The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

The Fury cards look pretty good until you see the price and power consumption. As of right now the GTX970 and GTX980 are easily the best options available for 90% of gamers. If you want even higher end the 980Ti is a no-brainer. Honestly the 390X should be a 380X, and the Fury cards should be the 390s. The current lineup makes no sense, and stinks of bad product to me.

The liquid cooler on the Fury X is also pretty weak and yes noisy. If you're willing to deal with the hassle of installing the Fury X and replacing the fan with a more powerful push/pull setup, it might be worth a shot. The pump issues AFAIK are fixed. That being said, 4GB of memory is asinine for what you pay. I would expect 6GB at the very least. Especially when the 390X has 8GB. HBM or not it's going to be a limiting factor for high resolutions period.

Actual power consumption on the 390X is okayish, there have been worse cards. I would probably use one given a cheap deal. A decked out factory OCd one with a 3rd party PCB would be pretty nice.

 

The GTX980Ti was a no brainer against the Fury X, because the X as it stands is dreadful. Against the standard Fury it's not so clear cut though, the Ti is a full 250W card unlike the 180W or so of the GTX980, so not that far away from the power level of the Fury. It's faster, yes, but it's also going to be a fair bit more expensive, so that's not actually such an easy decision. The GTX980 is of course cheaper than the Fury is going to be, but the gap between the 980 and 980Ti is so wide that both the Fury and Fury X fit in it, i.e. the standard Fury still bests the 980 by enough of a margin to call it definitive, and not really title-specific. To that end, the Fury may well be worth the extra money. Then however you will be comparing a 280W card to a 180W card. If that matters, perhaps that will sway things.

I wouldn't say the Fury X cooler is weak, it clearly manages the substantial heat output of the card perfectly well, but even if it was flawless I'd be very against a card that comes with no choice but water-cooling and the fact that I've yet to see official proof rather than rumour that the noisy pumps have been fixed, I'm still quite against the card as a whole. The Fury standard is a much more reasonable offering.
The '4GB HBM won't be enough' has, to AMD's credit, been somewhat debunked. There is almost no evidence so far of the 4GB HBM cards running out of video memory at 3840x2160 in titles where the 4GB 290X clearly does as it tanks relative to the 390X, which is pretty much the same but with 8GB. Given that AMD's architectures are still slightly longer-legged for high-resolutions, the Fury X is still gaining on the 980Ti at 2160p, even if it doesn't quite beat it. If it had 4GB of GDDR5 it'd have fallen flat way before. That being said, you're right, it'll only go so far, and I would probably argue that 4GB HBM is a competitor for 6GB GDDR5, but probably not 8GB.

 

The 390X is priced okayish and the 8GB of memory is attractive. Also, the power consumption is manageable in a single card being almost the same as the Fury X. Being cheaper than the GTX980 currently and matching its performance easily, it's the first thing that catches my eye. I think Crossfire would be a no-go without a 1KW+ PSU but multi-card is not my cup of tea lately. The card's competitive pricing is enough or me to consider it. It's certainly what I want performance-wise. An aggressively factory OC'd example with a 3rd party cooler like my GTX970 would be ideal.

 

Nice wrap-up Sam. On the high end, it certainly looks like the GTX980Ti is the card to get - no water - less energy usage - not as expensive as the Titan - virtually the same performance.

On the 980 end:

Jeff, it sounds to me like you are thinking about picking up a little extra gpu horsepower? What are you running that is stressing your 1440p? Are you trying to get back to 60 fps on some titles where you are no more than 40 fps right now? Somehow I am pretty sure that you don't have your eye on 4k as you just made the plunge to high def - what - 6 months ago?

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

Back to Sam's mention of the new Intel line: In regard to the new series from Intel, are theyl they still applying the heat spreaders with low-heat-transfer paste to keep the overclockers from easily ramping up speed on the base chips - so as to protect the market for the super-expensive highly-binnned chips with very fast clocks?

I still have my TRUE in the box with adapters for all the modern dies, from 775 on up. That clock speed of 4 ghz sounds nice, but I hear that the guys who actually take off the heat spreader (not an easy trick) and put it back on with better paste, or sometimes no paste at all, but arctic silver 5 or the like, can easily get 5 or more.

Speaking of arctic silver 5, I know that you guys have a lot of experience with heat sink compounds - I think Jeff said he has tubes of the stuff - is that still true Jeff? But what about this new heat sink paste based on carbon nanotubes? I thought it was called carbonite - but that is something else. Wow, I can't find it anywhere - they must be out of business. I did find one called coollaboratory pro, or ultra.

