The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Thanks
that made the decision easier

 

You're friggin weird, K!

 

How old is that message he quoted?

 

DXR lost 200 hours of web development work. That's five weeks at 40 hours a week of brain-intensive effort. That would be enough to shake up anybody. Wow!!!

In that case, DXR, you will be glad to know that I dropped my grandiose plans for Raid 6, and one day shortly after post #7439 (3 mos ago) I said to myself - "Naw, I'll just put mirrors in it, Raid 1." So now I am back, three months later. I returned the server last week, after writing more than 150 pages of documentation explaining everything. (But I said, "You don't have to read any of it - just call me if something stops working.")

I am using software Raid, the Intel Matrix Manager, with four sata ports on the southbridge - the board is the P5W DH asus. Sam's favorite brand, Inside the computer are four desktop quality generic hard drives, 7200 rpm. Raid 1 is easy to manage, and hardly any strain on the E6600 dual core cpu. The server has three sets of Raid 1 mirrors total. There is an O/S mirror, 149 gigs, only about 25 gigs used - so if one O/S drive fails, that's covered. That is the one that actually failed. There are two bigger drives, 500 gig and 640 gig, in a 500 gig Raid 1 mirror, for the data - which currently is 127 gigs of pictures and videos.

The third mirror is in the external backup. Perhaps a bit of overkill, you might think, but to me, if your ultimate backup is not bullet-proof, your whole system is weak.



Newegg unbundled a $300 esata/usb all-aluminum box with rear mag-lev fan, and took out the two 3.5" hard drives, and priced the Cavalry at only $50!



It has a JMB controller with a tiny 8501 imbedded microprocessor, that supports Raid 1, 0, jbod, and spanning. I bought it a couple days after the unbundling for this project.

Miles already has several usb 2.5" external drives. Those are great and super convenient - no power supply needed and they come right into My computer for true hot swap.

This box needs a power supply. It sits on the computer, plugged in all the time and it is always turned off. I put two 1 TB WD enterprise drives in it, in Raid 1.



When you turn it on, the new power over esata controller provides hot swap and port multiplier for jbod (unlike the jmicron esata port than came with the P5W DH that provides neither port multiplier nor hot swap) but you must "reactivate" the drive to see it in My Computer - a quick SCSI operation. USB is superior in that one respect. However, esata transfer rate is 3X faster than USB 2.0, for a 28 minute backup of the whole 127 gigs, versus one and half hours on usb.

I ruined two of those drives doing the project, due to installing that new $40 power over esata controller.



The new controller has a design flaw, and did not correctly carry the 5 volt floppy power that I fed it, over to TWO drives running at the same time on the power over esata cables.



Running one drive was fine, but I started messing around with XP software Raid, doing some testing, and I had two hard drives sitting on top of the computer, that I was trying to run in Raid 1, or Raid 0, to test transfer times.

I could not figure out what had gone wrong until after ruining the second drive (I lost $25 per drive on RMA back to newegg - restocking etc.) and then realizing that the card DID support two devices, as long as only one was on the power over esata cable, and the other was on a regular esata to sata cable. So that meant it was a power issue - 5 volts for the hdd controller electronics. I ended up disconnecting the floppy power, because I installed a floppy drive for Miles so I could use the F6 Raid floppy and enable recovery console if I ever need it, and I connected the usb cable to the card and a matching port on the P5W DH, and that supplied clean 5 volts for powering two hdds at the same time.



So without knowing it, due to faulty controller card design, I was earlier feeding the TWO hdds gray 5 volt power. Consequently I developed pending sectors, and then the drives started failing the drive manufacturer diagnostic tests. I got the wd LifeGuard vendor diagnostics, and similar from seagate. What a head-scratcher that was. But during the reading I had read that bad sectors can develop from power failures during head reads - and that thought came back to me later and helped me figure out what the problem was.


