The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

I agree with your statements Sam I bought Left 4 dead 1 & 2. VERY enjoyable games. I'll come clean, and say that I did initially acquire the first one before I bought it. I found it to be very fresh, and unique. Certainly more so than any other game I'd played. I will support developers when a game or software is worth it. GTA IV, I didn't even have to think about! I knew I wanted it before a trailer. Because I knew I could invest countless hours in the game. 12hrs to beat Rage? I'm gonna be really skeptical about this one. But if I enjoy it, I will likely buy it.

I'm not the type of person to pirate something just because I can. How they get their figures about lost money is ridiculous! Just because somebody pirates something, doesn't mean they're out that money. A high percentage of the time, a pirated copy wouldn't have been bought anyway...

Movies are a prime example. I'm sorry, but a lot of people aren't gonna go spend 20USD on a B grade movie, to just watch it once. They're either gonna rent it, or download it. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. Avatar, I bought the collectors edition. One of the best movies I've ever seen! They raked in quite a bit of money on that movie. Can't imagine why...
Stop making worthless movies!

I'll be playing rage at some point today

 

Yeah! Apparently a trailer will be available november 2nd. Can't wait for this one. LOL! I haven't even beaten IV yet :S There's just not enough time in the day!!!

 

Yeah I saw that last night. Interesting...

 

You were right Rich. I like it(Rage). Perhaps not quite as much as grand Theft, but it's definitely likeable. I must admit, I didn't see any bugs until I started upping the Anti-aliasing settings. 2X ran ok, 4X ran o-k, 8x really started stuttering, and 16x dropped below 30Fps just walking around. I get the feeling that a lot of the bugs could be avoided with very powerful hardware. I imagine it is in need of better coding though. There was one moment, where the mouse arrow disappeared. I had to hit tab, and then tab again to bring it back. Weird.

I might have to apply an update that I saw. See if that helps it in any way.

 

Guess what guys. AMD released a new driver addressing "Rage" issues. People are saying it's running good now
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/GPU124AMDCat1110PreDriverV3.aspx

 

Yes and no Omega. It fixes the performance issues but not the graphical ones as those are an in-engine problem. They helped me a lot as before installing those I was doing maybe 30-40FPS steady with bad drops. With the drivers it's locked at 60 as long as I force the textures to highest settings.

 

Well, it's progress anyway LOL! I just like to see AMD on top of things. My next card will likely be Ati/Amd.

 

Yes AMD was unusually quick to the draw on Rage. Here's hoping we see more of that. Some games take them forever to get Crossfire and performance up to snuff.

Also, I'm eagerly awaiting a Phenom II-ish revival of Bulldozer. The architecture shows promise. I'll likely be an ATi/Intel Sandy Bridge convert come December or January though. Alternatively I might have a sweet deal on a used 1090T coming down the pipe. Guaranteed to 4GHz on a very similar board.

 

Word on the street says AMD will be well ahead of the game with 28nm compared to nvidia, we may see some HD7800s before february...

 

Well, I was at Gamestop at midnight for my pre-order of the Skyrim Collector's Edition. It has some technical bugs, mainly drivers and Crossfire support, but I must say it so far doesn't disappoint. A bit odd that the game install is 5.2GB considering the subject matter and vast landscapes, but Bethesda are pros at compression. Oblivion is about 6GB in stock form, but unpacked is 10+. Time will tell but it seems to be a fantastic game.

It suffers a wee bit from consolitis, most noticeable being the textures. I have a strong feeling modders will pick this out right away. The engine is modded Gamebryo and the old modding tools even work with it so it should have an absolutely fantastic 3rd party community. All it takes is a few texture mods to make Gamebryo POP. It already looks exceptional, but since when were Bethesda games made to be played unmodded on the PC??? Even then the textures overall aren't bad but there are a few muddy ones here and there. It's really technically something Called "Creation Engine", but what that translates to is Gamebryo retooled from the ground up and DX10 added.

