The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Kevin, looks like not a bad mouse - and reviews seem pretty good. Most say "good value for the price." Really - you weren't kidding about allergic? What material was your old one made out of, that you were having a reaction to?

Yes John, Sam's experiences with Asus are legendary! On the other hand, I have to say that I am rather fond of Asus, and I owe my rich heritage of 2560x1600 gaming over the last few years to Asus. Let me explain:

Why I am deeply indebted to Asus for being problem-prone
My beloved gaming machine has an Asus P5E with 9450 quad core, and all I can say is I'm thankful it is such a cantankerous bast*rd or I would never have been gifted it.

You see, it wasn't mine originally. But it spontaneously decided to change its sata setting from ide to raid, only two weeks into its use by a professional animator relative, so he complained to IT at headquarters that his machine wouldn't boot up, and they said "Yes we've been having problems with that motherboard."

They promptly shipped him an i7 evga X58 tower. So 8 months later he casually mentioned to me - "Hey I've got this thing sitting in the garage along with a bunch of other old hardware - want to see if you can take them all with you and maybe get something working?"

"Uh..... sure."

(As my only significant upgrade had been to the 30" dell, and I was still nursing along a 4ghz p4, I thought I might as well keep an open mind about the whole thing.)

Then a year later when I decided to go to crossfire 7950s (with blower coolers) it got put into a spedo tower case that had been sitting in the garage for 4 years - brand new in its Microcenter box - and voila - my real to goodness gaming rig took final shape with 11 fans, not counting power supply - 2 more, and cpu hsf - 1 more (I've got fans on top, bottom, front, back, and both sides - including a 120mm 800 rpm motherboard circuit board exhaust fan - and one more free-floating 120 inside the case pointing 30 degrees up at the hsf - most of them 140mm, one 200mm, and three 120s.)

Being in such luxurious well-ventilated surroundings, however, didn't entirely stop the Asus from acting up, and for the past two years I have had to leave the dvi cable loose in order to jiggle it to activate the monitor - as I said, lovely 30" dell copy of Sam's early display. But my newer fix is to just pop off the case door and jiggle the entire upper card, sometimes the lower card as well - they seem to not sit that well in their expansion slots and sort of work loose from time to time - but happily jiggling the entire cards has seemed to stabilize the rig and for the past 3 months the display always comes up.

However, the new Asus twitch is that, for the first time ever in my experience, my motherboard battery has apparently died - I use a switch and completely power off when not gaming. So now I have to enter bios each time, quickly reload saved overclock settings profile, reboot into an alternative user, then reset the clock from a dozen years back, before switching to my main user. Trixx seems to have a problem loading on a 2002 machine. (One day I suppose I'll order another motherboard battery. Are they all standard?)

So while Sam may hate Asus, I sort of love them. But not enough to ever BUY one.

​

Kevin, you're so right. I spent a couple hours on WIKI yesterday, and there are ...................

*** THREE AVATAR SEQUELS IN THE WORKS ***​

to be released in 2016, 2017, and 2018. Wow!!!

All the stars are back, including Sigourney Weaver who appears in all 3 sequels - and I should mention that she played herself in the cutscene in the opening of the Avatar video game. The timeline isn't necessarily AFTER the events of the first film - after all there was so much history that had occurred prior to Avatar - the launching of the school for the tribesmen, the initial exploration of the planet, etc etc. We're going to learn about other moons besides Pandora, and other places - like the deep blue (more blue?) sea.

So these sequels, timeline-wise, do not necessarily follow the first film.

Anyway, Sam, that gives you at least a good year to catch up with the rest of the world, including John, DDP, and Ketola as well who, I will wager, have seen Avatar. Let's not hear you in 2016 saying, "Well, I don't know if I can be bothered to go see the sequel, since I've still not gotten around to seeing the first one."

And once you see the film you might like to pick up the $14 game. In my readings, I found it interesting to note how completely the game designers and film artists collaborated - to the point that Cameron was so impressed with the animals and vehicles that Ubisoft designed for the video game, that he decided to include some of them in his movie!!