I EDITED WIKI - HAHAHAHA
And to cap off the project, if you go to Wiki and read the S.M.A.R.T. article - very well-written, by the way - I actually contributed to the article by editing out a mistake in the Current Pending Sector count section, lol. I'm not kidding - the first and probably last time I will ever edit Wiki. On the two drives that were ruined, I had 5 current pending sectors on one, and 1 current pending sector on the other. The pending sectors went away, but ultimately the drives, as I say, failed the extensive wd lifeguard full test.



The author made a mistake at the end of the first sentence - he said that a sector that experiences a read error (which is then able to be corrected through the ECC circuitry, so it is not what is called a URE, an uncorrected read error) is placed on a pending sector list. He said, that prior to being re-mapped, it is removed from the pending sector list, on a subsequent successful read or write. (I have the exact wording below.) So if you can read the sector a second time, successfully, then it is removed from the current pending sector list, and it does not get re-mapped.

His mistake was in adding the two words, "or write" that I have colored above in red. The second sentence said that the pending sector is re-mapped on a subsequent write.

Well, if you're going to remap it when you write, then how would a successful write take it off the pending sector list, and disable the need for remapping. It didn't make sense - the two sentences didn't fit together logically.

He had a footnote for that section, so I read the footnote, written from a hard drive manufacturer. The way the footnote was written was completely logical, and I saw how he had gotten himself confused. So I decided to stick my neck way out, reminding me of the few rare times I have dared to correct Sam, lol, and I felt compelled, on the spot, to delete the part in red, and fix his mistake.

That's what I did. Then wiki asks you to write your rationale for your edit, and wiki warned me that if I didn't sign up, my url would become public. Well, I didn't care who knew my url - I was right, the author screwed up, so I just told them why I made the change and didn't bother signing up.

Several weeks later the "fix" was still in place, and now 2 more months later, I just googled "wiki smart" and went to current pending sector count, and it says: "If an unstable sector is subsequently read successfully, this value is decreased and the sector is not remapped" - as per my edit, lol. So I guess that makes me a wiki contributing editor.

Hahahaha. For some reason I think that is really funny. More later, I'll slowly catch up over the next month or so.

PS on a gaming note, since the project took me away from gaming for two months and the forum for three months, in the last few weeks I have gone on a total gaming binge, but I also have a real estate escrow that is closing, so business is still happening.

I finished Black Ops - oh man, going on the night raid, attacking the Cong in the river boat, to the sounds of "Pleased to meet you .... hope you caught my name - but what's troubling you .... is the nature of my game" by the Stones - SO COOL!!! Yeah, it's Treyarch - but they are getting better. Some really cool stuff in that game.

For multiplayer, back to Left 4 Dead 1 and 2. I was playing 1 for quite a bit, expert, pretty intense, only 3 main specials to worry about, but now I'm back to 2 - in some ways it is cooler, more interesting, a step up from 1, but almost nobody trying expert for good reason. I jumped in on plantation finale just in time for the whole team to be raped - they had no idea what they were doing. So one main idiot that just wanted to signal the boat - no planning - he left. I suggested play the corner out behind the house - this was advanced - a new guy joined in - we did pretty good, they lit the last two tanks and everybody incapped - but I'm running all the way around the map - tanks die, everybody up - I reminded them about the extra health packs under the stairs, and I jetted to the back gate. Gate crashed open, I'm yelling "Get here to the gate" and we all got out! Cool!

Then bridge finale - advanced - meet on top of the gas tanker and regroup - meet at the base of the hill then fight to the top, hold out while people restock in the ambulance, then meet in the ammo van and start the tank - backtrack to the base of the hill - he goes up, we go down, he stays low, we go high. Meet at the ambulance. I'm screaming "get in here" and one guy says "I'm trying, but I'm b&w." I jump out to help, he jumps in "there's health packs get yourself healed" and spraying out holding the zombies back. Healthy team charges out - tank is still not caught up to us - jump up on the gas tanker - toss a pipe, jump on the bus - only one guy made it to the 'copter as a charger caught up and did us all in - but that was still okay - one guy out was better than nothing. Haha. Tough finale!

