The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Some 4K results in modern titles. Overall the picture isn't especially bleak, but for how many of these all fairly popular titles have no dual-graphics support. If that were less an issue, they'd be pretty playable at 4K.

 

Congrats on the new headphones, Jeff. My Medusa 5.1 set is still hanging in there. I thought I had some bad speakers - they are 30mm I believe - and I ordered a set of 10 from china. But when I took one side of the spare set apart, I found a wire had come loose. That made me suspicious that I had the same problem on my everyday one which had suddenly dropped right rear. Yes - it was a wire problem. So I have ten 30mm speakers if anybody needs some, lol. They were super cheap, like maybe $10-12 for the whole set.

That chart is very interesting Sam. But I am getting crossfire support on Assassins Creed 4, whereas you show it in the red zone.

Regarding another title on your chart - I have been playing a lot of Company of Heroes 2 lately - and yes, there is no crossfire. That game is quite addictive. There is one skirmish that was VERY challenging with beautiful scenery, that you don't really have time to enjoy, lol. (I picked up some of the new DLC content.)

PRIPYAT RIVER, BEAUTIFUL SCENERY, SKIRMISH FROM HELL (screenshots in following post)
It is called Pripyat River. I got raped at General, dropped to Captain, got raped again, dropped to Conscript, (the EASY setting) and just barely beat it, half the time. I was able to beat conscript on a full run with no saves, which takes sbout 90 minutes, but only maybe 50% of the time. No way did I achieve mastery - not at all. Several times I quit when one mistake proved near-fatal, and I could see it getting very bloody for the next half hour with defeat about 90% certain.

But finally I remembered about Save points, meaning you can save a segment, which is what I was doing on Bioshock every 5 minutes. So finally I worked back up to the Captain level of hardness.

But for captain I no longer took the hill first. In fact I retreated to headquarters surrounded by 4 entrenched machine gun positions. I had to build up my forces as my points steadily eroded from 500, and then march out en mass at down to about 200 points or so to take the flag closest to me, several hundred years down the railroad bridge across the river. And since I was then still holding only one of the three flags, my points continued to erode - but at a slower rate - as I fought a murderous onslaught of tanks and fire-spewing half-tracks, plus random mortar crews targeting me from unknown vantage points out of sight - they use "fog of battle" and you are not allowed to see things 100 yards away.

The mortars were unbelievably damaging - finally I started building armored scout cars with a driver and forward and rear gunners, which can also carry a full squad, but I used them by themselves. The cars cost only 80 points (you accumulate about 160 points per minute) and 4 manpower points (you max at 100 manpower points) whereas an engineering squad with flamethrowers in the car cost 240 points additional, and snipers are the same price, and a heavy machine-gunner is 320, all of them 6 manpower points. I didn't have time to wait two minutes to accumulate enough points for snipers or engineers.

GOD BLESS THOSE SCOUT CARS
So I just built scouts by themselves, and that tactic is the only reason I was able to beat Captain. From time to time I would set the destination to the hill flag - like sending them a mobile machine gun, with about 1/3rd the effectiveness of a heavy machine gunner, but with the advantage that they will rotate around for best firing position, whereas the heavy machine gunners don't move from their position with about a 60 degree area of coverage.

If I had enough points saved up, I could build 2 or 3 at a time, setting the destination flag to my position near the bridge, then hitting the mini-map to jump back and micro-manage the battle. Then every 30 seconds a car would show up - and I sent them out chasing the mortar crews. What a lifesaver - those mortars were absolutely destroying us. If I tarried a bit on the hill position or at headquarters, I would come back to my bridge flag and find all my men dead. What the hell! I had no choice but to load the last save.

I learned not to tarry.

I also learned how to send out the cars to approximately where on the far vehicle bridge (WE were at the railroad bridge) that the mortars probably were, from how the shells landed, if they weren't on the other side in the trees. As the car got closer I saw the mortar crew, and then with the car selected, my left mouse turned into a red - "attack these guys" - indicator, and I touched the crew or their mortar icon on top. After targeting them like that, I learned to leave the situation alone and get back to the battle. The few times I had time to watch, I saw that the car would shoot a bit, then shoot a bit more, and to my surprise, it would stay way back, which I realized was far enough back to be out of the line of regular rifle fire, but still within range of its front 50. The mortar crew would go about its deadly work, killing us, until one of them suddenly keeled over dead, then another, or the whole crew decided to flee. And if the crew stopped again to re-position, the car was still after them.

I never saw those cars again, and I didn't care, as long as they killed or chased away the mortars, which most of the time they did. The "announcer" - the commissar - would say "we lost another vehicle" and I would see the car icon disappear from my list of troops, but so what - they were cheap and expendable. I could bounce back and reorder more in 10 seconds, as long as I had at least 80 points, and no more than 96 manpower.

ELITE TROOPS
Occasionally I had to restrain myself from hitting the elite squad button on my lower left hud. The face appeared whenever I had 94 manpower or less, and at least 320 main battle points accumulated. I wanted to order them as soon as they became available - I was losing men left and right and it took two solid minutes for them to get to me. And it was quite dangerous for me to be down to very few soldiers, because then I might be over-run by enemy squads, instead of tanks, and then the flag would turn over and my points would start dropping. So those guys were important - they were much more fierce fighters than a 6 man crew of 240 point conscripts.

But as I say, sometimes I opted to not buy the guys, but order a couple of cars instead - so the scout cars would be on hand when a mortar crew showed up. At one point I was targeted by two mortar crews at once - that was very dangerous - almost like being under artillery fire.

If I had no scouts, I had the elite troops chase the mortar crews. But that was a very expensive resource running around in enemy territory, getting themselves killed, leaving me short-handed in the flag circle.

MEANWHILE - OVER ON THE HILL
And at the same time I was worried about the hill position. You can see a little on the mini-map when your other flag is getting attacked. If it is a vehicle that is attacking, you see it. Anytime there was a 10 second lull, I would jump to the hill to see how they were doing. When you restart from a save, the enemy strategy may be entirely different from the last time - they keep changing it up. On one occasion they forgot about my bridge position and sent heavy tanks to the hill. I got murdered. I had to go back to a save point, and this time make sure they had at least one cannon. Other times they attacked the hill with mortars, and I had to make sure they had at least one mortar on the hill, and some scout cars, and then I had to run and micro-manage the battle.