Rich

 

I purchased the Asus GTX970 so will have to see how it blows £295 with 1 free game all my other gpu's came with 3 free games better be worth the extra bucks

 

From someone with a Gigabyte avatar that's an interesting choice

Clearly not everybody has had the experience I have otherwise there's no way Asus would still be in business, but the statistics do at least back my experiences up to some extent. Your card will more than likely be fine (unless you're sensitive to coil whine, you have to watch out for that with 970s!)

I didn't realise the Avatar PC game was a Ubisoft affair - if they ever decide to make video games for the sequels you may well be disappointed, there will either be no PC version or it will be dreadful - Ubisoft have a big anti-PC gamer drive going on at the moment. Quite frankly I've never seen such contempt for PC gamers, not even from the likes of EA or Activision. It's frankly disgusting.

 

I have had a bad experience with Asus myself before with a Asus M2N32 motherboard and said I would never purchase Asus again. However over the years my experience tells me they have been a much improved outfit. There monitors are top class and so are there DVD drives but I still would not touch there motherboards gigabyte all the way with the motherboards for me. I have also had a bad experience with pioneer DVD drive does not mean the next one they make will be bad we usually learn from experience and I believe Asus have so I believe I have made a good choice but thank you for your input is gratefully appreciated.

 

Motherboards are the main thing that put me off, but my experience with their graphics cards was little better. Typically speaking it's AMD that suffer most from low quality non-reference graphics cards these days anyway, but I usually give companies 2, sometimes 3 chances. Asus had almost 10, and blew every single one

 

To be honest I have not had that much experience with Asus like I said the motherboard really put me off purchasing a lot of there products. I have had a Asus graphic card before though which is years old and still running now in one of my lads machines and proved to be very reliable so I'm not to worried. The main reason I chose the Asus is that it is suppose to run a little bit quieter. Spec wise there both just about the same as well as price and many good reviews just as the gigabyte has so they really hard to part.

 

Funny enough my M2N32-SLI Deluxe was amazing and and the last good quality Asus product I've owned. Replaced enough P5N boards to turn me off of their products permanently. Video cards don't matter much though as they are usually just a reference board with an Asus sticker on them. Monitors as well aren't bad.

Finally got back to finishing The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker for the Gamecube on my 4 year old save. You guys know I'm a stickler for graphics, so believe me when I say that it has truly withstood the test of time. It's just as visually pleasing today as it was all those years ago, especially with the inclusion of the component cable and progressive scan. The colors in particular really POP with the component cable!

It is one of the main reasons I am a huge proponent of art direction, along with Crysis 1, Minecraft and a few others. In simplest terms, the graphics are done in such a style that it is nearly impossible for them to become outdated. It's not limited by the technology, but meant to look exactly as it does. Another excellent example of Nintendo's ability to exploit the little cube to its very limits.



Tell me that's ugly Limited texture resolution is obviously still an issue, but the textures are very clean and well made so as to create a sharp and colorful image. The models are made with a similar philosophy. They are so stylized that obviously visible polygons and rough edges are actually part of the art style. Wind Waker is easily in my top 10 games for graphics and within my top 100 favorite games of all time. ALL game developers should take note of this little gem. It is far better looking than many modern games.

 

Apart from the resolution of the UI that's easily on par with a lot of indie titles still coming out even today. Expanding console textures to higher display resolutions really works wonders a lot of the time, as to get textures to look good at the original very limited display resolution they had to be designed with a bit of care.

 

The Gamecube has a large number of exclusive titles that truly impress me. Both Zelda games rank among them as well as F-Zero GX, Pikmin, both Rogue Squadrons, and especially Super Mario Sunshine.

The Sega Dreamcast was an interesting early entrant to the sixth generation and an excellent all around machine. Its main shortcomings were a lack of advertising, a lack of 3rd party titles, and a lack of hardware power in the face of the later competition. It simply was not up to the challenge. The Dreamcast was very forward looking though. It had great online capabilities including a browser and email, and was capable of progressive scan approximately 2 years before the PS2 even debuted using an official Sega VGA adapter box. Any computer monitor or progressive-capable television of the time would work. In my opinion, its largest issue was a lack of hardware power. It wasn't capable of running the multi-platform titles that became commonplace on the "big three" due to the large processing power difference. Even the PS2, which is decidedly much weaker than the Gamecube and Xbox, had a vast advantage in capabilities. It also had a lack of memory, limiting its abilities even more.