So yes, back on Left 4 Dead 2 now.

But mainly - back on BC2.

Especially since I just accidentally discovered squad deathmatch in BC2, Vietnam maps - this must be what Jeff has been raving about - it is so much better than rush or conquest. I never really knew what Jeff was talking about - how his squad was so dominating.



Squad deathmatch makes you really play as a squad. But Jeff - nobody uses a mic - how does that work, Jeff? I tried the "push to talk" but nobody mentioned back that they heard me. One time I heard a guy talking. And one time there was a lot of noise - maybe it was mic noise - I changed squads and the noise stopped. So yes, maybe the push to talk communication is squad-based. It must be if the noise stopped by changing squads. It's too bad that they don't have a mic test like valve software. Come on Battlefield guys - get your act together.

I am mostly assault, M16, but uzi is not bad for engineer with rocket launchers to kill tanks. Uzi surprisingly can kill at long distance - but the hard sight blocks a lot of the view. For medic, I at first was an M60 guy, but I'm getting better at XM22 light-weight machine gun - 200 rounds, extra clip means 400 total rounds - very fast fire rate - there is so much flame it's hard to see but if you lift it for head shots, you see it connect, and the quick lettering that says "killing the enemy 50 points" tells you that you can move your hard sight over to the other guys - spraying the whole time - pretty good penetration through building timber, weeds, foliage.

I think that to be effective with that weapon, which is not super-powerful, it's better to be a support gunner, as you would really be with a light machine gun, standing a little back from the immediate confrontations. (Usually I am doing very well to get up to 1 to 1, sometimes a bit higher, usually not, but I had my best score with that weapon, almost 2 to 1 kill/death ratio.)

With squad deathmatch, you play on a smaller version of the main five Vietnam maps - four squads max, 4 players per squad max, 16 players max. You switch back and forth between being a GI or being a Vietnamese soldier. When you are a Cong you can see the swatches of red leather on your left arm. Then you must shoot any GI you see, there can be 8 of those - but also there can be 4 enemy Congs that you must also kill, so don't get so pre-occupied with killing GIs that you forget about the enemy Cong.



It can be a little tricky, because guys are always running up behind you that are on your squad, and who just re-spawned at your position. After a while you stop turning around when you hear those immediate footsteps behind you. That can be a bad habit to fall into.

I prefer the maps that have friendly fire turned off, after killing one of my squad-mates accidentally. Occasionally those footsteps you hear behind you are the enemy, and if you are a Cong and they are a Cong, and you don't check for the green lettering above their head, you may be dead real soon. I have had GI's run up along-side me, and then I noticed red lettering and killed them - they had made the same mistake I make a lot - they assumed I was on their squad, lol.

Anyway, I have played that, at one time, for 16 hours straight - way past my level of competency and way past my fatigue point. I think I am pretty competent for up to 4 hours max - half-hour to break in, then 3 plus hours of energetic and focused kill time. After that it is downhill, lol.

But the game can be hard to stop, particularly if you like the squad you are on, so like any alcoholic, I take it to the point where I can't hardly even see straight any more. hahaha.

I might try it on the non-Vietnam maps to check them out - maybe even tonight - different maps, different, more modern weapons, different strategies.

And my 8800GTX is performing pretty well - Miles had said something a month ago about it being very remote that the company would ever "recall" the 9450 computer I "borrowed" from him - it's been 18 months since he first got it, and I have had it for 9 months already - so a few days ago, now that the weather has turned really hot, I went ahead and modded a filtered side intake fan, putting to good use all the practice on the P4 machine - a very clean job. That has dropped GTX temps at least 5 degrees and seems to have put a stop to the crashes I was experiencing. So I moved everything back up to 4xAA and 2560x1600 on everything - and it is all smooth!

