The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Wow. THat isn't very old. But perhaps the coding is more mature, in the respect it can be told to do a good job. The Author of Bdrebuilder is no slouch. I'm sure he felt it was ready enough, to incorporate the helper apps into his program I guess we'll see if it's good enough for me though

 

NPB!

 

Personally speaking, I'm not lazy when it comes to encoding video, so I'm happy to let my CPU do the job. Unless you own a very powerful GPU, GPU-encodes aren't often much faster than the CPU method, and they're certainly not as good for quality.
For me, 0.9x realtime encode speed (based on 1080p 4:3 at 13Mbps) is ample on my i5 using Handbrake.

 

A GT 520 is showing a 10 - 25% increase for the author. My 260 is considerably more powerful. I'm not expecting more than 25 - 35%, but it would be wonderful if it's fast, and good quality. I WILL post screenies tonight

Does handbrake support full BD output?

 

Handbrake will support whatever file size you tell it. Not sure why you'd encode a bluray to full bluray size though, seems rather pointless...

 

What I meant was blu ray standard output(BDMV). E.g. BD-25. I'd never burn a dual layer BD

 

Yeah, the same point stands. At 25GB there's hardly any point encoding. The sweet spot for most films is between 8 and 16GB.

 

Hi Sam and Kevin,

I see you guys have a nice discussion going on video editing - you're way past me.

I'm still marveling at Sam's post 7884 on the last page - I'll have to study it for a few days before I can take it in fully.

I did note that you made a comparison, Sam, about DX10 and DX11, particularly in regard to Metro, noting that DX11 required quite a bit more graphics horsepower. You also mentioned that the 7000 family is able to show off its strength under DX11 - eg it's been optimized to perform nicely with DX11.

If you don't mind commenting subjectively based on what you have seen, or read about, I am curious, what do you guys see as the advantages of DX11 (by that I mean what does it do to the image one is looking at?) assuming one can run a particular game at decent frame rates that way, as opposed to dropping down to DX10?

Rich

 

cuda encoding is really grainy, just like that screen shot so i always have to turn it off

 

And now I will never know
My GTX 260 is officially dead. The Coolit eco water cooler leaked on the poor GPU. I heard a pop, and the screen went to puke! Thankfully I was at my desk when it happened though. I can only imagine how bad it could have been :S I took and blew it out for quite some time. I also blow dried the whole thing from top to bottom. The PSU was very lucky! If I hadn't been here...

So, it would appear I'm gonna be in the market for a new GPU. Because my spare card(8600Gt) is simply not good enough. It's supposed to have a fan, but it quit working some time ago. I won't even attempt CUDA with it at the moment. It does fall within the specifications. But I'm betting my Quad core is faster, and if you guys are correct about the video quality, it's a lost cause anyway. I'll probably try to repair the fan anyway. It does make for a handy backup. My 260 SHOULD Be the backup though! Blast!!!

 

And yet people still don't understand my distrust of water cooling...

 

Hey hey! Have respect for the late GTX 260! LOL!

 

I normally slate most of Nvidia's offerings, but the gtx260 was one of the few good ones. It's rare that you saw equal performance, price and power consumption from Nvidia. Things have gone downhill since then...

 

I was wrong about how BD rebuilder is using the Nvidia cards. It's more a frame serving/decoder. It does NOT encode the video!
BFG is no longer in business I thought. How would I go about their lifetime warranty?

 

Ah. You wouldn't. You'll just have to shell out for a new card I believe.

 

LOL, that's fine. I'm upset, but I have no one to blame but myself really. I should have been more observant.
I must admit, I haven't heard my PC this near silent in a long time. I did after all remove two fans though I really wish I didn't sell my Tuniq tower now It only fetched $20 too :S

I'll be browsing the Egg today. As well as googling the best price to performance ratio. I would like to stick with Nvidia though, having donated $15 for Nvidia applications yesterday! Though I won't be spending top dollar. My GTX 260 cost me $200 nearly 3yrs ago. There are probably 200 - $250 cards that'll spank the 260 now.