I thoroughly enjoyed the sixth generation of consoles. There wasn't much BS, just a push for the highest possible quality video games.

Now to get the S-Video cable for my good old N64 and an S-Video to HDMI upscaler. S-Video is technically a component video signal, and offers many benefits. It can also benefit quite well from a decent quality signal processor/upscaler.

Older consoles were capable of some pretty impressive stuff. The lack of a quality international video standard was a serious detriment to the average consumer though. For some stuff like the Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, Analog RGB Component(SCART/VGA) is an option. For others, like the N64, SNES, etc, S-Video is the best available option. It lacks the resolution capabilities of Analog RGB, but retains the proper color separation and is far better quality than Composite. It's a good raw source for deinterlacing and upscaling. For more modern consoles such as my PS2/XB/GC, the Standard Component(or D-Terminal in Japan) on any basic HDTV is a really good option. It's basically an Analog RGB Component signal like VGA/SCART but uses some digital signals for wider capabilities. Absolutely perfect for upscaling. I am considering sinking some serious money into a true video signal processor. Composite, S-Video, SCART, VGA and Component all upscaled to 720p or 1080p through HDMI. Such units do exist. I have seen them with my own eyes. Very impressive when configured correctly.

The introduction of Component and HDMI have truly revolutionized the games console industry. There are no real limitations on their capabilities and they have wide international acceptance.

 

I'm pretty sure even my N64 was RF, let alone the SNES!

 

Jeff, thanks for posting that screen shot - very lovely and nice-looking game.

Obviously not photo-realistic, but I would call it comic book style - very attractive and "sunny." I am reminded of what the lead artist on Dishonored had to say - the guy who helped design Half Life 2. He encouraged developers to avoid getting trapped into thinking that photo-realism was the only proper design philosophy, and to spend more time thinking like artists - interpreting reality.

I remain awed by your in-depth knowledge of consoles, including various methods of video rendering.

Yes, Sam, Ubisoft did Avatar the video game. However I seriously doubt there will be any more games made from the sequels, as sales were "just about 3 million", over a two-year period, and they thought it would do much better than that.

I was not aware that there are some in Ubisoft who have a beef with PC owners - I imagine it's the piracy that bugs some people. The original Infinity Ward devs were equally put off by the relatively low pc sales of COD4, versus console sales. What were the numbers? One million on PC, ten million on consoles?

As video game design is a business - you have to go for the big sales volumes, and port it over to the hackers. LOL

But I continue to believe that game developers themselves own PCs, pretty capable ones at that, and while you have to design for where your biggest sales numbers are going to be, the devs also want to be able to enjoy the games on their own impressive PC equipment.

Crysis 3 was a console port. Yerli said he was therefore limited in terms of what he could do. I don't really understand. Other than the opening segment, I thought the graphics were exceptional.

But I would have to defer to you guys, Jeff and Sam, regarding the graphics, as you know exactly what all the bells and whistles are, and "It looks nice" is about all you'll ever get from me. (I did a bit of a study on Far Cry 3 regarding 4x AA vs 8x AA - maybe one day I'll post the shots - very minor difference for a 5 fps hit that caused the game to lag. But 2x AA to 4x - major difference, so I was glad my hardware would run the 4x fairly well.)

But in terms of Ubi and their possible anti-PC tendency, at least among some of them who talk to the press, let's take a look at Assassins Creed, a title that Jeff got me into. I came into the franchise with number 3 - the American Revolution. I was very impressed - I understood that it it was a console port - but nonetheless, it was very enjoyable. I liked the horseback riding and everything else.

For Assassins Creed 4 which took the sailing from #3 and made a whole game out of it - also VERY well done in my opinion. I thought it noteworthy that they improved the ability of Assassins 4 to run on 4k monitors, by providing many extra (ten more?) gigabytes of texture files, making the whole download quite large. I posted one 4k shot. Obviously you already know my point - the 4k texture enhancement was NOT done for console gamers.