And I did a little bit of googling, and there is a fair amount of material regarding "de-lidding" the newer Intel chips. There are youtube videos about it. Nothing of this sort was needed when the heat spreaders were soldered on, but now that they are glued on, with cheap thermal paste, as one video said "When you overclock, you will hit a heat wall far before you hit a voltage wall, unless you de-lid the chip." It occurred to me that maybe there are some for sale - sure enough on ebay there are some - one guy says in regard to his Intel Core i7-4790K Delidded CPU Processor "used for 6 months, overclocks great, delidded heat spreader with Noctua NT-H1 as a thermal medium. delidded using wedge method - minor abrasions to the heatspreader from delidding process, but just a cosmetic defect. the heatspreader is a little loose, take care when handling, but if handled from the edges it should be just fine. Otherwise, if need be, just carefully apply thermal paste to the die and re-position the heatspreader over the die." He adds: "selling my used i7-4790K delidded CPU. Noctua NT-H1 thermal compound used as thermal medium between cpu die and cpu heatspreader. Overclocks well, ran @ 24/7 stable at 4.6GHz with I believe 1.28 vcore. Used for 6 months, selling because I had an offer for a X99 build I couldn't refuse. Has hyper threading, low power usage, supports DDR3 / Z97."




Somebody said in a forum, that you get a good guarantee through ebay if the product turns out to be no good. Especially I believe if you go through paypal - you get a warranty of sorts through them, like when you use visa. I don't have a vise - and the delidding looks like it takes a bit of skill - I think that I would not mind paying somebody $100 for doing it. That's still cheaper than paying $300 more for a chip that is binned to 5 ghz. Am I wrong?


MEET YOUR NEW FRIENDLY UPS DRIVER!
Hey Kevin - so you're finally going to take the UPS driving plunge? You didn't say, but did you pass the test? I assume you did.


A VIAL OF REDS, OR A BOOK WITH A FRESH PERSPECTIVE
Regarding seeing a doctor - they'll just give you more drugs. Why don't you spend $11 and buy the book "The Power of Now" on Amazon. It might help - it might not help. It's helping me.

You might relate to it - you might not. But certainly you can risk the $11 - what's the doctor visit going to cost? Anxiety of course is placing yourself in the future, with fear about the consequences, how things will turn out. Regret is placing yourself in the past, reliving unfortunate events that might have been handled better. We all spend a lot of time preoccupied with regret and worry - past and future.

But what about now?

When I was in Cub Scouts and then Boy Scouts, they used to talk about Indians - how they would walk through the forest and hear everything, see everything, smell everything, and not occupy themselves with frivolous thoughts like the rest of us. They knew how to be present. They knew how to tame the mind, instead of being tamed by the mind.

If you don't know what I am talking about, I don't either.

I have been reading the book and listening to the audio book, for four years now. I got the Spanish book, and the Spanish tapes, to combine learning Spanish with learning about Tolle's philosophy. I highly recommend the audio tapes, if you like the book. The reward for me - more calm. Sounds like that's what you want too. Right?

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

Well, my new project is - do you guys remember this little core 2 duo E7300 that I picked up for $99 on ebay a couple years ago?




I finally got tired of this P4, even if it did animate Left 4 Dead. It's just too slow! The little microtower above is 3x faster - scoring 350 vs 202 on the file conversion speed test that I use as a rough benchmark of relative speed, and there are two full cores - so that's 700 vs 202!

And no - there are no spare molex connectors, but there IS a spare sata power connector, and there is a floppy connector. I installed a floppy in it, mostly to test the floppy power connector, and then I added a sata power to dual molex adapter, and I put in a 92mm fan right behind the dual hard drive cage - that half-empty cage on the middle left, just under the big green rectangular plastic part - and I added a molex to floppy power connector and I DID install my koutech power over esata card, which gives me two hot-swap esata connections - with hard drive power for one of them - I have the special cable with wide sata power and signal.



It is a very speedy little guy! I had found over the past couple of years, that the usb is very fast - just 2.0 - but faster usb than any of my p4 computers.






This above was the ebay listing - I helped a friend get it - and then I liked it so much, that when I went back to this page to get some pictures - he said "Sold 5, one left" and for $99 delivered (included shipping!) I said, "Jeez, I'll buy the last one for myself."

DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER WHEN I SAID - "I'LL JUST DITCH WINDOWS 7 AND RUN IT AS AN XP MACHINE!"

You guys unanimously said "Bad idea!"


Hahaha.

Well, here's what I decided to do. First of all, it came with 4 gigs of ram. I have 4 sticks of 1 gig ddr2 1066 at 1.8 volts (same as the 1.8 volt 800 mhz 2 gig sticks that were in it) from when I replaced the 4 gigs of ram with 8 gigs for my spedo gaming rig. So I put two sticks into the unused two memory slots - and now I have 6 gigs of ram, fully tested on memtest. I can run a max 3.3 gigs for xp mode under windows 7, and still have tons more memory than my current 2 gig p4.

I am pretty amazed by xp mode - I have been playing around with it a lot in the 10-gig i7 in the sunroom, that I set up as a general computer for everybody - and xp mode does work fairly well - in fact I just discovered that you can capture a usb device, and get full usb 17 MB/sec speed transferring into the virtual machine. That is huge because the max limit prior seemed to be 3 MB/sec - fast enough in most cases - but nothing like full usb 2.0 for when you need it.


BUT NOT TRUSTING XPMODE COMPLETELY, I SET IT UP DUAL-BOOT, XP PROFESSIONAL AND WINDOWS 7.

Yes, I have a very speedy XP Professional running native mode (not virtual) on one disk.

