The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Currently bouncing around seasonal jobs and going to school a few credits at a time. Thus my ability to play a few games regularly. I do try to get some game time in every day. Later this year like late summer all the way through December I'm busy every day, so I'm playing what I can.

Mainly I have a backlog of games from the Golden Era of consoles ie Gamecube, PS2, Xbox etc and a few of the bigger ones on the current gen. Everything worthwhile on the PC in the past few years I've at least finished once.

If you wanna talk time spent look at me and Half Life 2. The game is a good 20-30 hours of play if you take some time and enjoy it and I've beaten it some 25 times. I really enjoy the story and gameplay and it always puts me in a very nostalgic place with my X800GTO Was the game that made me so passionate about the power of gaming on a PC.

 

It's only going in OEM PCs, it won't be sold at retail, so I don't really care. I can see why they're doing it, as being a number step behind will suggest the cards are out of date, and sticking with the 40nm process they can't really do that much with them, at the low-midrange.

Came back last night from one of the better LANs I've had, was a great laugh. Was actually in a room with two other 6970 owners, so for S***s and giggles we decided to all turn our fan speeds to 100%, an HD6970 quartet lol.
Was some Left 4 Dead 2 scavenge going on as a prize tournament (we're sponsored by crucial, so there's usually some mediocre RAM to give away), and alas won our first round, but our team (me, one of the guys who plays with us regularly online, and two less-skilled players, not bad, but still) was no match for the winners, a team consisting entirely of 4 of the people we play with regularly.
Some UT2004 Team deathmatch went on as well, some stupidly close matches there, we won both, with 60 versus 59 kills, and 101 versus 100. We also had the benefit of the room's AV system setup (we use university classrooms) and we had it playing oldskool game soundtracks from UT/UT04, Quake 2, Daytona USA and Need for Speed 3 playing whilst we were gaming. Damn epic.
LONG session of CS:Source gungame occurred as well, with some hilarious knife exploits going on. Loads of crazy maps I'd not played in before, including one which was essentially gg_punishment (you may not know it, but a very popular gungame map) but re-modelled, around the nvidia headquarters! lol
Had a couple of short games of TF2 as well to almost complete the Valve multiplayer spectrum (We've had some HL2M before, even as a tournament, but not this event sadly), which I found out seems to have some issues with Crossfire. Didn't get round to trying it with CF disables though, as there's easily enough performance to run the game on one GPU there.
Was lots of GRiD, we must have had around 20 races, probably more, another interesting performance shernanigans here, was getting 350fps, which seemed a bit high, until I realised that I had no shadows being rendered. Turned out the game had reconfigured itself to low. D'oh! 180fps after turning it back up. Still, not bad.
Had some Trackmania going on too, which also appears not to work with crossfire (although only on my PC, not on the CF rig next to me, which was also fine in TF2, but couldn't run UT04 in CF), but this time it was not a performance/artifacts issue, it was a quality issue. CF seemed to force mipmaps to minimum quality, so half the game looked like 320x240 res. Yuck. Again, easily solved though.
Had a few moments spare to play some DiRT2 as well, which I haven't done so far, plays pretty well on my system, not that I'd expect otherwise.

 

That was some amazing LAN party! Some close games also - 101 to 100, 60 to 59, you guys did okay! And what a spectrum of games - lots of Valve action sounds like. (I still have yet to take TF2 for a try - afraid of the learning curve I guess, lol.)

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Hmmmmm. Well, interesting perspective on the situation. You have a good point. If I substitute 6950s, I save $70 per card, or $140 for the pair, at 90% of the performance of dual 6970s I guess. If dual 6970s are going to overpower my Q9450, even overclocked, then it would make sense to save a bit and throttle back to 6950s.

BUT, if I am ultimately going to ditch the Q9450 platform, it would make more sense, possibly, to take the more powerful 6970 with me over to the spedo with the new 1155 motherboard.

So here's another way of looking at it: The 10% faster 6970 may help me smooth out a game or two, on my current platform. For example, BC2. Let's say I invest in $152 of DDR2 - ok I see your point - I have thrown good money into a dead end platform. Precisely what I did with the p4 when I spent $75 on the 670 chip that took me to 3.8mhz up from my 3.2. On top of that I spent another $50 on an extra gig of memory, so that I could have two gigs for BF2. Ok - so I blew $120 on antiquated hardware - but it allowed me to string along until this Q9450 platform with the quirky Asus p5e mobo, fell into my lap.

