The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

The video was just some benchmark results posted by an amateur youtuber. Basically it shows that SLI GTX970s in ideal conditions are still a bit faster than the 1070. Conditions are hardly ever ideal though, and compatibility and memory constraints prevent them from being a perfect solution. The memory shortage meant their replacement was imminent regardless of SLI issues. Even at 1080p there are a few extreme scenarios where their 3.5GB of memory is simply not enough. So the single 1070 is almost an equivalent to the 970s in SLI, plus more than double the video memory, plus zero worries about compatibility or SLI scaling.

Yes Rich your paraphrase is correct. SLI causes graphical glitches that simply are not present with a single card. Crossfire caused similar glitches, but in a different range of games. The large majority of mainstream games have great driver support though, so for most people it's a non-issue. My all-time favorites show a few glitches though, and that's where my issue was. Thankfully at 1080p, running single card with a factory overclocked GTX970 meant ridiculous maxed settings with power to spare.

 

THAT is very interesting, and I did not know that. I have always followed Sam's battles to get crossfire or SLI to work properly, but I didn't know that you could have what seems to be a functioning SLI or crossfire, but find yourself getting annoying graphical glitches that would not be present if you were running only a single card.

Hmmmmm. Thanks for bringing that up.



@sam - wow sam, those images are awesome!! So that is some kind of amusement park game? I followed each link, then pressed +, and then it showed more +, but not until I then opened the image in its own tab was I able to get it to go full size. I'm on a 1600x1200 screen right now, so I am seeing just a tad more than a quarter of the image until I scroll - yes it's unbelievable detail!

Now I think those are not YOUR screenshots, or am I wrong about that? Anyway, I sort of see what you're talking about - just an incredible amount of detail on the screen.

Okay, look, I think the Assassin's Creed franchise supports 4k. Would you have any interest in playing AC Syndicate and posting some screenshots, some day?


@ddp - you're saying that Thanksgiving comes early up there? Man! One more crazy Cannuck oddity. Tell me ddp, straight up - I can take the truth - does Friday in Canada fall on a Thursday?

Rich

 

Yes those screenshots were taken on my machine. At that level of detail the frame rate is fluid with the level of detail in those images, but with a fully-fledged theme park with several thousand guests it will understandably struggle a bit.

Concurring with Jeff, it was rare but you did occasionally see the odd flickering texture/lighting bug with dual graphics that wouldn't be present on a single GPU, in addition to the scaling issues. It wasn't common, but if it affected a game you played often, it'd be seriously annoying. Such issues didn't affect me often, but there was one in Trackmania United (or Nations for that matter) which caused mipmap to be set to absolute minimum if you had dual graphics enabled, so that was one title I had to disable multi-GPU for - a shame as at 2160p it really needed the extra grunt (although no longer of course as of the GTX1080, even the 970 did a reasonable job).

I don't own AC: Syndicate but will see what I can do in that regard. In the meantime, here are two from GameGPU:
http://www.gamegpu.com/images/stories/Test_GPU/Action/Assassins_Creed_Syndicate/cach/4k_1.jpg
http://www.gamegpu.com/images/stories/Test_GPU/Action/Assassins_Creed_Syndicate/cach/4k_2.jpg

Looks pretty nice although I do spot one of my pet peeves on there, UI fonts drawn in graphics instead of vectors - leads them to become very fuzzy at 2160p as they're being upscaled to avoid being too small on the screen. In most cases when they do this I prefer the UI to be unscaled.

 

Ahhh, you're trying to divert my attention - "Let's pick on the Australians, another Crown colony." Ok let's do it. I just last weekend had a 6-hour Netflix binge session on the series, Crown, about Queen Elizabeth, her consort (forgot his title) the Duke of Windsor and Wallace Simpson, and Churchill, played by The 3rd Rock from the Sun guy. Quite interesting!! Elizabeth asked the Duke of Windsor - "Why don't you apologize to ME [for abdicating.]" He said, "You. Why would I apologize to you." She answered, "You think I would rather be queen, instead of simply being a mother and wife, and probably having a happier life?" He apologized. Being a royal is not necessarily all it's made out to be. Admiral Perry could probably pull it off, couldn't you.

So, Sam, those screenshots were on your computer. Thanks for posting them. So it's an amusement park, and it could actually be populated by several thousand people? Amazing. Then other than the spectacle, which is quite the thing, what kind of a game is it? What do you do in the game?

[What I really mean is, whom do you shoot, and where are the Nazis?]

I see what you mean about the fonts being a bit fuzzy. Wow, those screenshots in that dreary factory building - I have the game installed, but now I don't know if I want to play it. Just kidding.


ARMA 3 SINGLE PLAYER CONTINUES TO BE A SOURCE OF JOY!

Kevin, where are you. This is the game for you!

I have continued playing the bejeesus out of Arma 3, and I have put aside the user scenarios for a while (still about 70 that I have not done) to go back to the showcase, combined arms, where I am defending against the counter attack. It is a weapons challenge for me, defending with mx rifle 30 round clip, mx sw - same but takes 30 round or 100 round belt clip, katiba - enemy rifle takes 30 round clip, zephyr - enemy machine gun takes 150 round belt, katiba grenadier with 20 nades, in a variety of scenarios - like for the nades on one map I am at my familiar rock, in first person mode, and they are coming in from the hill on my left - about 4 of them up there, and after I deal with them, then I can move around to the right side of the rock and try to handle them coming up the valley in front. Another equally-fun nade challenge has me off the rock, on the right FOB wall about 30 meters to my right, popping the enemies who are coming in the side entrance right in front of me.

Both of those nade challenges are intense and satisfying. I get killed about half the time so it's not a cakewalk by any means. But my nade skill is improving ever so much!


I read the book, "Outlaw Platoon" - I highly recommend it. It's about a real mrap platoon (armored vehicles, mine resistant ambush protected, also known as apc, armored personnel carrier) in Afghanistan. (Remember, Sam and Jeff, I thought the A was amphibious, and I was surprised in one user scenario when my apc sank. )

In the book, on their first ambush, where the 3-apc convoy was hit with withering machine gun fire (but they were relatively safe inside the vehicles, however one does not want to just sit there until they start using rpgs) the captain who wrote the book, jumped out, got the men mobilized, and had them pull up the narrow road to a small somewhat level area where they could try to counter-attack, still under intense fire.

He grabbed one guy who had done really well on grenadier in the two-year Army training school, gave him a big box of nades [which are 40mm big fat bullets - about 1.7" in diameter and they can be lobbed out of the grenade chamber that hangs just below the bullet chamber, up to 400 meters or further] and told him to keep pounding the ridge line. Then he grabbed another guy who was expert at "walking in" off-site artillery, and got him on the radio with headquarters back at the FOB (forward operating base.)

The grenadier guy kept popping those nades. Then the heavy cannons, which had to use rocket-assisted rounds to reach that range (with the danger that the artillery truck might tip over from the excessive recoil of the rockets - but it never did) finally completely laid waste to the ridge-line machine-gunners.

It was an ambush right out of military tactics, and the captain had a special outlaw insignia painted on each truck, each mrap. They found out later that some of the attackers deliberately avoided dealing with the convoy that had that "pirate" emblem on them.

So anyway, the nades are really fun.

I learned where the showcase save folder is, and when I pull out the armasave.save file, the game lets me do another save. So I have all these saves in numbered folders.

Along the way over the 3 years, I one day realized that you can take a scope off of a rifle, put it in your backpack or vest, and then put it on a different rifle. I never knew that, duhhhh.





ARCO, TWO SCOPES IN ONE - BRILLIANT!!

And then in the last 30 days, I realized that this weird scope, which they identify as 10x magnification, but which only really is 2x magnification from the top red dot section - can be switched to the bottom large tube, where IT IS ACTUALLY 10X MAGNIFICATION! That happened accidentally while playing the highlights of a user scenario where I was running around in 3rd person, hitting the ground, changing from scope to cross-hairs.

I rise from prone on the ground with the ctrl key, to go to crouch. The key to changing which part of the scope that you use, is to have the weapon scoped in, then press ctrl.

Well it happened accidentally, and I for the life of me could not figure out how to make it un-do. So I googled and learned how the scope works, duhhhhh. The scope is called ARCO.


