The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Sam, that link you pointed Kevin to, with overclock of 1020, and another at 1150, makes my top overclock of 975 look absolutely conservative!!!!

I was not able to get a stable overclock even at 1000 - it crashed within 10 minutes in Sleeping Dogs, which had been rock solid at the 975 overclock. So Kev - the thing is that the 7970 comes stock clock at 925. The 7950 comes stock clock at an artificially lower (my words) clock of 800, although the HIS IceQ sells a version that comes clocked at 925, for $20 more than the one with the exact same cooling solution, which comes at stock clocks.

So I think they are just playing some marketing games with the clock rate, saying "Okay, for you guys who don't want to overclock, for the exact same engineering design and cooling solution, pay us another $20 and we'll give it to you already overclocked at 925, just like the 7970, versus the stock 7950 clock of 800.

Now - do they cherry pick the 7950 chips for the + $20 version overclocked to 925? I suppose that is possible, but I seriously doubt it - what do you guys think, Sam, Jeff?

Anyway, like I said, when Blazothon, who was pushing the 7950 as a better match for 30" gaming, versus the 7970, a better match for eye-finity - when he said the 7950 at a clock of 975 performs the same as a 7970 at stock clock of 925, then 975 became my target overclock.

Yes, great review. It looks like you present the menu of fixes that will make the game playable - but I wonder, is this a Stalker type of a thing - or is it something that you think might appeal to me, whatever that is, lol. Well - I pulled it up on google, and watched some wacky YouTube videos, and over on steam, there was an interesting article from kotaku.com, about fixing up the look of the game as you were talking about, Jeff, such as this one that "takes the red out." LOL



And this one, called Nevada skies, which adds pretty weather effects:



and this one which introduces some fancy lighting effects,



but which the author turns off when he is in a dungeon, because it makes things too dark.

I don't know if this is my kind of game or not, but I am intrigued.

For the time being, I have returned to Rage, which I loved the first time through, but which I didn't fully take advantage of - I didn't run all the races, I didn't try all the various games, I didn't go on all the possible quests. AND, I didn't have the beast of a pair of 7950 cards that I have now, so I allowed the game to adjust me for a spot on 60 fps vsync ON, with my 750MB 8800GTX.

So now, I have maxed everything possible, and at first I turned off vsync, only to discover that my cards are only running at 40% load, and the game is still running at 60fps - BUT I am getting tearing. So I re-enabled vsync, and pretty much no tearing.

But this time, maxed - the graphics are WAY more gorgeous - amazing little dust devils in the street twirling a couple pieces of paper each time, float on past from time to time - the graphics have kicked up to a higher degree, and per MSI Afterburner graphing, which I get about 30 minutes of history by widening the 1/4" high window clear along the bottom of my 2560 pixel width monitor, the vram usage occasionally hits near max at 3100MB - I have max texture load turned on.

So yes - it looks really rich!

Rage isn't exactly as open world as New Vegas of course, but certainly a lot more open world than the underwheming on-a-rail recently completed Black Ops II.

There is one peculiarity about Rage - maybe you guys have some feedback for me:

There is a tiny 1/16" square box in the middle of my screen which covers over colors behind it - it is not opaque - I can see the colors behind, but I have never seen anything like this before. I can't find anybody talking about it on google - so I have decided to ignore it. Again - it is not my monitor, there is no little box on my desktop, nor in Black Ops - I went in to check.

So I really don't know what it is, but it is small enough that I have just decided to ignore it and not let it bother me. LOL Any ideas?

Rich

 

Definitely not running any OSDs? I'm sure an OSD application used to do that, although i forget which one.

 

Good thought Sam, I'll double check.

I'm pretty sure I had the OSD off when I tested - but generally, yes, I do run the OSD so I can keep track of the time.

Here we go, no OSD, and I didn't even turn on Trixx. I went right into Steam and loaded the game and took an F12 screenshot of where I had last left off in the game.



It's just behind the cashier's head - center of the shot.

Hard to see? Let me zoom in a little:



It is not completely opaque - I can see the darker colors come through the box, which helps me try to ignore it. Quite a curiosity - definitely wasn't there the first time through with the 8800GTX.