So similar logic for the Q9450. If I upgrade it with $152 worth of memory - memory that I can't take with me to a new 1155 platform - then I have pulled that money from my upgrade budget.

BUT - 8 gigs is going to run smoother than 4, even with just one 6970. (I'm back to talking 6970, because the extra $70 for that card, versus a 6950, is NOT a dead end investment - I can of course take that card along with me to the new platform.) And so, the grand total of $520 upgrade, consists of $370 that I get to take with me, and $152 sunk in a dead-end platform. However, the $152 increases the effective life of the dead-end platform for me - but I guess your main point is that I might as well forget about Warhead for now with the Q9450. OK.

I don't think I worded the above very well. Let me summarize in this question: Warhead aside, is there any point in my spending $152 on DDR2 memory?

I already have 4 gigs. I WILL be installing the 64bit O/S very soon. Let's say I leave Warhead sitting on the shelf (literally - I already own it, lol.) With a Q9450, maybe slightly overclocked, and a 6970, I think we all agreed a few weeks ago that I should see mid-30 fps from BC2.

So if I stay away from Warhead, and Metro, and those other hardware stressing games, do I really need more memory for BC2? With a 6970, would the game run smoother for me with 8 gigs of memory, when Jeff or Shaff are trying to nail my butt to the wall, than with my current 4 gigs?

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You have a new ride? What did you invest in? Is it the same car with the metal flakes in the transmission?

By the way, how would you handle the occasional social panic thing with those groups of total strangers you'd be delivering the pizza to. (Of course, you'd be riding in as the hero - the deliverer of VERY good eats - that probably would help a lot.) Some of what you said reminded me of a documentary I saw yesterday about the making of The King's Speech, which now I badly want to see. He had a panic issue which caused severe stammering. Have you seen the movie?

I like the other thing you said: "I need an FPS fix jeff! LOL! I crave like you wouldn't believe." That's exactly what caused me to start playing Condition Zero on my business desktop after too many months of abstinence. I had such an intense need to shoot something, it was crazy!!

By the way, Jeff, speaking of you, I note your BC2 concentration - it's the game that is getting the most use these days, you said. My gaming weekend is coming up this Friday through Monday, and I will be taking BC2 for a spin for the first time - still however on the 8800GTX - but the game put me at 2560x1600 resolution - which seems nice - but to do that I don't know how jaggy etc it's going to look - I don't know how it's going to play.

Shooting-wise I anticipate a steep learning curve until I am more of a help than a hindrance, but I'll try to jump right in on squad speak, if the other guys are using it. I noticed that the game apparently stresses squads more than BF2 did - I saw the button "Let us put you on a squad."

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Holy Crap! That's over 600 hours!!

Crazy - I was thinking of the game just today! (You guys won't believe me but a small group of family made a surprise visit to Seattle from LA when Miles was living up there - I think the occasion was his birthday. His wife met him at the back door of Valve for lunch, and the rest of us were just standing there when he came out and gave her a hug. Miles looked over at us, and he went into shock - he was dumbfounded. He didn't recognize any of us for a few seconds. Hahaha. It was priceless.

Anyway, he invited me in to playtest Half Life 2 for a few hours - I was stunned! "Yeah, sure, I'd like to do that.") He had already been telling me a lot about it. But in thinking about the game again this afternoon - I have already played it at least 4 times - a few years would have to pass before I'd go back to it again.

Still, you're right, it was soooo amazing. Handling my normal altitude nausea while running rapidly from combine rocket fire on the support tresses of the bridge - hundreds of feet above the water! The crazy "river ride" through the LA-like drainage canals. The spooky and sentimental visit to Alyx's old neighborhood, "We don't go to Ravenholm any more."

That was her old neighborhood Man! How dare those ghouls roam around jinxing that place up!