There have been many user scenarios that have given me ARCO and I have always said, "Oh this dumb thing again that pretends to be 10x zoom, but it's really this tiny standard 2x scope on top of a huge tube that doesn't do anything." I thought it was just for show. Man can I be Canadian sometimes!


You would think that on a game on which I have spent so much time, I would have done a bit of googling. You would also think that their in-game manual, with which I am VERY familiar, would have covered that in the "scope" section.

So I went back to my beloved showcase, defending the fort, with all those weapon challenges, to see if any of the dead guys all over the place had an ARCO scope.

Yes, the scope was there!!

One of the enemies lying near the first enemy mrap truck, has the katiba variant of the ARCO. And next to him is a dead zephyr guy, and a dead MX SW guy. There is a short 30 second lull between - "we captured the FOB" and "prepare for counter attack!" During that lull is when I have located and changed weapons, stocked up on grenades, chucked all but one rocket so I could carry more sutff, etc.


So that gave me two new ARCO weapons challenges, on those two weapons. And for the first time in that fantastic showcase, where I had been wishing there had been one for 3 years, I actually have a decent high-powered gun scope.

HAHAHAHAHA

I can't say that it has made a huge difference. The 2x scope is pretty good for distance up to 400 meters - the targets are very tiny at that distance, but lying prone, using slower mouse (my steelseries is set for 6-3 on the two clicks - for distant shots it's best to use the 3 sensitivity setting of course) you can definitely hit those targets with great accuracy.

The 10x scope however, is a joy - everything is so much bigger. Go figure.


There is one more interesting thing about a 10x scope.


You can partially see through smoke.


On one of those two weapons challenges, the ARCO with MX SW 100-round MX variant, I start on the rock, and usually I head to the wall, then around the wall to a concrete block which gives me a view of the side entrance near which the sarge lies in the mrap gully. He paints targets for me so I try to keep him alive.

But with the smoke trick, I sometimes stay right there on the rock.

I discovered that if I plant a smoke grenade on the auburn bush 10 meters behind me, when the smoke finally billows out, the way the wind is blowing, after dealing with the three enemies who might kill me coming up the valley, I can then come around to the top of the rock.

I look out, and I can't see a thing - just a pink blanket of haze over the part of the hill where the attackers are coming in from. When this first happened, I thought, "Oh jeeeez, bad move." But then when I scoped in - I could sort of see them - not perfectly clear but clear enough to target and kill. And they couldn't see me at all!

Does that apply to real life, or is that only in this game? Does high-powered optics partially penetrate fog, for example, or is it just in this game? I should google that question.

Of course the ideal thing would be to have the TWS scope, with the white-hot thermal mode, and then they'd be clear as day. But my question is, does any high-powered optics partially penetrate air-borne particles like water vapor or smoke particles.

Anyway, that "trick" gives me an opportunity to hold out at the rock, and try to kill 3-5 of those hill guys, before heading around to the front - or maybe just stay at the rock the whole time.

I can't do that on zephyr. The way the Director has them attacking, some machine gunners are way up at the top of the hill, lying prone, and they just wait and target my rock and do a really good job of suppressing my fire - the whole rock is shaking and no point in sticking my head out.

But on the MX SW counter-attack, they don't do that, unless they clearly see my rock, and yes, then one machine-gunner does try to suppress. But by the time I get to the top of the rock, they have moved into my "kill zone" and they can't see me or the rock.

I suppose they might see my muzzle flashes - indistinctly - but maybe not really well enough to target me. They seem really confused about where the fire is coming from, which is great.

They can't see me clearly until the smoke clears, which it does in about 20 seconds. So those 20 seconds are golden - they are blind to me and my cover, but I can partially see them. I love it!!!

(I actually spent some time, restarting that map about 10 times, experimenting with different smoke grenade placement, to get just the right amount, not too much, not too thin. For best results, I actually have to crouch run up to the auburn plant, and shoot the smoke grenade at the foot of the plant, to keep it from bouncing all over the hill. If I point straight down, from crouch, it will stay where it pops out. I do that right at the start where they are not far enough over the hill yet to see me do that.

Then I get back to my rock and target those 3 enemies coming up the valley. If I don't get those guys, and if I get wounded dealing with the hill guys, as has happened multiple times, one of those valley guys will kill me when I move over to the lower part of the rock, shielded from the hill, to undergo the 10-second healing animation. I can't fully depend on the secondary teammate who is lying near sarge but further up the gully, who tries to target distant enemies, from taking those guys out. He often gets killed pretty fast anyway. I throw a lot of smoke to try to keep him alive - it's an extra kick to beat a map and have more than just sarge survive.)

SPEAKING ABOUT FINISHING WITH MY TEAMMATES ALIVE'
In terms of keeping my guys alive, I did a couple last night where I beat the map and ended with a 4-man team on a katiba rock challenge from 6 months ago, which last night I turned into a 3rd person challenge, holding out in 3rd person on the little rock outside the FOB, getting there under cover of smoke.

Once there, in 3rd person, I can easily kill all the guys who come up outside that wall from the valley to enter the FOB side entrance. For some reason it's easier in 3rd person - they walk right into my 3rd person cursor and don't even try shooting me.

They still can't quite see me behind the rock, and they don't see the tip of my rifle, but I can clearly see them and my shooting cross-hairs in 3rd person view.
​

IN 3RD PERSON, AS LONG AS MY RIFLE BARREL CAN SEE THEM, THAT'S OK
Now that I think about it, in writing this, this must be another wonderful advantage of 3rd person. Let's think about it:

In first person, I suppose, to be able to shoot them, I would have to be more exposed, because at least the front of my scope has to extend past the rock to see them. In 3rd person, the cross-hairs are placed on the screen by the game to indicate where the bullet will go. Those cross-hairs can be problematic - they can jump around an object as I have learned in this game, whereas the scope will never do that. Anyway, I edge out to the right just far enough so that the cross-hairs jump out along the wall, no farther than that.

So what that means is, as long as the very extreme tip of the barrel is out from behind the rock, whether or not the scope is, apparently that is good enough for the game to give me cross-hairs.

It's a trick, but of course the entire thing about 3rd person is a trick.

No wonder these opfor (opposing force) guys don't shoot at me - at most they see one inch of a rifle barrel, which is practically invisible and blends in with the rock texture, plus I try to keep the smoke billowing at the wall, which blows across in front of them as they cautiously advance. When they reach my cross-hairs, at upper chest level, I press FIRE. ​

​

I read my old notes from 3/16 of this year, talking about rolling to right twice to target a machine gunner - the save starts fully scoped staring at the rock and I am in normal first person mode, the mode I have always played in except for the last couple of months.

I didn't pay attention to the old notes at first. But the machine gunner was making it difficult to run down to the wall on my new 3rd person variant.

I read the old notes about, roll left, or roll right. I decided to try the roll right two times to take out the hidden machine-gunner. So I followed the notes from this past March, rolled twice, using sensitivity of 3, targeted that machine gunner with shots to the head or upper chest, and then I ended up adding another roll to right, to get a second guy whom I discovered later. And then I finally ended up lingering for 5 more seconds to get a third guy who quickly comes up to the same area. By this time I am really exposed to the enemies running up from the valley to the wall, but I usually don't get wounded.

If I do get wounded, that ends my run, and it turns into a rock holdout map, because I have to heal for 10 seconds. The timing of this is critical. By then it's too late - just stay at rock.

But if I am NOT wounded, I then roll back left 3 times to get back to behind the rock, and then throw smoke at the wall to my left. Then I jump up to a crouch run, reload as I run, and tear down past the wall to the little rock, dive to cover, then change to 3rd person - I have lots of 3rd person experience at that rock from another map. So combining my notes from 6 months ago with my more recent 3rd person experience, adding another roll and two more kills, I ended up with team 4 a couple of times, and team 3 about three more times last night, starting from team 5. When I see that I have all those guys alive, I run in and heal them, and then I do crazy things to try to keep them alive. Sometimes it works. Hahaha.)​

Getting back to those two new new high-powered scope ARCO challenges, the action at the rock is normal first person, unless I leave the rock and run around to the front where I change to 3rd person view.


Here's why:


3RD PERSON, MY "LITTLE ARMY GUY" - OH WHAT A JOY!!