But I will accept the little box for the difference in quality that I get now.

Any other ideas? LOL

Rich

 

Is it always in the same location? That would be curious indeed.

 

Yes, always dead center. Rather strange, huh?

 

There has to be a logical explanation for that.

 

I agree Kevin - there is some reason somewhere - I got excited when Sam said it might be the OSD, but that wasn't it.

So I'm still waiting for one of you guys to figure it out, lol. In the meantime, I'll just chalk it up to a Rage anomaly, and continue to ignore it. Maybe I should revert to the default graphic settings, and see if that eliminates the box.

You're saying, move the graphics card? But keep in mind, DDP, that the mysterious little box does not appear during any other game, nor on the desktop.

I may soon have an over-hot i7 rig in an antec case to repair. If that comes my way, I should be able to install Rage on that rig and test one of the HIS IceQ cards.

 

It's probably just a bug associated with that game, in tandem with your configuration. In other words, either they missed it, or it's highly rare.

 

SO I got a chance to try Medal of Honor Warfighter. Let me say this, the actual setpeices in the campaign are cool, but that's about it. It uses the same engine as Battlefield 3 but the quality and polish just aren't there.

The graphics are muddy, visually confusing, and even with the FOV adjusted, very claustrophobic. How they made a game with worse graphics than BF3 a year after it's been released and on the same engine absolutely escapes me. They're not bad, but compared to BF3 it feels like a PS2 game. Very muddy, very blurry. Even turning off motion blur and post processing-smoothing doesn't do much to help. Textures are only average, and in some places are actually horrible.

The controls are just crap all around. Come on guys, it's not hard to put an FPS on the PC, but they fail despite this fact. It's impossible to entirely remove mouse acceleration, even through editing ini files, so simply aiming is a chore. Feels very much like a console-only game that was lazily ported. Think sliding around on ice, where you slide past your intended target and have to fiddle around needlessly to bring something properly into your crosshair. Really horrible aiming.

And don't get me started on the guns. The ballistics are crap, plain and simple. Absolutely none of the wonderful, realistic ballistics from BF3 are carried over. Large caliber rounds fail to penetrate plywood, and 50 caliber BMG sniper rounds drop several feet after only a couple hundred yards. All the guns feel like toys and actually firing them is a joke.

Sound is another weakness. Medal of Honor used to be famous for its expert sound design, even when the rest of the game sucked. They don't even have that going for them. All the guns sound like plastic toys and the impacts sound like a ping pong ball bouncing.

Mix all that with level design that kindergarteners could manage to improve upon... The scripting is absolutely ridiculous and everything feels(and looks) like it was tacked on.

Basically, Medal of Honor Warfighter was forced out the door only 25% finished in time to compete with Black Ops 2. The reviews also confirm this. I hope this means they will drop the franchise completely. Black Ops 2 may have Treyarch's usual meh workmanship, but to Treyarch's credit they do know how to make a fantastic campaign.

I am slowly being turned off to gaming in general. Quality standards have dropped like a rock in the past few years and the number of consolized idiots turning crap games into best sellers has only increased. EA Games is certainly partly to blame for this. They seem to have developed the rather bad habit of forcing otherwise decent companies to release games as early as possible, ruining their quality. Why in the world do we need another painfully generic multiplayer FPS?

I believe this video explains it quite succinctly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOHyD49DaeA

 

sadly I agree with that sentiment, although it hasn't yet put me off PC gaming entirely.

 

Well I don't feel that way universally. There are certainly some games on my radar that are being released by reputable companies, in their own time, and with a certain level of polish. I remain quite excited about Far Cry 3. Far Cry 2 was somewhat boring but was fantastic quality. Take out the boring and you have an awesome game...

Also, the latest Xcom game is awesome fun.

I feel that the console stagnation is mostly to blame. New hardware was always what triggered innovation...

 

Sorry for the double but just got done trying Black Ops II.