The bios is not clever enough to allow me to boot by hard drive, so I'm using windows 7 bootloader - but it works okay (and I even have Recovery Console installed on the xp drive, which when XP is the default, causes it to display a second screen asking you again what you want to do - but I found the boot.ini for that screen on the w7 disk and edited the clock down to 5 seconds, so when it comes up by then it is 0 time to wait, and the boot progresses rapidly.) Each Operating system comes up as the C drive (unlike when I ran w98 and xp) just like on my 9450 gaming rig where I once in a while boot to XP, the remnants of when I used to game with XP before I converted completely over to Windows 7.

Anyway, XP native mode is very fast indeed, and surprisingly, xpmode on the windows 7 operating system, is not that far behind speed-wise. It will drop frames on you tube videos, whereas the native mode won't, but in general I am surprised at how well it runs being a virtual machine.


HOW WILL I USE THIS LITTLE WONDER?
So - I don't really know how I will use it. Will I stay mostly in the XP boot, making occasional forays over to windows 7? Will I boot mostly to windows 7, dropping into xp mode from time to time, and hardly ever booting into XP native mode? I really don't know.

I am certainly fond of windows 7 by now - I like the aero look - I like the desktop gadgets. And xp mode is fun - a miniature xp right there in front of me - or hit minimize and forget about it for now. I have all my nice desktop wallpaper running, just like on my full xp, and since I discovered the ctrl-scroll trick of enlarging type in a document (my brother, a mac guy, said he knew about that - but I never did until 3 months ago) I can make my xp mode documents as readable as in windows 7.

So, that's my little project for now.

Good luck Kev on your UPS driver aspirations!

Rich

Edit: xp mode is fast! It's 307 frames/second conversion rate on my single-thread speed test - it beats my normal native mode xp (on the machine that animated L4D) which is 202. The host windows 7 is 508 (i7 nehalem not overclocked.) So you get about 60% of the host computer's power (on one core) going through the virtual machine.

 

Some more performance figures:

R9 380: c. 0.70x R9 290X at 4M (2560x1440) and 4K (3840x2160) - 0.62x GTX980
R9 290X: (Reference AMD card) - 0.91x GTX980 at 4K, 0.87x at 4M
R9 390: 1.04x R9 290X at both, 0.95x GTX980 at 4K, 0.90x at 4M
R9 390X: 1.10x R9 290X at 4K, 1.08x at 4M, = GTX980 at 4K, 0.93x at 4M
GTX980: 1.10x R9 290X at 4K, 1.16x at 4M, (Reference nvidia card)
R9 Fury: 1.29x R9 290X at 4K, 1.27x at 4M, 1.17x GTX980 at 4K, 1.09x at 4M
R9 Fury X: 1.37x R9 290X at 4K, 1.32x at 4M, 1.24x GTX980 at 4K, 1.14x at 4M
GTX980Ti: 1.39x R9 290X at 4K, 1.45x at 4M, 1.26x GTX980 at either.

This makes the following points:

- The R9 380 is around 70% of a 290X and should be considered as such due to the 4GB memory (I have not considered the 2GB version here)
- The R9 390 is largely indistinguishable from the 290X give or take a few percent and both fare better against Geforces at 4K than lower resolutions
- The R9 390X is around 110% of a 290X but suffers less performance drop-off at 4K for obvious reasons. Its performance against nvidia cards drops off substantially below 4K resolution
- The R9 Fury is around 130% of a 290X but suffers similar drop off against nvidia cards at lower resolutions
- The R9 Fury X is barely distinguishable from the standard Fury despite extra cost and hassle, and again, only really proves competitive at 4K
- The GTX980Ti is around 125% of a GTX980 and should be treated as such.

These results make the Geforces all the more compelling even at 2560x1440, as well as inevitably 1920x1080 where the same trends continue. For a 4K gamer at the current prices here of £444 for a Fury standard and £529 for a 980Ti, that makes the Fury better value (using the dV=dP^2 rule, it would be worth £515). Bringing up the rear in the value standpoint is of course the Fury X (pre-order priced at £530-£600 and worth £500). At a price of £329, the 390X is also a potential purchase, although again a little overvalued (worth £322)

If I were still gaming at 2560 horizontal, however, things would be rather different. Taking the base price of an R9 390 - £257, I get the following
R9 380 4GB - worth £116, priced at £170
R9 390X - worth £277, priced at £329
R9 Fury - worth £383, priced at £444
R9 Fury X - worth £414, priced at £530-£600 on pre-order
GTX980 - worth £320, priced at £379
GTX980Ti - worth £500, priced at £529

This makes the best buys really the R9 390 standard and the GTX980Ti. The small gap between the 390 and 390X in no way justifies the considerable price difference considering they're the same card. While the GTX980Ti costs considerably more than the standard 980, the performance gap more than justifies it at this resolution. Bringing up the rear are the GTX980 and R9 Fury standard which are around 15% worse value at 2560x1440. While the 4GB R9 380 is cheap, the lacklustre performance means it really should be cheaper still and should be avoided outright. The 2GB version is substantially cheaper so would make a better value offering, but when limited to 2GB, I would hesitate recommending it above 1080p.