I didn't tell Miles that I cut the hole in the case, he told me 9 months ago when he "loaned" it to me not to do anything like that - but like I say, that was a long time ago. Hell if they recall the machine, they should be glad, I just nicely upgraded it for them!



It took me 4 hours and maybe 120 separate drill holes through the stiff antec steel, around the little circle with the tiny 1/32" bit - I broke one of them - to get the project started - that's where aluminum would be so much easier to drill through.)[/i]

Anyway, thanks for talking about it before, Jeff - I see that squad deathmatch is the total BC2 bomb, fuhshizzle!

Rich

 

Actually Rich I play all the modes pretty equally. Deathmatch is hella fun though.

Just got done beating CoD Black Ops. I must say it is one of the most poorly made games ever. There are times when the graphics are great and other times where it looks like they took Infinity Wards stuff and duct taped it to a retarded dog. CoD2 still looks and plays better. There's my second complaint. The weapons have no impact at all. It feels and sounds like you're shooting a BB gun. Even the heavy stuff is like *pop* when it should be *KABLAMEXPLOSION*. Not to mention the bugs, performance issues, and the characters all look like a RealDoll in a military uniform. You can tell they tried, but it's just a poor quality game. /end rant

Yeah it's just terrible. All the console jockeys say its amazing but they've never played a real CoD game. CoD1 was even way better made and had better audio, level design, gun physics, etc.

I WILL MAKE THE MENTION that the story itself is great and so are the characters, even the on-rails sequences are fun. But it's all destroyed by the shoddy worksmanship, stiff animation, and graphical inconsistencies.

Lemme compare to CoD2, a game that came out in 2005:

Graphics: CoD2 9/10 Black Ops 6/10(Everything looks blotchy and like cardboard, just like WaW. Really feels like a console port when all the Infinity Ward CoD games were ported from PC to console)

Sound: CoD2 9/10 Black Ops 5/10(It sounds like they recorded gun sounds from other games with the speakers turned up and everything sounds flat)

Performance: CoD2 9/10 Black Ops 7/10(It runs AND looks worse, for no reason)

Gameplay: CoD2 10/10 Black Ops 6/10(Everything is buggy, the scripting often fails, and the entire game is a "try-and-die" corridor crawl where all the enemies spawn in the same place and sometimes right in front of you. Not to mention the hit boxes are horrible and it feels like you're shooting a BB gun)

So yeah Black Oops has failed to advance the series in any way and whatever part of the engine that was capable of looking nice, they replaced with cardboard and terrible textures.

I will also add that the guns are awesome. Again, the sounds for them suck, but the variety and realism of the different modifications were one of the major things keeping me playing to the end. My final verdict: Black Ops is worth a play for the story and guns alone, but expect to be very underwhelmed. It is easily the worst version of Call of Duty ever made. Even Treyarch's OTHER CONSOLE GAMES were better made. It's not a lack of technical skill that hurt Black Ops, it was a lack of quality. I might have rated Black Ops higher but it's a fricking Call of Duty so I WILL compare it to the other games.

Also of note: Treyarch produced the United Offensive expansion for CoD1 and I loved it. It was a truly great game up to the quality of the Infinity Ward original easily. What happened Treyarch?

 

Can you see the majority of Rich's images, none of them load for me...

Edit: never mind, chrome bug. They load in firefox.

 

Quite frankly Chrome sucks really bad and the new Firefox is such an improvement in stability and performance that Chrome has basically been out-gunned at their own game. I mean, experiences and opinions may vary wildly, but I simply don't like Chrome at all. That is one of many reasons.

 

Hahahaha.

Yeah, but the Stones' song was awesome!

Until I learned that you could hit Esc and reduce the difficulty at any time, then play in mission mode and get back in and raise it back up again, I was ready to throw the game away at that corridor sequence after blowing up the satellite missile launch in Russia. They just kept coming down the corridor, ad nauseam. Even on hard it was disgusting.

