The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Nice picture, Jeff.

That's interesting that your dad builds one, then puts the other away - probably underneath the build I bet - to allow it to become a collector's item. Six individual parts to each hood hinge - that is a lot nicer than any car kit I've ever seen.

You guys building your kits - requires a lot of patience I remember - the smell of the glue - the smell of the paint. Unlike playing a shooting game for a hundred hours, let's say Left 4 Dead - when you've put that time into a kit, you actually have something to look at and put on display. Something physical, to admire the detail, to hold.

That's a great picture Jeff. See what I mean DDP - surely you have a camera or a cell phone lol. Sci-fi mechs. Now I know Jeff why you like the sci-fi shooters.

I've watched Halo for a few hours - never played it though. So far, Half Life 1 and 2 and more recently Rage are the closest I've gotten to sci fi in recent times - but I can see where it could be interesting if the game is beautiful enough and high caliber enough. If your sci-fi mech in that picture was 20 feet high and chasing me down an alley, I guess that could be quite thrilling - again I am thinking back to those giant Half Life 2 tripod striders.



I have to thank you both for Rage and for Metro - any new games out Jeff besides BF3 that you are enjoying?

I have been away from gaming for about 3 months now. But it's never far from my thoughts. I actually bought the final modular connections for the Toughpower 750 PSU. I can now officially power two 7970 cards, with two sets of 6 pin and 8 pin pci-e power leads.

All I need to do is to buy the cards, just $1000. I guess it would be worth it to spend an extra $50 per card and get a better heat sink - like what - the XFX version?

This one is already overclocked at 1000 mhz vs stock at 925. And of course some gamers will overclock it some more. There are a few others with special heat sinks - but for the Antec case I want to avoid the ones that will let a fair amount of the air remain in the case.




Now that I look at the picture, it looks like this one doesn't really exhaust out the back fully. I am almost thinking about the stock turbines to get the heat out of the case, at the expense of turbine noise. I now have two 3000 rpm kaze 120mm fans pushing cool air in, one blowing in from the side right onto the graphic card, and when I'm gaming, I can't hear the fan noise. And I'll likely remain on headphones for the next 5 years I'm sure.

But I like the idea of overclocking, now that overclocking a gpu is acceptable here on this forum, LOL, as officially endorsed by Jeff and Sam - esp as regards the 7970.

That would allow me to finally get into Crysis - four years after everybody else, lol. And BF3 - just a year late.

So what's going on out there with video games - anybody hear anything exciting? I see that Max Payne 3 is out. I'm sure I'll get it eventually if it has even halfway decent reviews, having enjoyed the prior two titles.



I've been on iTunes for the past month - before this I never used it at all - just windows media player. I fixed the computers up in LA, both laptops, realizing the 137 gig limitation of the bios - setting up the 320 gig drive with a 120 gig C and a 200 gig D partition. Everything is humming smoothly.

The question arose as to whether I had wiped out a person's iTunes collection and/or the playlists. Turned out that neither - everything was intact. But to figure the whole thing out I became kind of an iTunes expert recently, and I became immersed in some great music - they had some really good stuff - some great ancient David Bowie stuff - like Ground Control to Major Tom - which I saw being lip-synched 6 months ago in a French film about a family man and his 3 sons, and then discovered it in cleaning up the iTunes collection, where I found all the "lost" playlists and songs.

That collection is now on all my computers, lol. My brother chipped in 300 classical items which is nice from time to time. I'm listening to a folk song playlist right at this moment.



There is a lot of Latin music in the collection, and about 12 songs from a group in England called Jamiroquai, with a style referred to as jazz punk, that sort of sounds Latino, which has sold 40 million albums. You guys probably know the group - Sam has maybe even seen them play.

Rich

 

To be honest, the best card out there to buy now is the GTX670. Unless there are further price cuts forthcoming for the HD7900s (seems unlikely given they've only recently been cut significantly), the 670 is better in every way - it's $60 less than the HD7970, and it's faster.

 

Wow - thanks for the tip Sam. That is interesting information.

Hey Sam, if I were to get a dual gpu card, like the GTX690 - does that still require a sli certified motherboard? I do not have a sli certified motherboard, as far as I can tell on the nvidia page, with my asus p5e 775 motherboard. The GTX 690 of course has dual gpus - but I just thought to myself, "Maybe the fact that there are two gpus on one single board, still requires a sli certified motherboard." Please advise.

