The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

My X38-DS4 had a dud lower PCIe slot but I attributed that to the chipset. The X48-DS4 and P55A-UD4 have had no such issues.

 

X38 still working like the day it was new here *knock on wood*

 

I've bought multiple Gigabyte devices. Other than a few LAN issues(which could be windows), I haven't had problems. I would need to have more than one problem, in a short time, to switch brands.

 

Again, 32" at 1080p isn't bad at all, very crisp for the most part. Certainly not like 40" which was pretty nasty at times(at other times not so bad). 27" should be just fine. Still have my Dell 2407WFP hooked up to my other PC and haven't found need to replace or sell it yet. Still my best PC monitor by a longshot. I just really like the extra size.

 

Wow, Jeff, I don't blame you for being quite upset about that scroll wheel failure.

DDP - those finnish servers must get busy from time to time - I never had trouble posting with the old system. Is anybody else having any problems?

Since you mentioned SteelSeries, Sam, I will add that I pretty much like my steelseries mouse - it works great except for one peculiarity - rapid mouse movements trigger the middle mouse button which I used to love to use for grenades. That's a great key for grenades.

But - I found way back in Left 4 Dead, that running around and moving back and forth checking for zombies - and suddenly there appeared a molotov cocktail waiting to be tossed.

I worked with quality control - as I recall they swapped out the mouse for another - but the problem persists.

Other than that - it's perfect! I have the laser version - about $60 as I recall - teamed up with a scratchy kind of large steelseries laser mouse pad. I just cleaned off mouse and pad with rubbing alcohol the other day.

On Arma I hardly throw grenades - occasionally some smoke. Alt G to cycle through the smoke, then g to throw. Not as nice as middle mouse, but ....

Kevin, thanks for trying to explain 3D. I was up in LA over the weekend for about 5 days - and one relative is looking at upgrading to a larger tv - his screen is only 37" and just 720p. So he's thinking about 60". I tried to get a 3d demo at Best Buy, but they couldn't really give me a decent demo. They said however, that there are some new glasses out which are "active" versus typical passive glasses. The active ones take a small battery, and actually synch to the screen - you hold them against the screen and then a light comes on. They emit a tiny flash that causes the 3d to work. But again - they couldn't get it working. The department head said he can't really see 3d. He still sees the 2 images. He said everybody's eyes are slightly different, and there is about 25% of the population that can't really see 3d.

So Kev, what did you buy for $366? Was it a monitor?

Rich

 

Yeah, it's an LG monitor(should make a decent pairing with the DELL U2410). The people that can't see 3D, probably aren't sitting still and relaxing LOL! Or they're trying too hard or something. Some people have trouble with Stereograms too. They're not that hard This one took me a couple minutes though :S It's a bit noisier than I'm used too.

 

I could never see the picture in stereo-grams. Ever. Have seriously tried.

 

While it is a 2D image, you have to try to look beyond it. Like you look beyond a river. Like the tree on the other side of the river. It helps some people while staring at the image, to rock back and forth, or focus on something between the image, and your eyes. Like your finger. It wasn't easy for me the first few times... you have to train your eyes. Once you get good at it, you can study the entire image, without losing focus. Watching 3D movies doesn't seem to bother my eyes. But if I play with Stereograms, I notice my eyes become fatigued quickly LOL!

 

Hmmmm.

That is very interesting. And like Jeff, I can't see it. For a second I thought it was going to kick in. I enlarged it in chrome, up to 200%, and only then the little hint "enlarge to full size" showed, and it became a bit bigger. I held up my finger, rocked back and forth, and then decided any more would give me a headache.

How about starting us off with something "less noisy."

 

Ok. I'll try to find something easier lol. They certainly exist.

 

http://www.eyetricks.com/stereograms/tips.htm
It helps to be centered. And the link above is right. Don't focus too hard. Relax your eyes, and it'll get easier and easier. You just have to train them.
This one isn't too bad. Strawberries outlining a heart.

 

Have seriously tried all the good techniques. My brain simply can't pick up the image. Would require retraining my eyes, as I tend to look very deeply into things.

 

I totally don't get the strawberry picture either. I thought for a second that something was going on - my eye started to see some depth - but then nothing happened.

How about if you give us one that does not look so obvious - I mean I can see the strawberries above. How about one where it looks like nothing - but once you "see" it you totally get it. Like that trick picture of an old witch - then you flip it over and it's a beautiful girl.

Maybe like that first one but is there something not quite so hard?

And there is probably a lot more to the strawberries than what meets the eye, but again, I don't get it. Right now I'm thinking - "no wonder I can't see 3D."

 

Just had a revelation! Blink! Blink multiple times while staring(perhaps not too rapidly), and your eyes will focus! It became ten times easier! If this doesn't work, I apologize, and I'll rest the case. I certainly don't mean to make anyone jealous, or upset. It's worth noting, that my eyes are not in good health. The muscles that control them, are very lazy. But, Perhaps some people simply aren't capable :S
Green one is Brontosaurus. No no no no, becomes YES!