The biggest difference in the game play on those showcases is when I started using 3rd person view a couple months ago for most of the action, and sometimes also for holding out at the rock.

The field of view is so great - no longer do you not know what is going on while you are healing on the other side of a concrete block or behind the rock. You can run along a wall outside the FOB and see what the enemy is up to inside the FOB. No longer are you lying prone attempting to stare through tall and thick grass, while the enemy AI has no difficulty at all in seeing you in similar grass. Your camera is above the grass, and you can see them better than they can see you.

The advantages are numerous, including the one that I mentioned above, in holding out on that little rock, where just my rifle barrel can see them, they can't see me at all.


The disadvantages are a few, but they are important. One click of the numeric keypad ENTER button and I am back in first person, so switching back and forth is nothing. One advantage of first person is when I am behind my favorite rock, defending against distant enemies. You can use the scope in 3rd person or first, so that isn't the difference. The difference is, in first person, you can more accurately tell when you are shielded by the rock, as you carefully edge out to take down one enemy at a time, rather than exposing yourself to multiple fire. If you try to do that in 3rd person, you may think the rock is hiding you when it isn't. If they can see part of your leg, that's enough for them to kill you.

Similarly in peeking around a wall - first person is best. Anytime you do anything when you must shield yourself from fire, and a subtle mistake will get you killed, then first person is best. That includes healing behind the rock - I think I am in cover, but my leg is exposed. First person I better know that I am behind the middle fat part of the rock.

However, the advantage goes back to 3rd person for a lot of the action.

For example, for lying prone and then rolling out to shoot an enemy, I have recently learned that 3rd person is so much better than first person.

When you are crouched or standing, the Q is lean left, the E is lean right.

This is the first game where I actually started leaning - you can stand behind a tree and just lean out to fire. If the tree is thick enough, that works.

But when you are prone, there is no leaning, so the Q turns into a roll left, the E is a roll right.

I first started doing these rolls in the Hogs Cove attack, a user scenario attack where we come in with 7 rubber boats to pacify a town. The game gave you the option to change squads as your squadmates all got killed. By the time you win the game, you might be the only guy alive out of the 40 who first arrived.
I joined the last squad, but my sergeant who helped spot enemies for him and me, would get himself killed, and if that happened I had to start reading map coordinates from the "sightings" that came in from spotters in the town. I would rather just have him stay alive and decide where we should go.

So I became super aggressive in keeping him alive by killing the three guys who were lying in wait for him, right past my critical last save point. I did the roll in first person and it was effective. I posted about it here - it felt like a real "bad-ass" move!

But the problem in doing the roll in first person, is that of course the screen does a complete flip while you roll. That is a bit disconcerting - you have to try to recover your view and target the enemy all in one instant - the first one to fire survives!

In 3rd person, it's so much easier.

Your character does the "bad-ass" acrobatic roll (it's really neat to watch it) but the screen stays perfectly steady. Without the need to recover your view, you just line up the cross-hairs in 1/10th second and press fire. Usually it works very well, unless they are very close, like within 5 meters, and totally focused on where you are rolling out from, with weapon already pointed. I would say, "don't roll" in that case. Maybe even "don't peek." You might try a different tactic like going around the back. LOL

I do the same roll from behind the concrete block that views the side entrance to the FOB. When, looking over the block in 3rd person, I see an enemy 50 meters away come into the FOB - just a couple meters from where the sarge is holding out in the lowest part of the mrap gully, about 1 meter below ground-level, I roll out left from behind the concrete block, right-click to instantly bring up ARCO scope (there is no scope lag in this game unlike other games that I have played) target and kill the guy looming large in my 10x scope, then roll back before the enemies on the hill can see me in the open. (At the end of the roll I am staring at an enlarged section of the concrete block, which is not particularly interesting, so I of course remember to right-click out of the scope, where again I can see everything including myself lying there in cover. I'm not THAT Canadian.)

Kevin, did I say you should get this game!

Rich

 

Sam, I think those screenies look rockin' and it makes me want to try the game. Obviously being accustomed to a lower range of resolutions the UI doesn't bother me. I would imagine its optimized for 1080p. That being said, 1080p on a 40" TV is always a little fuzzy. However, with the 1070 I can pile on the AA as it's just silly power for 1080p. Then it's not so bad, and even without AA I could hardly call it blurry. The TV makes a good accounting of itself in everything I've tried. It's certainly functional and I enjoy using it.

Lately, I can use 200% resolution scaling in some newer games. It equates to forced hardware SSAA with perfect quality and performance scaling. It renders at whatever percentage of your native resolution then downscales the image back to your display. It looks absolutely fantastic, insanely sharp for the display. Totally superior IQ-wise to any other method of screen smoothing. I actually have to put my face right into the screen to see what's going on at a per-pixel level. It's a very nice effect that makes this display's quality jump forward a few notches. I wish older titles could do it, and haven't had much luck using Nvidia's in-house DSR on the control panel. It's not very compatible. Luckily it works beautifully with Total War games which is awesome. Really nice image quality.

At 200% scaling it's performance-equivalent to running 4K. Not bad in BF4 and Star Wars Battlefront which both manage a solid 50-60 with vsync. I'll take the performance hit to never see screen tearing again. Always a few framerate dips, but essentially butter smooth. Minimum 45 maybe.

So yeah, the 1070 was a good investment, lol.

 

Jeff, that 200%, then scale back down to actual screen res - that trick sounds kind of magical - although I still am not completely sure I understand it. So you're saying that it is even better than turning up the AA to max? You say it works in newer games - so it's a feature of the game itself? So you're running like at 4k, but it's throwing the pixels to the screen at 1080p - but they get out there with an extra level of sharpness?

Hmmmm.


Would you be able to post a couple of before and after screenshots? Would the difference be visible on a screenshot?


ROT TOMB RAIDER
Speaking of modern games, I'm on the new Rise of the Tomb Raider. It won't support crossfire, unless there is some trick to it that I don't know about. I believe I am on the very latest catalyst - they don't call it catalyst anymore, but I just got it.

Anyway, I am running the card at 975 which is its highest stable clock - I might be able to manage 1000 but in the past that produced more crashes - and the game benchmark gives me an average of 25 fps. The game pretty much works okay - a bit of lag sometimes - but as it's 3rd person - you don't notice it too much. I have captured a bunch of fraps screenshots, and quality is really fantastic. They have me at High, but not ultra. However, I discovered on AC that high was really pretty close to ultra for my eye sight, and on Tomb Raider the scenery is lovely indeed.


AC SYNDICATE
Another one that is really lovely, the few times it's not raining, is good old Sam's hometown of London - back a while in the AC Syndicate game. Getting out of the city down to that borough a little south, with lots of trees - there is some magnificent scenery. Even in the city, with sunshine, the advertisements on the two-story horse-drawn buses are very colorful, and the traffic up and down the river is astonishing! AC has always handled water very well, like in AC4 with the pirate, and when those barges move up and down the river, the swells ripple out beautifully.

I am really impressed with the level of building and architecture - the whole railroad system in fact - that they had at that time. I can see now why the first thing you Brits did with India is put a railroad system in the country.

On that game, I believe that I AM getting crossfire support, although I actually did not run a gpu-z log to verify that like I did on Tomb Raider. I am getting mostly in low 30s on AC.


TOMB RAIDER CHALLENGING PUZZLES
Back to Tomb Raider - some of the puzzles are freaking HARD! I had to do a walk-through to figure one out. And I was almost on the verge of doing it on a second one, when finally the light came on. And even then, achieving what you had to achieve, the timing was just this side of impossible. I finally achieved it and kept saying to myself - "THAT WAS SOOO HARD." And it was just a crummy extra tomb - I don't know if I even got that much bounty. But it took nearly 2 hours to solve the puzzle because I was convinced you had to do it another way, until I finally decided that way was truly impossible. Which it was.

And they made climbing more difficult, as if the first game wasn't bad enough. Some of the climbing is a nightmare that you will repeat 5 times until FINALLY!

I DID set the game to level 3 of difficulty to make the combat more challenging - would that have affected the climbing? And the timing on the puzzles? I don't think so, but maybe it affected everything.


TOMB RAIDER COMBAT
The combat is okay. The hard thing about the combat is that you have to hold down right mouse before you can fire, which I find has a bad effect on my mouse handling - it is like I am over-gripping the mouse and it really interferes in aiming and shooting.