Watch Dogs (another Ubisoft console port)
Speaking about hackers - that is what this game focuses on - the main hero has a smartphone and can hack into almost anything. What has anybody heard about Watch Dogs? I actually sampled it yesterday, but that was that - today it's gone from my rig and I'm ready to go back to Arma3 and all the user community missions - about 150 4-5 star user-rated missions that I haven't gotten into yet. Watch Dogs wasn't quite my cup of tea, but I'll bet it would appeal to a lot of GTA fans - do we know anybody who fits that description? (hint: lives east of Portland, 3 hours flying time south of DDP - whose large igloo is just under the north pole.)

The Watch Dogs graphics were stunning - I could not even begin to run the game maxed out - I got 3 fps on ultra. I let the game put me on medium, and then I got 40. Maybe I could have reduced AA, and increased quality to high - but at medium I saw it still looked pretty good. It seems to be a superbly rendered photo-realistic layout of Chicago.

I decided that the game wasn't for me because there was just too much sensory input - you can hack everything - so every single person you see brings you a personal history, since you stole the facial recognition software from the city and you are linked to their database. So - this passerby on the sidewalk goes to therapy, makes $60,000, has problems with his sister, this other random lady is in an abusive relationship, etc etc. The data keeps coming in - Facebook and Twitter on steroids. Kind of cool if you're up for it.

My take: WTF!!

That didn't stop me from putting in about 6 hours on a game inside the main game - where you have to get past robot policemen and re-energize the city and "end the darkness." It was challenging and addicting, and I only stopped when daylight struck and I could barely see the screen.

They put a lot of work into this title - one reviewer said it was hotly anticipated. I could see that the game was going to be a lot of "running from the cops" - a lot of "mad skills driving." And of course everything in 3rd person. I believe I already had my fill of that with Sleeping Dogs, not to mention the very recent dune buggies in Avatar and Crysis 3.

But, as I was impressed with the layout of New York in GTA4, and similarly impressed with the layout of Hong Kong in Sleeping Dogs, I was most impressed with how Watch Dogs did Chicago.

Rich

 

The Assassins Creed: Unity release seems to have elaborated on the issue - Ubisoft don't just show contempt for PC gamers, but all gamers

Plus, the launch has also revealed their code at least, is very much anti-AMD as well...



It's been a while since I've seen graphs as stacked as this one - that there is a dual-core CPU outpacing the 8-core Piledriver AMD. Only the 200W+ behemoth can best Intel's entry-level dual-core offering. I would initially think the game perhaps only used two threads, but that's not true either:



Intel graph for balance:


The code is clearly just hopeless on AMD CPUs. It'll run, and largely speaking run smoothly enough to play, but those minimum frame rates could be unpleasant at times. Is the GPU market any better? In short... no.


Comprehensive bias of around a quarter to a third in favour of nvidia, as well as effectively nil crossfire scaling, despite SLI scaling well. Intel/nvidia is the way to go with this one, assuming you can even play through it without getting overcome by all the bugs... like this one:

or this one:

or this one:

or this one:

or this one:

or this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwnnzEagn2w

So how will it run at 4K? Well, er...


So for frame rates like those (I didn't even include the 2x AA test as it'd be unplayable on any current setup) it should be quite a pretty game right?

Uh, not really?

This right here, is an unfinished game

 

Ummm, you do remember AMD's CPUs suck and are hopelessly outdated and would have those problems regardless of bias right??? I disagree on graphics and think it looks awesome. Being pretty is about the only thing it has going though. I gave up on Assassins Creed after AC4 was touted for having amazing graphics by reviewers and turned out very average looking. Just another rinse and repeat garbage console franchise now. Obviously still good games but quality has continued to slip.

Holding off on the move to Intel in favor of expanding my Xbox, Gamecube, and PS2 collections. Amazon is AMAZING for used games.

 

Yeah, Jeff, I too found it interesting to see Sam "sticking up" for AMD cpus. LOL.

Those were some great graphs, Sam! And the youtube videos were funny.

I remember when I fell through the model on Assassins Creed 3 - I think it was in the temple somewhere - suddenly I fell right through the model and kept on falling forever to my death. And something like that happened recently - oh, yeah, I think it was Arma. I was at a corner of a building taking fire and suddenly I was inside the building.

