The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Hey guys I guess I am getting booted off the builder thread, which is fine, as long as you guys don't completely desert this thread like you did a few months ago, lol.

So from there you'll see I now, all of a sudden, have major stability issues in Sleeping Dogs, and it may be due to a recent patch that was just applied on my computer although the patch came out about 2 1/2 weeks ago - I have been mostly playing offline.

That is probably the last time I will ever tell Steam to keep a game automatically updated for me.

Had I not done that, I guess I could have downloaded the patch when I heard it was available, set a restore point in windows 7, installed the patch and then tested it, and reverted to the restore point if the patch killed my performance, which is what it looks like this patch did.

Am I correct about that? Or am I missing something - like maybe "RESTORE DOESN'T WORK" or something like that.

What if I went back to a windows 7 restore point of maybe two weeks ago. Should I try that to get rid of the patch? Will that even work?

Rich

 

Unfortunately you'll have to be a bit more specific about what the stability problem actually is for us to be able to diagnose it - perhaps it's a known bug with an update of the game that makes it crash?

 

Painkiller - Hell and Damnation [Beta]

HD7970: 2560x1600 Certified, 3150x1680 Compliant
HD7950: 2560x1600 Certified
HD7870: 2560x1440 Certified, 2560x1600 Compliant
HD7850: 1920x1440 Certified, 2560x1440 Compliant
HD7770: 1600x900 Certified
HD7750: 1366x768 Certified, 1440x900 Compliant

GTX680: 2560x1600 Certified, 3150x1680 Compliant
GTX670: 2560x1600 Certified
GTX580: 2560x1440 Certified, 2560x1600 Compliant
GTX570: 1920x1440 Certified, 2560x1440 Compliant
GTX560Ti: 1920x1080 Certified, 1920x1200 Compliant
GTX560: 1680x1050 Certified, 1920x1080 Compliant
GTX550Ti: 1366x768 Certified, 1600x900 Compliant

Crossfire Support: Yes (at least 40%)
SLI Support: Yes
Dual graphics testing unverifiable due to 62fps engine cap

Video memory requirement:
1680x1050: 640MB
1920x1080: 768MB
2560x1600: 896MB

CPU Compliance:
60Hz Compliant: Any modern CPU (Core 2 Duo/Quad, Athlon/Phenom II, Core i3/i5/7, AMD FX)
60Hz Certified: AMD X4 965BE, FX-4120/6200/8150, Intel Core i3 2100/i5 2500K/i7 940/2600K)
62Hz Solid Certified: AMD X4 975BE, FX-4170/6200/8170, Intel Core i3 3220/i5 2500K/i7 950/2600K)

-----

I Am Alive

Crossfire support: No
SLI support: No

HD7970: 1920x1200 Certified
HD7950: 1680x1050 Certified, 1920x1200 Compliant
HD7870: 1600x900 Certified, 1920x1080 Compliant
HD7850: 1440x900 Certified, 1600x900 Compliant
HD7770: 1280x720 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
HD7750: 1024x600 Certified, 1024x768 Compliant

GTX680: 1920x1200 Certified, 1920x1440 Compliant
GTX670: 1920x1080 Certified, 1920x1200 Compliant
GTX580: 1680x1050 Certified, 1920x1080 Compliant
GTX570: 1600x900 Certified, 1680x1050 Compliant
GTX560Ti: 1366x768 Certified, 1600x900 Compliant
GTX560: 1366x768 Certified, 1440x900 Compliant
GTX550Ti: 1024x600 Certified, 1024x768 Compliant

Video memory requirements:
1680x1050/1920x1080: 1.25GB
2560x1600: 1.5GB

CPU Compliance:
60Hz Compliant: AMD X4 965BE, any FX-series, any recent Core 2 Duo/Quad/Core i series
60Hz Certified: any AMD FX-series, any recent Core 2 Duo/Quad/Core i series
Essentially, the only thing you can't run the game smoothly with is an Athlon II/
Phenom II CPU. All the Intels, as well as the AMD FX-series pass the game with flying colours.

 

Hmmm. All I can say, is that a singe 7950 tore through crysis, crysis Warhead, and Crysis 2. Tore through those games. Average fps in the low 30s. Absolutely everything maxed, AA, AF, textures - max max max. I was daring my fps to drop to unplayable, and was surprised when Sleeping Dogs came along and I hit about 24-28 fps on max overclock, without crossfire.

