The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

GTAV was confirmed for the PC I thought? Requirements have been tossed around as well. I heard November 22.

Certainly hope I'm ready to run it with this video card. Ultra excited about my overclocking results and the performance. Now well above what the stock clock GTX760 2GB I was planning to purchase is capable of. From looking at reviews, 2GB -> 4GB on these cards nets a tiny bit of performance as well. So add another 1-2%.

 

"American history" - what the hell?? I am Iranian. You mean this forum is over in frick**n AMERICA - you bloodsuckers!!! - when we get the BOMB you are going to be in BIG TROUBLE!!!

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Just kidding.

I am fairly sure no american history class that I ever took ever said anything about finians. Besides, aren't you Canadian? We use different history books over here when we study American history - with Americans winning all the battles, and Canadians losing all the battles. You know - true American history - not made up Canadian American history

Jeff, that's great about your new card - you're rocking it with all the games that gave you trouble before, and getting another one of those cards will enable you to dominate! In fact, I believe that you will eventually settle into your new 2-year-from-now sweet spot of 2560x1440 - that's what I predict.

In the meantime, that is great. Is Christa still around - is she enjoying those titles with you?

Rich

 

You know, I think I asked that question too, and it was something like - "No, 51 states doesn't make a good row of stars on the flag."

 

Haha Rich, I think she and I are going to stay friends and nothing more from now on. It didn't work out in the end, but nothing really went sour either. Differences in character that never resolved themselves I guess I don't like to broadcast my relationship info, but you're curious

The new card is fantastic. Got the best one available, got good overclocking numbers out of it, getting good performance. Great little GPU. A high-end card in disguise. Pretty much a stock clock 7970 or close when overclocked.

 

Glad to hear things are amicable
Not PC gaming really, but after the mention of the Gran Turismo series during your GRiD 2 review, and remembering GT6 is due for release fairly soon I thought I'd finally plug the PS3 back in and start playing 5 again. I'm not as good as I remember me being

 

Driving skills grow dull when they aren't sharpened

All of my best Gran Turismo memories are from GT1 and GT2. GT2 had amazing physics and graphics for the PS1. Plus, off-road racing! One of the many reasons I use emulators. Also, many emulators are Nvidia-biased for whatever reasons, partly driving the purchase of this video card. The PS2 still takes quite a bit of grunt, but the large majority of titles can be run perfectly with enough brute force. Would possibly take an OC'd current-gun Intel to run some games. Even more for a few. It doesn't use multi-core very well, so only the first two cores make a big difference. Gamecube/Wii is similar, it takes a lot of grunt, but most games can be run nearly perfectly. I really need to get a Bluetooth adapter for my desktop, and play more Wii titles. I loathe the console, not the excellent games.

 

I found this very illuminating as they have achieved a similar overclock on the 2GB version of my card and compare it to its direct predecessor, the 660 Ti.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/07/09/gigabyte_gtx_760_oc_version_video_card_review/1

Shows what kind of gains I've made, and how it competes with a mid range AMD between the 6850 and 6970.

BTW, I finally got XFX to stop arguing with me about the overheating 6970. 7870 non-GHz being sent out at no cost to me. Thank you once again for coming clean XFX Will be up for sale possibly. Someone PM me an offer and I'll see if it's possible.

 

Happy that they replaced the card for you, but a standard HD7870 is a poor excuse for a replacement in my opinion. That's a $175 card replacing a fault with a card that was originally worth $350, but I suppose it offers fairly similar performance.

I'd love to play emulated Wii/Gamecube games on my PC, but the standard of emulation is absolutely abysmal. The highest rating for 'plays perfectly, no issues' on GC/wii emulation forums is what I consider unplayable - frame rate up and down like a yoyo, and due to frame rate synchronisation that means the whole game speed goes up and down, which makes things impossible to play. Music is missing or doesn't play properly in almost any title, and what games do have proper sound, it'll just suddenly stop and not play again until you reset the emulator. Credit where it's due for trying, but I wrote off Gamecube/Wii emulation as a technical impossibility a long time ago, it just isn't worth the frustration. Fortunately it's still easy to get hold of those consoles. The older 8, 16 and 32-bit consoles tend to emulate largely fine. N64 emulation's not perfect and has some sync/lag issues, but not in a large number of titles (e.g. Mario 64 seems fine, Super Smash bros is fine but pauses every hour or so for a couple of seconds for no reason, and Mario Kart 64 plays ok but DK Jungle Parkway inexplicable runs at double speed). I've not really experimented much with PS2 emulation, it's only recently mine was disconnected.

 

A new 6970 or a card of similar performance was what I requested. That's what they sent. The 7870 is a bit faster too from a quick glance, so I think it's an okay deal. The 6970 is not in production anymore. They could have done worse and not offered me anything. They did right and replaced the video card with something just as good. Plus, overclocking it to GHz-Edition specs takes about 30 seconds.

Emulation of the Gamecube/PS2 has really taken off in the last year or so.