Jumping over to newegg, I can see why ati is not cutting costs - it looks like you can't really get most of the nvidia cards at newegg - most everything is sold out.

The GTX690 is their flagship two-gpu card, with 4 gigs total - two 680 cores. What do you think about that card for about $1000?

But haven't we always said that two physical cards will outperform one card with two gpus - for one thing we can turn off a card if the game runs badly on cf, or sli. For another thing we can usually get each single card to overclock more compared to overclocking the dual card. And finally, since each pci-e slot on my mobo is 16 lanes of pci-e, I can utilize a full 32 lanes of pci-e on two physical cards in sli, versus the one dual-gpu card on only 16 lanes - is it possible that the sli could cost me 5% of a performance hit because of the pci-e lanes?

BUT - what about two physical GTX680s running in sli - does that require a special mobo with nvidia chipsets, which my p5e motherboard probably doesn't have? Or has the sli only with nvidia chipset requirement changed?

Edit: At the top is the nvidia sli certified motherboard link, and I am pretty sure I don't have a sli motherboard - in fact the motherboard documentation talked about crossfire, and never mentioned sli. So I think a dual card nvidia solution won't work for me with my present motherboard. If a single card, dual-gpu solution will run on my mobo (the GTX690) then that would get me pretty close to dual GTX680 card performance for the time being. That also provides the eventual option of upgrading to an i5 or i7 pci-e 3.0 sli motherboard in the future when I get tired of being bottle-necked by the overclocked 3.6 ghz Q9450. And that would allow a further upgrade with another GTX690, although probably the toughpower 750 wouldn't be enough at that time - maybe something more in the 1000-1200 watt range would be needed.


So then, if the GTX670 at about $400 is faster than the 7970 at around What about relative performance? Could you give some 30" numbers of the GTX690, versus the GTX680, versus GTX680 in sli (2 cards) vs GTX 670 vs GTX670 in sli, versus 7970? Edit - mostly can I run a singe card GTX690 right now on my asus p5e non-sli motherboard, and how does that compare to cf 7970s, for 30" gaming.

Here's the way I'm thinking. Putting out $800 versus putting out $1000 is quite a difference of course, but not a sea-change difference. Because of the 30" gaming requirement, as Jeff has pointed out repeatedly, we are forced to opt usually for the most powerful graphics card solution - an extra 10% can make the difference in being able to run BF3 with ultimate textures as Jeff recommends, or not. If I am going to spend $800, but not have fluid gameplay with ultimate textures, whereas $1000 would have gotten me there, then the extra 25% investment is worth it - even for only 10% more performance, if you see what I mean. I'm getting less performance per price, but I'm able to run the game the way I like, where the 25% cheaper solution won't do that in some cases.

I see that all the nvidia cards are 2 gb, with the dual gpu card at 4 gb, still 2 gb per gpu. What about overclocking - just as overclockable as 7970 - or not?

Rich

 

Apologies for the late reply - I have precious little time to commit to aD these days

The GTX690 does not require an SLI-certified motherboard, nor indeed any board with two PCIe slots to begin with (Though these days, boards without two slots are usually very low-end boards that would not suit game systems anyway).
The GTX690 itself is a considerable technical achievement, but it's not worth its price, nor the difficulty you will have in getting one.
You are better off going with two GTX670s, which are very competitively priced.

As for the performances:

HD6970 210
HD7950 268
HD7970 310
GTX670 324
GTX680 347

 

A few new games tested in a slightly less numerical fashion:

(Note: 'Complaint' reads an average of 60fps+, 'Certified' reads a minimum of 60fps+)

Spec Ops The Line
HD7870 Crossfire and above: 2560x1600 Compliant
HD7870, GTX580: 1920x1200 Compliant
HD6970, GTX570: 1920x1080 Compliant
HD5870, HD6950, HD7850, GTX560Ti, GTX480: 1680x1050 Compliant
Crossfire scaling: 49%
SLI scaling: Negative
CPU Requirement:
Quads: Q6700, any i5/i7, Athlon II X4 120Hz Compliant
Duals: E8200, any i3, X2 6000+ 120Hz Compliant


Diablo III
HD6990: 2560x1600 120Hz Certified
HD6970, HD7870, HD7950, HD7970, GTX580, GTX670, GTX680: 2560x1600 Certified
HD5870, HD6950, HD7850, GTX480, GTX570: 2560x1600 Compliant