So, Jeff, I think it's the memory, plus of course the massive number of shader engines. But back to memory, maybe you don't need all 3 gigs of a 7950, but you probably need at least 2 gigs. Still, 3 gigs might be nice to have - just in case you ever decide to spring for 30 inches, or for one of those new 27" 2560x1440 displays. I have noticed a couple of times when I have looked, that my memory vram usage, which only one card reports, has been at max in Sleeping Dogs - I think it showed 3300 memory or some such - whatever is the real number representing 3 gigs. So the game was using every bit available, as opposed to most other games which have shown just under 2 gigs' usage, not including crysis which used over 2 gigs of memory.

I will surely get Crysis 3 as soon as it comes out, and I'll let you know how it runs for me - and I'll report on 1920x1200 play as well just to give you an idea - including seeing at that resolution if it will run with crossfire disabled. Those 7950s are already below the $300 price point.

Here's the sapphire for you.



Notice they're now giving away Sleeping Dogs with almost every graphic card.

Here is where he had to dress up as a monk, to steal a rare orchid. It was quite a beautiful bit of graphics



Here's a closeup at the full original 2560x1600 graphics.




And this screen is quite recent, as I returned to my newer dockside apartment - one of 4 I have now: 1. the orginal seedy place with cockroaches in Northpoint, 2. the much more upscale in Central, 3. the quite upscale on the wharf, and 4. the super deluxe in Kennedy Town.

Here is the screen reduced for the post.





And here is a piece at the original resolution.





Rich

 

I agree Rich, you definitely need at least 2GB of Vram for a lot of games these days. Using 1920 x 1200, I can still barely scrape by with 1GB but the limit is quickly becoming apparent. Battlefield 3 and Skyrim do show video memory limits.

 

And if you're going to get 2 gigs, you might as well do a little future-proofing with 3 gigs, unless you go green. I don't know if the 8000 family will be out soon after crysis 3, but if not, we'll see from my tests if it is playable for me with a single 7950 at 1920x1200. If Yerli wasn't kidding, it won't be, but we'll find out in 6 months.

PS It is a little different playing Sleeping Dogs now that the game has been "beaten." There are still a huge amount of gang busts, and unlocking police scanners at each of those locations. I did that last night using my signature mode of running over everybody, lol.

And there are a bunch of races, and there is still the guy for whom I can steal cars, using the vault method - jumping from my car to the top of the car I am stealing. Kind of fun. Really not very hard - but the one mission about returning a guy's truck, through the vault, had me falling off the truck every time. I have not gone back to that side mission as I began to get majorly bored and frustrated.

The races are HARD! I decided last night - "Okay, I'll play a race, it's been a while." I think there are still a dozen races left.

It took me maybe 2 hours to beat that race - one little mistake and I started just deliberately leaving the track so it would disqualify me and more quickly allow a restart. I could not make up for a mistake - very competitive race.

It was tense! They are kind of fun - kind of wild - but I need to make sure I have the time set aside, because CHALLENGE is the name of the game on those things. My car was fast - the triad enforcer vehicle - but cornered like a Sherman tank - it did not corner. So I had to feather it around the corners, or cut corners. I could mow down everything, light poles, signals, but not a tree of any size.

The last hair-pin sharp 90 degree turn at a busy intersection had me hit a tiny tree with its tiny tree protection - and that stopped me cold about 5 times. Finally I was in the lead, as I had been several times, and somehow I made it around that last corner, missing that tree, and I floored it. All 5 cars were right on my tail, but thank god nobody zipped past. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and went to bed, in the game - and in real life. Hairy!!