I think the most gripping part of the game for me, was meeting up with the rebels at the little "ranch" on the coast, after evading the ants in the dune buggy. I told Miles by phone later about the trouble I was having with the rocket launcher. He said I didn't pay close enough attention to the instructions. He said it would be better if I shot the weapon by firing randomly backward over my shoulder. With that tip, my game-play improved tremendously. The interaction with the citizens, for me, elevated that game to a special place in the single player fps genre.

I can see, Jeff, why it catapulted you to a focus on PC gaming. Come to think of it, it probably did the same for me, although I had never played on a console before going to a PC. (And virtually still haven't - maybe 10 minutes once trying an xbox!)

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Is that some kind of HDCP type of thing?

By the way, mentioning HDCP, after 60 days in route from China and a bunch of official-looking customs stamps on the package (my brother already got his money back and gave the guy a demerit) the $90 LG GGW-H20L optical drive my brother ordered from an ebay retailer for his phenom, finally arrived. (Newegg carried the product at one time.)

It seems like a great value, but probably won't last long - like Asus mobos, lol. He needed it because he had made a mistake and bought about 20 HD-DVDs - the "idiot" thought he was buying BluRays, lol. (I can say idiot - he doesn't read this forum - I HOPE!)

Anyway, I installed it out on the test bench, and it wouldn't initially play the HD-DVD on the arcsoft player, saying I flunked the HDCP test. I ran BDHD advisor, and saw that it was the Dell 20" LCD monitor that was the issue. The Cyberlink player also failed - but told me to switch from DVI to VGA. I did, got no screen image, put the DVI back on, and the movie started playing lol!

I defeated the HDCP! Take that Bill Gates!! Hahahaha. But the Toshiba big-screen 47" is indeed HDCP compliant, as I knew it was, so everything is now perfect.

We have to test the drive with a BluRay disk, and I told my brother that if it passes, he then has to pay the poor guy and reverse the bad rating, haha.

Rich

 

I'm buying my brothers 1996 Ford Explorer. Pretty good shape. I've always wanted an SUV

Social situations vary for me. On the job, things are more professional. I enter a kind of Mode. I have multiple different modes LOL! Some are more uncomfortable than others. Family gatherings for instance make me very nervous. Border on panic attacks. Interviews of course(like everyone else), Though I think I take it to an extreme. I panic so bad I shake. I pray people don't see this... On my computer, I feel half way normal. But not quite. In my own solitude, I can even make myself anxious. I know...That's not right. Believe me, I want to see a doctor about this, But talking about it is probably the worst nervousness...

Any way, back on topic.
How will my GTX 260 run on Dirt 1 and 2 I wonder. I may be coming in to some time to play. My Left arm may be approaching a medical situation. Long story

 

I don't think it's quite 600 hours just on Half Life 2 Rich. Consider the Episodes, mod content, etc. Just an expression more than an exact figure. But yeah I've played a lot of Half Life 2.

So my biggest time users are(approximately):

Battlefield 2 - 250 hours

Bad Company 2 - 200 hours(as of yet)

Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion inc mods, expansions etc - 200 hours

Crysis/Warhead inc tweaking, modding - 120 hours

Grid/Dirt - 100 hours

Half-Life 2/Episodes 1 & 2 - 200 hours

Left 4 Dead 1 & 2 - 150 hours

All just guesses of course but don't be surprised if it's pretty close. That's the large bulk of my PC gaming.

Add another 300 or so hours for everything else on PC and another 300 hours for console games and that's my entire gaming history since about 2005.

Without a proper way to track my entire history of gameplay that's the best I can come up with. Who knows? Maybe it could turn out to be way more, or way less...

 

xfire logs it if you need. thats what i use.


on xfire i have over 1500 hours of cod4 played, though i mus thave played a good 30-50 hours before using that.

 

LOL 1500 hours on one game. You can count me out.

Also, I have issues with Xfire. Never liked it much.

 

If I thought 6970 versus 6950 was a dead-end investment, I wouldn't have bought them for my system.
4GB versus 8GB really affects very little at this point. Of the games that need more than 4GB it encompasses crysis/warhead and GTA4. That's about it.
Anything else, if it does break 4GB, if I close a couple of background apps, it's under. The performance gain in games you can actually play on that Q9450/8800GTX is nil with 8GB of RAM at this point. It is only something that will be necessary after you make the graphics upgrade. You notice that I didn't upgrade my RAM until after the 6970s had been ordered.l
Even if the memory was transferrable to a new system it'd be silly to buy it now, since it isn't, it's completely pointless.