Holy crap, it runs better than MW3 and Black Ops and is the best looking Call of Duty game yet. The graphics are awesome, every bit what Infinity Ward ever managed to squeeze from the engine ie very high fidelity. The technology issues seem to have disappeared. The disjointed models and ugly textures are eliminated. The hideously overused specular lighting has been toned back and been given a more natural glow. They have also added in an effect which made its debut in MW3, Ambient Occlusion. It has a drastic impact on this engine. The campaign itself addresses most of the main issues from Black Ops which were few as Treyarch excel at SP campaigns.

The only thing I can complain about is that the weapon sounds lack impact. Otherwise Treyarch have finally addressed their quality issues with gusto.

Treyarch actually managed to pull it out of their ass this time and properly use this fantastic engine to its potential. It is by far the best looking CoD game ever made, which is a huge accomplishment. It's finally wrestled that title from MW2's cold, dead fingers. Their reputation in my eyes has suddenly flipped 180 degrees.

Mind you I've made my thoughts on MP vs SP known. The campaigns should be long and high quality. Treyarch and Infinity Ward never disappointed there.

Seems I am eating my words from my previous post. Some companies do care about quality

 

finished BO2. my god i need a GPU upgrade. i cant even play BO1 with all low settings at 1920x1200, without it dipping into the 40s online. so currently have BO2 on my xbox. great SP. and the online is nice, but my god are controlers crap vs kb/m

 

It's really pretty

 

I think coming up on 4 1/2 years is pretty good for a graphics card, for someone playing games seriously!

 

without a doubt. kind of the reason i dont want to upgrade.... sentimental value. i cant bare the thought of it just sitting in my components drawer gathering dust. Id rather it die, which might seem a tad macabre LOL.

 

Can't get too attached to stuff else we never move on... It's something that plagues me too, but I can at least draw the line at graphics cards... just!

 

Haha, Jeff, that video was hilarious! Yes, no more block walls - just put a "return to battlefield" and add a countdown from 10 backwards - as BF pioneered. They're all doing it now. Well, my beloved Vietnam map pack in BC2 has that - and actually after a bit, you get used to it. You have to stay inside the map! Well, all right. And - no going backward - yeah, you get used to that after a while.

But I agree - if you just fill up the game with that kind of stuff, just everywhere you turn, it cheapens the experience. And that was the MOH experience - just kind of cheap. Mildly entertaining, but only just mildly. I got into the multiplayer, for a while, and actually almost got used to not being able to tell an enemy from a friend, but it couldn't hold my interest very long - I'll take CS:GO or BC2 any day.

I really am waiting with a great deal of expectation, for what Respawn comes up with. The quality level of those two guys, Vince and who?, is so high, I would expect another billion dollar franchise. I just hope it isn't Future Warfare with rocket ships, because then I'll probably just sell my gaming rig and start playing checkers.

DO YOU WANT RED OR BLACK?

I see that BO2 renewed your faith, Jeff, from Treyarch no less, lol. Actually the really only cool chapter, in my opinion, was the horseback riding in Afghanistan. I don't know why, but the futuristic stuff didn't interest me much.

And they had that on-the-rail stuff like in the video, which reduced my respect for the game. For instance, when I tried to melee the soldier guarding the right side of the radio shack, I was instantly killed for no reason. Did he turn around suddenly? - it never happened elsewhere in the game. I finally realized that, like the video, the game just did not want me to knife that one guard.

Finally I followed the "7m" yellow sign right to the window, and then to my surprise, I climbed in. "Oh, that's what these idiots wanted me to do - just follow the distance marker."

They do that again later in the same sequence. You are fighting off waves of soldiers from the botched attempt to seize the radio shack. I played it through again the other day and thought - "why is this so hard now? - I didn't have any trouble the first time through" I tried holding on the side, I tried behind the tree - suddenly these guys were all expert shooters and I was going down - fast. Finally, upon respawn, I looked over and noticed again, the distance marker, which indicated I should catch up with Hudson who was dragging Woods along.