 

Wow, Kevin, it's not like you didn't try. I was all ready to see a Brontosaurus, and I started slowly blinking, relaxing my eyes, losing focus - it seemed like a 3d effect was happening - and it just never kicked in! You've got it, and I don't got it.

In other words, I give up. But I give you 1000% for trying to help us out with this thing. I can see why you can see 3D and maybe I don't really see it except marginally.

On another note, I was scooting around in the quad in Arma - yes this particular scenario has a quad parked at the gas station, and two more in the little town that you can have access to, after you kill all the enemies guarding both places.

The scenario is Operation Scott Lass. It's quite good actually.

I purposely left most of the enemies alive at the primitive air base with the two large bunk buildings, so that they would come after me and I would test my ability to kill them all with the TMS scope - it switches between being a pretty high-powered scope, something like 20x-30x, or if you hit N for night vision, it flips to W-Hot, meaning that things that give off heat glow white - or you can flip it to have them glow black - for example if you were in a snowy environment I suppose, like where DDP lives - more north than the north pole.

Many first person shooters have had that type of scope from time to time - it's pretty cool because while the regular scope is nice - enemy uniforms DO have some camouflage ability, but with the W-Hot you see them as pure white, and everything else is a dull gray. You can't see through trees, but if they are in bushes and bits of themselves are visible, you can see them that way, whereas normally you would never see them.

Another example, is that I took the escape route by sea, meaning I drove my pickup truck further out toward the coast, passing some enemy patrols that I didn't even know were there, and when I tried to outrun the bullets, one of the AT guys got me with a homing rocket. At first I thought it was very talented grenadiers, and I was telling myself "Nobody could shoot a grenade launcher that well" but then I realized it was the AT launcher, in target lock mode - they locked on to my truck and the missile did the rest.

So now I am kind of in revenge mode. I piloted the UAV drone back toward friendly territory, which was the whole purpose of my mission, and now I'm just in it to murder patrols. LOL

So I like to get up on this one hillside, and scan the terrain with the TMS - the thermal scope. I am looking out over a valley about 2 miles in diameter. There they are - a patrol of from 4 to 7 guys. Then I hit B for binoculars - but in a supply crate while looking for the hidden UAV controller, I came across a range finder. So instead of binoculars, the range finder pops out - and it magnifies up to 60X. You just roll the scroll, and the range finder will tell you how far they are. That is good to know, because my thermal scope has lines for up to 1000 meters, in terms of how high I need to hold the gun to compensate for drop - but really 600 meters is about all you can do accurately, and 300 is optimum.

Anyway, the patrol can be 2000 meters - which is like 1.5 miles away - and you can see them plain as day. Then I mount up and roll the little quad bike down the hill and race across the valley, trying to miss the stone walls, and try to get around behind the patrol. If I can get within 300 yards behind, it's murder time. I have a lot of health kits for when I get wounded. But my best was - all 7 guys - DEAD. It's wonderful!! (I don't know why I'm so bloodthirsty - there must be something wrong with me.)

Or should I say, that's just one more thing that's wrong with me. But at least I'm not Canadian.

I should post some screenshots - I have some nice ones. I have written myself some strategy guides, for how to do some of these missions. I learned a bunch of new things:

1. When the terrain is flat - you need a way to gain height so that you can see these guys. You can have the most powerful scope, like I do, but you have to have a little height to spot them. So I just learned, some of these ruins - these rocky walls all over the place, can be climbed in crouch or standing - and then they can be crouched down upon, where you can still fire somewhat steady.

2. I found some walls where a tree was growing near and part of the wall was hidden in leaves - so I'm up on the wall, crouched, peeking out from the leaves - I'm very hard to spot, and my gun has a silencer for additional concealment.

3. I found a fantastic rock at the end of the runway, with a bush in front of it. I can get up on the rock - first time I have ever been able to get up on a rock in Arma, and I can go prone for steadiest aim when they're still 400 meters back at the main building, so I can thin their ranks a bit. Then when they move closer, where the bush is blocking my view, I go to crouch, and I can look up over the top of the bush, still partially concealed, and up on that rock I can see at least their chest area at 150 meters. When I first learned about this rock, I had wasted some time getting to it, and climbing it, and I think they saw me heading over there. Before I knew it, according to the map, there were 5 green guys - enemies - within 150 yards of me closing in - at the treeline slightly to my right just off the runway. I hit crouch, raised up from prone, and there they were - bright white. I took a bullet and the wounded icon came up, but I didn't try to get out of the way and heal. I started firing single-shot as fast as I could pull the trigger - on my 100-round MX SW 6.5 variant of the normal 30 round MX that I love - with silencer - and in 10 seconds all five were dead. Good thing too, because one more bullet would have finished me.