I'd have to hazard a guess at my playtime for these

CS: Source (mostly gungame) -c. 200 hours
Unreal Tournament 2004 - c. 500 hours
Unreal Tournament 3 - c. 100 hours
GRiD - c. 75 hours
Hl2/Episodes - single playthrough each, so 40 hours
Left 4 Dead 1/2 - c. 400 hours

+1. It was terrible.

 

Basically agreed with you Sam. There's really no benefit to going with 8GB of RAM unless building a system like yours or mine, and even then only Crysis needs it that badly. I found GTA4 to have very few differences while Crysis was pretty much completely transformed. Playing at maxed and I mean truly maxed settings sans AA is perfectly smooth and essentially hitch-free.

Also of note I only upped it to 8GB of RAM this month when I got a good offer, otherwise I'd still be on 4GB.

But to get to these settings you need quite a bit more than that 8800GTX. Again I stress greatly that if you care to overclock the CPU to a reasonable level, the Q9450 is still a monster performer. You can buy video cards first then, and do a platform switch later. CPU and platform aren't quite as time sensitive as video cards. The 8800GTX was truly a monster of a video card in it's day, but even two of them in SLI really lack the horsepower to play the newest games fluidly.

Didn't like it auto-updating my games, the voice quality was terrible(Steam is magnificent in comparison), caused really long boot times, the program itself is not generally very stable or reliable, need I go on? If it were more useful I would certainly have given it a better shot. But as it stands it's like having Steam in an application that didn't call for, and never needed it. If I need in-game voice and friends networking, Steam does it better. And to make my point clear I don't find Steam to be very well made either, but certainly a longshot from Xfire.

 

If it helps, my memory usage whilst playing Warhead (with all my background stuff open) is 4.7GB. I'm sure that 700MB could be shaved off other places.

In other news, the Geforce GTX560 Ti is out in the UK, at £210 ($275).

 

Read my edit as I tear Xfire a new one

I tend to keep my OS running lean and clean. A few background apps for essential functionality and that's it. If I'm not using it, it sure as hell don't need to be open

Currently have:

MSN
Steam
FRAPS
Rocketdock
CCC

That's my usual. Warhead itself takes about 1.45GB

 

Bit-Tech Analysis
reference points
HD6850: 150 (AMD scale)
HD6870: 171 (AMD scale)
HD6950: 192 (AMD scale)
HD6970: 212 (AMD scale)
GTX470: 160 (nVidia scale)
GTX480: 190 (nVidia scale)
GTX570: 194 (nVidia scale)

DiRT2
1920x1200 NoAA: 235A/173N
1920x1200 4xAA: 215A/168N
2560x1600 NoAA: 206A/165N
2560x1600 4xAA: 201A/164N

CoD:Black Ops
1920x1200 NoAA: 164A/165N [Approaching CPU Limit]
1920x1200 4xAA: 173A/166N [Approaching CPU Limit]
2560x1600 NoAA: 172A/165N
2560x1600 4xAA: 177A/160N

Just Cause 2
1920x1200 NoAA: 185A/181N
1920x1200 4xAA: 188A/170N
2560x1600 NoAA: 157A/163N [Below playability threshold]
2560x1600 4xAA: 171A/167N [Below playability threshold]

Bad Company 2
1920x1200 NoAA: 200A/175N
1920x1200 4xAA: 205A/173N
2560x1600 NoAA: 172A/163N [Below fluidity threshold]
2560x1600 4xAA: 187A/165N [Below fluidity threshold]

Idle consumption
HD6870: 20W
HD6950: 29W
HD6970: 31W
GTX560Ti: 26W

Load consumption
HD6870: 151W
HD6950: 159W
HD6970: 203W
GTX560Ti: 185W

Idle temperatures (assume 25C room)
GTX560Ti: 33C
HD6870: 39C
HD6970: 39C
HD6950: 53C

Load temperatures (assume 25C room)
GTX560Ti: 62C
HD6870: 69C
HD6950: 79C
HD6970: 79C
GTX470/480: 97C



