit. Maybe I can get a new graphics card cheap

 

Got my HD6970s in today, so far so good. Driver installation, apart from one hiccup with not uninstalling the old ones first, was relatively smooth.
Crysis Warhead's being maxed out at 2560x1600 Enthusiast with 8xAA and I'm getting 30-45fps most of the time, with drops to 18-20 for the heaviest action like the EMP blast.
The cards, while not silent, are vastly quieter than the 4870X2s they're replacing, and totally inaudible in games that don't load the cards heavily.
Power consumption's down considerably
2D Idle: 305W->175W
3D Idle [Desktop, alt-tabbed]: 470W->210W
3D Light load: 570W->430W
3D Heavy load: 810W->530W.

 

Hahaha I didn't know that - I'll have to factor that in, lol.

Wow! Congratulations on your 6970s! If you dropped from 8xAA to 4xAA do you think you'd pick up your Warhead Enthusiast frame rates?

I thought you weren't going to even try Warhead again until you increased your system memory, which I thought was only 4 gigs. Did you already get more Ram?

Rich

 

I ran the test before this, but I have now got an additional 8GB of RAM to make 12. Had a brief run in with BIOS issues due to one of the sticks not being in securely, but once I spotted that, been up and running at the same 4.12Ghz overclock without a hitch. Even passed IntelBurnTest. Very proud of that
Will try running Warhead with 4xAA in a bit, copying some files at the moment, which will hamper quickloads.

Couldn't be happier with my PC right now, it's nearly silent, even when in game, runs pretty cool (CPU idles at 28C, loads reasonably high but needs new TIM applying at some point, GPUs idle around 50 and load at 71 in moderate games, presumably about 80 in heavy load games), it's ludicrously fast, and as crysis shows, it can take on almost anything. I still had reservations spending £570 on the 6970s from my 4870X2s, which I will sorely miss as they've served me so well over the last two years. However, the change is frankly night and day, I must have cut 30dB off my PC's load noise level, possibly more, as much as 300W off its load consumption, and that's not even the best bit. The 6970s (presumably all 6 series cards?) change power state dynamically, so rather than running at 3D clocks all the time if a game is open and you're just alt-tabbed, if it detects no load for about 10 seconds, it drops back to 2D mode, fans return to being inaudible and power usage drops back down to the 170W figure [I've actually seen it as low as 165, even now the extra memory is in). This, coupled with the fact the load baseline is tiny (less than 300W if the game is lightly demanding, or CPU limited) and that base load doesn't actually increase the fan speed from idle, means that even with a crossfire setup, if you run something lightweight, you'd never know how much horsepower you have under the hood. No more unnecessary noise, heat, or power. Frankly, my room's a lot colder now too. Sad as I am to drop the X2s, the 6970s are mindblowing cards.
Touching wood, so far I've yet to encounter a single driver issue, I'm getting considerably more performance where it matters (benchmarks like 3dmark are relatively unchanged due to CPU limitations, can you believe), despite turning my PC from one that sounds powerful, to one that sounds totally effortless. Well, it is effortless. Nowhere near all 2GB of memory is being utilised most of the time, of the massive 6000rpm fanspeed I've yet to see more than 36% [the 4870X2 fans had gone up to nearly 6000 due to bearing wear, and were running at 100% in Left 4 Dead 2, ouch!], and while the cards are still hot to the touch, they're not dumping enormous amounts of heat out the back of the case.
This is so far, all with the side fan array of scythes completely off. I haven't turned them on since the 6970s arrived, they haven't been necessary.
Intriguingly, despite this, the temperature of my southbridge at idle has dropped 15 Celsius, due to the comparative lack of heat nearby at idle.

When I first got my 4870X2s, I had to get a much bigger PSU, "well it'll be worth it for the extra performance", put up with vastly more noise "because of all the extra heat" and buy a full tower case to cope with the cooling "again, goes hand in hand with performance". I made a fair few excuses for my quad crossfire setup. I'm glad I did, as it was awesome, and I hate laying criticism on a system I've adored for two years, but frankly, none of these concessions are necessary for the 6970s. They'd run fine in my midtower, even without any real cooling to speak of, and I could happily sell the 850W unit and buy a 600W, if I wanted to. No point in doing so given the ZM850-HP is effectively silent, but still, food for thought for new system builders.
Riding the euphoria through to the next challenge, installing behemoths like Call of Pripyat and Metro 2033. I want to see what my little friend's capable of

 

Unbelievable, Sam - totally mindblowing difference!

You want to see what your little friend can do, huh!

My former gaming buddy - the 10 year old little mexican kid who got me into gaming 6 years ago, used to say that as he played his various fps shooters "Come over here bad guys and see what my little friend has in store for you!" - referring to his "metralleta" (pronounced: maytryYETuh) - his automatic weapon!

Congratulations again, Sam.

You toiled long and hard to be the 4000 family quad cf pioneer - and make the whole thing work. I remember when your frustration level had peaked and you were ready to chuck the whole idea. Wasn't that about the time you switched motherboards and then finally started having some success - or was it new drivers - or both?

But now, how do you feel about dropping back from quad cf, to just regular cf? I know you're getting better scaling, and cf works better with most games, right?

But my question really is, do you think you might one day find yourself wanting to ratchet back up to quad cf? After all, you have the power supply, and you have the full tower case, and you have the side array of scythes, which right now are just sitting there idle, but ready to go back to work at a moment's notice, lol. And regarding Warhead, while your Enthusiast numbers work for me, I know that you really don't like "just 30-45 fps."

But I think from all the thought that you put into making this change, the answer is that you have decided "no more quad cf" for the time being.

And I would guess THAT means that unless 4xAA and your extra 8 gigs of memory (congrats again - what kind of Ram did you pick up?) significantly boost your frame rates, I have a feeling that you aren't going to play around too much with Warhead, until the 7000 32nm family debuts.

Rich