Another time they decided to concentrate on attacking headquarters, starting with the entrenched machine gunners which could not damage a tank. That gave me a breather and allowed me to build up both positions. But suddenly I was informed that I had lost the game - they had totally destroyed the main headquarters shack.

The second time I was paying more attention, and I (just barely) had enough time and points to order an anti-tank cannon, and I killed the Panzer with that. Alternatively, if I had enough munitions points available, 360 of them, I was able to order in a bombing run. But I needed those munitions for giving the anti-tank guys some light machine guns to make them more effective against infantry. So the game is a complete balancing act at all times. You never know what is coming next, and where.

HOW DID I EVER TAKE THAT HILL DURING THE RIVER BATTLE?
So, getting back to the beginning, when I marched my forces to the bridge position - what a grind that was - they REALLY wanted to get me off that flag. I had one save where I had managed to finally capture the hill and I was down to only 10 points left, with the Germans at their full 500. But I could never turn that 10/500 save into a successful campaign even with subsequent saves. And I tried, but somehow I always had one turnover. Finally I deleted that 10-point save to keep myself from further frustration, and I decided to try a better strategy for a first save similar to my successful 29 point campaign.

So I marched my troops across the bridge once again.

Under a murderous counter-attack, as my score dropped below 70, during a short lull, I assigned a squad of elite troops to the hill. I knew it would take them about 2 minutes to get there. I needed 320 battle points for them, 240 points for a set of engineers, and 160 points for two scout cars. That's 720 points which I had accumulated in 3 or 4 minutes of fierce fighting holding one of 3 flags - the flag at the river - while my score had dropped from 200 down to 70.

So I assigned the elite troops to the hills, popped back to headquarters, and ordered two cars, and one engineering squad which would be ready at headquarters at about the time they reached the hill and started the 30 second turnover - the little clock revolves twice, as the German flag goes down and the hill star turns from red to white on the mini-map, then as our flag goes up and it turns blue. There might be some roving German squads, but the Germans usually didn't stay to defend an uncontested flag - they were all trying to pulverize me at the river and doing a pretty good job of it. I knew they wouldn't begin thinking about the hill until it turned blue.

Two minutes later I saw the hill flag rotating on the mini-map - the elite troops were there. If I had 10 seconds where I thought things were under control, I went to headquarters. The engineers were standing next to the two scout cars. I ordered them a flame thrower which would magically appear en-route, loaded them into one of the cars, and sent the two vehicles to the hill using the mini-map.

I returned to the battle at the bridge. I was hoping those two teams, with the two scout cars and the flame thrower, could hold that position until I had time to build or capture a spare anti-tank cannon, machine gunner, or mortar, to send them from headquarters or from my position at the bridge. One time I had two cannons, as I often did, but not enough manpower, and one cannon was not manned. It was just south of the main circle. The Germans came and took it from me. That really made me mad. I reloaded the save before that, and one of the first things I did was to get rid of the cannon by sending it to my guys at the hill. I made do with the one I had, and managed it closely.

So in the last campaign, by sending the elite troops to the hill before I was ready with the engineers and the cars, I captured a bit faster, and my score froze at 50. While that would have given me enough time to recover from a complete turnover, I never had one. (That tells me that I should have been able to beat that other 10/500 campaign. But maybe I had been too worn out that day, and my concentration had suffered from hours of fighting.) With my score frozen at a nice high number, I immediately created a new save point, 50/500, the start of my third campaign. The start of the other two campaigns were 35/500, and 29/500. My next save point in this last campaign was 50/270, about 3 hours later after multiple reloads. Then another at 50/150 two hours later. That was the last one. From then to victory at 50/0 took only about another hour - they had thrown all the really big stuff at me prior to that, and most of their tanks had been destroyed.

THRILLING YES - BUT WHAT A GRIND!!
So I beat that campaign 3 times with at Captain level of hardness, over about 20 hours of grueling game play. I have no plans to try General hardness level. I don't know of any better strategy than the ones I have already been using. At one time I attacked the third flag, but it is high up on a much steeper hill, and that seems to be very hard to defend - it is not easy to tell if you are getting machine gun coverage, or cannon coverage. It is much closer to the railroad bridge, so I thought it would be good, I could swap resources back and forth, but I don't know how to work with that position.

Maybe that is the key. Maybe I should figure it out. But no. I think I have enjoyed about as much pain as I can handle, as a Captain, on the thrilling and chilling Pripyat River skirmish.

I have some good screenshots but I'll post those later - I'm at the laptop in the kitchen, not out in my trailer at the moment.

WINDOWS 7 AND XP MODE - VIRTUAL XP COMPUTER - AND IT WORKS
What I am doing tonight is putting W7 and xp dual boot on Daryl's laptop. He's my black roommate who is my personal challenge to bridge the racial divide. We see the world through different eyes, that's for sure. My job is to not be my normal inflexible self - and practice my Eckhart Tolle Power of Now presence, giving my busy mind and my ego a rest.

We have gradually worked up to a better relationship from when I threatened to ask him to move 6 months ago if he continued parking in front of the neighbor's house across the street. Anyway, when his laptop cratered about 8 weeks ago, I helped Daryl pick out a $99 ebay compaq tower, dual core, E6750, 4 gigs ram, and I gave him the $50 ati 6450 hdmi card that we had as a spare for the home theater phenom, to replace the 3650 card that I thought was going out some time ago. So now he can use his big screen as the monitor, and also play movies on it. (I threw in Power DVD 13 - we bought it for about $100 recently. Super great true theater affects with 1080 upscaling, more presence, better color saturation and nice sharpening, all done in software - the phenom runs at about 35% load - the 2-core E6750 at about 60% load.)

So as I worked on the $99 compaq tower for Daryl, replacing the vista it came with, for Windows 7 ultimate, I became so impressed with it, and so impressed with a feature called XP Mode, that I bought one for myself. Mine came with an E-7300 processor with less cache, but an advanced instruction set - however it gets the identical 365 fps score (on one of the two cores - the second essentially is idle) on the video frame converter that I use as a benchmark.

Sam, isn't that the cpu that you used to have about 7 years ago when your 3d-mark 6 points were about 7,000 - above everybody until Waymon bought his new system?