Also, it's damn demanding but my main issue is Crossfire support. With Crossfire working properly I know for a fact I can fully max it. Currently playing on one card to avoid the negative scaling. Fully maxed right out, but running not so great. Maybe 20-50FPS outdoors which with Crossfire I can only guess would be more like ~35-80 ie very very fluid for an RPG, especially Gamebryo which takes low frames in stride. So in the long run performance should be not too bad. My friend manages it fine maxed with a single 6970 at 1080p. Also, Gamebryo historically has 100%-ish scaling.

Overall it's the best quality and most well thought-out Gamebryo engine game I've seen to date. It also eliminates the series' ugly/nasty habit of destroying quests when NPCs get killed on accident. Like the games can be made unbeatable on harder difficulty because the enemies slaughter the NPCs and when a major NPC dies, so does every single quest associated with them. This happens in Fallout 3 and New Vegas as well. Bethesda seem to have taken a major note from Stalker - Call of Pripyat in regards to handling of NPCs. They are now all constantly replaced when killed, by a similar or identical NPC who has all the right dialog options. This is exactly what Call of Pripyat did to solve the problem and it works perfectly. Oblivion would end up de-populated after you leveled to a certain point and the monsters could kill the town guards.

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On another note I got some time to play MW3 yesterday and lemme tell you it's a true Infinity Ward game. Excellent quality and gameplay throughout. It is a kickass game in the Modern Warfare tradition. The action and set pieces are amazing. The production values are through the roof. This is with an actual minimum of the original Infinity Ward working on it assisted by Treyarch and another smaller studio. They were obviously the right guys though as even with some heavy Treyarch flavor to it, it certainly has the Infinity Ward quality. Would liked to have seen Black Ops look and play like this.

 

the guards had more to worry about than some monsters.

 

cleaner programming maybe.

 

A few performance-related notes for Skyrim:

Windows XP Users: For best performance, please upgrade to Windows 7.
Windows 8 Users: For best performance, please downgrade to Windows 7.
AMD Radeon Users: For best performance, please switch to an nvidia geforce.
AMD Crossfire Users: For best performance, please disable crossfire.

 

I spent hundreds of hours just modding Oblivion and Fallout 3. I've been able to effectively double the graphical quality, double the detail in the world, and make everything work better. I never killed any guards myself though

Obviously drivers will have a part to play as well.

Yes but Nvidia have already been able to release Skyrim performance drivers, while AMD has yet to do so.

Well again, Crossfire doesn't work without a proper application profile, so it's too early to point out all the bias yet. I think the next release or hotfix will be a addressing this.

 

Wow just need to say that Skyrim is such a large technological leap up from Oblivion and Fallout 3 it's not even funny. Just simply amazing. Also, it's extremely evident that Bethesda paid attention to their mod community as they've implemented several original mechanical and graphical ideas that were originally in Oblivion mods.

They also do away with the age-old Elder Scrolls concept of "pick this class and suck at everything else". Instead of sheer skill level advantages, they offer perks that you can invest experience into. So maybe your guy specializes in swords, well in Oblivion that means every other weapon is effectively useless. In Skyrim the skills are more streamlined, so it means if you wanted to use say an axe instead of a sword, you can do just that without sucking at it. Instead of levels for each type of weapon, there're global levels for One-Handed, Two-Handed, Dual-Wield, Archery etc so you have plenty of room to play with different weapons. Also, they bring back the idea that Fallout 3 pioneered, perks.

The skill system was a major gripe in Oblivion that has been basically perfected in Skyrim. Probably the most significant improvement in playability and accessibility made to the game.

I would really really really like to see a Fallout 4 on the new engine.

Basically what they've done is taken all the ideas pioneered by Oblivion and Fallout and made them triple the quality and polish. Then they increased the density of detail 10-fold, entirely replaced the animation system with a superior set-up, and completely scrapped the old combat systems in favor of an entirely new one. The AI has also taken MAJOR strides. The end result is a living, breathing world that makes even my SUPER ENHANCED AND ULTRA PRETTY version of Oblivion look like an early Alpha build of better things to come.

Skyrim could quite possibly be the greatest RPG ever made, period. This coming from someone who is highly critical and anal-retentive about Bethesda games.

Oblivion set the standard for quality and depth in a free-roaming RPG. Skyrim bends that standard over the table and takes its sweet time doing it.