Conclusion
The GTX560Ti, in a mildly AMD-biased environment like CoD:BlackOps, is a direct rival to the HD6870. In relatively neutral titles like Just Cause 2, it essentially equals the HD6950, as far as 1920x1200.
At higher resolutions, the GTX560Ti falls flat and ends up comparing to weaker AMD GPUs. However, since these resolutions are beyond the ability of cards in this price point, this a little irrelevant.
In mildly nvidia-biased titles such as Bad company 2, the GTX560Ti is able to be on the heels of the HD6970, a considerably more expensive card ($370 vs $275).
In the further-biased DiRT2, the GTX560Ti is able to clearly surpasss the HD6970 at reduced resolutions. However, frame rates here are quite high so this may not have the impact that the numbers indicate.
With additional stress on the card, the 560 sits just behind the HD6970.
The cooler on the 560 is every bit as adept as that on the 460. Temperatures are well within spec, too within spec in fact, the card could run quieter safely.
Power-wise Fermi still hasn't caught the Radeons, but the efficiency of the GTX560 is admirable, A 185W card performing at HD6950 level on average, meaning Fermi efficiency has now in fact surpassed that of the Radeon HD5870.
Heat gremlins conquered, noise gremlins conquered, and now efficiency gremlins conquered. It may have taken 16 months since the HD5 series release, but there's now no real hardware disadvantage to owning a Fermi, ignoring nvidia's other ills as a company in general.

 

HardOCP analysis

F1 2010 @ 2560x1600 4xAA
GTX560Ti: 142 [170 at 1920x1200 8xCS]
HD6870: 171
HD6950: 190 [176 with 8xAA]

Result: Landslide to AMD. The HD6870 far surpasses the GTX560, able to run at 30" res, versus the 24" of the geforce.


Civilization V @ 2560x1600 8xAA
HD6870: 171 [203 at 2xAA]
GTX560Ti: 195 [233 at 4xAA]
HD6950: 209 [217 at 4xAA]

Result: Minor win for nvidia. The GTX560 can surpass the marginally more expensive HD6950 at 4xAA and below. Only at 8xAA with a mediocre frame rate does the HD6950 take over.


Metro 2033 @ 2560x1600 Hi NoAA
HD6870: 171 [224 at 1920x1200 AAA VH]
GTX560Ti: 177 [240 at 1920x1200 AAA VH]
HD6950: 196

Result: Minor win for AMD. The GTX560Ti beats the HD6870 by 3.5% at 30", 7% at 24", but costs 15% more.


Bad Company 2 @ 2560x1600 4xAA
HD6870: 171 [251 at 1920x1200 8xADMS]
HD6950: 205 [238 at 2xAA]
GTX560Ti: 233 [252 at 1920x1200 8xTRMS]

Result: Very close, win for AMD. The GTX560Ti cleans up at 2560x1600, a resolution in which even it isn't very playable. At more sensible settings it's a dead heat between the GTX560Ti and the cheaper HD6870. The more expensive HD6950 can still pull off 2560x1600 if AA is reduced.


Mafia II @ 2560x1600 AA -NoAPEX
HD6870: 171 [265 at 2560x1600 NoAA Med-APEX]
GTX560Ti: 176
HD6950: 199

Result: Minor win for AMD. The GTX560Ti only surpasses the HD6870 by 3%, versus its 15% higher price. The ability to run Apex at 30" requires the removal of AA.



Overall, mostly wins on the AMD-side.
HardOCP do note that the stock cooler on the GTX560 is both quieter and cooler than that of the HD6 series cards. Given how quiet the HD6 card already are though, I don't really see this as much of an advantage.

 

I really need to upgrade, I've got my phenom 2 x4 965 sitting in an AM2+. just afraid that when i do up grade to AM3 2 weeks later they'll have AM4 With DDR5. which is my typical experience.

been eyeballing the 890FX but the only thing different than my current 790FX it seem is USB3 And Sata3 Support. im just wondering if the 890 chipset offers better performance.