Rich

 

Some interesting ones coming up


Borderlands 2

PhysX Low Mode (AMD & nvidia supported)

Crossfire scaling: 73%
SLI scaling: 93%
GTX690: 3600x1920 Certified, 3840x2160 60Hz/2560x1600 120Hz Compliant
GTX680: 2048x1536 Certified, 2560x1600 Compliant
GTX670: 1920x1440 Certified, 2560x1600 Compliant
GTX580: 1920x1080 Certified, 1920x1200 Compliant
GTX570: 1600x900 Certified, 1920x1080 Compliant
GTX560Ti: 1600x900 Certified
GTX560: 1366x768 Certified, 1600x900 Compliant
GTX550Ti: 1024x768 Certified, 1280x720 Compliant

HD6990: 1920x1440 Certified, 2560x1600 Compliant
HD7970: 1920x1200 Certified, 2560x1600 Compliant
HD7950: 1920x1080 Certified, 1920x1200 Compliant
HD7870: 1680x1050 Certified, 1920x1200 Compliant
HD7850: 1600x900 Certified, 1680x1050 Compliant
HD7770: 1280x720 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
HD7750: 1024x600 Certified, 1280x720 Compliant


PhysX High Mode (nvidia only)

GTX690: 2560x1600 Certified, 3600x1920 Compliant
GTX680: 1920x1200 Certified, 2560x1600 Compliant
GTX670: 1920x1080 Certified, 1920x1200 Compliant
GTX580: 1440x900 Certified, 1920x1080 Compliant
GTX570: 1366x768 Certified, 1600x900 Compliant
GTX560Ti: 1280x720 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
GTX560: 1024x768 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
GTX550Ti: 800x600 Certified, 1024x768 Compliant
GTS450: 800x600 Certified, 1024x600 Compliant

Video memory requirement
1680x1050: 512MB AMD
1920x1080: 512MB AMD, 640MB nvidia
2560x1600: 768MB

1680x1050/1920x1080 PhysX: 768MB
2560x1600 PhysX: 896MB

CPU Compliance:

60Hz Compliance: AMD FX-4100/6100/8120, Core 2 Duo E5200/6700, any Core 2 Quad or Core i series
45Hz Certification: Intel Core i5 650 (not 750/760)/2500K, Core i7 930/2600K
60Hz Certification: None

 

I saw an ad on Borderlands just last night. Medieval, isn't it? Dragons and such?

Ok, on the horizon, I am aware of Crysis 3, 6 months, Medal of Honor Warfighter coming in one month, Far Cry 3 also in about 6 months.

Am I missing any shooters that I should be paying attention to?

I don't know exactly why I jumped all over Sleeping Dogs, but I did play GTA4 and Mafia 2 which I liked, and I actually visited Hong Kong once, so maybe that's why.

Kevin, by how much you liked GTA4, you would probably get a kick out of Sleeping Dogs, and your card should handle it okay at 1920x1200. So I would suggest, "sample" it, and see what you think, lol.

(I celebrated a Sleeping Dogs accomplishment last night. By running down everybody at a parking lot drug bust, I finally got my last police level, with the key to the police car trunks, inside of which, however, are only shotguns, which you can't hide in a holster unlike a pistol. So you get the shotgun, if you wait carefully at the police station until the cops have dispersed, and you run to your car before a cop sounds the alarm. If you don't want to wait, you just have to outrun them with the car, which isn't too hard. Then I swam to the Kennedy Town sewer disposal, where I was already killed twice - the final karate move I learned has actually messed up the character motion - I can't get him to grapple and run with the villain as before - and I shot-gunned all the guys, beating that mission. I actually didn't do it right the first time - I got too close, and they jumped me, and one of them took the gun, and I got out of there within an inch of my life. Then I did a game reload, which always takes you back to one of the apartments, and went back to the police station again. But the second successful time I stayed back - the slow shotgun reload time gets you if you aren't careful, just like on Left 4 Dead, and you can't melee with the weapon. I was staying in the game just for that police car trunk key, but now, it's kind of meh. I have just one or two drug busts left. Also I did a cockfight for the first time - again meh. So I think the game has mostly lost its appeal. The car races are fun - there are at least 10 that I haven't done - I could keep doing those I suppose.)

I would advise any PC gamer, who experiences the type of PC lag I have found, as opposed to what I see in the walkthroughs with the super responsive xbox 360 controllers - DO NOT take the last statue to the dojo and thereby learn the last, supposedly most-powerful karate move, which is a counter move, meaning you have to wait until they glow red, hold the grapple key, then hit the counter-punch key. POSSIBLY, I just need to really get the timing right - maybe the move isn't as bad as I think, if I properly learned it.