As for some game benches, some pretty difficult titles been released lately. Although it hasn't received the bad press Arkham Knight has, Ark: Survival Evolved is possibly the least optimised PC game I have ever seen. Getting less than 6 frames per second on a £1600 pair of Titan Xs with a single monitor would be pretty tragic!

F1 2015
SLI Support: No
Crossfire Support: No

M60 1920x1080: Radeon R9 290/390, Geforce GTX780Ti/Titan/960
A60 1920x1080: Radeon R9 280X/380, Geforce GTX680/770/960

M60 2560x1600: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX980Ti
A60 2560x1600: Radeon R9 290X/390, Geforce GTX780Ti/980

M40 3840x2160: N/A
M30 3840x2160: Radeon R9 290X/390, Geforce GTX980
A50 3840x2160: Geforce Titan X (GTX980Ti OC)
A40 3840x2160: Radeon Fury, Geforce GTX980Ti (R9 390X OC / GTX980 OC)



ARK Survival Evolved
SLI Support: No
Crossfire Support: No

M120 1920x1080 Low: Geforce GTX980
M60 1920x1080 Low: Radeon R9 290/390, Geforce GTX780/Titan/970
A60 1920x1080 Low: Radeon R9 280X/380, Geforce GTX770/960

M60 1920x1080 Medium: N/A
M50 1920x1080 Medium: Geforce GTX980
M40 1920x1080 Medium: Radeon R9 Fury X, Geforce GTX970
M30 1920x1080 Medium: Radeon R9 290/390, Geforce GTX780/Titan/970
A60 1920x1080 Medium: Geforce GTX980Ti
A50 1920x1080 Medium: Geforce GTX970
A40 1920x1080 Medium: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX780Ti/970
A30 1920x1080 Medium: Radeon R9 290/390, Geforce GTX780/Titan/970

M40 1920x1080 High: N/A
M30 1920x1080 High: Geforce GTX980
M25 1920x1080 High: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX780Ti/970
A50 1920x1080 High: N/A
A40 1920x1080 High: Geforce GTX980Ti
A30 1920x1080 High: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX970

M25 1920x1080 Epic: N/A
M20 1920x1080 Epic: Geforce GTX980Ti
M15 1920x1080 Epic: Radeon R9 Fury X, Geforce GTX970
A30 1920x1080 Epic: N/A
A25 1920x1080 Epic: Geforce GTX980Ti
A20 1920x1080 Epic: Radeon R9 Fury X, Geforce GTX980

M60 2560x1600 Low: Geforce GTX980
M50 2560x1600 Low: Radeon R9 Fury X, Geforce GTX970
M30 2560x1600 Low: Radeon R9 280X/380, Geforce GTX770/960
A60 2560x1600 Low: Geforce GTX970
A50 2560x1600 Low: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX970 (Radeon R9 390X OC)
A40 2560x1600 Low: Radeon R9 290/390, Geforce GTX780/Titan/970

M40 2560x1600 Medium: N/A
M30 2560x1600 Medium: Geforce Titan X
M25 2560x1600 Medium: Geforce GTX980Ti
M20 2560x1600 Medium: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX970
A40 2560x1600 Medium: N/A
A30 2560x1600 Medium: Geforce GTX980
A25 2560x1600 Medium: Geforce GTX970
A20 2560x1600 Medium: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX780Ti/970 (Radeon R9 390X OC)

M25 2560x1600 High: N/A
M20 2560x1600 High: Geforce Titan X
M15 2560x1600 High: Geforce GTX980
M14 2560x1600 High: Radeon R9 Fury X, Geforce GTX970
A25 2560x1600 High: N/A
A20 2560x1600 High: Geforce GTX980Ti
A15 2560x1600 High: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX970 (Radeon R9 390X OC)

M15 2560x1600 Epic: N/A
M12 2560x1600 Epic: Geforce Titan X
M10 2560x1600 Epic: Geforce GTX980Ti
M8 2560x1600 Epic: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX780Ti/970

M40 3840x2160 Low: N/A
M30 3840x2160 Low: Geforce GTX980
M25 3840x2160 Low: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX970
A60 3840x2160 Low: N/A
A40 3840x2160 Low: Geforce GTX980Ti
A30 3840x2160 Low: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX970

M15 3840x2160 Medium: N/A
M14 3840x2160 Medium: Geforce GTX980Ti
M11 3840x2160 Medium: Radeon R9 Fury X, Geforce GTX980 (GTX970 OC)
A20 3840x2160 Medium: N/A
A15 3840x2160 Medium: Geforce GTX980
A12 3840x2160 Medium: Radeon R9 Fury X, Geforce GTX970

M11 3840x2160 High: N/A
M10 3840x2160 High: Geforce Titan X
M7 3840x2160 High: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX980 (GTX970 OC)
A12 3840x2160 High: N/A
A11 3840x2160 High: Geforce GTX980Ti
A9 3840x2160 High: Radeon R9 Fury X, Geforce GTX980