Anyway, that core 2 dual core machine is about 3 times faster than the single core pentium 4 that I use for my business desktop (at a score of 202 fps) so when I went over to the seller's site for some pictures to document the machine I had just helped Daryl customize, and saw the note "sold 6, this is the last one" I thought - "Hell I'll buy it myself." By then I had about 20-30 hours into working on the machine, replacing vista with windows 7, figuring out XP Mode, seeing that the virtual XP computer really does seem to work smoothly - I figured the investment of time might pay off if I had one too. In fact, I cloned his disk onto another sata that I had lying around, and I was up and running with all the software and XP mode fully loaded with no extra effort.

DARYL CATCHES ME COPYING HIM
Daryl came into the sunroom a few days later - this was last week - and he said, "What did you do, buy one for yourself?" I had to laugh. I wasn't going to mention anything to him but he had me cold. I said, "Oh, is that what you think?" He said, "Well I've seen it here on the workbench - it looks exactly like mine upstairs."

I had already told him that apart from my gaming rig (and the i7 that I still have not overclocked) his tower was 3 times faster than any of my four pentium business towers. (Why do I have 4 - I used to have several high school assistants, and I might decide to get busy like that again, lol.) So I said, "Yeah, I copied you. I picked up one for myself." He thought that was pretty funny.

Anyway, he has decided he likes Windows 7 better than XP - newer - slicker - he likes the gadgets like I do. So in regard to getting his laptop running again, he had me pick up another drive for him and I loaded Windows 7 on it yesterday. He tested it running a YouTube cartoon film spoof video - and he told me "Look how choppy that is - my computer was not this slow before."

By the way, Kevin, the youtube cartoon of course had no nudity, but the guy whom the quite handsome and fierce-looking princess is jailing asks "Aren't you going to search me - who knows what I have in my trousers?" And the girl says, "Oh, how gross, with your sexual innuendos" - but then as she closes the cell door - she admits that she is excited at the thought and they'll probably ultimately have quite a romance because of that remark. So in a John Lennon accent he says "Wow .... so you'll let me out then?" "No, you're our prisoner." About 30 seconds later it shifts to a scene with dragons, and a cameo from the guy in How to Train your Dragon, "Oh, dragons are quite mellow actually" and another from Game of Thrones - the blond saying "I'm raising my dragons as my children." It was the How it Should Have Ended, The Desolation of Smaug - about two minutes long. Check it out Kev.

So I told Daryl that he needs to give up on being bored with XP if he wants smooth YouTube videos. XP is leaner and meaner. So he agreed. I wiped the drive, and I started to put XP on it, then I had a second thought, and wiped it again, creating a 30 gig partition for Windows 7. Tonight I'm wrapping up having installed both operating systems on it.

In XP I just loaded that same video. Task manager shows it is running at 100% cpu load, and flash statistics show I am losing a lot of frames, but it is only 15 fps to start with. But it is noticeably better. Daryl came in and I showed him - we watched about a dozen of those How it Should Have Ended, HISHE productions. Good production values, good voice acting - they have millions of YouTube followers.

So regards to all in the new year, and I'll have some decent screenshots next time. Cheers!

Rich

 

Wow - double post - just as well, because now I have some screenshots to support my post of a week ago, above, describing the skirmish from hell, Pripyat River.

First of all - Company of Heroes 2 is a great game. The campaign is very interesting. You develop an appreciation for some of your very useful arms, such as the two anti-tank cannon shown in the picture below. And man, are those engineers useful. Not only do they fix stuff, but they can be outfitted with one flamethrower among the group of 4. You put an engineering squad in a small scout car, and the combination of two 50 caliber machine guns, and most of all, the flamethrower, is very effective against infantry.

Also, your tanks come in different flavors of course. found out that the elephant gun - a tank solely dedicated to taking out other tanks - works very well at long range - it shoots farther than the tanks it is shooting at. So if you get a sniper to allow you to see (to expand the line of sight) you can fire the elephant and kill the other tank, and it won't even fire back because, for one it doesn't see you, and for two, it can't fire that far.


Repairing a tank in the middle of a battle to take a key city.



In this game, you have to continually balance resources, and defensive positioning and offensive strikes, in order to meet the various objectives. And near the end of the campaign, they threw a new challenge at me - managing two different battlefields at the same time!


We have surrounded the occupied town, and we are not going to let any of the German soldiers escape. An elephant gun is the far-shooting tank on the right - two normal tanks command the top of the hill position.



These are some notes I wrote to myself, along with the pictures, for some future time when I might want to replay this campaign:
"This picture above shows the defense here at the railroad. I thought I wouldn't enjoy replaying it, but as I realized more and more strategy, it is intense. For example, there are two mortars nearby, so if you order troops, then back off the battlefield, you can grab them and have them pick up the two mortars, giving you a total of 4 mortars on top of the hill, which is pretty potent.

It is useful to grab the reverse tool, send the hill tanks far in reverse, then bring them forward as shown so their best armor is in front. That is the fastest way to do it.

This is the railroad. I failed a bunch of times before realizing that I was failing on the other battlefield. You have to use the mini-map to jump to the two places that you are holding. Also you can jump to the main camp, order a medium tank or a tank destroyer, and then grab the flag and stick it in the mini-map for the other battlefield, and the tank will go there. For my battlefield, I have a half-track, the second from the end at top of screen, which the mini-map shows is nearby. I order that to come below to the right of the tanks, get the engineers out, then convert it to Anti aircraft gun, which is good against soldiers. Also the flames of the engineers are helpful, and I can replace their numbers by putting them near the half-track.

I left all the guys with the german hand-held anti-tank weapons at the other end of town - and that side is holding its own with two anti-tank cannons, and those hand-held weapons, and the half-track with anti-aircraft gun. But as I said above, that side sometimes failed - so sending it an extra tank helps - and going to it and sending it troops and tending to it, sometimes also is needed.

Keep adding soldiers and put them in that circle next to the flag - do that for both battlefields. And keep having them take over the anti-tank guns. On the other battlefield, move the two anti-tank guns into the outer edge of the circle."


====================================

Okay, so that was the main game, which I played this past Fall, then the DLC came out. I didn't play any of the German skirmishes, but there were some extremely interesting Russian skirmishes - including the Pripyat River as described in minute detail in the post before this one.

