The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Alright, let's put it another way
$1 for 5 hours means if you're a hardcore gamer and play 30 hours a week (and that's not particularly hardcore in the grand scheme of things by the way), then that's $312 a year - or the cost of a fairly substantial graphics card outright, every year! If you skip a generational gap like I have then the cost of upgrading to new tech is fairly similar to the electricity bill of running said tech...

 

Ok, lol. So Kevin, you might give the game a try again - you're not going to get away that easy as I went out and took 150 screen shots just for you, lol. Anyways - I'll post those later - not all 150 for heavens sake, but about 20. They show how to set up the jeeps if you like that killing location, haha.

Oh, yeah, I had that trouble at first - backing up from a screen - just get used to hitting the Esc key - that pretty much backs you out of any of those menus, like for crafting or buying ammo, etc.)

Sam - good info about the coolers - I'll make sure it comes with any brackets I will need for moving across platforms.

Regarding micro-stuttering, your info was great especially since you are the one with ALL the experience up to quad cf.

But what you didn't really discuss was the main point of the Tom's review, flawed or not (and I am sorry that I forgot to link to it - they explain the graph of course.) They were surprised to find a major reduction in micro-stuttering, going to the third gpu. You have run quad cf, and got sick of all the hassle, but that's even one more card than I am talking about - I'm "just" talking about 3, lol.

Blaze told me that a good upgrade path would be to think in terms of a third card, when technology went past any crossfire set that I happened to own.

Well, if the third card is not really needed for today's whatever super game - but had a major effect on reducing microstutter, then to me it's worth it to go ahead and get the third card right away.

I'm caught in what Jeff rightly figured out is the 30" gaming dilemma - I run closer to 30 fps than he does - and so crossfire might not really get me fluidity. You say - "Turn down the settings" and I say "Keep the settings turned up to ultra and go get the third cf card."

Your graphics investment will be 50% greater, your energy costs will be higher as you point out, but it's all relative to - what is the desired end result? For me, I feel it would totally be worth it to spend a little more money for electricity and run the third card right now. One wants all the bells and whistles - the ULTRA visual experience - PLUS it should feel fluid.

When I'm on the wave runner - that's totally fluid, and I'm immersed in exquisite graphics. It's pure poetry in motion. When I'm running around on foot, I can feel the choppiness and it detracts from the gaming experience. If I can throw some money at that irritating situation, and have it pretty much go away, that sounds good to me, lol.

So - let me ask you once again - from your experience, do you tend to agree with their findings? If so, if I were to implement tri cf, either now or later with the 8000 family, am I right to expect a more fluid experience with reduced micro-stutter?

Rich

 

Well... waverunners and jeeps DO sound appealing. LOL!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1x_gaNIb0

I INSIST THAT EVERYONE WATCH THIS NOW

I will do and buy whatever it takes to run this game maxed. Absolutely bleeding-edge next-gen Wing Commander. OMG. The PC Gaming Community has been waiting for this for 15 years. They've already smashed their donation goal, so the game is basically assured.

There are several great space games, but the last one to have a focused story with and sim-quality ship piloting was Star Wars X-Wing Alliance. While a fantastic game and fairly modern looking when upgraded, it's very old and severely limited.

I have played Wing Commander 3 and 4 all the way through. Probably the best, most immersive story I have ever fought my way through. Actually IMO better games than X-Wing Alliance, but nowhere near the graphics or technology. The gameplay is second to none though, and the stories are very meaningful with live-action cutscenes. You'd have to play to understand, but it is truly a classic and a legend of PC gaming.

I make the specific mention of Wing Commander because the creator of Wing Commander is working on this new title. I'm not sure if this universe will be connected to Wing Commander due to licensing issues, but if this game lives up to Wing Commander titles of old, it will be an earth shattering new benchmark in what can be achieved with video games and computer graphics technology.