But the style that I taught myself, to deal with the lag, when in a fight against 6-10 guys, I have to keep moving the guy I'm attacking out of the crowd, so with pretty steady W and Space for run, plus X for grapple, and lots of left mouse hits or kicks. When guys behind me turn red, the fact that I'm moving away keeps me safe from attack. But I noticed right away, that learning/unlocking that last move seems to have partially "frozen" my character. I find myself yelling at him all the time now - "Get moving you a**hole!"

For 3 to 5 guys I can still manage, but above that forget it, especially if they all have knives or meat cleavers - any hit causes my health to go down quickly, despite drinking the tea just ahead of the fight, giving me maximum resistance to damage. And I don't want to activate that health cheat again - it pretty quickly causes the game to hang, although when I first did it I got an good hour of successful use out of it, which allowed me to finish the last missions, and get to where I didn't have to rely on karate so much. I appreciated it so much, I donated to the guy, but also I told him he had some coding work to do on W7 as after a while it appears to conflict with the game engine. For the cheat, go to youtube and the lingon channel - you'll find info on it - and then you can google the exact name for an ad-free quick download.

You'll know the cheat is working, when, in addition to the "Ah-hah" sound when you hit F1 - the health meter on the left sparkles. Mine sparkled like that, and all was perfect, but then at the end it stopped sparkling.

But come to think of it, it stopped working in the very last parking lot of the evil guy's compound, and maybe the game did that intentionally, since it was presumed that I had the giant meat cleaver with me, according to walk-throughs I saw way later on youtube, when I was trying to finish the very last scene, the duel between me and Big Smile Lee.

On the screen when I entered the compound, it had said "Slaughter all the thugs." I never saw the screen say that before, with the word "slaughter". I don't know where my meat cleaver went, but I had nothing in my hand other than giving everybody the finger. However, after many deaths, and a few successes, where I wasn't sure if the cheat was working, but somehow I made it, but then forgot to disable the cheat, so the game hung 5 minutes later, so I was back at entering the compound again - "oh no" - out of frustration I ultimately got the bright idea of hijacking one of the 3 cars that were right there, and running over everybody.

That requires some ability also. You have to keep moving driving back and forth, or they jump in and haul you out of the car. They actually did do that, and I had to do some karate for a while, but I saw a momentary break and ran back to the car, and finished the pedestrian massacre! Hahahahaha. I actually read a walk-through yesterday, that said you better eat a lot of stuff before going to one of the parking lots, to build up your health - or maybe a better idea is to run everybody over - and here I thought I was the only guy who had thought of that, lol.

Rich

 

Borderlands is far from Medieval Rich, it's actually pretty much Sci-Fi.
The game is defined as a 'Space Western' - with the sparse style of a western but in a science fiction environment on a different planet - Pandora. The environment includes automated robots called 'claptraps' which have their own voice and can communicate with you.
It's a fun game, but by far the better when playing co-op with up to 3 other players (to populate the other player classes).

Also, what is this 'PC Lag' you describe with sleeping dogs? Frame rate, or is it input lag? That can occasionally happen with console port titles, but more often than not, it's cured by disabling VSync (remember this discussion? )

 

Borderlands II looks to address a huge amount of issues I had with the first game.

 

Black Mesa

Interesting one this, as I haven't personally found the game as demanding as the game suggest, and certainly haven't seen any issues at 2560x1600 from the apparent lack of crossfire. Take this one with a pinch of salt!



GTX690: 1920x1440 Certified, 3240x1920 Compliant (1920x1200 120Hz Compliant)
GTX680: 1600x900 Certified, 2048x1536 Compliant
GTX670: 1440x900 Certified, 1920x1440 Compliant
GTX580: 1366x768 Certified, 1920x1200 Compliant
GTX570: 1366x768 Certified, 1920x1080 Compliant
GTX560Ti: 1024x768 Certified, 1680x1050 Compliant
GTX560: 1024x768 Certified, 1600x900 Compliant
GTX550Ti: 800x600 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
GTS450: 853x480 Certified, 1280x720 Compliant

HD7970: 1680x1050 Certified, 2560x1440 Compliant
HD7950: 1600x900 Certified, 1920x1440 Compliant
HD7870: 1440x900 Certified, 1920x1440 Compliant
HD6970: 1366x768 Certified, 1920x1200 Compliant
HD7850: 1366x768 Certified, 1920x1080 Compliant
HD6950: 1280x800 Certified, 1920x1080 Compliant
HD6870: 1024x768 Certified, 1680x1050 Compliant
HD6850: 1024x600 Certified, 1600x900 Compliant
HD7770: 1024x600 Certified, 1440x900 Compliant
HD7750: 800x600 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
HD5770: 800x600 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
HD5750: 853x480 Certified, 1280x720 Compliant

