The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Those metro fps was with dual 5850's right? So I'd guess us single GPU people should continue putting off playing metro 2033 for a few more years if we want to max it

 

I'd like to play it. But I'm sure my GTX 260 wouldn't run it at levels that SHOULD be experienced Besides, time seems to be an issue for me right now. As well as money

 

I'd put Warhead on the SSD, but honestly? With 12GB of RAM I don't really notice the sequential loading spikes. When they occur now they're so slight I don't think an SSD would make any difference. I have to agree with something Jeff said to me over messenger, the game seems to throw a fit if you run out of system RAM, claiming to use tens of gigs and generally being a bit unstable, but as long as you have enough RAM to start with (Which in my case is turning out to be about 6GB, occasionally slightly over) then you seem to be fine. I've not once reached the 8GB used level yet.
As far as CPU limitations, I'd get more frames in CPU-bound stuff like CSS and TF2, but I really don't see Crysis frames going up. As CPU-demanding as Crysis is, a 4.1Ghz i5 is at the point where really, a faster CPU is higher synthetic benchmarks and nothing else.
The people I know who're upgrading to sandy bridge CPUs are one who pursues relatively cutting edge hardware (and his previous i7 920 was a very poor overclocker, as they go), and people who still had Core 2 Quads and Phenom IIs (The unlocked dual core kind, not the true phenom kind) - to them of course, it's a fairly noticeable upgrade.
Right now, I sit with what is known as the 'flip' upgrade, whereas Sandy Bridge is the 'flop' upgrade. (This is actually a recognised industry term), whereby with each generation, a 'flip' occurs, with a breakthrough new technology that adds a fairly considerable amount of performance, then the 'flop' occurs a bit later, refining the architecture, adding a bit more performance.


As for Metro's depth of field, HardOCP summed it up when they basically went "we're not benchmarking depth of field. We'll cover it in a single graph to show what it does, but we're not enabling it in any of our 'maximum playable' benches. It's hugely demanding, and doesn't really do very much" (Not a quote, just a rough paraphrase)
The chart posted sums this up pretty well, the increase at 1920x1200 shows from two 6970s to FOUR, and from two 5850s to three 6950s. Geforces have a bit of an easier time, from two 580s to three 570s, and from two 460s to two 570s. Still hefty increases though.
At 2560x1600 it borders on the ridiculous, from four future 28nm GPUs, to four future 20nm GPUs, or in nvidia's case, two future 28nm GPUs, to three, possibly more. For an average of 60fps it's still an increase from three 6970s to three 20nm GPUs, two generational leaps, and from two GTX580s to three.
4x MSAA is also a fairly big hit, and as HardOCP also covered, it can decrease image quality. This was meant to be fixed pretty shortly after the game came out, but I never read anything definitively saying they had/hadn't done it.
Either way, given the ludicrous demand of the game, AAA is a pretty safe bet, as it is still some AA, and might allow the game to otherwise be maxed at 2560x1600 with four HD6970s, but maybe not, depending on which reference you use. Likewise, the best that nvidia can offer, three GTX580s, still may or may not be enough. (This is $1500 of GPUs in each case, with one of the details off, and AA at the lowest setting where it's still on, and we're not sure it'll work!). Just going for an average of 60fps however, allowing for big tanks in performance in places, we can get off with the (comparatively speaking) lightweight of two HD6970s, or two GTX580s, maybe. The two 6970s aren't guaranteed, you might need three!

As far as running the game on a GTX260 goes, for nvidia owners there's no real extra performance to be had by cutting to lower DirectX levels, so you can stick with DX10 at least, but realistically, you'll be looking at an average of 30fps, a minimum of 20 at best, at 1920x1200, with no AA or Depth of field, everything else max though. Up to you if that's worth it or not.

 

Bit of a marathon one to compile, this.


As you see, Arma II has many configurable settings that have an appreciable impact on performance.

'VHAF' refers to the game's inbuilt Anisotropic filtering setting set to very high, rather than forcing it to 16x in the driver.
Vxxxx is the visibility distance.
T = Textures
Tr = Terrain
O = Objects
S = Shadows
PP = Postprocessing

Acronyms used for SLI/Crossfire should be obvious.

"But what is the TCF HDX 800R?"
This refers to what would be known as three of the HD 10870. Since it is very unlikely by the time this comes that AMD would move to five figures, they'll likely be using a new name. Since we have no idea what that name would be, I made one up. HDX 800 is merely an extension of the move AMD made 7 years ago when they reached the 9800 series, moving to the X800. The letter R represents that it is the most powerful (single) card in the series, I did not use XT as AMD are likely to have left that nomenclature far behind.

This, by the way is just the original, not the far more demanding expansion.