By comparison, in Arma3, using crosshairs, you can hold right-mouse to get your 2x zoom. But the rigidity of holding that right mouse button down makes me usually opt to use a gun sight, and set a zoom level, so I can release the right mouse button.

So it's a compromise between:

1. crosshairs and no zoom, meaning max view and max mouse freedom but you might not be able to see the enemy that well, versus

2. the rigidity of holding the mouse with crosshairs to get a 2x zoom, meaning max field of view, but less mouse freedom, however you can see him better, versus

3. gun sight and locked-in zoom, with smallest field of view, but especially with 5x zoom now you can REALLY see him, and back to easier mouse movement with your finger OFF the right mouse button. ​

But in Tomb Raider, and AC also, you have no other option - you have to hold that right-mouse button. The weapon doesn't get engaged until the right mouse aim button is pressed. So you always are slightly struggling with a mouse that you are OVER-gripping.


Hahaha.

Counter-strike it ain't.

Anyway, Tomb is kind of fun - there is every type of arrow including poison and grenade. The combat REALLY IS more challenging with this setting as I can tell by some of the walk-throughs. My shotgun would not have killed the guy at that distance - for example - I had to stand very near the door to get the guy.

So I do get killed a fair amount, which just gives me an opportunity to do it again and see if I can conserve my 180 rounds of AK ammo, or not even have to use the AK at all, doing everything with arrows and pistol with hollow-point rounds (for hollow-point more damaging bullets use middle mouse as handgun trigger not left mouse.) I would NEVER get killed if I did everything with AK, however, I doubt that I would I have enough AK ammo for every confrontation - I try to focus on headshots of course, to conserve ammo - you do pick ammo off of dead enemies, but not that much. I like to keep those 180 AK rounds in reserve - I never know when I'll hit a REALLY bad combat situation where I don't have the automatic weapon ammo, and I really wished that I did.

I keep thinking back to this time:

BEFORE I BECAME "ARMORED UP" THEY GAVE ME A REALLY TIGHT COMBAT CHALLENGE
The first time I was in a really tight spot, trying to use stealth and arrows, I got killed 6 times trying a few different strategies, different attacks, and I wondered if I was going to be able to beat it. I had some real doubts. I didn't have the AK yet, and not even handgun - just arrows - and not compound bow - just plain starter bow which was not very strong. And I hadn't worked up to the "kill from above" melee skill that I have now. So I was wondering if I was going to need to reduce the difficulty level.

Then I remembered that in addition to 15 regular arrows, I had 2 poison arrows.

I had already killed the two snipers, and I was at the first roof-top sniper position overlooking a small compound. I had gone back to what had seemed to be my most promising attack. There were still about 8 AK-wielding enemies down below who didn't know I was there.

Two of them were right near me, down below in front of an instrument panel, and one a few yards back, was virtually just below me. So I hit him with an arrow in the head, and while the slight gasp he made alerted the other two and turned them around, by then I had used middle mouse to plant a poison arrow at their feet and the fumes took them out.

Phew! This poison thing might be my salvation!

Two more enemies were patrolling together 20 meters to my left - I was looking down from a rooftop as I mentioned. They were unaware of the carnage that had just occurred at the instrument panel. I placed the poison arrow between then and they too dropped. Whew! I might beat this thing.

Then, while I thought things were already looking up, the game did a marvelous thing - it told me to hold middle mouse to craft some more poisonous arrows with the extra herbs that I was carrying. FANTASTIC! I didn't know about that! I had read people talk about how wonderful the field-crafting was (versus crafting at a campfire - which is like at a safe-room) but I didn't know what they meant. If you run out of poisonous arrows, but you still have some plain arrows, plus the required amount of poison mushrooms, you can craft some poison arrows right then and there.

So nowI had 2 more poison arrows, and I quickly used one on a single guy who was walking over to the others to examine the bodies - I was on a poison roll and I didn't want to blow it with a misplaced attempt at a head-shot - at that time as I mentioned, my bow was weak and my only chance at a one-shot kill was a tricky head-shot - especially hard on a moving target.

I could taste victory - so I did a sure-kill poison. The noxious green fumes boiled up and he choked and dropped to the ground. That left only about 2 or 3 more, and now this whole thing was manageable. The last guy tried to hide underneath me, and I dropped and charged him, and meleed him with my climbing axe - melee is not really that good in this game, and I hadn't built up to the finisher skill, but somehow I did it right. That actually was not too smart of me - I could have gone over to the other side of the yard and hit him with arrows - or even that last poison arrow - but like I say I could taste victory and he seemed like a chicken to me. LOL (It didn't matter - I now knew how to beat the map, even if it took another couple of tries.) ​

CRAFT GRENADES OR SMOKE BOMBS OR MOLOTOV COCKTAILS
Mentioning crafting - you can field craft molotov cocktails out of the many random wine, or olive oil bottles, that are lying around. You pick one up and hit middle mouse. If you have the required elements, it turns into a molotov cocktail. Use right-mouse to aim - and they give you a landing arc which is not to hard to use. Tin cans become grenades - not super strong but mildly effective - and mug-sized bottles become smoke bombs - they can't see to shoot you, or even move, so they make easier targets.

If you hit Q key and turn on your special intuition, the enemies light up. If you don't move much they stay lit up. That can really help in combat in a dark or smoky area. It also helps in hunting a bear - they light up even on the other side of the wall of the pitch-black cave, if you choose that skill. Yeah I want to know where that scary bear is. I also want to plan my retreat in case he starts running after me - if I can make it to the little bridge he can't jump across the stream like I can.

Molotov cocktails are one of my favorite things!

Those unarmored enemies really scream as they get burned alive. Wait! As I think about it, I believe it also even works on armored enemies.

Maybe it's just the fire arrows that don't seem to work on armored enemies, whereas maybe the molotovs in fact DO work on them.

I still don't have it quite figured out. Those fire arrows seem pretty weak in fact. They don't work on bears either. The best thing with a bear is to shoot a poison arrow not AT the bear, but right on the ground in front of the bear's head. Let him smell the poison. That REALLY slows him down and you can then shoot arrow after arrow (especially if by then you have compound bow which shoots more powerful arrows) until he regains his wits or dies from the arrows. It does take a bunch.

So those fire arrows do not seem to be very powerful. But the grenade arrows are lovely - they can take out two armored guys if you shoot the ground between them. The are effective on a panther also. The panther will be stunned, and another arrow or two is all it will take.


Also I upgraded to a two-arrows-in-one-shot head-shot skill against two enemies, that I don't know how to use. I tried it once. They had two enemies waiting right there together so I could use the skill. It didn't work, but I arrowed the second one in the head anyway with a second shot, as he slowly reacted to the guy falling down beside him.

So that reminds me. Right this minute. A video should show me how to use that skill - the game doesn't have any good tutorials.

I'll see you later - time to open youtube and learn how the double-arrow double-enemy skill works.

Rich

 

Yes Rich, it's exactly what it sounds like and does the same thing as SSAA but more effectively and reliably, with better performance scaling to boot. By newer games I mean Frostbite games (Dragon Age, Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront etc) and a few other engines have Resolution Scaling as a native video option in the in-game settings. Both Nvidia and AMD cards also have it as an option in the video control panel, though this implementation relies on driver compatibility, so isn't always reliable.

It does more for the image than AA does, because it helps textures scale dynamically to your resolution as well. A texture loses its crispness and detail as you move away from it, even if very detailed up close. The aliasing and limits of resolution mean you cannot see the details, as they are literally obscured by the tiny spaces between pixels. This mismatch with screen resolution is what causes textures AND edges to shimmer and flicker as you move around. However, with Resolution Scaling/DSR, it's been rendered at a higher resolution, then scaled to fit within your monitor's lines of resolution. This means it not only antialiases the edges of objects, but also everything inside and outside the edges too. This makes it an extremely powerful visual effect, but it comes with a proportionate performance hit. On my 1080p display, 200%/4x renders it at 4K resolution, then scales that 4K image to fit my display.

Imagine, if you will, trying to measure something precisely with a yardstick that only has feet marked on it. You can tell if it's shorter or longer than 1, 2, or 3 feet, but that's it. Now add in inches, halves, eighths, and sixteenths. It's still a 3 foot ruler so you haven't allowed it to measure more, but it can make a much more accurate measurement within its own length.