Video memory requirement:
1680x1050: 640MB AMD, 768MB nvidia
1920x1080: 640MB AMD, 896MB nvidia
2560x1600: 1GB AMD, 1280MB nvidia

System RAM usage: 370MB beyond current system load

CPU requirements
60Hz Compliant/Certified: Any dual-core + desktop CPU from the last 5 years
120Hz Compliant: Athlon64 X2 5000+/Athlon II X4 620/any FX-series, Core 2 Duo E5200/E6700, Quad Q6700/8200, any i-series
120Hz Certified: Phenom II X4 965BE, FX-4@3700, FX-6@3250, FX-8@3200, Core i3 any, i5 760/2500K, Core i7 940/2600K

 

Guild Wars 2

Another steep one this! Even with good dual graphics scaling from both sides, an HD6990 is hopelessly inadequate for anything beyond 1920x1080, and can only just achieve a fluid 60fps at 720p-esque resolutions.
The much more powerful GTX690 fares better, but even that $1000+ behemoth is unable to meet 60fps certification at 1920x1200, let alone 2560x1600.
The CPU requirements are little better, with AMD FX series CPUs unsupported across the board, and even the new high-end i7 3930K failing by 1fps to make the required minimum of 60, setting the benchmark at the 3960X, and the better faring quad-core 2600K. Core i5s fall quite a way behind, Phenoms further, and FX CPUs further still.

Crossfire scaling: 90%
SLI scaling: 80%

GTX690: 1920x1080 Certified, 2560x1600 Compliant
HD6990: 1366x768 Certified, 1920x1080 Compliant

GTX680: 1366x768 Certified, 1680x1050 Compliant
HD7970: 1280x720 Certified, 1680x1050 Compliant

GTX670: 1280x800 Certified, 1600x900 Compliant
HD7950: 1024x768 Certified, 1600x900 Compliant

GTX580: 1024x600 Certified, 1440x900 Compliant
HD7870: 1024x600 Certified, 1440x900 Compliant
HD6970: 1024x600 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
HD5870: 1024x600 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
GTX570: 1024x600 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
GTX480: 1024x600 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
HD7850: 1024x600 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
HD6950: 800x600 Certified, 1366x768 Compliant
GTX470: 800x600 Certified, 1280x720 Compliant
GTX560Ti: 800x600 Certified, 1280x720 Compliant
HD5850: 800x600 Certified, 1024x768 Compliant
HD6870: 800x600 Certified, 1024x768 Compliant
GTX560: 800x600 Certified, 1024x768 Compliant

GTX460: 853x480 Certified, 1024x600 Compliant
HD7770: 853x480 Certified, 1024x600 Compliant
HD6850: 853x480 Certified, 1024x600 Compliant
GTX465: 853x480 Certified, 1024x600 Compliant

HD6790: 640x480 Certified, 1024x600 Compliant
GTX460SE: 640x480 Certified, 1024x600 Compliant

GTX550Ti: 640x480 Certified, 800x600 Compliant
HD7750: 640x480 Certified, 800x600 Compliant
HD5770: 640x480 Certified, 800x600 Compliant

GTS450: 512x384 Certified, 800x600 Compliant
HD5750: 512x384 Certified, 853x480 Compliant

Video memory requirement
1680x1050: 512MB
1920x1080: 640MB
2560x1600: 768MB nvidia, 896MB AMD

CPU requirements
60Hz Compliant: Phenom II X4 955BE/X6 1075T, Core 2 Quad Qx9770/Core i3 530/i5 750/i7 920
60Hz Certified: Core i7 2600K/3960X

 

Soon as I can Rich, I just may Work work work... :S

 

I have never run it with vSync. My frames are always 30+. Maybe if they were 50+ that would help. I have read others talking about it on the net: "pc lag" and I believe it's input lag. And I don't know how they could have made the input more responsive, as they ported over from the consoles, but probably you have some ideas.