4. I have a save point where I am at the drone plane, and they are starting to come after me - so I have replayed this many times. It plays different each time, because Arma uses a probability programming scheme - and the enemy never comes at you the same way. So this one time, I think it was yesterday, I kept hearing shots being fired at me, but I had no idea where they last guy was - it was the team leader, the most aggressive. Well he had worked around on the left, in that other tree line on the other side of the runway. I kept scanning with thermal, and nothing.

I kept telling myself "It is impossible that he can see me, but I can't see anything on thermal." I took a bullet to the chest, and hobbled over behind a small stone wall to bandage up before he killed me. Then I decided to check the map. There he was, a green dot.

AND THEN I DID SOMETHING NEW - A NEW TRICK!

Arma has a new thing they added 6 months ago - where you can use shift and left mouse to put a destination marker on the map. When you come out of the map - you see the arrow and the distance to that marker on your helmet faceplate HUD. I believe all of this is based on real warfare. But that green dot would normally be there only if a teammate had identified the enemy position - so Arma is doing it for me, which I like. Usually when I am taking fire they put the dot on the map, but not always. Sometimes I actually have to see the enemy before it is there, and other times the dot is where the enemy was last sighted - he may have moved from that earlier position.

So, anyway, safe behind the wall and now healed up, I created the marker right on his dot, then I came up in crouch, and per the marker he was way left of where I thought he was - about 100 yards further to the left - no wonder I couldn't see him - I was scanning in the wrong place, duhh. I took him down quickly. The destination marker trick is something I have never done before - but now it's a standard part of my combat technique as of yesterday.

5. In fact, that is how I target these patrols from that distant hillside. When they are out there 1500 to 2000 meters away, and I am looking at them in the range finder, Arma puts the green dots on the map. I put a destination marker right on those dots. Then I look out and there is the marker, indicating 1.5 km. As I gun the bike toward it, that distance indicator drops down eventually to zero. I go around the side, wanting to get behind the patrol, which is slowly coming toward me - I watch them for a minute to see their general direction of movement. It takes me a full two minutes to work around, and they have moved a couple hundred meters at least by then, so at the destination marker I have to scan around with the thermal. Ah hah - there are the little bastards - all 7 of them. I am off the bike and slowly running to catch up, looking for a good ambush position. They don't have anybody looking back - they have no clue that they won't be needing dinner tonight.

The last time I did this, I closed in with the MK200 - a 6.5 light machine gun with a 200 round belt - which I don't like as much as the 100-round MX SW with the belt cartridge - it takes a large cartridge with the 100 round belt, or it will take standard 30 round cartridges. That is good, like on the Hogs Cove Assault, when I run out of ammo, but pass a dead friendly and take his 30-round cartridges.

Anyway, I don't really like this MK200 - it's not my 6.5 mm gun of choice. For one, my MX SW silencer won't fit it - so it is loud and they can locate me by the noise. For two, it doesn't offer single shot firing mode - so you have to try to control a short burst - it jumps, especially in crouch mode, less so in prone of course. But the reason I have it is that I have done so much killing in this scenario, that I am getting down to low ammo for my MX SW - I started with 1000 rounds but I should have brought 2000 with me before I dropped behind enemy lines to retrieve this advanced UAV drone that these guys stole from us.

So yes, I took the MK200 machine gun off a dead enemy, and from time to time in all the little equipment boxes, I find a 2-pack of two 200-round 6.5 ammo belts for that MK200 weapon. Right now I am carrying 1600 rounds - but you go through more ammo with it. If I get good at using the weapon, I can probably stay here behind enemy lines for quite a while as long as the patrols keep spawning. So my MX-SW is lying on the ground next to a dead enemy at the gas station, where I can retrieve it - it still has 500 rounds - but meanwhile I am trying to get good at this MK200 rifle.

So I took out all the 7 guys on that big patrol. I got within about 250-300 meters and used the W-Hot mode of my scope to light them up bright white. Boy were they surprised when they started taking fire from the rear.

I ended up getting wounded, and lying behind a rock to heal, but with the thermal scope I was able to come out from behind the rock, lie prone in the weeds, where normally I couldn't see a damn thing, and with the thermal, still just barely partially see their glowing white bodies, and finish killing the last two - PAYBACK! They'll think twice about it before firing a missile at my pickup truck again!

When the map indicated there were no more guys to deal with, I rode the quad over and took screenshots of my body count. Sick!

But at least I'm not Canadian.



Rich

 

You can if you want to... lol

 

Sam, I see that you play, or have played Audiosurf. How do you like it? Do people still flock to the servers? LOL! In any case, $2 was a price too difficult to pass up!

 

It's been a while - I enjoy it though. If I'm honest I most enjoy the custom mode [as-everybodymono] [as-nogrey] which is a regular game mode in Audiosurf 2 - basically becomes a 'catch them all' rather than 'avoid the greys' situation.
I was always hopeless at the colour modes, seemed to go too quick for me :S

Hope you all had a merry christmas