PRIPYAT RIVER SCREENSHOTS

As described in minute detail in the prior post, this is a "capture the flag" contest. You have to hold at least 2 positions to win, by slowly draining your opponent's points down to zero. The mini-map shows the 3 positions, and I have full-size screenshots of the two positions that I was able to hold. I tried the steep hill, but my attempts to hold it were clumsy compared to my success at holding the other two. So I let the Germans keep that one position.


The three flags as shown on the mini-map.



The star of the show, is here - the Scout Car. These were cheap to buy in this skirmish, whereas in another one not described here, they ended up costing as much as a full squad. These scout cars, as you see, feature a driver, and a mounted 50 caliber machine gun on each end. The car can carry a full squad. In prior campaigns I have used them filled with a sniper squad - which consists of two snipers - which works well at a good distance from infantry - as long as the infantry doesn't carry any anti-vehicle rocket launcher weapons. The 50 caliber machine guns fire at farther distance than regular anti-tank rifles, and the snipers have the longest range of all.

The scout car can carry any full infantry squad (not mortar, etc) and features a mounted 50 on each end.



The start of the campaign involves capturing a few points near my base. This one is captured, and then converted to a fuel depot, to get my fuel points up, so I can buy the engineers a flame thrower. The more points I capture and hold, the faster my overall points build up, which allows me to order more squads or scout cars.


Capturing a point near the bridge flag, which is down the railroad to the right, past the river.



Later, as I discussed in the prior post, I found I had to build up a huge assaulting force to take that river bridge flag - AND HOLD IT - consisting of several infantry squads, plus two anti-tank cannons, two mortars, and two heavy machine gunners. I selected all of them, right-clicked the flag point, and as they all charged out, I selected individual positions for key weapons, while they were on there way there. Speed of positioning was critical, as we were hit hard almost immediately.

There are icons on top of the screen indicating each squad - I can select an icon, then right-click the position I want that squad or vehicle to move to on the ground or on the mini-map.


Here is a small group heading down the railroad to the bridge position - later on I found, on Captain hardness level, that I needed a much bigger "army" to capture that flag.



By the time I built up that many guys, the score was under 200 for me, 500 for the Germans. My points were dropping fast since they held all 3 flags.


The other flag which on the easier level of hardness, Conscript, I was able to capture and hold near the beginning of the game, is on a small hill pictured below. But in Captain hardness level, they threw everything they had at me when I tried to capture it, and somehow the game is not even - the Germans have a lot more tanks and soldiers than I do.

That makes sense because it is really about the fierce struggle of a few key Russian generals to break out of entrapment during the early very successful march of the Germans into the Russian heartland. The Germans were unstoppable, until the Russians resorted to tactics like burning down their own towns ahead of the Germans, dismantling their factories, and using guerrillas to disrupt the German advance by blowing up bridges. Finally winter arrived, and the Germans were caught over-extended, and without adequate clothing, since they had mistakenly assumed early victory - victory before the worst of winter would arrive.

This is the hill flag, farther away from my base than the bridge flag. I captured this only after grabbing and holding the bridge.



The prior post describes the "split-second timing" that I had to use to capture the hill before my points dropped to zero, while holding out against a fierce counter-attack on the bridge. I was down to under 70 points on my last successful campaign, when I took a few-second break, and took the steps to capture the hill. See the prior post - the bold red lettered section: HOW DID I EVER TAKE THAT HILL DURING THE RIVER BATTLE?


For the final screenshot of the Pripyat campaign, the most intense and most challenging part of the skirmishes, this is a shot where I was getting machine gun fire on my mortar teams. Notice compared to the photo of the scout car being repaired, that they heavy wall had mostly been broken down, and my units on the bridge itself were much more exposed to fire than before. Also notice how beautiful the layout is, with the river, the bridge, and the forest areas.

Damn machine gunner is firing on my mortars.



If you look at the very top of the screen above, you will see that my blue points at 50, are far-exceeded by the German pink points to the right, at 154. But per the mini-map, I still successfully hold the two blue star victory flag positions, so I am slowly wearing them down. I believe I had to restart again after that machine gunner got in there, and find a better place to put my mortars.


After these pictures, which should really have been inserted in the prior post (I was away from my main computer, on my laptop without access to all the screenshots, testing and loading software on the tower for Daryl, when I wrote that first post above) you might be curious about glancing through that prior post again, and getting a better feel for the tense drama of this Pripyat River campaign.


Here below is the main screen of Company of Heroes 2.


The Pripyat River skirmish is in the left selection, Theater of War.



There were two more "capture the flag" campaigns in the Stalingrad section - but one was in a white winter setting, and another was in the bombed-out ruins of Stalingrad. Neither was in as pretty a setting as Pripyat River, so I only played each for 5 minutes, then quit. Been there - done that - in much prettier surroundings!!

Rich

 

More excellent posts Rich. I usually read their entirety, but mustering an adequate answer, opinion, or argument for such a vast chunk of information at one time is usually beyond the amount of time or effort I put into posting here. Keep em coming

For the benefit of those not following the Building Thread as closely as this one, particularly Rich. Anyone who has already seen this please ignore

Corsair H110 water loop showed up today with two extra Swiftech Helix 140mm fans for push/pull. More assembly than usual for a cooler required but a very solid install once done. The quality and feel of the materials are much better than the Cool-It Eco 120s or Corsair H50s I have seen and used in the past. The hoses are an evaporation resistant rubber instead of corrugated plastic, so much less chance of cracking like the old models loved to do. A little light tugging showed the hose connections to be solid, and not ready to pop open like some H100is. The pump/block is quite low-profile, but seems to be plenty adequate for the loop, and is very quiet.

The radiator is 280mm, which means it is two 140mm fans wide. I am able to run it with four fans in push/pull. I mounted it inside the top of the case, where the 230mm exhaust fan mounted. It is exhausting out the top as well. Was able to replace the 140mm fan on the side with the 230mm fan from the top. I cut a bigger hole in the side panel and put in a stainless 230mm fan grill to dress it up a bit. I now have proper HAF airflow, plus all of my fans are higher performance than stock HAF fans.

The only snag I hit was attaching the cooler to my case. The 140mm spacing means that there is no in-built way to install it. I had to improvise and suspend it by some zip-ties with some rubber pads to dampen vibration. I simply can't get the zip ties tight enough to kill vibration, so the rubber pads are essential. It rattles like mad otherwise Overall though the installation was pretty straight forward, and easy to do. The backplate is plastic with keyed steel thread inserts that can be swapped around to fit different sockets. Not fond of the plastic backplate, but it worked just fine with the included adhesive tape to stick it to the motherboard. No real complaints about installation ore problems I didn't know about before purchasing.