I have watched walk-throughs, where the actions are instantaneous - the guy behind starts to glow red, meaning he is going to attack, and the xbox player immediately suspends his attack and counters that guy, and then throws him into a fan duct. There is no way that any of my moves, or counter moves. occur that rapidly. So I would say - yes - profound input lag.

So to survive, since they have no "reduce difficulty" or anything user-friendly like that to help you out, I developed a style of fighting that involves a lot of me running at the guy I am attacking, including grappling, plus a lot of left mouse punches and kicks (a lot of left mouse spamming) and a few right mouse keys thrown into the command queue in case the game wants to use them, which it does from time to time.

That used to move me away from anybody behind who would attack me, and it used to consistently throw the guy I was attacking to the ground, and often knock him out. Finding 45 of the health shrines, thereby gaining +90% health, and eating food, drinking tea, and drinking the power juice, were also essential before each major karate event, and took me all the way to mission 39, Civil Discord, which I could not beat until I downloaded the health cheat.

But prior to mission 39, I had just learned the very last karate move, which also involves the grappling key and then the right mouse counter key, and as I mentioned, my guy now seems to be partially "frozen" in place. He won't run at the defender and throw him down as consistently as he used to do before. The result is that I am getting hit more often. That may also be why I couldn't beat Mission 39 without the health cheat.

Perhaps I could just work on the new move a bit more, and get the timing down. He glows red, I hit grapple key, and then right mouse key, to execute the supposedly "all powerful karate move" called pham bam, or something like that, which by the way is not a guaranteed knockout - once in a while they have jumped right up after taking that blow.

Maybe even surrounded by a dozen other antagonists, I could develop the patience and timing to make that move work, attack one guy until somebody else glowed red, then do the grapple and counter move. Perhaps it's just me. But actually I think I have tried that, and my character always pauses before responding, so a lot of times the counter doesn't even work the first time. Perhaps I have too many input commands in the queue by then.

Or perhaps input lag truly is at fault and that is the fundamental problem.

The very last duel with the supreme bad guy, had me dying every time, like 10 times in a row. So I came over to this side of the trailer, and turned on this computer, and watched a walkthrough. It was a guy on a console. I watched the guy using the counter move, and not much else, since any attempt to punch resulted in just very weak swings. He actually did get hit once while trying to attack. Then he just stopped trying to be aggressive, and waited, in total reactive mode. That worked for him.

So I put the walkthrough video into practice, waiting until he glowed red, whether I was facing him or even if he was behind me, and I hit the counter key, right mouse. It didn't really matter if I hit the grapple, since my character was so close to death he had no energy for anything fancy. He never did that pham bam move. But if I hadn't already taken too much damage, the counter started to work for me - he started to do the counter successfully as I waited and got the timing down. Remember there was only one attacker, and he was almost as tired as I was. Then after several counters, with automatic takedowns, the screen prompted me to punch the guy in the face a half dozen times, and then grapple him, meaning pick him up by the collar with both hands, and attempt to drag him over and stuff him into the very narrow ice crusher machine.

He resisted on the way there, broke my hand grip, which began another round of counters, take him down, punch him a half dozen times, and try to stuff him into the machine again. Each time he resisted, and throwing him into the machine just resulted in throwing him to the ground, as I was always just slightly off from the very narrow machine opening, like kitchen trash can size. But on the third time, I just got him close, and the animation took over and tossed him right in, where he lingered with his legs sticking out, jerking, while the machine ground him up.

I didn't see on the walkthrough that the guy needed three attempts to accomplish the task, but I was just so grateful for the game to be over, I couldn't complain very much, hahaha. So I don't know. Maybe a lot more time in the dojo practicing - you can go in any time.

But I believe I have pretty much proven to myself that there is an input lag that prevents my moves from being as responsive as they need to be, to allow me to follow the style of gameplay that they are trying to teach - the gameplay you see on the xbox walkthroughs.

Mafia 2 started out with a lot of tedious boxing, when he was in jail. That was not a piece of cake. I had it on hardest difficulty. But you really had to know only a couple of things, how to go into a defensive posture, and how to strike. It became a timing issue and a moving around issue. I was killed several times by the first asian fighter, and later by the paunchy fighter in the shower battle. But eventually the game moved over to more gunplay, and less fist-fighting. I can't recall any lag issue on that game.

Graphically, Mafia 2 was okay, but certainly not as stunning as Sleeping Dogs.