Edit: Hey I just noticed - Sam, you FINALLY posted a 4k screenshot. It is BIG.

It's hard to tell from a screenshot, but the graphics didn't look that bad - I didn't immediately see any problems. But you would know better than I. Were those not really 4k textures, for example? Can you be specific where you think the quality was lacking?

Regarding AC4 - I loved it. What can I say? All those sea battles! And what about the fishing - you could go catch great whites, killer whales, plus some really big fish. I thought it was a worthy successor to AC3. I want more of the same - that's why I need to hear additional about Unity. I'm sure I'll eventually get it when I think the kinks are worked out. ​

NEW TRICKS ON ARMA
That reminds me - I did a couple things last night that I have never done in Arma - for one, I fired from a second story window right through the wall as an enemy below came toward me - killing him through the wall. I started doing that more and more, especially since I had the very powerful enemy 7.6 zephyr light machine gun. Those opfor occasionally do it to me - one in a while killing me right through the walls.

From that same second story window - I also for the first time took out an MRAP with the rocket launcher.


That was a pretty tiny window - the glass was already blown out from shooting at soldiers.



That worked out beautifully - but I had been worried that the missile would likely strike the edge of the very narrow window and kill me instead. Nope - it did what it was supposed to do. I was so impressed, I took some screenshots.


Here's a little closer look - the launcher scope indicated a clear shot - it went right through the window!



And the third thing that was new - for the first time - after trying for an hour to get out of a corner.....

(they had both sides of the street with prone enemies waiting to spot me wherever I was, plus more on the merging side street, and I didn't want to go back over to the side behind me nearer the beach - that area is also heavily patrolled)​

..... I finally used smoke, which I have never done before in Arma. That was in the Operation Greenstorm scenario, me against about 100 opfor.

(The game was meant for coop, not single player, I realized after getting hooked on it. So I play the game now after after parking my squad in a safe place - much easier than trying to keep them alive. When I blow up all the ammo dumps I fly the escape helicopter over to where I left them, and we all leave together. Those helicopters are very cool to fly. I create my own save points to slowly get through the carnage.) ​

As I say, for the first time, I decided to try smoke to escape from that corner out that front door. At first I tried one - no success. Then two - still didn't do the job. I had only 3 smokes with me. Finally I decided to use all of them. So the last time I tossed out a total of 3 smoke bombs and hesitated a couple seconds to let them percolate.

There was SO much smoke. It was godawful thick with smoke!!

And the enemies seemed to be very distracted by that - I encountered hardly any resistance rushing out past the porch railing on my left, turning left to cross the street, and jumping into that doorway I was targeting across the street. But the backdoor on that little corner house led to a closed room - not out back to the compound area like I thought. So I had to quickly exit the house, expecting the worst. But there was still no real resistance - the cloud of smoke hanging there was thick and as dense as a hill of snow - so I ducked into an alley with nobody shooting at me.

Whew! I created a new save point and made a mental note about the tremendous usefulness of smoke.

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

Gaming-wise, I clearly need to wait on Assassins Creed Unity for a game patch, and for Catalyst that gets cross-fire working. As it is on Arma, I mostly play Very High, but sometimes when I have a million enemies around, the framerate really plunges, and I have to drop way down in picture quality to avoid dangerous rifle movement lag that can get me killed.

I'll probably go slow on picking up Far Cry 4 as well - wait for a patch and wait for AMD to upgrade catalyst.

Similarly I am waiting on COD until Sam gets it and says it is worth buying.



In the meantime, yes, I am back on Arma 3, with over 150 user community scenarios I haven't yet played. But as I've been away for a couple months busy with Crysis 3 and Avatar, I did want to re-visit my favorite 3 scenarios, Hogs Cove, Contact Person, and Operation Greenstorm.



Attack on Hogs Cove in particular is a great scenario - it's an amphibious attack with rubber boats on a small enemy-held town. Strictly infantry, no artillery or air support. It might be dead of night, high noon, or sunrise. There are five 5-man squads, Alpha through Echo, and Zulu squad that hangs back a bit with a general combat lifesaver.