Overall cooling performance is drastically improved, including my chipset temps, which were a primary concern for pushing higher. The 230mm side fan will be the main culprit for that. The 140mm helped, but had jack-all for area coverage, and was only able to feed limited air to the case.

----------------------------------------------------

1100T @ 4GHz 1.5v 2800MHz NB 1.275v(this is considered a fairly aggressive overclock on these chips)

Previous Config:
CM Hyper 212 Evo w/ 2 x 2500RPM 120mm Delta fans Push/Pull, 140mm side fan

New Config:
Corsair H110 w/ 4 x 1500RPM 140mm fans Push/Pull, 230mm side fan

Prime95 Results 1 Hour:

Previous: 58-60 CPU, mid-50s Chipset

New: 45-46 CPU, low 30s Chipset

LOL Think my cooling has improved? This is apparently the very best aftermarket cooler you can have without assembling a custom water loop... and I added some fans
----------------------------------------------------

Four medium static pressure fans in concert at their max of 1500RPM(both the Corsair and Swiftech fans having nearly identical specs) are drastically quieter than two 120mm Delta-style fans at 2500RPM. My lord, I daresay my PC is almost quiet now. The overall noise level is almost a quarter. I was so used to the noise that I just learned to drown it out. Maybe the fans weren't at an irritating frequency for me? They were noisy, but not annoying or whiny.

 

Wow Jeff, nice. Yes your temps are way lower.

I bought that new TRUE hsf - it takes up to 3 fans in push push pull, but I wonder if I'll ever install it. It does fit all the current chip sizes - they made sure of that.

But now you come along with some water cooling at a very affordable price.

My rig is okay right now - but my cpu holds me back.

In running Assassins Creed 4, the two 7950s in crossfire hum along in the low to mid 60 degree temps, at maybe 75% load each. But my core #1 hits 100% very often, and drops my framerates to below 25 quite often. Since it's a 3rd person shooter, it's not too bad, but clearly I am cpu bound.

But still - I'm okay for now.

My new thinking, is that I will need to build a monster system within a couple years, to jump on the 4k bandwagon. I'm going to need more than what I can get by overclocking that hot i7 - if I am ever able to get some decent results. By then, intel will have shrunk the die size again, maybe - and hopefully AMD will have also done the same. And for the right money, (or for somebody willing to cut off the heat spreader and replace the bad thermal paste) there will be some very powerful solutions available.

In taking the lead, and jumping way out in front, way past the sweet spot of 1080p, Sam has me thinking more and more about doing the same.

He finally got through to my brain on why it always looks crisper, whether the textures are 4k or not, and along those lines I was thinking to myself yesterday - "Well, if you had four 24" 1080p screens put together, running off eyefinity, to give you the 3840 x 2160 pixel count, and you stood back about 5 feet and noticed how nice it was, and then you magically shrunk that 4-screen 48" diagonal size down to 31 inches - well yes - that would be unbelievably crisp, almost twice as crisp as my 2560x1600 30 inch screen."

That was what Sam meant when he said you get the "far distance" crispness, close up. LOL

So he got through to my brain, finally, and it's going to be the same as happened 6 years ago - I'll start thinking about it more and more, and just eventually start planning to spend the money. The first step is - I'm going to start getting more active in real estate.

LOL

Thanks for the "thanks" regarding the posts. I'll try to make sure subsequent posts are well-illustrated. If you get the chance to play the game, that Pripyat River challenge might similarly intrigue you. (By the way, I just played a new Assassins Creed 4 DLC - Freedom Cry. The black guy Adewale has his own game. It is pretty intense. I WILL post screenshots pretty soon.)

Rich

 

BTW, benchmark fully texture modded Crysis with maxed settings, my custom cfg, and 16x AF.

GPU Test: Average 51FPS

CPU Test: Average 55FPS

This is literally as cranked as Crysis gets sans AA. Quite satisfied with that score. At the same settings, the 6850s and 6970 both averaged about 42-44. The GTX760 4GB is an extremely solid performer. Well beyond my expectations having looked at reviews of slower 2GB models with lower end PCBs and coolers. The 1090T has seemed to meet the performance needs so far and avoid being a bottleneck. My latest OC is especially aggressive, and it shows in performance

 

Wow, Jeff, you're rocking with that GTX760 4GB model - why am I very sure that you will never go for a low-ram version of a video card ever again!

===================

Hmmmm. DDP, I know that the extreme cold up in Canada has kept you alive for all these hundreds of years since the Irish Flannigans embarrassed you in your little town, by waltzing in, and then hurrying out when they saw how blasted cold it was. But I have a basic question.

Since all biological processes go slower in sub-freezing temperatures, how are you even able to formulate a simple (although non-sensical) statement like in your "post" just above Jeff's.

I guess we'll never really know how that all works.



Guys, I had to come back here (and take DDP's abuse) to post this amazing slice of a Tom's hardware review on Asus' new 4k screen: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/asus-pq321q-4k-monitor-review,3698-4.html

"Where this screen excels over all others is in graphics. Viewing a photo on the PQ321Q is an almost religious experience. Even a few inches away, you can’t see the pixel structure. A photo shot at the display’s native resolution or higher is simply stunning. Color gradations are super-smooth, jaggies are non-existent, and everything takes on a vibrancy you just don't see on a lower-resolution monitor. Gaming inspires the same reaction. The depth and clarity of the on-screen environment achieves a realism that’s leaps and bounds better than even the best QHD monitor."

Mouth-watering! That is prose that would melt the coldest heart (maybe even also DDP's frozen Canadian heart.)

Rich

 

Crysis 2 is likewise improved, especially when using the excellent texture mods. And though not perfect, Crysis 3 is generally quite fluid at maxed settings. 30-50FPS average, which would have been blisteringly fast for me in the first days of Crysis 1. I consider that a small victory

Every other game I've tried is cake to run. Outperforming the GTX680 and 7970 indeed. Quite a high-end card in my eyes. Refreshing after a few years on those 6850s. The 5850s were much better cards, and though having the same memory, didn't suffer the same issues. The 512MB 4870s were also a much better experience...