My biggest regret about the game, besides the current Crossfire debacle, is that I'm still not entirely finished with Oblivion yet. I have most of the Shivering Isles yet to do and several side quests left unfinished with some 100+ hours on my current character( I always play a Nord with heavy armor and axes). I'll have to make a concentrated effort to finish it before the end of next year so I can FINALLY move on. Oblivion has been a long and blissful chapter of my gaming life that is finally coming to an end Again remember that the majority of my experience with Oblivion had multitudes of graphical and mechanical mods, so my praises of Skyrim are very very high.

 

Just an update. AMD have released 11.11b a few days ago and Crossfire is finally scaling in Skyrim. AFAIK scaling seems near 100% in most places, but probably averaging 60-80% owing to some CPU bottleneck. This has allowed me to turn to 4xAA and I am currently running approximately 50-70FPS, not far off my predictions. Gamebryo has a history of excellent Crossfire support and regardless of bias, Skyrim is actually an AMD/ATi branded game much like Oblivion before it.

In no other game has the jump from 2xAA to 4xAA been so drastic. Also, averaging 60 is miles smoother, so this version of the engine seems better optimised. It actually runs better than Oblivion. Also, this game has a capacitance effect much akin to Crysis. Meaning it literally looks better in motion than in still images. Regardless of some blah textures which there is rumored to be a patch in the works for, Skyrim is graphically superb.

 

Skyrim's only bithreaded by default, so yeah a CPU limit is very possible.

 

Woohoo just finished Modern Warfare 3. So far I've identified Ravensoft, Neversoft, Infinity Ward, Treyarch and Sledgehammer Studios as the dev team. Quite the collaborative effort. I think they went a little more "arcade hollywood" with the ending than a pure Infinity Ward team might have, but the quality of the effects, sound and graphics pull it all together with style. Not the most expected end to the story, but very satisfying and brings closure to one of the greatest epics told in gaming. As it stands, I currently view the Modern Warfare series as a single, very long game. And together, these three games create one of the greatest gaming experiences ever made. My opinion now stands that anyone rating these games for the multiplayer is missing out on something great.

MW1: 9/10

MW2: 9.5/10

MW3 8.5/10

ie all fantastic games. MW3 suffers ever so slightly in the sound department though, where the other 2 excelled, so -.5 points. 90% of the sound is fine, but the gun sounds are still nowhere near as good as MW1 and 2 which are pure Infinity Ward games. Still, it stands to be said that they ARE better than the gun sounds in all of the previously released pure Treyarch games. I can see the flavor showing through from all the different companies that devved this game, and for the most part, it's a very good thing. The lack of experience is evident in some sections of the game. But their ambition I think overshadows their "green-ness" in game making. The only studio to have worked on MW3 that actually had much experience, was Treyarch and a very few people left from Infinity Ward, and they mainly oversaw while the other mentioned studios collaborated on the development. To that end, even Treyarch's good points(action and set-pieces) can show through while Infinity Ward can still influence the finished quality of the game. My final point being, it's definitely not a pure Infinity Ward game anymore, but that's not a bad thing. Also, they didn't ruin the story, even if it felt a bit rushed. I think they scripted the battles ever so slightly too much too. The beauty of Call of Duty was the re-playability. While I'm sure I'll be coming back to this game later, I probably won't still be playing regularly it 6 years later ala Call of Duty 2.

 

STALKER

I need a friend like that, lol. I tried to like it, and the guy said "Put away your gun" in perfect English - so that was an improvement. But the people were wooden - the latest installment had no help at all from what I could see, I didn't know where I was going, and compared to Metro it was not my cup of tea.

I didn't uninstall it - but......... So you're right - not my type of game.

METRO 2033
On the other hand, I think I was too harsh on Metro 2033. The models of the main guys at the end - two or three of them - are very good. What had bothered me earlier, wasn't just the shiny models at the beginning of the game - it was also that some of the people's lips did not move, like the little boy who is drawing while his dad talks to him about going back home. The kid is asking about his mom. I crouched down to get closer and to see what he was drawing. I noticed that while he talked, his lips were not moving. If anything reinforced that he was a ceramic statue, it was those frozen lips, lol. Add the facial shininess to that (yeah 20 years of not taking showers as Jeff pointed out produces a lot of skin oiliness lol) and it was off-putting. By the way, how do you raise crops underground? Artificial sunlight I guess. The game is based on a book. Anyway, it's a great game.