If you're hurt you're supposed to go see those guys.

Before this most recent arma update, I would just use my health kit, and I could generally get a replacement off a dead enemy. But to my amazement, I see that now they don't give you a health kit. Who would send soldiers on a mission like that without at least one health kit with bandages for a light wound?

That got me upset, but then I found that at least SOME of the dead enemies do have the kits. If you go near a dead guy who has the kit, in addition to the small assault rifle icon which means you are close enough to check out the inventory of the stuff he has with him, if you see a semi-circle above that, it means you can re-arm from that dead soldier. The only thing I'm missing is a health kit, so that's what I get when I select re-arm. One out of five dead opfor have that. Okay, I can live with that.

As far as rifle to take with you on the assault, you can change your loadout at the beach before marching on the town - everybody waits. I have tried a variety of weapons, including the stock one they give you with iron sights, and 30-round 6.5mm clips, with a total of about 210 rounds of ammo. They are all fun.

But my favorite is the DMS two-level scope, and the variant of the 6.5mm rifle with 100 rounds on a belt, with 2 spare belts. When you get low on ammo you can also re-arm from dead friendlies, so the gun also apparently takes 30-round clips. Very nice. You can always pick up an enemy rifle, but I like the friendly rifle much better.

The DMS scope is something like 10x-12x, unlike the other very high powered sniper scope that is more like 20-30X magnification. I have tried the higher, but it is just too much magnification for close to medium combat. As it is, I shoot without the scope a lot, using the crosshairs, particularly when I often turn on full auto right inside the town. Things can get pretty dicey when you encounter a 4-8 man squad - often you don't have time for reload, which is why I like the large capacity belts.

They also let you try out some other rifles, like the 5.5mm ammo, or even the 7.6mm ammo, which usually is a one-shot kill - but the amount of ammo is much less than the 210-300 rounds you get with 6.5mm ammo. And when you run out, you're not likely to find anybody with that ammo - so you have to change guns.

The dead enemies are everywhere, so unless you spot a dead frienly, it's likely you'll be fighting later with a katiba - 6.5mm also - but I don't like it too much for some reason - I don't like the sound it makes - and I am convinced it has less impact. Jeff has suggested I could be right - that the size of the ammo is not the full story - the powder charge behind the bullet is of course important, and I have noticed that I can't take ammo from a dead enemy - the clips are not interchangeable. And Jeff says also the length of the barrel has an effect.

So a couple nights ago, eventually everybody was dead - I had already switched squads - and now my new squad was dead also. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't keep my sergeant alive - he insisted on sprinting into dangerous situations.

So rather than go back to my last save, I said, what the heck, because with the much fewer enemies we were coming across, I figured they were also almost wiped out. The spotters continued to inform me about opfor that were sighted - lower left on my hud "enemy spotted at quadrant 231322." How did they know? Were there drones overhead? Anyway, when those quadrants were 400 meters away, I just ignored them. I knew I'd get better intel in a few minutes.

So I checked out the alerts that were nearby. The third dead enemy brought a welcome "Mission Accomplished."

Hogs Cover - a very cool scenario from about 6 months ago - featured in PC Gamer as one of the top 25 scenarios, and it's my all-time favorite. That one scenario is worth the $60 price of admission.

Rich

 

Well got to say been testing this Asus gtx 970 over a week now and got to say what a card this really is the best card I have ever had. Yes I have spent more than I ever had but fifa is flawless which I have never had before as always a little lag. This card never blows smoke never wines just does its job without a fuss it is truly awesome. I have not even heard the fans move yet been playing pro evo 2015 rise and others and the fans have yet to kick in.

 

Glad to hear, I'm pretty pleased with my GTX970 it has to be said given its performance at 3840x2160 - but the odd thing is, in real terms I haven't really upgraded in terms of raw graphics processing power for almost 6 years - the two HD6970s were only slightly more powerful theoretically than the two HD4870X2s they replaced but dual crossfire being better than quad crossfire they were worth it - the GTX970 isn't much more than double the power of an HD6970, but not having dual-graphics makes for a better experience than having it. I've downsized and 'sensibilised' and that has brought some modest performance benefits, but in real world processing power terms, not a lot has changed since I added the second HD4870X2 at the very start of 2009.
That said, every game always 'scaling' the same is nice, as is just the faintest whine from the cooler around 20dB rather than the 70+ screaming the X2s were doing towards the end of their 2-year pairing...