Quite the ridiculousness going on here, with a modest 4xAA, even when we reduce terrain, objects and shadows down to medium, to run Operation Arrowhead at 2560x1600 res (let alone eyefinity!) with a very high draw distance requires three GPUs from FIVE generations away!
Just to put that into perspective, five proper generation gaps behind us is the Radeon 9600/9800 series, or the Geforce FX series, back before PCI Express had even been invented.
This is so we can use three cards as well, not just a single one.
Suppose we:
Wanted one GPU instead of 3? -> Two more generation gaps
Wanted more AA, or supersampled? -> At least another generation gap
Wanted to run 7Mp eyefinity, or even 12Mp? -> At least two generation gaps, possibly three
Wanted to turn the rest of the details up to max? -> At least one generation gap, probably two
Wanted to run in 3D with the same fluid frame rate? -> Two more generation gaps

Add all these together, Arma II: Operation Arrowhead may not be maxing out until the PCI Express interface, or possibly even the ATX standard, is long dead and buried. In the politest sense, a lot of the older forum members may not still be alive to witness the coming of this.
This is very unlikely to occur in this decade, probably in the mid, or possibly late, 2020s. Scary stuff.

I've long suspected, but never really analysed it. Arma II:Operation Arrowhead truly is, the new champion of hardware demand.
Oh by the way, the view distance probably goes higher than 5161, that's just the highest I've seen tested yet, probably because it's the limit of 1.5GB per GPU.

 

So in summary in about another decade I should be able to play Arma II arrowhead with satisfactory settings? lol

 

If you're willing to settle for large drops in performance in certain places you can play it on reasonable hardware now. At 1680x1050 medium with no AA, you can average 60fps on a lowly HD6850.
Even 2560x1600 with mostly high settings could possibly be run on two current cards, it depends on crossfire scaling. The results in italics are derived from crossfire/SLI benches that considerably underperform results derived from single cards, indicating poor multi-GPU scaling. This may no longer be an issue with more modern cards.

 

I was mostly joking, but my idea of satisfactory is 1920x1080 high with some AA, average 60fps and no drops below 50fps. Call me unrealistic but if they put the graphical detail in there I want to see it lol.

 

Well, a minimum of 50fps at 1920x1200 with some AA gives you this:

Low AA, Very High AF, All Very High settings, 1200 View distance: Three HD6970s
As above, but Normal AA and 1600 View distance: Four HD6970s.

I don't have any nvidia figures for 1920x1200 with AA unfortunately, but interpolating the 2560x1600 results, I would guess:

Low AA, Very High AF, All high settings with very high terrain, 1200 view distance: two GTX680s, whenever such a card appears

 

LOL ARMA II.

Thanks for the performance numbers Sam.

Omega, I'd say bite the bullet and play it now. I played my whole first time through on a single 4870 which runs it a bit worse than a 260 and I'd say its playable enough to enjoy. SRSLY you're gonna skip a great game because you can't average 60? I would never have played anything to begin with then...

 

I never said I'd skip it lol! And actually, I've found GTA IV (when playing with settings) to dip down to 30FPS, and it doesn't bother me. 60 is nice of course. Time is more my problem. Plus at this time, I'd feel guilty playing games. Let's just say that the household is suffering a financial fiasco Sure wish I had a second job. Making money on computer projects on the side isn't covering it.

Man, a friend just asked me to look at their friends computer. Virus or something. Apparently they called somebody, and this somebody wants 100$ just to come out and look at it. I laughed about that. I generally don't charge anything If I can't fix it But google and I are very close. I don't give up easily!

 

Well, I hear you, Kevin, about finances. I am thinking of making a move to increase my house sales to get my finances into better shape. Not for Arma II - since that's 3 generations out still, or even for Metro 2033, which, while Jeff said some interesting stuff about the amazing graphics and lighting, is still basically a futuristic subway system shooter. That's too much of a stretch for me since I'm basically World War II, with some zombie detours, courtesy of you guys having gotten me hooked on L4D, lol.

My friend Mo, with his computer store, made quite an increase in his basic analysis charge, since the competition is like what you mentioned in your post - they charge $100s just to take a look. Since your time is valuable, Kevin, you might consider telling your friend that you don't mind trying to dig in and fix the situation, but they need to come up with $50 up front for you to start tinkering with it - and that is non-refundable. Tell them you'll try to get it fixed for that - if possible, and you'll be very reasonable about additional charges - but you have bills to pay like everybody else.

I like your flip, versus flop discussion, Sam. So you have a flip - a radical upgrade, whereas for you a sandy bridge cpu would be a flop, a refinement.

For me, I guess a sandy bridge would be a flip - moving from core 2 quad cpu, to i5 or i7, but I think I'll stick with the 9450 for the time being, and expand my memory.

Since you discovered, Sam, that you don't need more than 6 gigs of memory to run Warhead, and it is running so well that you don't think putting it on an SSD would make much of an improvement, that tells me that if I max out my P5E motherboard with 8 gigs of DDR2, I should be okay for a while.

Plus it's a crossfire motherboard, with a full 16 lanes of pci-e per card, not that that seems to matter all that much, as you have pointed out many times. Anyway, with a 64 bit O/S, 8 gigs of memory, some basic overclocking on the 9450, and at least one 6970, maybe moving to another one later on, I should be okay, even maybe for Warhead, provided I don't mind fps in the low 30s. And you mentioned that my power supply, at 750 watts, Toughpower, should handle that. Plus I could move everything to the spedo, and get the psu out of the hot box case.