By the time I had played through the whole game - I think they really polished up the models in the later parts - I liked it so much that I would now dock it now only 3 points for facial models, not 10, and I would give it a final score around 92, with Half Life 2 being a 98 (and Rage being a 94, lol.) Metro was a very immersive experience in Slavik story-telling.

Kuddos to those guys - I hope financially it was quite profitable for all concerned. I will play it again on new hardware when I can turn up the effects to max, and enjoy all the special lighting that you have mentioned, Jeff.

RAGE
Speaking of Rage, I haven't gone back to it - I've been doing a lot of catching up on L4D and L4D2. I was surprised to see all the old maps in L4D2 with the old players - interesting.

Kevin, what's Rage been like for you? Do you enjoy the car racing, the RPG aspect, the combat? I don't care if you have bought the game or not, or if you ever buy it no matter how much you like it. But - how much do you like it? LOL

You know, I shouldn't have used the word stealing, although the publishers of course would say that piracy and stealing are the same. I shouldn't have used it, because you're right, sampling is more like what you guys are doing.

But even though I used the word - myself I attempted to torrent GTA4 and got caught with a letter from my ISP saying if I kept it up they'd turn off my internet - the context of my statement was not that I was condemning it, (although I freely admit that I was disgusted that all those xfire players, putting in hundreds of hours on MW1, hadn't shelled out a penny for a stellar, standout product) my context was that I absolutely didn't, and don't, blame any publisher for focusing first on consoles, or even for saying the future is with consoles the way Carmack did.

You guys may not like this statement, but dollars and cents comes before creativity.

You can't create if they turn off the lights and all your artists have to quit because they can't pay their mortgages. These companies can only exist if they can pay their rent and pay their staff. If consoles do that for you, then your first focus should be on the console version.

If we PC guys ever feel like we are being given the crumbs, well that's life.

In general, however, since the devs all own PCs, (and since, as Carmack pointed out, while 6 years ago consoles were as good as PCs, today's PC is way more powerful) I believe those crumbs will usually guarantee that we'll have a good PC experience.

For example, if you are a publisher, and you have a good console game, expecting to sell 500,000 units, and you think you can probably pick up an extra 100,000 units on a PC port, at $40 per, that's near a half million increase in revenue, your share about $300,000. Can you pay the dev $150,000 to port it over, allocating 6 artists and 2 programmers concentrating on it for 2 months? Hell, even if you just break even on the PC port, the extra buzz might sell a lot more console units for you, and that would be highly profitable.

What I am saying is, one of the good things that might come from "sampling" through piracy, is creating a buzz that could increase ultimate console sales.

I was listening to Gabe Newell on an internet link with a school, and he was discussing Steam. As he talked more about being a publisher, he mentioned that they found that by holding deep discount product sales, from time to time, instead of the expected cannibalization of overall sales - taking customers who would have paid full price and giving them the product at 1/2 price or 1/3 price, they found, counter-intuitively, that ultimate sale ended up being much greater than if there had been no discounts. It was clear from his discussion that this was an unexpected result - he called it counter-intuitive.

I would guess that kind of thing happens only if you are able to create a buzz about a game - guys getting it - talking about it - "hey play this game it's great." So for Valve, overall sales often end up being much greater, by holding sales from time to time. For another publisher, maybe overall console sales end up being much higher, for a game with a break-even PC port, because of the extra buzz from PC piracy.

OPERATION FLASHPOINT: RED RIVER
I went back to Red River, the Fireteam Engagements. I would give Dragon Rising, and Red River, both scores in the 90s, maybe 90 for DR, and 92 for Red River. I spent the $5 to get the downloadable content, DLC, and so I have a total of 16 fireteam engagements, 4 of each type. There is Last Stand, CSAR, Protect the Convoy, and Search and Destroy.