 

Also, picking up on the other point raised, yes Rich it's unusual for me to 'stick up for' AMD in this case but it's just plain wrong of the developer to blame the manufacturer not only in an unprecedented case for game development (i.e. it's clearly an inadequately tested game not a fault with one brand of hardware that only affects one title) and secondly AMD going bust does nobody any favours. Look at Intel's development stagnation since AMD started falling behind. The Core i5 750 is now more than 5 years old as a product. In high-performance IT terms that makes it practically a relic, yet with its reasonable overclock, the current equivalent CPUs barely outperform it - certainly my 3470 doesn't beat it, I think the 4570 does, but only just. For all that development, there ain't a lot to show for it. Sure, the newer CPUs are only 70-80W things that idle extremely efficiently compared to this one using 200W because of the voltage increase and a lot at idle since manual overclocking's enabled, but even so, I'd expect after 5 years CPUs to natively outperform them - some other examples of 5 year development gaps are going from the P3 500mhz to the P4 Northwood 2.8Ghz (around 5 times the processing power), or perhaps even more noticeably, from the P4 Northwood 2.2Ghz, to the Core 2 Quad Q6600 (around 7 times the processing power).

I'm not wholly convinced this is due to the termination of Moore's Law from some physical limitation, I genuinely believe a lot of it has to do with the lack of proper competition. Now that AMD are starting to fall behind in the graphics sector as well, that is also a worry, as for gamers at least, faster GPUs are still very much a requirement (and anybody that tries to preach otherwise is simply misguided, I'm sorry) whereas faster CPUs tend only to be necessary for mainstream computing tasks like video editing, transcoding and the likes these days.

 

That's funny you mentioned Moore's law - as in reading your post - just before you brought that up - I was thinking the same thing. Here you are really about even on graphics power after 5 years, but down to one gpu not 4, and here you are about even on cpu power after 5 years, except burning twice as many watts to produce the power.

Here's a thought: Is it possible that we don't really need to keep up the incredible escalation of power that preceded the last 5 years?

The Moore's law rate - what was the law - doubling every 5 years? Maybe we're down to doubling every 7.5 years. Burning less energy is very popular these days. And I'm also thinking that today's power is pretty good, for resolutions below 4k.

I'm thinking in terms of my 30" 2560x1600 "modest" 4 megapixel load - modest by 4k standards. Yeah, on that watchdogs title I was shocked not to come close to ultra during the 5 hours I sampled it - but I was pretty much able to max out crysis 3 on my aging setup (crossfire 7950s oc'd to 975, and cpu 9450 oc'd to 3.343ghz.)

But yes, crysis 3 is already an older title.

More recently, no trouble on AC3 and AC4, or Far Cry 3 - running 4xAA not 8xAA but very little difference in quality and maintaining low 30 fps the whole time. Yes, there was that period of micro-stuttering on that game, but that seems to have been solved.

We'll see how I do on the new titles I am eyeing - Far Cry 4, Assassins Unity, and COD, but on Arma I already keep it one notch below ultra at Very High, and mid-to high 20 fps seems mostly to work for me without lag (except as I mentioned when there are dozens of enemies closing in, my framerate can drop to single digits, and to stay alive I cut graphics quality until I am no longer in thick of things - although I think it's not my gpus - it's the 9450.)

So is it a question of competition - or is it consoles - or is it energy consumption?

AMD apparently offers the biggest bang for the buck - but they don't offer the biggest bang at unlimited bucks. So AMD has staked out its turf - the middle ground with reasonably good power at the upper end of its range, and Intel and Nvidia have the strongest equipment.

Maybe you're right - it's the lack of competition.

And everybody's making a profit - that's important in this tight economy. And consoles are not all that extremely power hungry. And energy is an important consideration - being green with minimal carbon footprint is popular.