GTX590, GTX680: 1920x1200 120Hz Certified
HD7970: 1920x1200 120Hz Compliant, 1920x1080 120Hz Certified
HD7870, HD7950: 1920x1200 Certified, 1920x1080 120Hz Compliant
HD6870, HD5870, HD7850, HD6970, GTX470, GTX560Ti, GTX480, GTX570, GTX580: 1920x1200 Certified
Crossfire scaling: 95%
SLI scaling: 65%
CPU Requirement:
i5 2500K, i7 2600K, i7 3930K: 120Hz Certified
Core i3/i5 series, X6 1090T, FX-8150, X4 920: 120Hz Compliant
E6600, X2 5200+: 60Hz Certified


Max Payne 3 VHQ (Without AA)
HD7970, GTX680, GTX590, HD6990: 2560x1600 Certified, 1680x1050 120Hz Compliant
HD7950: 2560x1600 Compliant, 1920x1200 Certified
HD7870, GTX480, GTX570, GTX580: 1920x1200 Certified
HD5870, HD6970, GTX560Ti: 1920x1080 Certified, 1920x1200 Compliant
HD6950, GTX470, GTX560: 1920x1080 Compliant
Crossfire scaling: 78%
SLI scaling: 56%

Max Payne 3 VHQ (4x MSAA)
HD7970 Crossfire: 2560x1600 Compliant, 1920x1200 Certified
GTX670 SLI, GTX680 SLI, HD7950 Crossfire: 1920x1200 Certified
GTX590: 1920x1200 Compliant, 1920x1080 Certfied
HD6990: 1920x1080 Compliant, 1680x1050 Certified
HD7970, GTX670, GTX680: 1680x1050 Compliant
Crossfire scaling: 73%
SLI scaling: c. 50%
CPU requirement:
i5 2500K, i7 2600K, i7 3930K: 120Hz Certified
i5 760, i7 920: 120Hz Compliant
i3 550, Q6600, X4 620: 60Hz Certified
E8200, X2 5600+: 60Hz Compliant

Note: Max Payne 3 was not tested at Ultra Quality due to video memory limitations

Video memory requirements (1680x1050 / 1920x1080 / 2560x1600)
DirectX9: 710/725/980 AMD, 740/760/990 nVidia
DirectX11: 915/945/1125 AMD, 940/980/1145 nVidia
DX11 Ultra, +4x MSAA: 1400/1510/1985 AMD, 1540/1610/1930 nVidia

Sufficiently close for comfort at 1080p that I suspect 1GB cards are pushing their luck at 1920x1200.
As for Ultra mode with AA, clearly that's the domain of 2GB cards even at low resolutions.

 

That lines up with what I've been seeing for Max Payne 3. The game is quite reasonable to play, but very hard to max. Without AA most reasonable gaming configs can run it quite well. My cards handle it just fine as long as I can get past the stupid memory limit. It's still pretty demanding though it seems once you turn the AA on. Luckily AA isn't as essential as native res

BTW I was quite happy to see that Diablo III is very reasonable, and one of the better optimized games to come out in a while. It'll probably be some time before I finally move to Diablo III, hopefully Battle.net's issues will be lessened, and some of the more glaring flaws in the gameplay will be taken care of.

As of right now, Diablo III is a half-assed attempt to emulate WoW's community slapped over a fundamentally amazing game. In particular the Auction House is just plain stupid as any piece of equipment in the game is attainable with just enough play-time invested. I never needed to purchase or trade for anything in Diablo II, barring a few runes here and there for making better items. Again, I'll be playing Diablo II for the foreseeable future unless they can tone down the stupid community features and create a bigger focus on gameplay.

 

Diablo 3's hardware requirements were exactly as I expected. Nothing Blizzard produce ever falls into the 'you'll need a new PC for this' category, whereas by contrast, almost everything Rockstar come out with lately does.

 

I will argue that StarCraft II with AA was fairly demanding for its time but eh not really

They want to cover as large a player base as possible by keeping the requirements reasonable. Considering how nice the game looks and how well it runs, I can't say I disagree. They don't let their performance goals compromise the final game

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=youtu.be&t=49m45s

lol'ed. (Contains strong language)

 

LMAO Love it.