M7 3840x2160 Epic: N/A
M6 3840x2160 Epic: Geforce Titan X
M5 3840x2160 Epic: Geforce GTX980Ti
M4 3840x2160 Epic: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX980
A8 3840x2160 Epic: N/A
A7 3840x2160 Epic: Geforce Titan X
A6 3840x2160 Epic: Geforce GTX980Ti
A5 3840x2160 Epic: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX980

Batman Arkham Knight
SLI Support: Yes - Scaling 15-20% (unsupported with PhysX enabled below 3840x2160)
Crossfire Support: No

M60 1920x1080: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX780Ti SLI / GTX970
A60 1920x1080: Radeon HD7970/R9 280X, Geforce GTX780/970

M60 1920x1080 PhysX: N/A
M50 1920x1080 PhysX: Geforce GTX980Ti with dedicated adapter, otherwise N/A
M40 1920x1080 PhysX: Geforce GTX980Ti
A60 1920x1080 PhysX: Geforce GTX980Ti
A50 1920x1080 PhysX: Geforce GTX980

M60 2560x1600: Geforce GTX980Ti
M50 2560x1600: Geforce GTX980
M40 2560x1600: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX780Ti SLI/GTX970
A60 2560x1600: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX980

M50 2560x1600 PhysX: N/A
M40 2560x1600 PhysX: Geforce GTX980Ti with dedicated adapter, otherwise N/A
M30 2560x1600 PhysX: Geforce GTX980Ti
M25 2560x1600 PhysX: Geforce GTX980
A60 2560x1600 PhysX: Geforce GTX980Ti with dedicated adapter, otherwise N/A
A50 2560x1600 PhysX: Geforce GTX980Ti
A40 2560x1600 PhysX: Geforce GTX980

M50 3840x2160: N/A
M40 3840x2160: Geforce GTX980Ti SLI
M30 3840x2160: Geforce GTX980 SLI / GTX980Ti
M25 3840x2160: Radeon R9 Fury, Geforce GTX970 SLI / GTX980
A60 3840x2160: N/A
A50 3840x2160: Geforce GTX980Ti SLI
A40 3840x2160: Geforce GTX980 SLI / GTX980 Ti
A30 3840x2160: Radeon R9 390X, Geforce GTX780Ti SLI / GTX980 (GTX970 OC)

M40 3840x2160 PhysX: N/A
M30 3840x2160 PhysX: Geforce GTX980Ti with dedicated adapter, otherwise N/A
M25 3840x2160 PhysX: Geforce GTX980Ti
M20 3840x2160 Physx: Geforce GTX980

 

That is a nice analysis, Sam.

Say, speaking of Batman, I have heard again and again that Batman is a really good title. Have you guys played it? Is it fps, or third person like Sniper Elite? I think the one I've heard about is the one you include in your post above -

Batman Arkham Knight

If any of you guys have played it - how did you like it?

Rich

Edit - I pulled up metacritic top scorers for PC, and I see that Batman Arkham Asylum scored a 91. That must be the one I was hearing about - did you guys like it?

 

I haven't actually played any of the Batman titles - I know Asylum, the original title, had good reviws.
Arkham Knight may well be a good title on consoles, but the PC port is a catastrophe - so much so it was pulled from sale when people realised how bad it was, and won't be returning for a few months. The mediocre performance and lack of dual-GPU support for the game is the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

 

Thanks for the feedback, Sam.

Yes I read a bit more about it after coming upon a metacritic list of top PC video game scorers, and seeing Arkham Asylum at 91 - and also Arkham City, a later entry, at 91. Yes, it did get good reviews.

I have started playing it, and I'll probably finish - but the fighting mechanic on PC is clunky - it's a half-hearted PC port from console.

For example, if you catch it right, right-mouse button means counter-punch if the mouse icon lights up - and on normal difficulty, you DO SEE the enemy with an attack icon, so sometimes counter punch works.

But if you wait for the icon, it may not show up.

The other problem is, that right-mouse also means aim. For example AIM your bat boomarang, if that is the CHOSEN "weapon" of the moment. Then left mouse - the punch button - fires off the boomarang.

They have right-mouse doing too many things.

I find that while I am smashing one guy, and another lights up behind me about to bean me with a pipe, and I hit "right-mouse" to do a counter punch, then the result is:

CONSEQUENCE OF RIGHT-MOUSE IN GROUP BATTLES:
1. either I throw a worthless boomerang at the guy I am smashing - resulting in getting badly beaned by the pipe behind me for the loss of a nice chunk of my health
2. or if I am really lucky, it might result in the intended "elbow in the ribs" to the guy behind me and successful counter punch with no heavy loss of life​

So in these group situations, spamming the left mouse attack key and continuing to move around, seems to work better than anything else so far. It didn't work that well in Hard mode, but after failing the first group battle scene again and again, I restarted in normal mode - and so far it's just barely working.


OVERHEAD WORK FROM THE RAFTERS (GARGOYLES)
But when the enemy thugs have machine guns or shotguns, they don't expect you to engage them all like that - it would be a veritable firing squad - one dead batcorpse with 100 holes in him.