 

Oh, man, between ddp "sizzle sizzle" and Sam - "now you guys finally get my distrust of water" if I ever get my hands on a Tuniq tower I will never let it go, specially for just 20 bucks!

This unfortunate turn of events has made me think more about air-cooling, and, Kevin, am I wrong, don't you own a HAF? I recall you are one of those HAF guys, even before Sam. (So why'd you have to go and ruin it with water?)

It's a good thing you got a raise (didn't you say something about making more money lately) so now you can afford a 7000 family card!

Forget about those chump change donations to nvidia software. You're making more money, and Sam and DXR have verified anyway that cuda encoding sucks.

LOL

Actually I'm not as cold-hearted as ddp "sizzle sizzle" so I want to say, seriously, Kevin, I'm sorry about what happened, and it's actually quite nice of you to post about this, because now I will NEVER consider water cooling!

Rich

 

Hahahaha!

"sizzle sizzle!!!!!!"

Seriously, though, Kevin, thanks for sharing - as a result I will never, ever, think about using water for at least the next 10 years by which time I might forget the valuable lesson you just taught me.

Speaking of getting taught lessons:

With a great deal of brain effort - I finally think I have a handle on this graphic card performance metric, which you first introduced, Sam, in your post #7680 on 9/20/11.

I had printed it out to PaperPort, and I found in my Games folder, in a sub-folder up at the top, called "0 charts." I now see that I could have deduced the performance from your post of 1/31 and then 2/3. You took me by the hand and explained it in your post of 2/5, but I now see that the information was right in front of me.

It helped me to put together the following spreadsheet, taken from your post of 9/20/11 (not every game was included) together with those two recent posts I just mentioned, 1/31 and 2/3.



I did notice that the 6970 seemed to have jumped a tiny bit in power from September, where it was listed as 201, but now seems to be at 210, which is fine, I don't care.

Given that the right-most number of each pair of Game Power Requirements numbers, is 60 fps MINIMUM, and I certainly am very happy at 30 minimum - which means that I can count on mid-30s to 40s most of the time - then I could take those numbers and cut them in half. However, on the other hand, given that all those numbers are based on 1920x1080 gaming, and I want to play full screen at 2560x1600, requiring me to multiply by 1.9 as a general rule, then I come back to basically the same number, maybe just a bit less.

So, looking at the spreadsheet - and using the 1.9 scaling of crossfire 7970s - which I made as a fourth column in the lower blue section "PC score (power of your pc) using below card PLAYING BELOW GAME" I can see, as you pointed out in your 2/5 post taking me by the hand, that yes, crossfire 7970s exhibit from 540 to 710 in power, generally speaking (less for Dragon Age) and will work for me, except for Metro DX11 Very High, where the right-most number is 830. But the number to get AVERAGE 60fps is only 470.

We don't really have a handle on the 7970 specifically on Metro 2033 - that did not show up on the upper part of the chart. But assuming Metro 2033 on crossfire 7970s is more toward the 710 range - dividing by 2 and multiplying by 1.9, on the 830 MINIMUM 60fps, gives me 788 - not too much above the 710, which would be required for 30fps MINIMUM, but if I concede to a minimum of 25fps in the rough spots, I only need a power of 657, well below the 710 of the crossfire 7970s.

Again, this is for 2560x1600 gaming, minimum 25fps. Since the AVERAGE power requirement number is only 470 - that tells me I would spend 80-90% of the game at 30-50 fps, dropping only in a few rough spots - lots of smoke, whatever - down to 25fps.

That would work for me just fine.

And it looks like I would be very good to go on all of the crysis games.

The missing part of all of this, now that I DO have 8 gigs, is: do I install the games on the windows 7 disk, do I install them on the other xp disk, or do I think about a little ssd for windows 7 the way that you did? And then also - am I going to have to make sure I OC the 9450 to 3.6 to prevent it from bottlenecking the CF 7970s on this P5E mobo (with two 16x channels available.)

Rich