 

Remember Rich, moving to 4K has absolutely no impact on CPU demands. Still though, you don't want to be lagging out because of a CPU when you're already spending a fortune on graphics and a monitor.
The UP2414Q has now been released to the public - it too, surprisingly, is a full fat 60Hz IPS offering, and is priced fairly competitively at around £960 here (or the equivalent of $1330 pre-tax). [For ref, even now the price has come down, the UP3214Q is still £1980, or $2750 pre-tax)
Still, at that res, you will need a DPI enhancement to really see content unless the monitor is right in your face. Were I rich enough, I'd consider getting one for a secondary so I could run it in portrait to have a 3840 vertical pixel display - but as a secondary it'd be too far away to see on a screen that size, and running two separate eyefinity display groups is a near-impossibility anyway.

I kind of gloss over your image posts Rich - it's not the length, but you're pointing out things that are not visible on the low resolution thumbnails you post here - you'd need to upload the image in full resolution for us to be able to see what you're on about, half the time!
I'll have to try and run Crysis at 3840x2160 just for laughs - not considered trying it yet

 

haha - you know, the next day after I posted I was thinking "Oh, those were the Finnians, not the Flannigans." I guess I was thinking of a pet name I came up with for a little girl relative - about 7 years old - during holidays a year ago. I called her a Flammagan, and it stuck - another adult relative thought it was amusing and appropriate - like some kind of Irish leprechaun or mischievous wood nymph.

I wish it WERE the California heat causing me to make mistakes. Actually it is bitter cold right now in California, although you would be walking around in a tee shirt no doubt. My trailer thermometer says 64, and I have on 6 layers. There is a space heater, but the electric bills are quite high. When I'm gaming, no problem - those 7950s put out some good amount of very welcome warmth, but this business tower runs cool.

You keep saying that - and I know it's true. But it's counter intuitive somehow - I feel like it just HAS TO use more cpu cycles, lol. But yes, I will try to keep that in mind.

You know, at the time, Jeff, I was secretly somewhat skeptical about the idea of going with the 1 gig memory version for the $50 or so price difference. That is certainly a lesson well learned for all of us, all the more evident by your contrasting experience with this 4 gig new GTX760 card of yours. Fluid on Crysis 3 fully maxed!! Wow! I have been waiting for that title to hit Steam, but I guess it never will. So maybe I'll have to buy it on ebay. I know I won't be able to max it - but I should be able to get a somewhat decent picture quality.

It sounds like you're coming around to liking Crysis 2 more than you did before - maybe it's the mods. I have to say - I did enjoy the game. I pretty much played all 3 of them at the same time and I enjoyed all of them about the same. But I don't have the fine appreciation for the graphic effects that you do. I remember your posts showing the pictures of the rocks in crysis 1 - I forget which effect that is - starts with an M I think - the idea being to produce higher res textures without increasing the poly count.

Haha, these are now merely thumbnails to you, lol. You're quite right of course. Let me give it a try.

Okay, here's that one with the machine gunner shooting at my mortar team. I used the first link option, email link. This should be full size.
http://s518.photobucket.com/user/harvardguy/media/coh2fullsize_zps1c850a9c.jpg.html


That should have been the full size version of this below reduced image with a frame:



Oh, wait It's a two-step process to see the image full-size - HIT THE MAGNIFIER TWICE.


Here's what you see the first time:


THEN AFTER MAGNIFYING, IT HAS OPENED LARGER, BUT THEN HIT THE MAGNIFIER AGAIN.


The second time you can now "view the original image".



I know this is only going to take up about 55% of your screen real estate, Sam. Let me know if the two-step works for you. It is working for me right now, but I'm logged onto the site, and it picks up my cookie and knows I'm on.

So, anyway, if that works, that would have been a much better way to have presented this picture from the illustrated post showing the HUD. I could show it small, then link to the original.




So yes, Sam, give me some feedback - let me know if you're okay with hitting that magnifier twice, and if so, I'll try it in the future.

======================================


LEGENDARY, SHMEGENDARY
To close out this post, I just finished Assassins Creed 4 with a bang - I took out 3 of the 4 legendary ships all in one night last night. I almost quit after the first two hours fighting the double ships in the upper right corner of the world map. But then for some reason, I went back in and worked at it for another two hours.

It was just basic stubbornness, or maybe California heat getting to me. Plus I decided there was a strategy I was not using - which was "take the fight to them."

These legendary ships are not only bigger, but they are faster. So trying to stay back after defeating the first one, and trying to use the mortar - that wasn't working. He'd come up behind me, turn sideways, and pepper me with enough stuff that my lead in health was soon worn down. The fire barrels out the back didn't quite deter him enough.

And then worst of all he started charging me and ramming me in the back. So I decided to be the one to do the charging - since I actually had a ram and he didn't. The last time he was down to 20% and red, and I was still at 1/3rd. We rammed each other head on and I was prepared to follow up with some close in heavy shot - I thought I had enough health to maybe take him out that way. But as soon as we rammed, the screen indicated "hit space to loot" (meaning that when you sink a ship you can get half the loot that floats up from below) and my crew cheered "We did it!"

I was stunned. "Son of a bit*h!"

That victory made me curious to check out the other 3. I went to a close port, got fully repaired and renewed my ammo, and then went to the the lower left corner, one big ship with massive armor and a deck full of mortars. I found that the only weakness seemed to be in the rear. Even close in, I was still getting mortared pretty badly, as much as I was able to stay behind him, and my combination of mortar and shooting seemed to be having good effect on target. I was close to being dead, but fortunately there were other ships nearby. I veered off the quest, mortared two small ships, boarded them one after the other, and I got patched up to two-thirds life. I went back in and was able to kill him off. Total number of retries, only my third attempt.

Then I went to upper left, and at first it seemed not too bad, but this one was all alone, nobody else around, and he had a ram - a big ram. After about 5 or 6 attempts I gave up. He was faster, and he liked to ram, and he didn't mind busting through a bunch of fire barrels to ram me in the back. I tried ramming him, but I lost twice as much life with those head butts as he did. He didn't have a mortar, but to get close enough to hit him with mortar, I had to try to stay on his butt, but he pulled away, and then soon he'd turn and ram me. My close encounters, with heavy shot, were effective. But the rams had their effect on me - my health was slipping away faster than his.