So they give you gargoyles on high walls all around the room, and ample opportunity to spy and plan your moves.

So let's try KICK GLIDE - that looks like fun. The guy is in position below you, and the left mouse icon suddenly appears with the words "kick glide." Let's go for it.


.....(gliding is very cool by the way) ........


GREAT!!


We sweep down, knock him off his feet and stun him. The guy is now down on the ground in front of us. We should be able to do the [right-mouse] ground silent takedown, where I apply a choke hold and he passes out.


So there I am, down on the ground with him after the kick glide, hitting the right-mouse key, and throwing utterly useless boomerangs at him, while he noisily gets up, and suddenly I am taking very unhealthy lead from all of his buddies, looking for a near-by gargoyle.


(I didn't find the gargoyle in time. Joker's crazy girl-friend shows up, to kiss-me-off, bidding me a happy after-life.)


Time after time - FAIL.

I suck.

So what works is to not do a glide kick - not do anything fancy - just drop down behind him, out of sight of the other thugs, creep up, non-lethal silent right-mouse takedown, and then F-key rapel back up to a nearby statue until I find the right opportunity to do it again to the next guy.


Patience patience patience.


The fighting mechanic, ported over from console, is not quite working on PC - the same thing I ran into on Sleeping Dogs, the Hong Kong karate and car racing game. Today I was thinking it over, and I'm going to try to take AIM off of right mouse. If they let me take aim off of right-mouse, that might help out a lot. No more boomarangs!


[Sigh.] What have I gotten myself into?



WHAT HAVE YOU GOTTEN ME INTO, SAM!!!

Yeah, I read a little about the fiasco -Warner Bros. apologized. What I read said that in the rush to put out the title, they hired an independent company to do the port. That has badly failed before, and it failed again. They either aren't giving them enough time, paying enough money, or ALL OF THE ABOVE.


But one review said the game was the "best of the series, and a historic milestone in gaming."

So I guess it's a kick-butt title if they ever get the port right.

Thanks again, Sam

 

Very seriously considering a factory OC'd 390X. Attractive pricing used, 8GB memory, etc. I would be okay with power consumption running a single card. It's definitely more powerful than the GTX970. My main concern is modded Skyrim. It is incredible and worth every penny you can put into it if you have the dedication.

Also, just upgraded from my old Motorola KRAZR to an LG G Stylo. Nice little 5.7" phablet that isn't too bulky. Same build quality as the flagship model LG G4 but much simpler guts so far cheaper. 1GB of RAM is an ouch, and the GPU isn't great, but it has an okay CPU. Easily enough to run the few apps I use, and I no longer have to carry my deactivated Galaxy S3 for work and Facebook. I have already optimised my S3 for memory and battery usage so the LG should get a similar improvement. There were better phones for the price from the network I chose but this one had the best reviews. Most bad reviews on the site are for quality issues. Most of the bad reviews for this one are that it lags when the memory is full. I can deal with that. It only has a 720p display but that means it plays nice with performance and battery life.

I tend to gravitate towards tablets for when I'm doing in-home computer work for the screen size. Alas both of my lovely iPads had inexcusable issues caused by Apple. I needed a new phone too as the hinge wore out on my Motorola. Seemed like a good compromise.

 

Still waiting on someone other than Sapphire and Asus to produce an R9 Fury standard... Still, the longer I wait the more my bank balance will thank me I suppose

The only thing I really used my tablet for at home was showing parents things outside my room (no need now as they both have a Nexus 9 each, one to replace the previous crappy laptop, and the other inherited from my late grandfather, originally something used to entertain him in the hospice), and for watching TV in bed, which I do occasionally but pretty rarely. It's more use at work as a high resolution screen for dealing with things a phone screen is too small for, but lack of an ethernet port or natively running Windows can limit its usefulness, even with a remote desktop client to my server at home. Ultimately I'd like to try and replace the pair of them with a Surface 3 and ethernet adapter, but I'd much rather that work pay for it. We'll see!

 

You guys with your fancy equipment - I've still got my Octane for the last - what - five years?? Not a smart phone either. A close relative got an iphone 5 a year ago - (the sister of Miles the animator.) I told her I'd chip in $100 to have her get the one that was 64-bit at the time, the 5S was it? I think the two were 5C and then 5S for $100 more. She's pretty happy with it, and it takes some nice pictures.

So now apple has a bigger phone - but did you say, Jeff, that you had issues with Apple?

I'm typing this on the core 2 duo microtower. It's sitting on top of the p4 that animated left 4 dead - so I can finish migrating over to the new one. I was procrastinating, and then - first my gaming rig wouldn't post - and then 5 days later my business rig (that animated left 4 dead - you guys are going to be so glad you won't hear me say that anymore in about a week) wouldn't post either.

It was my week for two main computers deciding not to post. I had dark hair a week ago - now I'm like Anderson Cooper.

I told myself, "Wow Sam finally turned out to be completely right about the Asus 9450 - looks like the mobo has had it. " I started looking up new boards, and new gdr3 memory, and new processors - this was going to be costly. Of course I was going to get advice from you guys.