Back to the lag - maybe the lag is my particular hardware, just due to the fact that my cores are so close to being maxed out. Maybe on an i7 this would not occur. For example, all of a sudden last night, there was major lag as I was driving, and I glanced up and my fps had plummeted to the teens - and yes again, all my cores at 100%. I had paperport open, because I was mapping the police station locations, where the pump shotguns are located, on the paperport map. I alt-tabbed to paperport, and changed the folder, which always drops the paperport cpu usage down to almost nothing. Back into the game I went, with cpu cores running in the mid to low 90s, and fps back up to over 30fps and driving again was fluid.

By the way, as of last night, I have successfully shotgunned everybody - no more bad guys on that map, except for small groups maybe guarding some of the "treasure suitcases" that I haven't yet found. The most scary yesterday was the Hong parking lot, where I had killed two guys with the car a couple days ago, and it said "18 thugs left." Holy mackerel, 18 more? Usually there are only 6-9 total, so 18 more is excessive. And all armed with meat cleavers or knives.

I went over again last night, ran over two guys, and again, "18 more left." So, not a game glitch. I exited the parking lot, and went looking for a police station. And food, and tea, and energy drink. Just in case.

I realized that the run-them-over was not going to work on that mission, unless perhaps you got out of the car, drew more bad guys into the mix, then jumped back into the car, then jumped out again waiting for more baddies. Yeah, that might have worked. But I just went to get a shotgun. The shotgun holds 24 rounds, and I guess there are 20 of those guys. Close up there is a one to one correspondence between shotgun, and dead enemy. So I jumped out of the car, and the groups started appearing. It got a little hairy, finally as I was running around during reload, I was down to 5 rounds, and only 4 thugs left, but it worked out with no karate necessary, lol.

So shotgun was fun, but now pretty much nobody left to use it on.

The best part of the game was driving around the city, with high res graphics. Really beautiful. But if anything, I might go back and finish Mafia 2, although there is a good chance I might have to start at the beginning - I don't know if my Save Games has my progress since I moved my Steam games off my smaller xp disk, to the big W7 disk.

The nice thing about Mafia 2 is that you don't lose your weapon every time you save. And when you run out of ammo, you just go buy some more. I like that. I just might get that game started again. And I was super-impressed by the FBI mission, the first one, on the side missions, when you play the role of his cousin. The car chase on the icy river was epic. (Kevin if you are the one with the "what's wrong with mankind's creativity" - I have never ever used that word before - but it is a perfect word for that mission.)

Kevin, still, you might enjoy this Sleeping Dogs game, if your 3 jobs allow you time to sample it, The car races are bizarre, meaning bizarre and great, but maybe not epic. Your mini-map gives you help on the up-coming turns, and in addition, they have fireworks going off to lay out the course - if you can believe it, those jokers went all over Hong Kong before each race and lit a bunch of flares. That is crazy and cool! Input lag or not, I can eventually beat each race, with less frustration than trying to beat some of the karate missions. All it takes is enough repetition to mostly learn the course, and enough concentration and focus to not make any major mistakes the last time - anything that will cost you one full second is fatal. I deal with the input lag the same way I have to make up for the general lack of cornering ability of most of the cars, by hitting the controls ahead of time, which is probably realistic.

So again, in regard to new games, I ask, besides crysis 3 and far cry 3, what's on the horizon that looks really noteworthy, not sci-fi, and not medieval, lol? I already pre-ordered MOH warfighter, coming in 35 days.

When Respawn Entertainment finally release their new title, I'll get it no matter what genre - sci-fi, medieval - no matter what.

Rich

 

Yes. I hear the word Epic a bit too much I'm guilty of using it on occasion though. Especially at work LOL!!! :S

 

"Ah hah" the truth comes out - you are the biggest offender. Hahaha.

Mafia 2 is epic. Well, almost.

I'm on difficult setting as before. But this time I just ran through the fighting. I don't know why - it must be all the damn karate practice. I didn't get killed once and the fights were over quickly. Mostly I just stayed in defensive, let them throw a few, then unleashed the combinations - then finally tried to close in and finish them.