It's really quite an interesting idea. It's built on the same mathematical/visual concept as AA, but is much more thorough.

 

Hi Jeff. Your explanation sounds great - my brain still can't quite figure out why it works.

So you have the image - paying the performance hit - as if it was about to go out to a 4k screen. So far so good. It's incredibly detailed. Okay.

Now you take it, and adjust it to the real screen resolution, 1080p. And that image ends up being much sharper than if you didn't go through all of those computations. I appreciate your analogy of 3 foot ruler, but I still don't get it.

Okay, let me ask you another way. Is this something that a screenshot or a piece of a screenshot will show? Should I just google it and be exposed to many examples and learn about it that way?

Anyway, Jeff, it sounds great - especially the part about incredible sharpness on your monitor. Way to go!


RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER - UPDATE
Regarding tomb raider, I finally got to the part where we're fighting "the deathless ones" and I was getting my butt kicked until I started taking advantage of the Assassin's creed style of "assassination from above" moves that they have put in this Rise of the Tomb Raider. That was kind of cool. I saved that first major battle at the campfire just before that, and replayed it about 5 times. I have it on Survivor Difficulty (3rd level) and the game really is challenging - all the trapeze work is also the same way - very tricky.

I am trying to hold off on using my m16 - trying to keep it in reserve. I paid a lot of money to upgrade to it from my AK - but I am conserving my 180 rounds - that's 6 clips of pretty good killing power.

But ammo is scarce in this game - you get ammo off of dead guys or rare bullet cases - and that is the ONLY way you get ammo - no shops where you can buy ammo. So I keep backtracking to the first time I entered the soviet zone, where there are always 4 guys to kill in that first map, and maybe a few bullet cases around. Then the logging camp has another 5 guys to kill, and then the copper mine has another 3 guys to kill. Then I fast-travel by campfire back to where the mission is.

My new problem is - I killed a very hard-to-kill bear, used up almost all my arrows, all my shotgun shells, and finally finished it with 35 round of M16 fire. And this bear was right in the deathless zone where a lot more combat is coming up real soon - the Trinity modern bad guys just broke through the ice that covers this lost city, I just caught a glimpse of one of their helicopters way up above, so soon I'll be fighting them AND the deathless at the same time, I'm sure.

And not only bullets - I am 60% out of the ore that allows me to make grenade arrows which are very helpful on these massive attacks. However, one youtube video I recently watched showed that the poison arrows seem to work as well - maybe even better - than grenading them. The poison works just fine on the really heavily-armored guys - they have to breathe - that makes sense. It might work also on the flame-thrower guy. I don't think he's using a separate breathing apparatus. There was one of his type recently at the copper mine but I used the grenade arrow on him - I should have tested the poison arrow - the crafting item to make them, poisonous mushrooms, are all over the place, so I better learn how to use that arrow type. You might recall that in my first long post up above, the poison arrows saved the day for me in a very difficult situation.

Rich

 

I really don't know how to explain it better Rich as I don't fully understand it myself. Resolution scaling is, however, best summed up as a very high quality form of super sampling. It doesn't just smooth jagged lines, it sharpens all details on the screen. It should be used in place of any other type of AA if available. It can also be used to increase performance by turning it down, which preserves UI scaling and other things while giving a somewhat better image than actually lowering your resolution. Very powerful effect.

Have again had a rather interesting odyssey in audio.

- Bought a pair of Beyerdynamic DT990 Premium 600 ohm headphones to complement my Sennheiser HD598s. $180 was a massive bargain. They were well over $300 a few years ago. Discovered 2 things about them:

1) The 600 ohm rating for my Creative ZxR sound card's headphone amp is what it is capable of driving audibly, but it strains badly with real high impedance headphones. It drives the 300 ohm Sennheisers with power to spare, but is far too quiet for the Beyerdynamics. CD audio is okay-ish but vinyl audio, which has much less pre-amp, is frustrating to listen to. Sound quality also suffers, because there is not enough power to make the drivers perform properly at the volumes I like. The 250 ohm version would have been a better buy, though won't have quite the same response curve. The 600 ohm is the king of the line if you can power it.

2) The other thing I learned very quickly after A/B comparisons. They are a league above the HD598s in overall quality. I found out in the audio community they are considered more direct competitors to the HD600 and HD650, Sennheiser's flagship models. So competing with $300-500 headphones, instead of $150-300 like the Sennheisers. The HD598s are certainly capable of good sound, but the Beyerdynamics have straight up better power handling capabilities, bass, treble, mids, etc. I like to play my games and music hard and loud. The more expensive Sennheisers maybe better than mine in that regard but I've never listened to them on my own setup. My Senns can go loud, but they simply do not have the same power and snappy response as the Beyers.

- So to remedy my lack of power I bought a Schiit Asgard 2 headphone amp. It has over twice the power output of my soundcard at 190mW for 600 ohms vs 80mW for the Creative ZxR. Instead of using the ZxR's headphone jack, I bypass it completely with a pair of RCA cables from the line out on the sound card directly to the amp. The headphone amp acts as a pass-through and pre-amp for my front stereo speakers as well, preserving the use of the soundcard's RCAs for my analog 5.1 setup.

- The amp has greatly improved the sound quality and overall authority of my music, games, and movies. My music is a lot smoother and the Schiit amp is far less taxed for general usage than the ZxR. However, to listen to my vinyl, I still need to have the volume near max. When listening to CD audio, I can use less volume and the sound is very powerful and exciting. For vinyl, even of the same song and mastering, the sound is strained and gritty at such a high volume. The amp is still being overtasked. Damn, those are some power--hungry cans! You should ideally be able to turn your volume far above comfortable on a pair of headphones. The Asgard 2 can do it easily with my 300 ohm Sennheisers, but struggles a lot to do it with the 600 ohm Beyerdynamics. They are simply asking more than it can provide.

- Next step is obvious. Get a better amp, because the headphones seem worth it. So a Schiit Valhalla 2 tube amp is on the way. 450mW at 600 ohms! It's advertised specifically for powering 600 ohm Beyerdynamic headphones, so they know what's up, lol. The Beyerdynamics have very bright treble, and tube components are well known for behaving well with treble. Supposedly pairing Beyers with tubes is a fairly popular combination I stumbled into on my own.

- As an added bonus, I got a fair deal on a pair of AKG K712 Pro headphones. $250 "used - like new" fullfilled by Amazon. They retail anywhere from $400-500 and the Amazon blowout sale price is still over $300. Threw in an aftermarket cable for them as I detest super long cables for desktop usage. They are hailed as the ultimate accurate and neutral headphone, but with an added kick in bass and musicality. An evolutionary improvement on older K7xx models. They also have a reputation for being hard to drive like the Beyers, though due to a matter of efficiency, not impedance. The Beyers and AKGs make the HD598s obsolete in my collection most likely.

So that's roughly $1400 blown on sweet audio gear in about 2 weeks. Man, this audio thing is getting expensive, and I'm still in the entry-level! lol. I'm pretty satisfied with what's shaping up though. I've done enough research to have at least some idea of what to expect. Out of that $1400 I expect to recover $200 on my Schiit Asgard 2 and $100 on the Sennheisers, bringing my total to $1100. Two awesome pairs of headphones and a very respectable headphone amp was my goal to begin with. I think at least on the headphones side of things my upgrade marathon is done.

I also got an AntLion Audio ModMic(noise cancelling version w/ in-line mute switch) as a microphone, eliminating the ZxR's desktop beam-forming mic, and the Creative ACM altogether. I can mount the mic to several pairs of headphones with the included magnetic gizmos. Very high quality pickup and sound. Need to enable Noise Reduction and Acoustic Echo Cancellation in the sound card as the mic is very sensitive. Great quality while talking to my friends and I can use any headphones I want, period. For $50, totally worth the cost.

 

Holy crap Jeff. Not only do you know your stuff on visual effects, but you are an audiophile on top of it!

I just keep putt putt putt-ing along on my Medusa 5.1 gaming headphones - pretty good directionality for telling where the gunfire is coming from, and the music seems to be decent. I play it fairly loud. Rise of the Tomb Raider uses beautiful cello - the same way that Max Payne always did - and the cello sounds pretty rich to me.