 

DiRT Showdown in detail:

Average 30fps: AMD FX-4100, X2 5200+, Intel E6600
Minimum 30fps: AMD FX-6100, X2 550, X4 9850, Intel E8400/Q6600
Minimum 40fps: AMD FX-8120/X4 630/ Intel i3 2100/Q6700/Q8400

Average 50fps: AMD FX-6100/X4 620/X2 550, Intel i3 530/E8600/Q6600
Average 60fps: AMD FX-8120/X4 820, Intel i3 2100/Q6700/Q8400
Minimum 50fps: AMD FX-8150/X4 920, Intel i5 750/Q9550
Minimum 60fps: AMD X4 965/X6 1055T, Intel i5 760/i7 920/QX9770


Ultra quality requirements:

HD6850: Average 30fps at 1280x720, Minimum 30fps at 1024x600
HD6950: Average 30fps at 1600x900, Minimum 30fps at 1366x768
HD7870: Average 30fps at 1920x1080, Minimum 30fps at 1440x900
HD7970: Average 40fps at 1920x1080, Minimum 30fps at 1680x1050
HD6990: Average 40fps at 1920x1200, Minimum 30fps at 1920x1200
CF7970: Average 50fps at 2560x1600, Minimum 30fps at 2560x1600


That's quite some game at ultra detail.
Presumably the lower details will be much more paletable but wow, considering racing games need good frame rates, this one's a killer.
My current system with two HD6970s is not going to give me the performance I want on ultra even at 1680x1q050.

 

Some recent titles on the old numbering system:

Binary Domain: 70/85 NV, 70/165 AMD
RE Operation Raccoon City: A165 AMD, A195 NV
The Secret World Beta: DX9: 185/225 AMD 210/250 NV, DX11: 1000/1600 AMD, 320/445 NV
Alan Wake's American Nightmare: 195/230
Spec-Ops The Line Demo: A190
Diablo III: 105/130
DiRT Showdown: 540/720 AMD, 610/900 NV
Max Payne 3:
DX9: 125/140 AMD, 115/130 NV
DX11:160/180 AMD, 140/165 NV
DX11 4xAA: 415/500 AMD, 290/320 NV


Remembering that a performance of 100 is needed to play a game on an HD4870/GTX260-esque GPU at 1920x1080 with 60fps. Average before the /, Minimum after.
Lighter games like source-engine titles are typically 60-100, heavy hitters like Crysis are normally c. 500.

 

Becoming rather jaded by the rapid-fire release nature of the latest Dirt titles. It's a good game fundamentally but it's dropped some of the realism for arcadey BS. Dirt 1 was amazing, Dirt 2 was good, Dirt 3 was better as they toned down the arcade crap a LOT but just not as good as Dirt 1... For the record Dirt 3 is currently the one I play.

Dirt Showdown seems even worse for arcadiness but I have yet to play it... EDIT: Yep it's utter crap. Would much rather play FlatOut Ultimate Carnage as it's not made by a company with a reputation for DECENT REALISM ie I actually expect their games to be goofy.
---------------------------------------------------------------

On the separate subject of driving assists... ummm, guys, real race cars have ALL of the driving assists. I particularly didn't understand why they were even optional in F1 2010. Formula 1 cars have traction control, braking assist, stability control etc. It's not a cheap cop-out, it's exactly WHY real world race drivers can run the speeds they do. I've had people give me crap for using the driving assists like "It's not realistic, you're a noob." Ummm does anyone else know any professional race drivers?

Frank Jelinski is also my distant cousin and I've talked to him extensively on his experience racing Formula and Sports cars. This isn't some random amateur, I'm talking former winner of the 24 Hours of Daytona and a regular participant in the 24 Hours of Le Mans for most of his career.

 

Oh, those spammers are up to their old tricks are they?

DDP - are you gonna hold out FOREVER????

Where are those battleship model photos??????

I didn't know you guys were still coming here after a year, lol. No, not a year, just almost a full month!

I have to assume those are at stock clocks, the HD7950 at 800, HD7970 at 925. BUT ... I have been assured that a 975 overclock on the 7950 will TIE the 7970 (and maybe still pull less power and generate less heat than the 7970) and that the card will overclock all the way to 1150 according to one review, with a slight voltage boost. I just posted to the builder forum about it.

So, assuming a clock of 975 gives the HD7950 the 310 numbers, I would think that 1150, if really achievable and not somebody's pipe dream, would scale up proportionately to 365, making the 7950 the most powerful board on that list. (Of course the others also can be overclocked to some degree.)