I play the large majority of Gamecube games I want to nearly flawlessly. Not a user-friendly interface by any stretch. The trick is in how you set the emulator up, and compatibility improves drastically with every new version. I have played many games to completion with ~99% flawless performance, graphics, and sound. I have dozens of games. Most of the glitches you're having make it seem like your sound settings are not correct. Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, both Pikmin games, Paper Mario Thousand Year Door, Mario Sunshine, Mario Double Dash, the Star Fox games, all the good RPGs, both Metroid Prime games, etc, etc. Most of the really good games have full support. You just look up what settings to run on the Dolphin wiki. Not super simple, but the emulation community has gotten quite organized finally.

I own a Gamecube and all of those games, but the composite cables produce a poor image on an LCD and the component cables are $100+ due to rarity.

PS2 emulation is in a similar state to GC/Wii emulation. Very developed and the large majority of games can be played to completion with relatively few glitches. There is a wiki that contains most of the solutions. Some PS2 games are simply very demanding to run properly and require something like a 4.5GHz+ Sandy Bridge.

http://wiki.pcsx2.net/index.php/Metal_Gear_Solid_2:_Sons_of_Liberty

Another reason I emulate is that none of the consoles will let you play the games at 1080p. Emulators will. The only ones I really can't run but want to are the Rogue Squadron games for the Gamecube.

N64 about 95% of games will run flawlessly with a proper video plugin. Again all in how it's set up.

 

I spent a good few days on it, carefully copying the recommended guides off the various forums. The issues I listed were as good as I could get - it took a long time to get any sort of response out of the emulators at all. Resolution though I agree, playing the N64 at 2560x1600 with anti-aliasing is quite something, when you're used the original

 

It has become much easier recently as many things have been streamlined and ironed out. Dolphin for Gamecube has advanced steadily. PCSX2 is the choice PS2 emulator, and while advancing slowly, is already quite capable. I have put hundreds of relatively glitch-free hours in on it. I may have better luck than you though, or a different taste in games. Emulating is somewhat of an art

If you're attempting Wii games support might not be as good or they may be more demanding. Also, disable Crossfire.

 

Wii emulation? I've not heard of too many Wii like controllers for the PC :S Not really that interested yet anyhow. My Wii is still running like a champ. Probably because I rarely use it. It's certainly a lot better of a console, with Homebrew installed

 

Get a Bluetooth adapter and the proper drivers and the WiiMote works for the PC.

 

Nice!!! Thanks for that Jeff!

 

Been playing some Metro Last Light lately. Currently averaging about 65FPS. Lowest I've seen it get is into the low 40s. Regular gameplay is like 50-70FPS. Very High settings, Tessellation and Motion Blur at Normal, PhysX On, AAA which is effectively a subtle built-in FXAA filter. Looks and plays absolutely awesome.

Stalker Call of Pripyat formerly in the 40s due to a video memory shortage with mods, ~80FPS average. World of tanks which was formerly in the teens, 50-60FPS. War Thunder formerly in the 40s and 50s, sometimes in the teens due to lack of video memory, 80+ FPS at nearly all times. Crysis 2 with mods formerly 15-30 with a single 6850, 30-45 in Crossfire, 40-60 with the HD6970, now 50-80. Ultra smooth and quite visually stunning with the HD mod.

Skyrim used to choke on the 6850s and stutter horribly. 15-45FPS on a single card, 20-60 in crossfire. Horrible stuttering that simply ruined any chance of enjoying the game. The 6970 eliminated the stuttering, but it came back when I tried to apply HD texture mods. Now I have every single mod applied, locked at 60, zero stuttering. Only dips to ~45 in really populated towns with tons of detail, but again no stuttering to speak of. Super super smooth throughout. 4GB of VRAM made all the difference here.

I did miss out on a bit with the 7970 going on-sale less than a week after my purchase, but the card continues to prove itself. It really is a very powerful GPU, and well suited to my resolution. Finding myself surprised at the gains when overclocked. The 7950GE I was considering cannot compete with this. A high-end card in disguise as a mid-range card. The 7870 would have been much nicer than what I had, but Gigabyte and Nvidia put together a decent video card.

Looking at benchmarks and comparing to my own performance shows the 1090T is not a bottleneck for this card at all. Like nearly to the decimal matching online reviews with OC'd Sandy Bridges. Would be curious to try SLI or a higher end card and see if that remains the case. Also runs X Wing Alliance in 3D hardware mode which the latest Catalyst removed.

Basically very surprised at the performance of this card, especially with to the decent overclock. Exceeding my expectations even after having done the homework beforehand. Not a bad card at all, and runs very cool to boot.

 

You have to remember, even the HD6970 is a three year old card now

 

Amazing. I remember all the hype about that card. Has it been that long already? :S

 

Afraid so (December 2010). I mean, it's still a decent card, but you can get levels of performance not far off it using pretty small, inexpensive cards now. My HD7770 is a good three quarters as powerful as a HD6970, and that was £90 a year ago, they're £75 now. If the R9 290X is as powerful as it's suggested to be, the HD6970's really going to start looking old-fashioned soon. Still, until there's something that can genuinely outpace my pair of them without needing crossfire, I think I'm going to stick with them. With the beta driver mayhem going on at AMD of late, I don't want anything to do with crossfire from a new generation. Technically speaking I've already got my displayport outputs so I'm 4K ready on the current cards.