About 3 months ago I lost the entire right side - I thought all the little speakers had blown. I had actually picked up a pack of 10 of those tiny speakers from china about two years ago - but the wires inside the headphones are microscopic and I was not looking forward to trying to solder them.

Anyway, as a first start to see if I was going to have to take things apart, I disconnected everything from everywhere - uncoupled the headphones from the amp, and uncoupled all the wires going into the computer sound card (motherboard sound actually.)

Hooray, my entire right side came back online, and the speaker test tells me that every single speaker is working, plus pretty good bass. So these crazy 15-year old medusas are still working okay - okay for my not too discriminating needs.




But my hat is really off to you, Jeff. Since you are a guy who appreciates specific textures on rocks in a river, and you know the graphic effects needed to make those textures more life-like, and you a guy who also appreciates audio textures to that same purist level of fidelity and detail, I have to congratulate you for springing for the $1,000+ investment. I am impressed that you are taking the audio to an entirely new level where, when you play, or when you listen to music in general, the visual and the audio effects "speak" to you - in sparkling richness of colors and harmonics.

You put in the hours, you did the research, you know how digital compares to vinyl - you know the difference between good sound and GREAT sound!

That is just freaking awesome!!!

Rich

 

So the AKG K712s got here and man they are nice! Not as heavily built as the Beyers but space-age through and through. Just as nice but in a different way. Self-adjusting head band means I never need to play with adjustment. Always perfect every time. They also use a mini-xlr connection on the headphone-side of the cable. Very simple and secure, and makes buying aftermarket cables a bit easier. The ear cushions are black velour with thick memory foam padding and more padding over the speakers where your ear makes contact. Super lush and with the excellent headband makes for amazing comfort. The functionality and comfort of these cans is excellent, and shows a lot of thought. The DT990s are similarly lush in build quality and comfort, but grip a bit tighter and use some more conventional build materials. Both sets of headphones are a few notches above the Sennheisers in build quality, but the Sennheisers remain by far the lightest and most comfortable of the the three.

The AKGs' sound is just as neutral as the Sennheisers with far greater power and better bass response. They may even be more clear and precise, without the typical "Veil" of warmth Sennheiser headphones seem to have. Excellent volume on all my music. The Asgard 2 is a perfect amp for them. They are still a very bright headphone like the Beyers and Senns. This means piercing treble. However, all 3 pairs respond amazingly to different types of music. The harsh treble is in the recordings, not the sound of the headphones. I find that like the Beyerdynamics, and unlike the Sennheisers, they respond negatively to EQ. I can make only very light EQ adjustments on them without instantly losing detail. It's like some sounds just disappear. This is indicative of a very flat response curve. I added a couple of +1db bumps in bass response and left treble alone, while lowering pre-amp by 1db to minimize distortion. They sound really excellent. An amazing companion to my Beyer DT990s. The Beyerdynamics are an equally capable headphone with punchier and brighter sound, and are equally as comfortable and pleasurable to use. The Sennheisers are slightly more forgiving with EQ adjustments, and lose detail and resolution far less readily. However, they simply do not have the same power handling capabilities of the two newer headphones, and the AKGs easily match them in detail. The Sennheiser HD598 is now old news to me, lol.

In mellow music Id like to crank the nuts out of, like Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac, the AKG K712 is currently my only option. When the tube amp gets here, it'll give the DT990 a much better shot at showing its true colors. Hopefully, the tube amp is capable of properly powering the AKGs as well, lol, or I might be keeping both amps. The Valhalla 2 is a high output impedance amp which means it can handle high loads well, but doesn't handle lower loads very well. The DT990 and K712 are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

 

Schiit Valhalla 2 Tube Amp got here and WOW!!!!! For the 600 ohm Beyerdynamics headphones it is absolutely NIGHT AND DAY. The power, range, quality, everything is a notch or two up from the Asgard. Simply breathtaking authority and ability with the Beyers! It's like a whole new world as far as high impedance headphones go. Also, the treble isn't really reduced, but it is definitely more controlled with slightly less sibilant hissing. After about 20 hours of break-in on the tubes with 4 or 5 over night cooldowns in between, this effect has been amplified. It is a match made in heaven for the Beyerdynamic DT990s. Due to being able to adequately power them, the Valhalla 2 has also opened up their frequency response range. No more dead spots! For the AKG headphones, it's a little different. More below.

I was worried about the Valhalla being unable to power the AKG K712s. They are low impedance but low sensitivity as well so need a lot of voltage. The Valhalla is high impedance, so needs to deliver a lot more voltage than a low impedance amp to get the same results. The AKGs act almost like the Beyer DT990s did on lesser amps. Solid-state amps with middling power and low impedance like the Asgard 2 are better suited than tube amps like the Valhalla 2 for the AKGs' specific needs. However, the Valhalla is still a pretty good amp for them.

In low-gain mode with the tube amp, I need near full volume to get them loud enough. Perfectly fine for CDs, bad for vinyl. The sound is great and 90% of stuff is easily loud enough, but my vinyl recordings totally fall flat. Fortunately, hi-gain mode has more than enough power to push the AKGs to the point of damaging them, which is ample for vinyl sources. I actually have to be careful with the volume knob. It means more background noise by default though, which is a trade-off. The amp itself is silent, but any small noises produced by my PC and other stuff are amplified. When running on a more appropriate amp, they do not have this issue, and the Beyers don't have the issue on either amp. I'm sure there is a taboo about running AKGs in hi-gain, but they don't seem to have lost any sound quality or ability. Still very detailed, revealing headphones. I just match to my source. Most stuff is fine with lo-gain, and most of my "quiet" vinyl sources are loud enough where background noise isn't a big issue. It's definitely something to take note of though. Less efficient headphones would be outside of the Valhalla's ability. My dumb ass lucked out.

That being said, the Valhalla 2 tube amp is more suitable for my overall uses than the solid state Asgard 2. I lose a bit of the perfection on my AKGs in hi-gain mode, but the Beyers are completely renewed! The Valhalla 2 is different from the original Valhalla in that its ability to drive low impedance headphones has been expanded. That certainly seems to be a true assertion. The original may not have been a good buy, and the Asgard 2 was a near miss. Fortunately, the Valhalla 2 has just enough oomph in the right areas to drive my small collection of headphones with relative ease.

As a stereo pre-amp, Valhalla 2 is not as perfect as the Asgard 2. There's is definitely some of that tube magic, which is perfect for acoustic music with tame bass. Uriah Heep, Fleetwood Mac, The Doors among others. Very clean, airy, bright treble which makes the speakers sound crystal clear. Excellent stereo imaging, but a slightly smaller and closer soundstage than the Asgard 2. That means both amps have an equal ability to deliver detail and let you pick out specific parts of the music, but the tube amp makes it feel slightly closer and less spread out. However, overall bass response rolls off slightly with the Valhalla. So any electronic music, or heavily distorted rock and roll suffers a bit. There's just not as sharp a kick to the response. I can EQ it up a bit, which works fine, but it's just not the same. In that regard, the Asgard was more transparent. I quite like the untouched signal from my soundcard, so the Asgard 2 would be my go-to choice as a dedicated pre-amp. For headphones, the difference in soundstage and bass is slightly less pronounced, though it is there. All of my headphones are known for a vast soundstage though, so it's kind of a curiosity to me more than an issue. And the Beyerdynamics also have very strong bass, so any loss there is minimal.

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On another note I have reconfigured my main 5.1 setup. Moved the Polk Monitor II 60 rears up front. Monitor II 50s have replaced the 60s in back and the CS2 center has been replaced with a CS1 center. Monitor II 70 fronts and Monitor II CS2 center are up on craigslist.

So basically, I downgraded, but for some valid reasons:

- First fact to bear in mind is that my receiver states it can deliver 665W or roughly 95W per channel at its theoretical max limits. Yamaha commonly overstates the power ability of their receivers in the mid-range, so I'd say 560W overall or 80W per channel is a safer bet. That means about 160W each for bi-amped front speakers. Just a guess but an educated one with some research behind it.

- These are massive speakers which need a dedicated amp to sound their best. Even when using bi-amping/bi-wiring from my Yamaha receiver, I simply cannot give the 275W 70s the power they need to be great performers. Bi-amping the 200W 60s come much closer to their power needs, so the receiver has an easier time powering them as loud as I like them. Maximum ability is a different story, but suffice to say even the 60s are powerful enough to shake the house.