Maybe the strategy on that would have been to learn how to avert the ram at the last minute - with a change of direction. As I mentioned, there were no other ships around to help me get patched up. Anyway, I decided that he was actually worse than the double ships, because of that ram.

I went to lower right for the last one - just to see. This one was easy. He was not heavily armored - my shots and follow up pivot cannon openings, had good effect. Remember, my ship is fully upgraded - most powerful shot - most powerful repeating pivot cannon, most powerful mortars.

I didn't mortar this guy at all, but his strategy was to mortar me like crazy. He had no built-in ram, and he didn't try to use speed on me, either to run, or to turn and ram me. His whole thing was mortar. There were plenty of other ships around to use as health packs. But I didn't need to do that - I killed him on the first attempt. By continuing to circle I seemed to stay away from many of the mortar shots. His health reduced slightly faster than mine.

This was the one they threw in to make sure that anybody with a fully upgraded ship could kill at least one of those legendary ships. So anyway, my world map now has 3 empty corners, and only one big red "iron cross figure" in the upper left. Next time some screenshots. Great game.

Thanks to you, Jeff, I think I'll follow that franchise for a long time. While playing Assassins Creed 3, I did check out flamboyant Ezio and his brother for a bit in Assassins Creed 2, but graphically, AC3 seemed so much better, I never went back. I can see how the franchise would accumulate a good fan base, and I don't mind that I came into it with the last installment, with AC3, of the triple Desmond Miles series.

(By the way, mentioning AC3 reminds me of something: I installed the demo for Call of Juarez on the new tower that I set up for Daryl a week or two ago, and I tried the Call of Juarez horseback riding again. It wasn't bad - but not as great as I had remembered it being, since by comparison the horseback riding in AC3 was so much better. They took from Call of Juarez and made it a better experience graphically, and in how the horse handles.)

Rich

 

Yes I definitely would have had a much better experience with a pair of 2GB 6850s. Really a shame because their sheer horsepower was squandered by the memory limit. They are still well capable of playing most of my games... if they don't run out of memory. What a waste... Particularly Skyrim and War Thunder, two of my staple games, are fully capable of being run at maxed settings by the 6850s, if I take steps to reduce the memory load. Not a compromise you want to make when you see what needs to be sacrificed graphically. Essentially, no sweet texture mods for Skyrim, which are a true must-have. Skyrim can look just as good as Crysis War Thunder likewise needed sacrifices in Cloud quality, texture resolution, and other like effects that are essential to a good looking game.

Parallax Occlusion Mapping. A wonderful technique

I've always quite liked Crysis 2 as a game, but the technology was disappointing. I certainly don't see it in the same light as other questionable games, but it has bad consolitis. Low res textures(atleast for a Crysis game), poorly integrated and overdone tessellation effects, volumetric lighting is now a 2D effect, POM and destruction physics are missing entirely. The game and engine were very much neutered graphics-wise to accommodate the consoles. Looking at the drastic difference between Crysis 1 on the Xbox and Crysis 1 on the PC, you'll see that the difference should be much greater.

Mods go a long way towards transforming the game into something special. I really is impressive and spectacular to behold, especially with the textures. There is also a shader mod available, which aims to restore some more of the Crysis 1-like effects. I haven't tried it yet, but that'll come soon enough.

Overall, I've always liked Crysis 2, it's just that the graphics, and the bugged HD6 series performance, meant I had a severely compromised experience on my first playthrough. The game is great, and deserves a better try. Even if it's not Crysis 1, I still can't discount its good qualities.

Glad you're really enjoying the Assassin's Creed series

 

64ºF is a bit cold for inside, I'd probably have two layers on if it were that temperature. However, 64ºF outside is fine, as that sort of temperature is OK if I'm not staying still in one place.

Crysis has been on Steam for years Rich - are you sure you're looking in the right place?

Yes, the double magnifying glass method works (but only if you provide the URL for each image, and don't just embed the preview). Really though, you should do away with the problem entirely and use a proper image host!

Are you still using XP after all this time, or do you just have Aero disabled in Win7? I notice your Google Chrome doesn't have transparency switched on. I'm assuming the latter, else that's madness

 

Haha - I LOVE XP.

But, of course, I use Win7 on my gaming rig.

A couple posts back, Jan 18, #8782, I had a paragraph, near the end of the post, under the red bold heading DARYL CATCHES ME COPYING HIM, where I talked about liking his $99 ebay core 2 duo compaq so much, that I bought myself one.

Mine came with an E7300 processor (wasn't that your old processor before the 6600?) 4 gigs ram, and vista. I installed windows 7. And I learned all about how XP Mode, virtual machine, works - and I am impressed with it. (A decade ago I tried to make windows 98 work in virtual mode within xp, and it seemed to work, until it didn't, and I had to rebuild the entire virtual machine. The second time that happened we came up with the idea of dual boot on two separate drives which I run to this day on the other 3 pentiums. But this Windows 7 implementation, called XP Mode, appears to be more solid.)




However, if I switch over to the Compaq for my everyday non-gaming machine (it is about 3 times faster than this pentium) I seriously question whether there is any advantage for me at all in retaining Windows 7. As I had posted, Daryl wanted windows 7 on his portable when I got him a replacement hard drive. I ended up putting both O/S's on that laptop - I thought that was cool, and I wanted him to tell me later if he still was as excited about the new look of Windows 7. But I don't think he boots to that at all since xp is faster on the youtube videos he watches.

Sam - why should I retain windows 7 on the core two duo?

Even if I put a 1-gig hdmi card in it, and xp only saw 3 gigs of memory - that is plenty of non-gaming Ram, so why would I want to bother with windows 7 for non-gaming business usage? For the life of me, I can't see it. I love the W7 gadgets, and yes I do like the aero look, but otherwise, it is not fully compatible, unless we're talking XP Mode, which comes very close to 100% compatible. But what advantage does windows 7 give me that I would put up with running xp in a virtual environment at the times when I absolutely have to have it (like to make pdfs on my $300 xp-only adobe pdf publisher program.) Why not simply drop the idea of windows 7 and just convert it to a speedy XP machine?

I am asking you because I am asking myself the same question, as I consider what to do with the little tower. I just don't see a clear argument that says to me - "Keep it as a Windows 7 machine, with XP always available in virtual mode."