 

i do hate the GTX 560!


i have the money to burn right now, about £350. was ready to get an SSD and a 6950 (which i wanted to bios mod to a 6970, but now damn this makes it hard to choose, esp as it OCs like a beast.

hopefully this starts a price war, and these cards drop to below 150 soon?

never has xfire auto update my games, though steam wants to do any time i open steam. but thats not an issue to me. would liek if xifre did that. no ram leakages, no problems with either one. never use wither to voip with. always use skype or vent or mumble or teamspeak.

 

The waiting forever for my PC to boot with xfire installed is what killed it off for me.

 

Better performance? Probably not except for some minor benchmark gains owing to DDR3. Typically though 890FX will have better power management, better OCing, likely run cooler etc. Heard nothing but good things about it, but AFAIK it's just 790FX with some new features.

Ahh but Steam has sheer simplicity. Also I already use it for a great many games, so it means I don't have an extra program sitting there. For me the choice is obvious. Everybody get on Steam, join a group chat. Simple simple simple. Makes managing large groups of people easy when there's a central program we all have and needs no special configuration. Open the window, click chat, done.

Same here. At first I thought I had hardware issues =/

 

The monster GPU performance index chart
HD6970: 211
HD6950: 191
HD5870: 179
HD6870: 170
HD5850: 157
HD6850: 149
HD5830: 132
HD4890: 114
HD4870: 100
HD5770: 92
HD4860: 85
HD4850: 80
HD5750: 77
HD4770: 79
HD4830: 60
HD5670: 50
HD3870: 45
HD5570: 42
HD4670: 40
HD2900XT: 40
HD3850: 37
HD2900Pro: 35
HD3690: 25
HD4650: 25
HD2900GT: 25
X1950XT-X: 24
X1900XT: 20
HD3650: 18
X1800XT: 16
HD4550: 15
HD5450: 14
X1800GTO: 12
HD2600XT: 12
HD4470: 11
HD4450: 10
HD3470: 10
HD4250IGP: 9
HD2400XT: 7
HD2600 Pro: 6
HD2400 Pro: 3
HD3450: 3

GTX580: 230
GTX570: 194
GTX480: 190
GTX560Ti: 180
GTX470: 161
GTX4601GB: 134
GTX285: 128
GTX465: 128
GTX460: 122
GTX275: 121
GTX280: 112
GTX260+: 100
GTX260: 91
GTS450: 90
GTS250: 76
9800GTX+: 76
9800GTX: 70
8800GTX: 67
8800GTS512: 65
9800GT: 58
8800GT: 57
GT240: 50
9600GT: 43
8800GTS640: 38
9600GSOG92: 37
8800GS: 37
GT430: 32
GT220: 25
9600GSOG94: 23
9500GT: 19
8600GTS: 19
8600GT: 15
9400GT: 5
8500GT: 5
8400GS: 3
G210: 2


Yes, these charts are comparable as the HD4870 and GTX260-216 (denoted GTX260+) are direct performance equals, and both have been used as the reference points of 100.
GTX560Ti scores are derived from the new benchmark from HardOCP released today, and are not an approximation.

Index 191 HD6950 1GB for $273 shipped, or Index 180 GTX560Ti for $258 shipped? I think I know what I'd choose


For dual config setups, apply roughly the following figures:

X1 series crossfire: x1.4
HD2 series crossfire: x1.6
HD3 series crossfire: x1.6
HD4 series crossfire: x1.8
HD5 series crossfire: x1.75
HD6 series crossfire: x1.95
HD4/5/6 series TriCF: x2.5
HD4/5/6 series QuadCF: x3.1

8800 series SLI: x1.7
9000 series SLI: x1.7
GTX2 series SLI: x1.75
GTX470/480 SLI: x1.8
GTX460/GTX5 series SLI: x1.85
GTX2/3/4/5 series TriSLI: x2.6

 

if i'm not mistaken isnt DDR3 slower than DDR2 but capable of higher Bandwidth. still makes you wonder why its still called Double Data Rate.

 

Nope, DDR3 is faster but has higher latencies. Most benchmarks will show it to be marginally faster overall than DDR2. In practice they are mostly the same. Though AMD CPUs will show a slightly larger difference with lower latencies due to the nature of their memory controller.

I'ts called double data rate because the memory has a base clock. My 1066 is running at 533MHz DOUBLED, not 1066MHz