The thing I still like about the 7950 is lack of memory bottlenecking on the tough titles where the 7970 already beats nvidia at stock clocks - the titles I need the 3 gigs memory for things like textures, AA, effects, etc., games like crysis, Metro 2033...

By the way, Jeff, I can't believe how wrong I was about Metro all that time, not wanting to play it, "Oh, isn't that the one with the monsters in the subway?" Borrring. How wrong can a guy be? And I was way too overly critical in the beginning, with the doll-like modeling, and the kid telling his parents about the little story, but his lips aren't even moving. The game improved right after that. It was taken from a book, as I learned later, and the Russian atmosphere is different, refreshing, and haunting. Those damn Russkies can be entertaining at times (when they aren't building missile silos next door in Cuba.) The good old cold war days.

Oh, those Max Payne 3 figures are lovely. You have the Q6600 on there as certified, so I must be okay on my Q9450 - but I'm only at 3.344Ghz - still okay? I will go crossfire on that title, as I see you are recommending that. So there is my "need for crossfire" proof right there, lol.

And I'm looking at the 500 numbers from the old numbering system - I am going to have a 600+ point system in 60-90 days!! Oh joy!!

A good test for all those ram chips on the new hardware. Max Payne = Max everything, lol.


Nice video link Sam - AND YOU WANTED ME TO BUY SOME NVIDIA HARDWARE!!!!!!!!!!!

NO, THAT IS A NO! Nobody else, Jeff, knows ANYBODY who is a professional race car driver.



He's your cuz - wow, that is some serious cred. I think we know who the noobs are, and it ain't anybody named Jelinski.

Rich

 

Another quite demanding one here, albeit only graphically (providing you are using a quad core CPU)


Ghost Recon Future Soldier

Certification/Compliance applies at 62Hz due to UE3 engine limiter

HD6990: 1680x1050 Certified, 1920x1200 Compliant
HD7970: 1680x1050 Compliant
HD7950, GTX680: 1440x900 Certified
HD7870: 1366x768 Certified, 1400x900 Compliant
HD5870, HD6950, HD6970, HD7850, GTX480, GTX570, GTX580: 1366x768 Compliant

SLI not supported at time of testing
Crossfire scaling: 92%

HD7850 Crossfire: 1680x1050 Certified, 1920x1200 Compliant
HD7870 Crossfire: 1920x1200 Certified
HD7950 Crossfire: 1920x1200 Certified, 2560x1440 Compliant
HD7970 Crossfire: 1920x1200 Certified, 2560x1600 Compliant

Video memory type requirements:
AMD: 1GB at 1680x1050 / 1920x1200, 1.25GB at 2560x1600
nVidia: 1GB at 1680x1050 / 1920x1080 (95% limit near), 1.25GB at 1920x1200 / 2560x1600

CPU requirements:
Dual core: None certified (i3-2100 compliant at 3.6Ghz OC)
Quad core compliant: AMD FX-4100, Athlon II X4 640
Quad core certified: AMD X4 940, Intel Core i5 750
Hex core certified: AMD X6 1055T, FX-6100

Core 2 architecture not accurately estimatable due to lack of test data
Estimated certification for all 45nm Core 2 Quad CPUs, compliance for 65nm Core 2 Quad CPUs.

 

Is there a place where I can buy all the Dirt games for a discounted price? I know Jeff said 3 wasn't very good, but why not buy a bundle?

 

Nope, 2 was the less than spectacular one. 3 is much better.

 

Oops. That's embarrassing. Usually I remember numbers like they're nothing. But I have been working 14.5hr days :S

 

Nah not a problem. I tend to drone about random thoughts anyway, so I don't blame you for losing track XD

All three games are actually quite good and none of them I would think qualify as bad or even average. They are fine quality and very polished. The reason Dirt 2 is my least favorite is because it's arcadey and dumbed down, much like Dirt Showdown. Granted, still an excellently detailed game with rich gameplay and spot-on physics, but I play for the Rally/Offroad time-trial racing. It requires a lot of practice and intense concentration, and having audible directions from your passenger is a must to navigate the courses at qualifying speeds. Goofy derby events that don't actually exist are not realistic and mar the atmosphere of the game. I wish they could focus more on individual racing disciplines, as they cover dozens of different types of racing with each game.