 

Rich,

I didn't go into much detail about the 'surprise result' that 3-way crossfire nullifies microstutter, because typically, it doesn't. That may be an odd effect with a particular title at a particular resolution, but with a sample size of just 1, you can't assume that's typical behaviour. Microstutter does indeed still exist with more than 2 GPUs, and how it behaves in each title will depend on the title I'm afraid. It could also be that with three GPUs they have sufficient horsepower that they're reaching the CPU limit of the game, and that is therefore smoothing out the bumps.

 

Looks amazing, but 'Achieved with CryEngine 3' was all I needed to know.
As a heads up, here are two noteworthy graphs of the lead title which of course is Crysis 3:

 

This is being done by an entirely independent developer. There will likely be very little vendor bias, so I don't quite get what you mean here. The video itself is fully in-engine gameplay footage and it really does look that awesome. Check out some of the gameplay videos.

 

I'm not anticipating vendor-bias, I'm anticipating just a high level of hardware demand in general. If this game makes full use of the engine, it's unlikely that any hardware config no matter the cost is going to max the game out on release, even at 1080p.

 

Actually, Star Citizen is supposedly going to be quite highly polished and optimised at release. The footage you saw was very very early pre-alpha running in real time on commercially available hardware. That is not a Crysis-esque pre-render video, it's in-game footage.

Have looked around for specs estimates, and it's going to be demanding for sure, but somewhat reasonable. I would imagine it scales quite high, but we've all seen the room CryEngine has for tweaking out extra performance at zero cost.

One thing to be aware of is that this is going to be a no holds barred PC-only release. This will not suffer from cross-platform issues. It's in very capable hands. I would even be so bold as to guess my current hardware will be able to handle the game nearly maxed if I tweak it right.

CryEngine 3 is much better optimised than CryEngine 2, and capable of better visuals besides. Don't underestimate the power of a dedicated PC developer on the non-neutered CryEngine 3. Crysis 3 is probably a pretty strong indicator of how Star Citizen will perform. As Crysis 3 is going to be a PC centric release ported to consoles, it will also scale quite high. And from the look of the gameplay videos and screen shots, Crysis 1 will finally be deposed from its throne once and for all. Star Citizen will be competing with Crysis 3, not Crysis 1 anymore.

 

Interesting. Have horizontal flickering after updating to the latest 13.1 drivers. Seems to only happen when Trixx applies clock changes. Every time I scroll a page or move a window I get the flickering, especially when I watch movies. Games are unaffected.

10 minutes on Google shows this is a glitch with the latest versions of Catalyst. Changing color depth from 32 bit to 16 and back again clears it up completely. Just have to do it every time I reboot, which is maybe once a week. Takes all of 5 seconds, but still annoying.

 

Does it happen without Trixx?

 

Nope. Seems to be a common problem associated with Trixx. The video cards are otherwise fine and do extended gaming sessions with no artifacting. They idle in the upper 30s and low 40s. Mid 60s at load. Loaded in the mid 70s without the side fan.

Doesn't matter if I go through and play with ULPS either.

 

Another reason why I stopped using programs like that. I've had issues with programs like Redline, Afterburner, Trixx and so on ever since I first started using them. Afterburner was good for the OSD, but even that caused some problems. When you add complexities of crossfire and/or dual monitors to the mix, it pays to eliminate unknowns like those...

 

Afterburner is a terribly buggy and bloated program. Am not surprised it caused issues. Trixx itself has not been the cause of any problems, barring this horizontal flicker which is easily remedied, and not to be taken as a sign of damage.

OSDs have the potential to be buggy. My only OSD is the FRAPS numbers in the top left.

I use Trixx because AMD Overdrive does not let me push past 850MHz or control my fan profiles. Afterburner offers similar functionality, but requires other programs to be running as well, and does not work well with PowerPlay.

Trixx works without complaint with PowerPlay. Both with ULPS on and off. Both cards downclock their core and memory to the proper value of 300MHz when idle.