As soon as I did, my character suddenly helped carry Woods, which triggered the appearance of the helicopter. "Oh, that's what I was supposed to do." LOL When they tighten the rail to the most narrow possible path like in the video - in this case: "unless you help move Woods along for those five steps you will die" - you lose respect for the game. That's how I felt about BF3 the sp game. I started shooting all those Persians chatting amongst themselves out there on the street, before the militants came, just to see what would happen. Headshots had absolutely no effect - their conversation went on as if I weren't there. That is not how Zampella and West would run a game. They would make me lower my weapon, at the very least. That is polish, that is fine-tuning, not doing that is cheap.

So regarding BO2, I thought BO1 and World at War were much better. But you have more appreciation of the graphics effects, Jeff - you can notice and respect graphics accomplishments that I don't recognize. I enjoy them, but I can't pick them out like you can. Yes I do enjoy good graphics, but it appears that for me, the ticket is the character acting.

Oh - yeah - I remember now. It was the character acting that I felt was lacking in BO2, whereas in World at War and BO1, the earlier Treyarch titles, that main Russian character, Viktor Resnev, in both games, was so flamboyant and so well acted, it uplifted the entire gaming experience for me.

In BO2, yes, they brought back Woods, which was good - he kept telling the story, and then Mason the kid, now all grown up, mainlined the future sequences - but as a character actor he was very plain and not memorable - just an okay guy like a million other okay guys.

That was another problem in MOH - the game highlighted in the video you linked us to, Jeff. I can't remember one single memorable actor in that game - every one of them just as bland as can be. Oh, but now I remember - the hurricane flood waters chapter, THAT was amazing, maybe even better than the horseback riding in BO2. Those flood waters were surging, they were giant black waves and you were screaming along in those little boats - that 90 seconds was maybe almost worth buying the game - almost. So I guess the best character actors in that game were the hurricane flood river waves. LOL

Compare that with MW1 and MW2 - Vince and Jason filled up those games with VERY interesting English characters - think back to COD2. And even the hodge podge of MW3, included bringing back the great English guy from MW1. You had rich character acting - that's what helps make a great shooter experience, I think. When you go to their Respawn web site and read interviews with West and Zampella, they say they enjoy being in LA and plan to stay there, because of the proximity to Hollywood. They have easy access to great acting, great voice talent, without the need to jump on an airplane.

Even Spec Ops The Line, really a 3rd person shooter like Max Payne, had several great character actors, especially the main guy whom you play as. "Circle the helicopter around again" he says, manning the minigun. "Why?" asks the pilot, the black guy, one of the 2 guys in his small squad. "I want to see what this gun will do." He then proceeds to massacre the entire group of rogue American soldiers, and even takes down most of the high-rise tower.

He plays a guy on the edge of nuts. That's a friggin character actor for you!!! (I read about him - he's got a gruff presence - he plays a lot of villains in the movies - they thought he was brilliantly cast as the lead in Spec Ops.)

Speaking of Max Payne - again - great acting all through the game.

I really enjoyed all the crysis titles - good acting, heroes and villains. The girl was kind of a caricature though, those ukranians don't know how to throw a girl into a game unless she has major T&A going for her - a scientist no less, lol, with low cut jeans and belly button. Well, okay. It didn't detract much. But they could have used a little subtlety, like Vince and Jason would have done. A little more like Alyx - you know, sexy but not Jayne Mansfield. But anyway the games were great.

I don't know how Far Cry 3 will turn out. I'll play it for sure.

But I know that at least, we have two studios with some major talent, Crytek and Respawn, feeding the fps genre, and maybe Treyarch will get back to using memorable, high-quality actors.

What!? I thought you and Sam were the kings of selling stuff. Jeff trades all over the place. I thought I was the only guy who has never sold anything. "can't bare the thought of it sitting there" Hahahaha. Put it up on ebay!!! (One day I'll figure out how to do that.)

Rich

 

Ebay isn't difficult Rich. I jumped right in. MUCH easier than I figured it to be. As is usually the case One day, I'll be programming, and laughing about how much I was intimidated by it all. I almost have a handle on HTML language. Once I do, I'll move on to Java, and then C#(C sharp), and then C++. I here this is a good order to take it. I have a guy at work, that I can pick his brain