It had frozen on a late night gaming session, then wouldn't post a couple days later when I restarted it. I pressed the little re-boot button, and normally that triggers the optical disk light, the beginning of the post, but nothing. All the fans were running like crazy.

I moved the whole tower into the sunroom on the table. I pulled out the new memory, the graphic cards, and I put in one stick of old memory. I also pulled out the lithium battery. It had been acting funny starting several months ago - the computer wouldn't retain the current date - so I started leaving it with power rather than shutting off the power strip completely. The battery came out and there was a little bit of whitish dirt on it - hardly anything. I wiped it off and grabbed a couple of other batteries that I have saved from old junked computers. I looked up how to reset the cmos and did the procedure. And I put a smaller nvidia 285 card in for graphics. Finally it started responding to the quick reboot key - and shockingly the display popped up.

I was very surprised - I think I said "Oh no!"

It almost scared me.

I was so for sure that I had lost the motherboard.


So it's all working again and I am grateful that I don't either have to buy a bunch of new equipment, or put the i7 into the spedo.

I had to put the old lithium battery back - it didn't seem to want to post consistently with the others. I tested to make sure it could survive 30 seconds without power which would allow me time to carry it to the trailer and plug in the power cord.

So my only conclusion is that the lithium battery had built up some gunk - and for some reason that was interfering with the bios post - or that the battery had caused some corruption to the cmos.


Or .... it was .... "all things Asus."


But remember, Sam, all things Asus got me that 9450 in the first place, so I can't b**ch too much.

Then 5 days later my business tower wouldn't post. It was making a very weird squealing sound ever 3 seconds. I took off each expansion card one by one to locate the sound. No dice. (It was the built-in horn.) Finally I took it out to the sunroom - pulled the memory - then put one stick back in, and it posted fine. Then another stick, finally all sticks. It simply had loose memory. I believe I have experienced that before - the memory loosens up for some reason.

Anyway, that gave me the final incentive to make the switch, since I had everything disconnected.

I have some screens for Batman that I'll post in about a week. I somehow got through Arkham Asylum on normal level difficulty. I could not reset right mouse - it had one setting for the three things that right mouse kept doing, so changing to another key wouldn't have helped. The last boss fights were so hard I had to watch videos on all of them to get some tips. I finished the game thinking - "that was so hard, it interfered with the fun."

Could I recommend this game to anybody playing it on a PC? Well, I might recommend the Easy setting - seriously. The problem is, it's a console port, and the karate controls don't work the same on the PC - just like with Sleeping Dogs.

So now I'm on Arkham City, on EASY setting. LOL Way better! Yes, I've still gotten killed in fights - but not as much by a long shot. The graphics on both games are very nice. I think Left 4 Dead got the jockey idea from Batman with the lunatics that jump on your back. I think Brigmore Witches, the great Dishonored DLC, got some ideas from Batman - the character Poison Ivy.

Oh - by the way - Poison Ivy is extremely sexy, and she's back in Arkham City. And a very nice touch is that you get to play sometimes as Catwoman, which is a lovely break from Batman. The games have great qualities, and I'm glad you suckered me into playing them Sam!

Jeff have you played any of these titles?

Kevin where are you - did you upgrade to UPS driver?

Rich

 

I'm afraid I had a severe panic attack during the drive test. Had to back out for everyone's safety. I've since seen a doctor, and am taking medications. UPS will give me another chance in 6 months to a year. Not sure driving is for me though.
I still want a full time inside position. At $26 an hour, that's nothing to sneer at lol

 

Also considering another GTX970 G1 as those have dropped in price a bit. Overall SLI has less issues than Crossfire and more reliable scaling. The cards are also power sippers so would be easy on my PSU. Memory is still a concern, but the games I actually NEED more power for are a matter of power only, not memory. A few games touch 4GB of usage but nothing I care about yet, and I am always willing to sacrifice AA on this monitor

Omega, sorry to hear that. I have had similar experiences driving. I didn't have my license till I was 21.

Rich, I have played Arkham Asylum only. I found it to be wonderful quality and well designed, if a shoddy port. The graphics are pure Unreal 3.5 high resolution goodness as well so the environments and characters are really convincing. The Arkham series is also based entirely on the BatMan Animated Series which was a benchmark for animation, writing, story telling, and character development in a serialized cartoon. It has much more in common with serious anime than children's cartoons. And both the game and the TV show have Mark Hamill as the Joker, who is probably the most chilling version.

I recently picked the entire Arkham series up sans the newest one, and have been meaning to give City and Origins a playthrough. I monster-manned my way through Arkham Asylum in a couple sittings it was that good. And I don't remember it being a short game.

The contacts on memory sticks can oxidize a little bit over time and cause a loose connection without any physical movement of the memory. This is especially true in humid environments. Have seen a few PCs with this and the common trick is to clean up the contacts with a pencil eraser then wipe them with a little alcohol.

 

Very sorry to hear that mate, I know someone who has had panic attacks in the workplace and it was not an easy time for them but at least they weren't in control of a vehicle at the time. Sounds like the right decision to call it off, even if I'm sure it's immensely frustrating.