Wow, 16 maps in all - not a campaign, but virtually a whole new extra game! Some of the maps are repeats from the campaign, but some are new.

The second map of Last Stand is at night. At first I totally hated it. I forced myself to go back to it, for completeness, and then I loved it and logged almost a dozen hours on that one map. The challenge is to find the best defense - I think that is the name of the chapter. I learned how powerful the grenade launcher is on the assault rifle. You can take out a squad of 4 guys, from 250 yards away! Is that realistic, Jeff?

I am asking you because you own an AK. Or did the OF guys jazz up the grenade launcher just for the fun of it? I remember reading that they decided to give it long-range capabilities. On one of the Last Stand missions during the daytime, before I went back to Best Defense, the initially hated night-time mission, I tried out the grenade launcher for the first time on an enemy jeep that had broken into our defensive area.

The jeep was about 8-10 feet from me. Having just been playing a bunch of BF2, where I often play assault class with underslung grenade launcher, I targeted the jeep as per usual.

THE TACTICAL NUKE STRIKE KILLED ME. :O

WTF?

Wow, I'm dead! It took me a little bit to realize that the Red River grenade launcher blast is wayyy too powerful to use BF2 style. Forget about any grenade launcher you have ever used in any prior game, this thing packs a punch!

Anyway, playing at hardest difficulty, I managed to help my guys hold out on the night campaign well into the second wave, and one time we actually made it to the beginning of the third wave.

Very intense.

It was very interesting to see no enemies - have my guys not call out any enemies - myself not call out any enemies, but having seen helicopters dropping behind those distant moon-lit ridges, over on my side of the perimeter, and then suddenly spot a very tiny 4-man team racing along a mountain-side attempting to flank me and come in the unprotected southern entrance. Most of my guys were covering west, I was covering east myself perched on a rock that let me see the road to northeast that often they marched down, the distant building cluster due east that they often came in behind, and on my right, part of the southern edge where the helicopters never went to, next to the electrical towers. There they were, moving swiftly - VERY tiny black figures on a moonlit night - 300 yards out - three football fields away - 1/8th inch high - coming in from due east and running directly west, planning to come up that unwatched southern road straight into our camp. Without night vision - no hope of ever having seen them. Just barely spotting them now.

Ok you sneaky bastards! I switch to grenade launcher..... BOOM! Not quite a direct hit. Two shaken stragglers are slowed way down. Switch off launcher to sniper scope. My rifle fires 3-round bursts and is extremely accurate, (more so if I crouch, as I recall.) "Dead!" I call out - to myself. Threat averted.

A quick look around, I don't see any more squads. Now my guys are calling in helis spotted 500 yards out due west. It's time to sprint over there - cutting through camp to reload my grenades - to do what my sniper and light machine gunner and grenadier can't seem to do - hold back the rapidly advancing 4-man squads.

Best Defense. I have 4 guys, including myself, holding a 360 degree perimeter of a mountain top base camp about 60 yards in diameter, at night. Intense, moody, suspenseful, nail-biting Red River fun. Very hairy!

Then we have the CSAR missions - Combat Search and Rescue - find and rescue the downed helicopter pilots. What a lark!

Those little heli pilot guys with their little smgs are hard to keep alive. Do you just keep running like hell trying to get them to follow, and hopefully stay just ahead of all the chinese chasing you, so the laggard of the two doesn't take too many bullets? Do you assign two of your guys to "protect soldier" and does that help? Do you heal them when you have a second? I did that a couple times. It is very difficult to save both of them. Not impossible, difficult.

Running around the map avoiding the enemy is very challenging, and very suspenseful! Follow the gorge. Stay below the ridgeline. I have no idea where the enemy is, ground troops supported by humvees with 50mm mounted machine guns. Stop for a second. Consult the map. Where is the rescue point? Have I flanked too far? Should I go for the small footbridge, or take the close-by main bridge?