But the one thing I had trouble with, was getting out of the government building after stealing the gas ration stamps. They definitely don't want you going out the easy way, the way you came in, so they have a lot of cops stacked over on that side, even after I carefully taught myself the route. Finally I just ran tried the main stairs again - and sharp turn to the left. I took at least one bullet but made it somehow - down into the correct door leading to the boiler room, then climbing out on the coal. Attempt 15. Whew!

The rest of the game is going along smoothly. I had to start at the beginning as I feared. It's been two years. But it really is a nice game - you look behind you and you see your tire tracks in the snow - or your footsteps as you walk along. Little touches like that. The old cars are trippy.

The history is not perfect. One mistake: The date is 1951, according to the mission date information on the screen, the war had almost ended when Vito was sentenced, and he just got out of prison after 6 years. So 1951 is correct. The problem: the radio is playing the famous 1958 song Donna by Ritchie Valens. LOL

But overall, the game is nice. This time I'll finish it.

 

Mafia II runs well and what it lacks in flash it makes up for in quality. The graphics are awesome. LA Noire is also very good and high quality. It is a must see for its facial animations. So real it's creepy.

 

Does Sleeping Dogs use AFR even with VSync off I wonder? If a game renders two or three frames in advance of what it actually displays, you will obviously get two or three frames worth of input lag. If you get 150fps, that's 13-20ms which isn't too noticeable, but if you get 40fps that's 50-75ms which is very noticeable.

 

We have a winner - first product to attain a 100% DOA rate on every unit manufactured.

It's the new unofficial HD7990 from Powercolor (if anyone remembers the traumas I had with 4GB HD5970s from Sapphire, you can relate here!). All the units sent out to reviewers had to be modified (washers inserted to tighten the heatsink) before they could run any tests.
Add to that, crossfire isn't supported in the driver for the card, so only one of the two GPUs functions on the card except in some rare occasions when games will work with a generic profile. EFOTY award Powercolor, well done

It's a shame that the genuine HD7990 was scrapped, as dual-GPU-on-a-card solutions proved very effective with the official HD4870X2, HD5970 and HD6990, though of course all the unofficial ones are all garbage, and it's no better on the other side of the fence, with the Asus Mars 295 being a similar magnitude of fail. As of now, if you have $1100 to spare, the GTX690 is in a class of its own. Slowly but surely AMD will lose more of the enthusiast sector at this rate. Here's hoping the HD8970 is competitive!

 

I finished Mafia 2 and it was really good - I wasn't thrilled about the ending, but whatever.

I've heard of it - is it a shooter? Maybe I'll check it out.

Hmmm, I could google, but I assume that's Advance Frame Rendering. That is a very interesting theory.

I have read a dozen times that the game is a console port. Does a console do that?

According to those YouTube walkthroughs, as I have mentioned before, on a console, those commands result in instant screen movement - whereas while my fps was 30-40 almost all the time, still the game felt laggy.

I am trying to recall how Spec Ops: The Line felt - it too was 3rd person. Or for that matter, there was the recent Max Payne 3, also 3rd person. There were some very hairy parts in both of those games where I needed the commands to result in pretty quick action, like diving for cover. I guess those games were reasonably responsive. But controlling a character in 3rd person always seems to me to be a bit laggy, compared to first person.

But the karate made the lag more pronounced. In Sleeping Dogs there were numerous times when I hit the right-mouse button immediately upon a character suddenly glowing red, and I got smacked anyway. Only in the very last scene, with both characters barely hanging on, did I finally prevail by not doing anything at all, mouse-wise, until the red glowing, then I hit an immediate right mouse. Those counters did work.

Was the possible problem that I was building up a queue of left mouse clicks, for the numerous kicks and punches I had to do, so that a right-mouse command had to sit in the queue before it came up? Would they have needed to give the right-mouse button a much higher interrupt level to over-ride that possible problem?

Some of the comments to one forum thread, titled "the karate is too difficult" said, "Well, what's the problem? You just spam left mouse, and then when someone glows red, you hit right-mouse and he'll even interrupt himself in the middle of an attack on one assailant, to immediately counter the glowing attacker." Those were apparently comments from xbox players. That was not how it worked for me - he didn't interrupt anything. He more often than not, got whacked, with a serious impact on his health. LOL

Ouch! So my problems with Power Color and those artifacts, were not just me? And let me get this straight - they sent out a card with dual gpus, but no crossfire support. Way to go!

Rich