And here's another consideration ......
Add the idea that maybe it's simply the fact that we already have virtual photo-realism for the most popular formats, including even up to 4 megapixels on 2560x1600 - the fact that my aging 30" rig can still pretty much keep up with the new titles, while Jeff at 1080p or 1200p blows the new titles away.

Another way to look at it - How much more eye candy, at current popular resolutions, would noticeably improve the gaming experience, and warrant development of huge Moore's Law jumps in power?

Now, as the owner of a 4k rig, you might say that my narrow perspective is simply the result of never having experienced the extra immersiveness of 4k. And you may be right about that. Eventually I'll have to really check it out - I might one day show up at your flat and say "Give me a demo Sam."

Rich

 

Just started playing Far Cry 4 and it is actually good. Basically Far Cry 3.5 in graphics and technology. Vastly improved and more reactive enemy AI. The India/Tibet/Nepal mountain environment is actually pretty dang cool and there are tons of mobility options, including autogyros

Short review.

Graphics: 10/10
Improved graphics in nearly every single area. Drastically better put together than Far Cry 3. Better textures, better character models, better lighting, better handling of draw distance by far, better shadows. Even better optimized overall, though it does run worse on average than FC3 on my PC. The rock walls are tessellated very well and tessellation is used in some form or another throughout the game. It is absolutely stunning. Too many little elements of quality to mention. Good stuff here. This is true quality, and easily among the likes of Half-Life 2 and Crysis 1 for sheer realism. It is not one particular thing but a combination of overall quality and artistic talent that make this game truly spectacular.

Crysis is still far more technologically advanced overall than any other game, bar none. It was built with the most ambition and hardcore WORKSMANSHIP that I have ever seen in a game since Half Life 2. Far Cry 4 shows a studio finally learning how to use their technology though. Far Cry 4 is going to sell and it's going to sell hardware too because the PC version is easily superior to the consoles. Expect larger pushes from this team in the future. This is something special as far as graphics are concerned.

They have done some very neat things.


Sound: 9/10

Excellent sound effects. The guns and explosives all have a satisfying report. Nice and meaty. Overall very good voice acting much like Far Cry 3 and even more variety. The music is a little generic, but well made and sets the mood really well. At least as good as the previous game. It gives an epic feel to the game vs Far Cry 3's vacation. The game sounds good.

Performance: 10/10

The game is excellently optimized in day one patch form. For as good as it looks, it runs even better. I have it absolutely maxed and it's not much worse in practice than Far Cry 3, which took months to run properly. The engine is very mature now, and it is quite capable.

Gameplay: 8.5/10

The most important element is probably one of the least improved. Make no mistake it is easily better than Far Cry 3, but it feels more like a vastly improved expansion than a whole new game. There are many more varieties of things to do, which keeps the game interesting. The new villain, Pagan Min is interesting, but not nearly as good as Vaas. There are flying machines and the vehicles are overall better designed and handle better. The gunplay is very polished now aswell. One real problem I found is that you lose quite a bit of the customizability and gun realism that you had in Far Cry 3. The pre-customised guns that are available do much more damage than the regular ones, when some should even do less as-equipped. The effective range of the weapons is far better though.

The story is good but not as good as Far Cry 3 or Crysis. The friendly faction does seem a lot less ambiguous though and with the sheer amount of content it makes Far Cry 2 seem very sparse indeed. Overall a damn fine game but not amazing. It feels more like an expansion than a true sequel though. The next game needs to innovate. This style of gameplay and environment feel a little stale.

Overall: 9.5/10

This is a nearly perfect game with very few flaws. Repetitiveness and too many elements of consolitis are among them though. Repetitiveness is okay in a game like Skyrim with huge potential for growth and change, but Far Cry 4 is ultimately a guy with a gun. The menu system is also obviously meant for a controller. I can't fault it that much though. It is an uncompromisingly beautiful game with lots of loving care put into it. The developers wanted it to be good, and it delivers! It is clearly a much better designed game than the previous one. The main villain isn't as notable as Vaas though, which I find disappointing. Far Cry is a fun, beautiful game that feels good to play.

 

Am I right in thinking all the settings in that video are exclusively for nvidia hardware owners? Not really sure what I think of an entire suite of features being locked down to an individual hardware vendor...