Then the one where you are supposed to get down to the trench line - so boring. I think I dropped it all the way down to easy to be able to light one of those napalms. You are at risk for about 5 seconds as the cut scene takes over of grabbing the barrel, slicing your knife into the top, then tossing it down - killed every time on higher difficulty levels - hahaha. Yeah definitely some weird parts.

But the Stones - ode to the Devil or whatever the song is named - on that cool night, going down the river with the other boat and the marines running along on the shore - worth the price of admission. A good job with that piece of cardboard, haha.

What are we to expect now out of Infinity Ward since the main guys bailed?

Jeff, you are probably right about everything. You are definitely a connoiseur. I didn't seem to be too bothered by the gun sounds - I don't remember that. I will tell you one gun that I find the sound is "interesting" and that is the medic weapon xm22 on vietnam bc2. I am beginning to get used to it but it doesn't sound powerful. However, it is not overbearing to listen to - it doesn't grate on your nerves. And that's good.

Oh, so - that reminds me. Do you guys use your mics on squad talk on squad deathmatch?

Rich

 

Whenever I play Bad Company 2, my squad will be my friends, and we'll just be using skype to communicate instead. I've never used the game's in-built voice system.

 

That is interesting, Sam. Since you have a wide group of friends through your LAN events, I can see how you would be able to put a session of BC2 together like that.

The in-game voice system does not seem to have much development put into it - no mic test - complete different from Left 4 Dead. But yet, unless my memory is faulty - I believe Jeff said his squads were all communicating with mic, and that was a big factor in their ability to dominate the matches. Jeff is in a clan, if I recall - so maybe these were his clan members.

On another note, I guess I have now caught up with the forum - and I just read Jeff's review of Red River - and I am now downloading it in Steam, lol. Thanks again, Jeff.

By the way, a few pages back, you guys were talking about BC2 being tough to handle for some cards - although Jeff mentioned that his frames jumped to 70-90 on the Vietnam maps. I am getting about 50+ fps, and after modding in the new filtered side intake fan, I maxed all the settings. My 8800GTX is running 75 degrees or less - it got cold last night and it was churning out the frames at around 68 degrees. However, on one map - I think my ping was near 175 though - I did experience some momentary pauses - about 1/5th of a second, every minute or so - not too bothersome. I didn't know if that was ping, or some graphic card stuff - probably the card, right? Or - could it have been server lag - yes that is also a possibility, right?

Anyway, Sam or Jeff, if you have any thoughts on squad talk - that would be interesting. But my finding is that guys in the BF community just don't use mics. So different from the valve community, Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, Left 4 Dead - everybody chatting away. LOL

Rich

 

Server or client lag in bad company 2 won't manifest itself as a pause in the game, you'll just find people teleporting around and being hard to hit.

 

Basically the worst gun sounds in a game ever. Ever.

That's the XM22 Stoner LMG and it doesn't sound powerful because it fires the same 5.56x45 NATO round that the M16 fires. High velocity, light weight rounds.

I don't use it because noone else will. When squadded up with my friends we use Steam group chat.

Yep it's basically Dragon Rising with fewer frustrating technical issues. The major issue was the FOV being about 60 for Dragon Rising. In Red River it's a much more reasonable 75.

Plenty of people use mics but not in-game. Most servers have an associated TeamSpeak VOIP server.

 

Was curious how much my BFG gtx 260 would go for on ebay. $69 is ridiculous cheap, isn't it? I thought I'd get closer to one hundred. Apparently not. There's no way I'd sell it now. I have an Asus 8600Gt I was considering slapping back in, to get some money quick on the BFG 260. No way i'm letting it go that cheap. Heck, if they're that cheap, an Sli option could be in my near future. I wonder just how much gain I'd get though...

 

your mobo wont allow for SLI, its got to have a Nvidia Chipset.

 

Oops. Forgot about that Well, you can see how much of a gamer I am LOL!

I may have to make my next GPU an AMD then. My future board is another AMD chipset.