So right now, besides the 6970 upgrade, I am pricing out 8 gigs of memory. I have 4 slots, but they are all used with 4 x 1 gig of memory. My board will take PC9600 (1200mhz) but what is in there now is PC8500 (1066 mhz.) Newegg has 8 gigs of G.Skill 1100mhz PC8800 Cas 5, timings 5-5-5-15, for $199, and it has 4 gigs of G.Skill for $84, times two kits = $168, same latency and timings, but slower at 800mhz. So based on those numbers, going from 800 to 1100mhz, from $168 to $199, is 18% more cost, but 37% faster speed.

There is also a lot of new and used memory on ebay, especially 4 gigs in 2 x 2 gig kits. I can get brand new kingston, cas 5, 5-5-5-15, 1066, for $76 each, two kits coming in at $152 - one vendor has 7 kits available.

Do you guys have any memory advice for me to consider? On the 8 gigs, if I try to deal on ebay, should I try to get the same brand of memory, or does it matter that much as long as the speed is the same.

Rich

 

Thanks for the advice Rich, I may just do that But I'm still too green to be asking that much. My friend is bringing their computer tower to me. So I won't charge much at all. I don't like going to meet strangers. People make me unnaturally uncomfortable. Can't help it I have a social anxiety. Nothing like you'd understand. I border on panic attacks. I've developed SOME control over it, but I'm still highly nervous LOL!

 

It's a little odd, as despite the fact that LGA1366/1156 were the flip, they consituted less of a performance increase in more cases than LGA1155 has done.
With 1366/1156 vs 775 you got 20% more performance per clock, and clock speeds pre-overclock were about the same, 10% higher post-overclock.
With 1155 vs 1156 you got only 10% more performance per clock, but clock speeds pre-overclock are a good 15% higher on the range, and 25% higher per unit cost, and post-overclock clock speeds are still a good 20-25% higher than LGA1155.
As it stands though, for a gamer, Sandy Bridge doesn't allow me to do any more than I already can, it's more of an upgrade for process worker machines, video encodes and renders etc. will be quicker.

That isn't the expression I'd use

Power-wise, the highest I have seen my system draw with the 6970s is 605W AC, in Crysis when looking at the flare on the ground in 'contact', which always caused performance leak issues (I think the animation for it is bugged).
At my PSU's 87% efficiency, This represents 525W DC draw. A 600W unit would handle my system comfortably, as it turns out.
Typically I only see 530W ac, 560W only in Crysis, 460W and 485W DC respectively. A big improvement on the 700W of the dual 4870X2 system.

$152 for 8GB of DDR2 is still a lot of money. The 8GB of DDR3 I bought is only $115 on newegg, and if you're spending $370 on an HD6970, or worse, $740 on two, you really need a faster CPU to avoid a bottleneck.
What I'd recommend, is going with HD6950s. They're 90% of the speed, for 81% of the price. They still have the 2GB of memory, and the high resolution resilience of the 6970.
Add the $152 you would spend on DDR2, the $140 you save on the graphics cards, and you have an 'upgrade pot' of $292.
An i5 2500K, P67A-UD4 and 8GB of XMS3 RAM are $534, so that's only $234 extra to raise. You simply won't see the benefit of crossfire without a faster processor.

 

Don't forget the DRM that's on the Sandy Bridge chip. P3 Processor Serial Number all over again if you ask me.

 

Doesn't affect anything I do, don't see how it's relevant to be honest.

 

Just thought i'd throw it out there.

it has the potential to be disastrous on so many levels but people will slop it up no matter Simply because its the Fastest thing on the block. Intel Knows this and there strong arming it.

 

I agree there, it takes a heavy duty system to properly utilize Crossfire. My 955 is barely enough to keep these 6850s happy, let alone a pair of 6970s. If you can get a decent overclock out of the CPU it will help buty it would be better matched with either slower cards or a faster CPU. That CPU at 3.4GHz+ would have no issue pushing my system just for the record and for the most part a pair of my cards would handle 2560 okay.

 

for shame AMD. pulling an nvidia and renaming the 5770 to a 6770. bad move.

 

Eh the going has been rather slow for me lately. My only game seeing any real play time is Bad Company 2. Been playing some Dirt and Grid and will probably start picking up new titles as the big wave comes out this year. Looking at Crysis 2, Homefront and Rage specifically. Call me an FPS junkie

 

I need an FPS fix jeff! LOL! I crave like you wouldn't believe. I wanna crank the speakers, and dim the lights and go crazy. But my circumstances won't allow. I need another part time job badly. I've been scouring the web for an answer to no avail. Yes, I'm being picky...
I must admit though, a pizza delivery guy seems appealing! Easy money, and sounds like good tips in the right area But I believe I use my own car, and I'm not gonna do that to my new ride