Despite being legally permitted to do so for 10 years now, I only started the process of learning to drive last month. Certainly had its nerve-wracking moments but I do feel a lot more at ease when with the instructor.

I too had the same thought about picking up a 970 but for me, I think I would want more video memory, plus the SLI vs Crossfire thing in terms of reliability still holds true but the number of titles that are out recently with support for neither, well after release, tells me I really do still need to stick to my old guiding rule of 'buy the best before you buy another'. I think I'd sooner go with a 980Ti or Fury than go with two 970s. If I later want to get two of those maybe, but I'm really not sure I want a 500W graphics setup again...

 

At 4K I can imagine the performance landscape is a little different. At my resolution though, I think I can squeak by on future titles for a while. It's not even 1600p which you've been running for years. I looked up several articles on video memory usage in modern games. Even at 1440p or 1600p, most modern titles use around 1.8-2.4GB of video memory. Battlefield 4 and other demanding titles included. Only a few outliers even approach 4GB and this is with every test they did using 4xAA and sometimes torture settings like SSAA.

Based on those results, I'm fairly convinced that 4GB is going to be okay for my needs for a while, and SLI is a very viable option. Two GTX970s with good overclocks are easily the same as or better than a GTX980Ti in most situations. Otherwise, it's about $150 more than a second 970 for a 390X that doesn't perform as well as the SLI pair, or another $150-$200 beyond that for a 980Ti.

http://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/

$690
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125787

$360
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125684

Sure, the 980Ti might be a little faster and have the video memory advantage, but the price speaks for itself. Remember that 970s overclock like crazy. I got nearly 20% out of mine. A pair would need a milder overclock I think but a solid 15% or so would still mean a noticeable increase in power.

 

I'd agree with that. It wasn't so long ago 2GB became a sticking point at 2560x1600, I'd be happy with 4GB for now. Of course, technically only being 3.5GB cards the 970s might get a bit tight at some stage if you really are pushing for rock solid frame rates as there are a small handful of titles that will break 4GB at that resolution, but not many, at least not yet. Until you're seeing performance levels offered by the next generation once we finally get the die shrink we've been waiting for over 3 years for, then perhaps it might be wise to step up - odds seem good that all high-performance cards in that gen might carry 6 or 8GB anyway.

 

Pretty sure come Friday I'll probably be getting a used one from Ebay or Amazon. Gigabyte will still honor the warranty if it has issues, and I can save 50 or 60 bucks. For less than half the price of a 980Ti, I can put myself in the ballpark. Skyrim is my main target. It has issues with Crossfire still but SLI can be made to work easily and well. It scales nicely which is good because I have over 300 mods currently and still looking for a few more. I've optimised my texture modding process somewhat so video memory should be okay if I keep it to strict size limits. No 4K textures.

 

Appreciate your thoughts guys. It sucks, but yeah... I couldn't put people at risk. What really bothers me is, I was taking anti-anxiety meds that day, because I knew it would be difficult. Apparently not enough lol

On the gaming side, Haven't been able to really enjoy much lately. Between helping my brother out around the yard, and low internet speed, just never enough time. Brutal! LOL!

 

Yeah that's a main consideration for dual graphics - if there's a title you play regularly then whether or not the multi-GPU setup you're looking at is inferior or gets in the way becomes a major consideration for a single title. In the days when I was using crossfire regularly the titles I played mainly were source-engine games which had no issue with crossfire so even though plenty of AAA titles didn't work well with crossfire, I wasn't disproportionately losing out. All that said, even if the noise level is lower nowadays, two R9 Fury cards would use a very similar amount of power to the two HD4870X2s I had before, with a pair of GTX980Tis not far behind. I'm still paying off my LAN PC at the moment really, alongside other non-computing related expenses, but if I do end up with enough to justify a new GPU then I'm still looking very closely at the 980Ti at the moment, until the new silicon process has been released. Multi-GPU will probably wait until then. I can't really justify multi-GPU based on AMD this gen due to the immense power and heat, and going with 980s instead of 980Tis, despite the lower cost, is wasteful for video memory reasons. Two 980Tis though, not a cheap purchase, as they'd cost more than the entire LAN build did, and that was considerably more expensive than the last one I built as it was higher spec, plus the fact it was all-new kit rather than using a previous case, fans and secondary disk.

Omega: Sadly my experience of these things is all too often that when dealing with mental conditions rather than physical ones, pills seem more for lessening the burden than eliminating the condition altogether - something that wouldn't work before the pills may not work after. At least that's my experience of people on antidepressants, obviously others may vary. Anyway, if you're able to take the higher office position, as long as it's not a job you hate, I think you'd have done fairly well. $26 an hour is still a fair bit more than I earn at the moment.

 

GTX970 G1 on the way $300 purchased and shipped. Screw it, let's do this. I want cheap power. Can already name a pretty good list of new games I want to play that SLI works great with and don't need more memory.

Also, e-peen.

The 980Ti achieves more or less the same results with more video memory and no scaling issues. My CPU is pretty beefy though so it shouldn't bottleneck at least. The 1100T was really struggling to fully load a single 970.