This board supposedly supports 4-way SLI or 4-way Crossfire.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128508

 

Nice, its not based on the fusion chip set either. performance probably favors ATi over Nvidia...but its nice to know we finally get option in that area.

 

Ah - very interesting. As perhaps 1/100%, or maybe 1/1000% of gamers who actually own an assault rifle - (Jeff owns an AK for those who don't know) - when you say that gun sounds are off, I can't argue. That is VERY interesting that the XM22 is throwing out M16 rounds - why is it called Stoner - is that the name of the manufacturer, or a weird label the grunts put on it?

I have never owned an assault rifle but I did actually clean, and fire, an M16, including at night. I remember watching the tracers travel across about 1/4 mile - I think the targets were 1000 feet away. I got a few bullseyes. The round travels fast - what is it Jeff - about 800 miles/hour? I would say it took maybe 1/2 second to travel across as I moved to the side of the range and was watching other guys firing. I think every third round was a tracer. The rounds are big - but it's all powder - the head is little like a 22 round - but moving FAST!

What is the 45 on the end of the "5.56x45 NATO" name - the weight of the round? The round is like a 22 - meaning .22 inches, or about 1/2 a cm, or 5.56 mm. What is the 45 - 45 grams?

Man! Sam uses Skype with his buds - and you use Steam. I am running the game through Steam, but I didn't know you could do that - Steam group chat. That is awesome - could you explain very quickly how I would do that? Another thing - is it push to talk - or could I use open mic like on the left 4 deads - I much prefer that - too many things going on to push another button.

I don't really know what you mean, field of view. Is that distance? I thought we already said that dragon rising had amazing ability to see soldiers at long distances - which I am finding also with red river.

Is that fusion actually working now? I know that Sam was hugely interested for a while - but I was highly skeptical, lol - sounded too good to actually work, haha.


RED RIVER
I am indebted to Jeff once again. For any hardcore military FPS guy like myself, this game is on the must-have list.

No question it is more structured than Dragon Rising. I got so angry at the Staff Sergeant Knox for making me come down and play the Assault the Taji stronghold on the lower level, that I shot him in the foot once. I started coming down and running right into him, face to face and pushing him back - but he still knocked me out of the game several times. He said "if you don't come down now" and I was already down!

After I shot him, I thought he would just heal himself, but Knox getting incapped if only for a second started the round over again, lol.

The game is very immersive - maybe it's the Dell 30" - or maybe it's the mescaline - just kidding!!! - but I thought he would be grateful when I went across the river and killed the sniper who had him pinned on his belly. But no! Finally I told myself - "Rich you fool - you aren't playing squad deathmatch any more - there are no real players here - every goddamn player is part of the programming - nobody is going to be grateful about SH*T!" I blame the Dell 30" - or maybe there is some genetic malfunction.

Finally I said "Rich, stop being so goddamn stubborn - the game just taught you how great it is to go high and get the drop on all the bad guys - but they obviously are not going to let you do that for this chapter - so cut it out and figure out where that damn rocket launcher dude is hiding who kills you every time!"

Finally I got halfway smart - the mescaline wore off a bit - still kidding!!! - I don't do that stuff - (anymore ) - and I moved along on the river side of the wall, where my squad refused to go.

That was way better, we inched along, and this time the rocket launcher guy could not totally take me out because of the partial shielding. It's amazing how obvious that solution was - maybe I was actually doing weed and going through a STOOPID phase.

(DDR don't kick me for the drug kidding - I have been watching the Chapelle show DVDs again - for the record I do not endorse any illegal activity of any kind - and to my knowledge the video game lobby has enough money that playing video games is not yet illegal - but I would do it anyway as a conscientious objector.)