 

And quad, I need to post some pictures of those. I hated quad at first - you're driving around in enemy territory for cryin out loud - bullets flying and you're in a quad? But actually, once you learn to drive the thing - like in those 60 second emergency medical delivery trials - where you are flying off of hills and stuff, then the quad is the most fun land vehicle in the game, with the best field of vision with nothing blocking you. You can race around in it, passing the friendly jeeps, trying not to fly off bridges, with the wind whistling in your ears - it's a rush - that and the wave runners. The jeeps are okay, and they have dune buggies that are pretty nice, almost as much fun as quads, and very stable, the most stable vehicle in the game.

Hmmm - I am very sad to hear that, and I hope you prove to be wrong, lol. But I appreciate the advice. Mentally I am geared up to buy a bigger power supply, replace my restrictive fan filters with the less-restrictive type to get the airflow I should be getting with all my fans, and think either in terms of 3 cards on a 3x mobo, or a double gpu card, plus a single - that's more realistic since they tend to be close to 3-wide.

The idea that 3 would solve micro-stutter somehow seems logical to me, but a sample of 1 is not science, that's for sure. So I will be eagerly waiting to hear a lot more about this. You mentioned 60 fps - is that the magic minimum fps that pretty much insulates one from micro-stutter? In other words, even with your sensitive eyes, if you are running at a minimum of 60, but some stuttering is really 40 at that instant, can you spot it?

Jeff I know I have to watch that video, but I'll do it next time I promise. It's almost dawn - no it's quite late and I have to shut off 3 computers and get to bed. But built on cryengine3 does sound nice - and I bet it is gorgeous.

By the way, you are the first one who talked about micro-stutter, so between you and Sam I hope we will keep up on this subject and see what solutions may arise.

Rich

 

60fps is important because it's the point at which you're exceeding your display's refresh rate, so there is less of a frame sync problem to deal with. Generally speaking I'm not suffering microstuttering issues much at the moment with my two cards - I'm not playing games that suffer it too badly. Some will always be worse than others.

 

Actually I'm a bit worried about nvidia bias since:

-They have made a point to mention they are developing on Nvidia
-Their hardware giveaway was Nvidia
-Their computer hardware survey did not have any recent (7000 and 6000 iirc) AMD gpus as selectable options.


I still backed it and am looking forward to playing (and maybe buying an nvidia gpu lol).

Edit: thanks for the catch harvardguy.

 

Well, so far so good, as the Alpha actually runs better on AMD cards!

 

I have high hopes that it will be relatively well polished and un-biased. Alpha and Beta testers will clean it up quickly, if they bother to listen to the community.

 

Well that does make a lot of sense. And for that reason - since one has a better chance of getting to 60 fps, adding another gpu or two might be a good thing!!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, since you're an invaluable resource known as the only living person I know of with quad cf experience, I wouldn't mind you refreshing my memory on what those days were like. Now you already said, for 2 1/2 years of reliability, you suffered unbearable noise, and unbearable heat. Now, I personally would think that when one is living in jolly old cold and damp England, a little heat would be a good thing, and the noise might drown out Big Ben once in a while - those bells!!!

But anyway, was there any good stuff? Like fluidity. Like smoothness. Like buttery smooth fluid wave-runner romps down digital vibrance euphoria. That kind of good stuff.

Actually I think I'm starting to become living proof of what Jeff has characterized as high res hell - moving away from his sweet spot of reasonableness, to the 4 megapixel domain where, spread among the jeeps and dune buggies and quads, are too many boars to hunt, and make purses out of.

Actually, with micro-miniaturization, we'll never see as much heat again as from those boisterous 4870x2 cards, much less TWO OF THEM IN ONE TOASTY AND LOUD MIDTOWER CASE!!

Yeah, but was it fluid?

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I'm sorry we have moved on to this new page because I quite liked that picture of the Teledi Albatross Heavy Freighter. I should re-post it myself.

RED MAW!!!!!!!!!!! (I think you meant "didn't have any recent")

BUYING WHAT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good one Sam!!

They better listen to the community if they want to sell X millions. Meanwhile I was looking fondly at this $350 Corsair PSU on newegg the other day - all digital ???

What does that mean? (too lazy to link - actually too scared to link - it's a MONSTER - you guys probably know which one I'm talkin about)

Rich