Get moving again - if I take too much time they'll kill both pilots. I took the main bridge across, and I'm on the other side of the river heading to the evacuation point. Three hundred yards down the road, the mission coordinator sees me on satellite - he says I'm close enough for evac - he's called in the 'copter. Then, behind me 200 yards, I spot a Chinese jeep with a dozen troops who are now on my side of the river. I'm safely too far away for their 50, but they'll close in soon enough. They seem to pause as they notice me noticing them. With all-powerful grenade launcher I land a few lucky rounds into the support troops, thinning their number down to just a few and giving everybody pause to evaluate the situation. By now, she (evac pilot) is yelling "Cleared for dustoff!" It's time for team to board. We all get out including both heli pilots.

During the campaign, our squad was always Bravo Squad - squad 2. There is Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta.

As the 'copter lifts off, the mission commander comes in over satellite link, "Outstanding job, Bravo."

(I like that much better than if you lose both pilots. The commander mics out - "Satellite shows both pilots down, I repeat, both pilots are down. That's unfortunate, but Bravo you can still get to evac." When you are finally onboard there is no cheering. He says "If I wanted those results, I would have called the Army.")

sorrrrry - lol

I'm going back to the CSAR missions again in a few months and log another 20 or 30 hours without doubt. By the way, I did the coop multiplayer - but the game is too easy if you have real players. The hardest part of the campaign was holding back the hordes of chinese, so your wounded could be evacuated from the FOB (forward operating base) and you have to keep falling back to new positions. But when you have real players on your team, even that part of the campaign is not hard enough to really be challenging. Now if they tripled the number of chinese, now we might have a challenge, like L4D2 on expert. (By the way, I think they have toned back the expert. I went through the shopping mall on Dead Center, expecting to get horded every 20 seconds like a year ago, but we sailed right through. I think they levelled it off to be no harder than expert on the first Left 4 Dead.)

MODERN WARFARE 3
Speaking of challenging - I started MW3. I put it on hardest, because I hear it's a short campaign, so when you play at hardest, you often get killed and have to repeat - that extends the playing time a bit. I hate to sail through a game without it being tough and scary. That's no fun. But I checked game options - you can reduce the difficulty at any time. That's important if you get into a situation that is virtually impossible to beat, which becomes completely boring. But I didn't like that it said "For the remainder of the game" but I'll see how it goes. I played about an hour of the first street fight until we went into the first building, tossing those new special grenades that explode like firework sparklers, and it wasn't that hard to advance. I got killed about 5 times testing the limits of the game and seeing how aggressive I could be. I'll start over when I get to it again in a month or two.

It will be very interesting to see what Respawn Entertainment comes up with as their first collaboration with EA, under the new EA "Partner" program. I guess the Activision guy who has gotten himself nicely hated around the community, got a little too wrapped up on corporate profitability and revenue accounting, and lost track of the collegiality that these video game artists need in order to be happy and creative. I read that they took about 60 of their Infinity Ward staff with them when all the smoke cleared away.

Speaking about creativity - I'm not hearing all that much about crysis 2 - the attack on New York. Is it any good? Not that I could play it if I wanted to - maybe the 7000 28nm cards crossfired would let me do that.

I would still like to play crysis, or maybe warhead, at max quality, very high, or gamer, whatever, and really experience what you guys rave about - the lighting, the other effects.

You said, Sam, that I won't be able to max out Metro for a couple of gpu generations - hmmm. I did have it on high, but there is very high, and then ultra high. So going from one 768MB 8800gtx to a couple of 7000 cards with 2gig ram each on 28nm, you still don't think I could push it to ultra, and pull at least 30 fps? I don't have to crank up AA beyond 4x - unless that's where the quality begins to show - and 30 fps absolutely works for me.

I watched the video for Skyrim because I have been hearing the buzz before coming back here and reading Jeff's reviews. This guy ain't afraid of no dragons, huh?

The video looked good. I don't think an RPG is my style. I watched a guy play World of Warcraft on xbox for several hours, on several different occasions, about 6 years ago. He also was great on Halo, and later he got on my PC a few times, and he was great at COD4 multiplayer. However, watching him all those years ago on WOW, although the game looked pretty good, I wasn't too interested in the RPG aspect of it.

But I must say once more, that Skyrim video was very impressive.

Rich

 

I haven't played Rage much yet. The hours I have spent were pretty enjoyable though.