Back to Red River - lately I have been playing, not the campaign - but the firefight mission - the one where you and your squad defend against waves of PLA dudes (chinese) charging in. It gets really hairy when they start using high mobility vehicles - jeeps with mounted 50 caliber machine guns. You can kill the shooter - but I have learned that the jeeps, which have bullet proof windows - can disgorge a bunch of enemies at a moment's notice, so I have lately decided it's just better to use the rocket weapon - some kind of anti-tank and anti-personnel missile - and blast the jeep all to smashed-up on-fire hell, which kills the 50 caliber shooter and everybody inside the thing.

I like running up on the hillside - and if I go too far up, the remote game voice that yells at you, this time it's not SSgt Knox - says "Get back to your squad you idiot - you're needed as the point man" but you can go up for a minute or so - one time a jeep ran right up the hill 20 feet along side me and got me with the 50. My squad is Taylor, with the grenade launcher, Bennedi, with the light machine gun - which might be an XM22 in fact - and Soto with the sniper rifle. I tried doing the mission by making myself a XM22 guy and I couldn't shoot anything with that machine gun - so my respect for Bennedi went way up and I went back to my two assault rifles.

One time I survived the first, AND the second, set of waves, and the game announcer dude said "Do you really want to do wave 3?" Fool that I am I kept going, lol. Maybe I was at 70,000 points, maybe gold at 80,000 by the time I was killed off, but I forgot to look.

I think I'm going to jump on it right now, for about 3 hours, and see if I can perfect this wave management.

In the campaign itself, I am at the "holding back the PLA hordes while the helis evacuate the wounded marines" having fallen back after manning the mounted 50. By the way, I found in this mission, that as I kept playing, the mounted 50 ran out of ammo - so I am now using it like a sniper rifle - one shot kill - just one round at a time trying for that beautiful red X that means one less enemy to worry about. That so reminds me of firing the M16 in Left 4 Dead, for example at the airport finale - and trying for all head shots to save ammo - and to get that beautiful red spray of heads exploding as the horde charges up the hill. That's your only guarantee a zombie is out of commission, when she/he is headless.

Performance-wise, the side intake fan keeps temps below 75, mostly below 70. But this game seems to be quite a bit more gpu intensive than BC2. I was getting only 25fps with textures high, isotropic 4x, and only 2xAA. I dropped all 3 of those, and got about 30, but with AA off there was a lot of aliasing - terrible!

So I increased my gpu clock, like a year ago - from 594 to 621, and upped memory clock and the other clock, 100 each, settings that I recall were stable a year ago. I picked up 9% increased minimum fps on furmark, at a temp cost of only +3 degrees, from 76 to 79.

It is very stable in-game, and runs cool as I mentioned, so I added back on 2xAA - way better - much less aliasing than nothing. I tried adding back on high textures and 4x isotropic filtering, but that dropped me back to laggy 25 again. So right now I am getting about 28-29 and it seems smooth. Same as last year. Sam being the connoisseur of what is really smooth would object, but for me anything close to 30 seems to work - given my leaden reaction times. I think DXR said a while ago that an extra 3 fps was helpful for him too, from time to time, when he had his 8800 on a slight overclock.

Well, got to go "ride the waves" and see if I can get these high-mobility vehicles under control and maybe even make it to wave 3 again. This time I'll try to remember to mortar everything and exit via the chopper, the way that Jeff likes to do. Will they get upset if I mortar headquarters on my way out? Yeah, they probably won't let the points count.

Who can I shoot in the foot this time?

Rich

 

Omega/DXR (last page, didn't notice the new one!) For AMDs that is certainly true, but it is not the case globally any more. Intel said no to any more nforce chipsets on their platform (and I applaud that decision tbh). Unfortunately GTX260s aren't going to be worth much at all any more. After all, the GTS450 does everything the 260 does and more (DX11), for half as many watts, and they cost $100 new, only $70 after MIR. A 2-3 year old, big, heavy, power hungry, technologically outdated version of same isn't going to fetch much. Is the same issue I had with my 4870X2. With HD6870s the price that they were, I couldn't charge more than £90 for mine in the end. Still, that's a 35% return, which isn't too bad for 2 1/2 years I suppose.