- I can only use single wire for my rear speakers, so no bi-amping to use as a crutch. At 150W, Monitor II 50s are much, much easier to drive on a single channel than the 60s or 70s. Same goes for the center speaker. The CS2 is 175W and the CS1 is 125W. I can power the smaller speaker much, much more effectively.

- Overall, the larger speakers were much too large and powerful for the size of the space they were in. Even if I move to a much larger room in the future, these are exceptionally powerful speakers and would scale well to a very large listening area.


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So yeah, some downsizing in some areas, and some severely huge upgrades in others. I am starting to finally discover my likes and dislikes in audio equipment, and what best fits my individual needs. I have tried to find solutions to move away from my Creative sound card as a source, but Games like Mass Effect and even some newer ones still use Creative's EAX sound processing. It's currently the best game sound available, and I constantly wonder why we no longer have hardware sound in games. It's truly the best and most capable sound solution.

Digital sound, as is found in all modern games, is advancing, but very slowly. Companies are advertising sound features today, that were available on Creative cards in the early 2000s. The ZxR, and its older brother the X-Fi Titanium HD, are among the only sound cards that have these features for my favorite older games, while having a much greater focus on sound quality than other PC hardware. I can have surround and reverb in Mass Effect, but get a fully untouched stereo signal to audio gear with the click of a mouse. That's the real beauty of using a quality sound card. With a single click, it can go from a gaming and surround sound processor, to a pretty good stereo source for audiophiles.

My next upgrade will be a bit more complex. I intend to replace the op-amps on my sound card. I'm looking at quite a few options, and many of them supposedly outright reduce the sibilance and hissing the Creative card is prone to. Not having had the benefit of spending real time with a reference-quality system, I can't tell if this is good or bad. If that sibilant hissing is in the recordings, and changing the op-amps reduces it, that could be considered coloring/changing the sound. I'd like to experiment.

 

Those headphones have some amazing features - self-adjusting sounds nice. A particular way of attaching the cables - so are you saying that if a cable gets damaged you can simply attach a different cable? That makes a lot of sense versus the cable and headphones being one integrated unit like my Medusas. Nice

The padding sounds great. I just had a cheaper headphone that I was using up in LA for the home theater (I like the sound turned up, but they are in a duplex and are cautious about the sound bothering the neighbor next door, and they always keep it turned down too low for me) develop "melted cushions" so that the last time I used it, I had to pull the cushions apart, and after wearing the headphones I had black stuff all over my ears. I had to toss those out - but they WERE comfortable. I am temporarily using a $16 pair that I got years ago from Radio Shack for my laptop case - I need to pick up some better headphones pretty soon.

Maybe I'll see if the Sennheisers have an economy model.

Okay, I got up to the end of your 2nd to last post - where the tube amp is on its way - and you might be keeping both amps depending on how the tubes drive both sets of your finer headphones.

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

The tubes amps arrived:

Ok, so far so good. For the Beyers they are a great match. You actually did a "burn in" on your tube amps, powering them up for hours and then a few overnight cool-downs. I have to say one more time, I have never personally known anybody this knowledgeable about audio - it's really impressive.

My brother was visiting - our phenom htpc in the kitchen died - motherboard southbridge chip fried I think - it looked like a bad video card but when the replacement 6450 hdmi card came from newegg, it still wouldn't post. So I bought an eBay $75 core 2 duo compaq dc5800 - like the other two that I bought 3 years ago - one of which I am typing on right now - and installed that one in the kitchen. The big-screen TV Toshiba from time to time develops garbled sound - maybe after an hour or so. The fix is to turn off the tv momentarily, power it back on, to re-boot the audio card, and sound is fixed.

But when the home theater video is playing, all of a sudden there is no sound, which never happened on the phenom. With the dc5800 turning off the set disables the hdmi sound. The fix is to "switch user" then log back in, then re-start the video in Power DVD 16 to where it was last playing. As a further fix, I enabled "on-board sound" and "built-in speaker" in the bios, so that when you flip the tv back on, the sound comes out of the tower 10 feet away, instead of from the tv. If volume is low, you might not even notice it as the internal speaker is not too bad at low volume. I tried it on a few people and they couldn't tell me what the change was. But for higher volume, where you want the tv to handle the sound, then you do the "switch user" trick.

Anyway, my brother was so impressed that I immediately identified the problem and applied a fix - his non-techie level of being impressed is how I feel compared to you, Jeff, when you explain all this amazing audio equipment - you really know your stuff!!​

Okay, so the Valhalla with the Beyers, no problem. In fact, GREAT - better than you have ever seen the headphones perform. Amazing!

But with the AKGs, it has to be run in high-gain mode to handle vinyl, with the corresponding problem that it may pick up background noise, like coming from your pc. Other than vinyl, and with the Beyers, lo-gain works fine. Handled carefully, hi-gain seems to be okay with no loss of clarity or range, although you suspect that hi-gain is not the recommended way to run the Valhalla.

You're talking about pre-amp mode. So I take it that when you are not wearing headphones, you are running these amps in non-preamp mode - ie driving speakers. Do you wear the headphones to avoid waking up the neighborhood, meaning driving the other family members crazy?

Oh - the next section talks about your speakers. I remember that in addition to headphones, you do have all those speakers. Is it a volume issue, or a time-of-day issue when you switch from speakers to headphones?

Oh, I see, there definitely is a "noise level" concern here.

Do you have any tentative expansion plans?

I kind of lost you there. You go on to talk about digital sound - so what did you mean by hardware sound?

Rich

 

Rich, all of your paraphrasing about my headphones is absolutely correct and you seem to get the basic gist of my upgrade path.

For the speakers, noise level is everything. The largest of my speakers, the Monitor 70s, have overwhelming bass response with some things, and I can't do much to control it without screwing their quality. Fine for low volume, but when I turn it up, it's a problem everywhere in the building except my own listening spot. They drone pretty loudly outside of a closed room. Easy to turn them up loud enough to bother others, and not realize it. There are of course times when I am able/allowed, or even asked to take them as high as I want. However, for my own preferences and listening area, the smaller Monitor 60s are a nearly equal performer without bothering anyone or at least bothering them less. I can still crank them to amazing volume with crystal clarity.

As an added bonus, because my speakers are now an overall lower wattage, I can power them better with the relatively basic amps in my receiver. This allows me to get slightly fuller and better sound out of them at lower listening levels, and they have cleaner sound with less strain at high volumes. I can easily push the 70's high enough to cause a safety shut down in the receiver. With the Monitor 60s, I can nearly max the volume and have clean sound out my window and down the street, without a safety shut down. And neither set of speakers has even been near distorting with the receiver. They could handle a LOT more power. So the lower power speakers are simply a better match for my use, AND for my receiver. If I ever want that punchy bass back, a decent quality subwoofer isn't that expensive used, and I can turn it off when I don't want it. In fact, it would likely take a little more strain off of my receiver.

By digital vs hardware sound, I mean exactly that. Digital sound is entirely software, while hardware sound is processed on separate hardware. In this case that separate hardware is the sound card. It allows game technologies like EAX Occlusion and Reverb, HRTF, and Hardware Sound Acceleration which allows a great many things. However, hardware sound has fallen out of popularity, due to the overall decline in popularity of soundcards, caused by Creative's iron-fisted copyright policies. Modern hardware is much more powerful than back then, so those great technologies are starting to slowly make a comeback as integrated features in newer sound engines. It's all processed by the CPU though, so sound cards only act as a DAC to send the sound to the speakers.

 

Hmmmm. Okay now I follow you - digital is software, hardware is a sound card.

What about the integrated chipsets like realtek - are you considering those to be part of the digital, as they are not really discrete cards?

So sound cards have lost popularity - they didn't like paying out all that money to creative - I remember our first Soundblaster card a bunch of years ago - you could talk into it and sound like a parrot as I recall. But cpus are now powerful enough to drive these various effects.

So when you say "sound engines" you are talking about software, like the SoundMax drivers I loaded into the dc5800 core 2 duo with integrated realtek sound. And I kind of think you are including the chipsets as just an extension of motherboard logic.