Somebody play devil's advocate for me, please, because that would make things simple - I already have it set up with Windows 7. But I need XP for a lot of things that I do - including dozens of Pagemaker 6.5 marketing brochures, for example.

In regard to that program, I was able to install Pagemaker 6.5 under Windows 7 by brute force, and remarkably, it mostly works. But just like XP was slightly different from windows 98 (I mostly run xp, but xp ever-so-slightly changes the angle on a Sold banner, taking it out of the realm of "fresh and interesting" back to the realm of "ho hum that's nice") ... similarly the printed result of Windows 7 compared to XP is off a hair - compared to pure XP, or XP Mode.

What do you guys think? What do I lose by using XP exclusively on this little Compaq, and tossing Win7 out like a bum with the "fuggedaboutit" treatment?

Thanks for that feedback. Well, I am kind of comfortable with using photo bucket since Shaff told me about the site maybe 6 years ago. Rest assured, on any important image, like a screenshot, I will upload both and give you the full size link along with the preview.

By the way, Sam, for completeness, if you don't mind, here are four versions of the same PhotoBucket full-size image - the difference being in which link I choose.


1. This is the email html link that I used in the last post which requires hitting magnifier twice
http://s518.photobucket.com/user/harvardguy/media/coh2fullsize_zps1c850a9c.jpg.html

2. This is the "direct" link that I use to embed the previews in these posts
http://i518.photobucket.com/albums/u343/harvardguy/coh2fullsize_zps1c850a9c.jpg

3. This is a link labelled html link, for ebay, craigslist, etc.
<a href="http://s518.photobucket.com/user/harvardguy/media/coh2fullsize_zps1c850a9c.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i518.photobucket.com/albums/u343/harvardguy/coh2fullsize_zps1c850a9c.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo coh2fullsize_zps1c850a9c.jpg"/></a>

4. and finally this is a link that is labelled, image codes, for forums, boards, etc.

I put it in quotes to try to get the actual link.

4. Here it is again without being in quotes.



So from those 4 choices, I don't know if the post preview will tell me if those behave the same as the other, requiring magnifier twice, and also I don't know whether your experience will be the same as mine, as you are not logged onto PhotoBucket, but I am through my cookie.


Was there any difference between those, and if so, which of them did you prefer?

(Haha, well - nothing wrong with being complete. For me there was a BIG difference - the only one that worked was #1, the same as last time, with the double magnifier. I am going to assume, that, like for me in this preview, the #2 direct method doesn't work at all for you, unless you figure it out somehow in which case let me know what you did, also that #3 similarly is not a valid url, and that #4, which link I couldn't even get to display, even within quotes, since it had embedded in it the html information, similarly wasn't helpful without the magnifier. That's why I tried out #1 in the last post. I recalled in a prior attempt a few months ago, that the #2 method, which I always use for AfterDawn, had given me the sad impression that photobucket didn't support linking to a full-size image. If you don't answer this, don't worry, I'll stick with the #1 html link, which we know works, as it is apparently the only way to activate the magnifier.)


[i](So now that I have this full-size image thing handled, with the double magnifier, I am tempted to go back and repost those comparison screenshots in Assassins Creed 4, when I was talking about the improved look of applying the highest level of AA and post-processing, but nobody could see any difference.) [/i]


[quote=estuansis]Parallax Occlusion Mapping. A wonderful technique
I've always quite liked Crysis 2 as a game, but the technology was disappointing. I certainly don't see it in the same light as other questionable games, but it has bad consolitis. Low res textures(atleast for a Crysis game), poorly integrated and overdone tessellation effects, [/quote]

Wow, you know your graphics. But Jeff, as soon as you said "tessellation" - I have the impression that I mixed up the first effect with whatever tessellation does. I remember that you posted about a group of rocks in crysis 1, and about enlarging a texture by duplicating it in post-processing, so the original poly count can be lower, but the final output resolution is high.

Reading about the sacrifices you had to make to work within that 1 gig limitation - for a guy like you who is so into the graphics [i](even more than myself, you actually know exactly what is going on)[/i] - I felt your pain. Really. When one loses so much of the graphical magic - it seems to rob the game of so much of its luster - why even play it? I held off on those crysis titles for several years until I finally had the horsepower to run them in their full [i](albeit un-modded)[/i] glory.

When you talk about consolitis, I was reading recently about Crytek. They sold only about 100,000 pc copies of crysis 3. Is that possible? So few? Maybe they did better on the consoles, but Yerli was talking about how you had to make compromises in making the game for consoles, and some of the commentators had different views "Make the PC version better than the console version."

Probably easier said than done. Yerli talked about budget restraints. But to have solid under 200,000 PC versions? That staggers my imagination!

I would ask Yerli, how much does it cost for Crytek to have its reputation tarnished with a mere 78 metacritic score, versus the 90s of the other titles?

The reviewers play it on PC - right? So is that a good strategy - porting to PC over from a console version. Maybe it's well worth the extra investment of creating a spectacular PC version, then downsizing that to pick up the required console sales numbers.

So I don't know where Crytek is going. Jeff, how are you liking Crysis 3? I will eventually pick it up for sure, Steam or not. Origin only wants $20 for it. Are you enjoying the game? [i](Sam it's only crysis 3 that is not on steam, the other's are.)[/i]

How were Metro 2003 and the sequel handled? Those both seemed exceptional to me. Were they built with PC in mind, and then ported to console, rather than vice-versa? If Crytek has been hurt by this - and by hurt I mean in the pocketbook - this may be something that all devs closely consider in the future. If the idea takes hold that you go for a high metacritic score with an exceptional PC version - we'll all be happy about that.

Rich

 

You will find now that xp is actually less compatible than windows 7 overall because of how old it is. Of using up to date software in my experience you're more likely to find stuff that doesn't do everything in xp that it does in 7.

You can stick with xp if you must, but when the support expires in April and all the viruses built upon the remaining unfixed zero day exploits are unleashed - have fun

I never used the gadgets, but technical necessity for crossfire aside, the upgrade to 7 was still vital to me, for compatibility, features, and even in many cases performance. The concept of YouTube being 'slower' on 7 is not one I have heard of and suggests a problem on that PC, presumably with flash. Trust me, there's no difference in performance there.

 

I cringe when I have to work on an xp machine LOL!

 

Games for 98? Wow LOL! I can't imagine a game not being ported to the new OS's. Surely there's some kind of "trick".

And I don't mean VM's