When I have a little hdmi card, like the 6450, and AMD has sound coming out of that card - they are using maybe one chip, or maybe a chipset of their own - that also would be digital sound, right?

But slowly the technologies you mentioned are migrating over to digital sound? - whereas before they were only available with separate sound cards?

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I know what you mean about woofers, and about those 70s versus the 60s. You said you could just work mainly with the 60s and add a subwoofer to make up for the bottom end that you are losing.



My roommate rigged up a pretty nice sound system for a 4k big screen that my brother picked up on a black friday special a year ago. I drive a $70 50-foot hdmi cable from that i7 that I got from the animator, playing the videos from power dvd 13. I never turn on the main sub-woofer, although I would like to. But I don't miss it that much because there is a lot of bottom coming from the rest of the surround-sound speakers which are pretty nice.

We weren't going to get a 4k, but it was only $130 more than the one we decided to get to replace the gift big screen that died, and we mostly got it because that roommate, Daryl, kept raving about 4k and smart tv sets.

But if the sub is on, even though I am in the sunroom with a thick double-pane sliding glass door separating it from the rest of the house, that low vibration really travels.

Here's a little story about that subwoofer from two nights ago.

My roommate came in two nights ago, when I was there watching Star Trek Beyond, to see how his sound system was working out. He really did a nice job balancing the sound - he's driving everything with a big sony receiver. There may be some more equipment too that I don't know about. For himself, upstairs, he has a big screen in his room which is the master bedroom, but he loves TV and movies, so it was always his idea to also put a tv in the sunroom.

Two years ago he ran into the house and grabbed me to come across the street - a neighbor was getting rid of a 45" big screen that was slow to boot up - it might take 10 minutes to stabilize but then the picture was good. They had enjoyed it for 10 years but had just bought a new one and were giving this one away.

So we put it in the sunroom, but after 6 months it finally died - but by then we were hooked - Daryl's idea had firmly taken root, which is why we did some shopping two black Fridays ago.

Anyway, two nights ago when he opened the slider and came in, he said he didn't want to watch Star Trek, he just wanted to see how his system was sounding, and then he reached behind the tv and pressed the button to activate the large sub-woofer.

About an hour later my brother came over. He said, "Wow, I'm surrounded. That strong bass is coming from out here, as well as from above my room where Daryl has it going upstairs all the time."

I said sheepishly, "Oh, yeah, Daryl wandered in a while ago to see how his sound system was working out, and he turned on the sub which I never do - whoops - let me take care of that" and I walked over behind the tv and hit the button to turn the speaker light off.


Haha - my brother is REALLY sensitive to low vibrations - he keeps telling me they channel right through all the walls. ​

Say, changing the subject, Jeff, if something comes to mind, perhaps you could give me a recommendation for a $40 or $50 set of headphones I should get for watching the home theater up in LA on the little 1080p samsung tv with 5.1 sound system that I rigged up about 5 years ago - the mkv videos are rendered by the Panasonic bluray player and I plug right into the Samsung tv side headphone jack. I'd like something comfortable with normal mini-jack plug (or if it has the large plug, then it comes with a converter to mini-jack plug.)

The radio shack laptop headphones are working - wayy better than trying to watch at very low sound volumes - but the other ones were much more comfortable before they "melted." I guess the melting was from the faux leather cheap material being just too cheap - so I should get some kind of better quality that won't do that - it's not like there is a ton of heat but in the summer it can get to 80-85 degrees in that living room, and also in the winter now that I think about it - they crank the gas heater pretty high.

So if you have anything in mind, let me know. Otherwise I guess I'll eventually get over to Amazon and start reading the reviews.

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Speaking of Amazon - for some reason two nights ago I stayed watching the credits of that Star Trek movie. The last cast member was listed as "Jeff Bezos, star fleet officer." I looked up started and said out loud - "Jeff Bezos - are you telling me there's an actor with the same name as the Amazon guy?"

I went back to the 20" dell monitor and dragged the power dvd window off the tv and tried to find him, but I couldn't. Then I googled - he had thick alien makeup.

I saw the guy when the unidentified ship was coming into the star base - "it's coming in hot" and then behind him, the human guy in charge says "identify yourself, identify yourself." I said to myself "Oh, that alien guy, that was him - he even had a few lines to say." Then a minute later there he was again, telling the lady of the ship, "Speak normally" while they calibrated the speech converter. But when I googled it, they only said that he had that 8 second part where he said "speak normally" - but it seemed like the same alien to me - the first guy had more words and twice as much air time.

Yep, being worth 50 billion can get you into a movie if you're a die hard trekkie fan and it's on your "bucket list."

Rich

 

Why not, I'm sure the crew would be more than happy to entertain such a visit for a small part

Meanwhile on the graphics front (which is the thread title after all ) things are starting to move again - the GTX1080Ti has had its unveiling with claims of a 35% gain over the existing 1080 and almost no increase in price (the existing 1080 will drop to $500) - Vega is also on the horizon.
That plus Ryzen CPUs actually looking potent enough for Intel to start sending requests to reviewers, it's about to be an interesting time in the hardware sector once again...

 

Integrated chipsets like Realtek are largely producing software sound. They support some basic hardware acceleration features, but those features are largely unused.

I don't mean drivers, I mean the sound engine. Like Source Engine and Quake Engine are graphics engines, there also needs to be an engine to produce sounds. It doesnt come out of nowhere. The specific engine I am referring to is Creative's EAX hardware accelerated sound engine. Discrete sound card or integrated doesn't matter, as long as it supports EAX hardware acceleration.

When using HDMI through a video card, the card produces zero sound of its own. It's simply a passthrough for whatever sounds are being produced in Windows. It's pure software sound from the ground up, and doesnt even require separate sound hardware. It's all generated by the CPU and sent through the cable as a pure 1's and 0's signal. It's the most pure form of software/digital sound there is. In fact, when using HDMI for sound, I completely disable all sound chips, including the onboard and the sound card.

I'd go even further as to recommend HDMI and a receiver for nearly anyone wanting surround sound from a PC. It's less hassle than what I am doing, and likely to be noticeably better than the onboard sound. For onboard sound, stick to mostly stereo. Integrated chips have crap surround support, and often treat rear channels as "effects" channels instead of just outputting the proper rear channel signals. So you get echoes and booms instead of the sounds you're supposed to hear. Onboard sound is usually fine for stereo though.

This is correct, more or less. They are under different names, being developed by different people, but the technologies are definitely trickling into the software sound playing field. A great example would be the latest Battlefield games, which have an absolutely exquisite software sound engine. Good examples of the technology are dynamically generated echoes, such as the reverb caused by a large room, or sound occlusion, caused by a sound being generated behind an object. Say you walk into a room, and hear a sound. You can tell if it's coming from inside or outside the room, how far away it is, etc. That's only the tip of the iceberg.

Long story short, sound cards were a major thing so hardware accelerated sound was available in many games of the day. Sound cards fell out of popularity, and games had weak sound design for a long time because they had to revert to pure software. It's taken a while to get even close to what we had before. Sound cards are no longer needed to get the full sound features out of a newer game. They're really only needed for older games that relied on EAX for their surround/effects to begin with.

These are among the best in their price range. I cant think of many more to recommend as even my cheapest pair was $150+. These have a very good reputation though. They won't be particularly bass heavy but the quality should be very good. They're well built and come highly recommended by lots of budget sound enthusiasts.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826138190

 

Wow, thanks Jeff.

That headphone recommendation looks really good - the reviews are mostly very enthusiastic, if not ecstatic:

It shouldn't be a problem the fact that they are open and the sound comes out - the others will be listening to the same sound from the 5.1 speaker system, but at a low level. Hopefully they won't notice the sound coming from my headphones - hopefully it will just blend into the mix for them. I would imagine that would be the case, unless the sound coming out the back was very much altered from what I will be hearing (like very tinny or otherwise distorted.) I wouldn't want to negatively affect their listening experience of course.

I need a little bit longer cable than 1.5 meters, but I have an extension. Apparently also, the cable is removable.

I wouldn't mind having a volume control - sometimes the sound right out of the tv is a bit loud. I wonder if anybody sells a cable with a built-in volume adjustment. [oh yeah, a bunch do - newegg has one for $10]

I'll probably read all 150 reviews - the first 30 sound very good.

thanks again Jeff!

Rich