The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

I'm telling you guys, try it on the xbox!

 

Xbox, shmecks-box!

Sam, amazing review! Somehow the game lacks realism?? - less realistic than cod4?? Hmmmmmmm.

Estuansis, do you agree with Sam?

And did any of you dudes find the kite?? Lol

 

Nah. I'd sooner have a decent resolution and proper input control. As I'm not a geforce owner, I don't have any issues the console games don't have.

 

Yeah, proper resolution and input control. Here Yea Here Yea!

Shut up boozer!! LOL

But what about the hang glider?

Hey on the catalyst download web site they were showing all these controls that AMD is now making available for overclocking with AMD motherboard and cpu - the "spider" series with phenom quad core that's coming out and high end crossfire mobo.

AMD natch is trying to use graphic cards to drive mobo and cpu business - smart!

Is their stuff any good??
-Rich

 

lol where did that come from?

 

Not good enough really. AMD's Best Quad only really equals Intel's worst. They might be cheap, but they guzzle power, produce vast amounts of heat, don't overclock that well. Their new fab may help their case, but it would still only put them on equals with Intel's current stuff, if that, and with i7 around the corner, the Blue camp seems the safer bet.

Shush you about that damn hang glider... I'm juggling Rock Band, Far Cry 2 and Dead Space at the moment, with work, and a long backlog of HD films to watch...

But seriously, as far as the xbox fanboyism goes, not going to be welcome in this thread...
Gamepads are only useful for racing games, other than that console ports are inferior in every way except for when there's split-screen potential, but even then, skype and LAN matches come close to that.

 

I agree that Far Cry 2 looks extremely nice. It's not quite as visually spectacular as Crysis, but it has an excellent look all its own and runs twice as well if not better.

Far Cry 2 is a rival to Crysis in quality and gameplay, but it takes a vastly different direction with its approach. It uses all the visual techniques differently than Crysis and it pays off. The large world in Far Cry 2 is impressive and detailed. It's bigger than any map in Crysis by far and I enjoy the gameplay just as much. Both games have their share of bugs but both are worthy of the "Cry" series name.

I have yet to try it on the X1800XT but I bet I could get it running with decent visuals.

Overall, I give Far Cry 2 8.5/10.

It's not perfect but damn close as far as the sandbox gameplay I love so much is concerned. This is one of those games that puts me in the "Zone" and does it on a massive scale that Crysis hasn't quite achieved. Crysis takes the cake though for the graphical quality and sheer details in the outdoor levels it does have.

 

So guys I was never into the whole half life thing.

I just installed the original half life. I'm gonna start playing that now and than move on up in the series.

 

The original Half Life - Oh My God!

When you have the battle with the marines at the top of the elevator - you can point blank shoot a marine with a shotgun and he may not die, but you will see him actually limp back into the action. My family member Miles was unaware that they had done that - modified the marine AI animation depending on level of hurt. It's awesome.

The shut up boozer LOL came from "get an xbox." You heard what Sam just said about console fanboyism not allowed Hahahahaha.

All right, so nobody is gonna go look for the hang glider. Come on Estuansis, you're the king of looking around. Find a few hills - there is a hang glider up on top on of them and you will have a fine time flying around, I swear.

Ok, I'll stay in the blue camp for now - after all I'm shaff's nehalem b*tch, errrr, I mean guinea pig (same thing??) LOL
-Rich

 

I'm watching for it but I could spend days actually looking for it. The world is huge with lots of little crags and valleys and hills and deserts and rivers and lakes and plains and jungles. If I find it, I'll let you know. But don't hold your breath.

For now I would recommend you check out Dead Space. It seems to perform fantastically and play decently. I would expect a patch to fix the mouse lag soon. Maybe a 3rd-party work-around?

Still downloading... curse torrents... 30KB/s... been going for 3 days... should be here tomorrow if it at least keeps steady.

 

30KB/s? Ouch. This is the beauty of LAN file sharing. I downloaded it at 11.6MB/s

 

shush u sam, nicking all our bandwidth in the LAN. im sure ut2004 would have dlded within a few seconds, had you been not eating the bandwitdh

also PC>console, unless is tekken.

 

That was LAN bandwidth, of which there is nearly limitless. It was the internet that got whored, and that isn't how I acquired Far Cry 2.

 

did you not aquire it off me?

 

Indeed I did

 

Oh, man, if you, estuansis, can't find that hang glider, nobody can. I'm gonna go back to the old thread, I think 10 pages back from the end, and find Dinc's FC2 trailer with the hang glider. I think it kind of hints where the damn thing is. I sort of remember it overlooking the train - if that's any help. Another good project LOL!

 

lol there's train track circling the entire map. That really narrows it down

Put up a link or something. Show me the video

Clipping along at a brisk 50KB/s now LOL. At 98% with an hour left. Much more bearable

Having a lot of patience helps. Glad I didn't try to download Mass Effect and bought it instead. 12GB, lol. Even then, I still managed to have my 500GB Samsung drive nearly full up a few times. Methinks maybe it's time to have an 8 disk RAID 0+1 array. Oh well. Probably not quite yet, but the Armor is going to get tested with a lot of drives soon. This thing is loaded with bays in every inch of usable space

 

Nice reviews Sam

I've yet to try either of these games, even though I have installed Far Cry 2.
May give it a try soon.

PS - Just how scary is dead space

 

A train track circling the whole map!!! Didn't narrow it down much LOL

Ray is back! - maybe you'll beat estuansis to the hang glider

Ok, I found the hang glider. There are several of them in the game, and sometimes you pretty much need to use it to get to certain diamonds. First of all, here is a pretty good post with diamond and hang glider locations:
go to post 30 joseph stalin

Here is from one of his locations:

Here is what it looks like to be flying a hang glider from a video I watched of an E3 demo.



Here on YouTube is a guy about to take off on a hang-glider - he pulls out the map - so you can see right where the thing is. I believe it is the same hang glider location as the picture above.



Here is the actual YouTube video. He doesn't go right over the little houses as in the top picture, but it's a longer better video:
flying the hang glider

TALK ABOUT SPOON-FEEDING!!! Just kidding. LOL.

Now go find one and take a ride!!
-Rich

 

Thanks for the info. Will check it out and report back. As of now, Deadspace is the fresher game for me

Daedspace is fu**ing awesome in every sense of the word. Oddly enough I am having no mouse lag to speak of. The game is snappy and responsive with easy controls. Maybe it makes a difference that I'm using the Cat 8.11 beta drivers? Anyhoo, gonna copy Sam's format here and just score it out. Just spent a half hour with it so first impressions...

Dead Space

Graphics: 9/10 - Easily the brightest point of the game from the very get go. Amazing texture work and lighting with loads of little details. The physics are nice and there are plenty of fireworks to show off the engine. I especially like the monsters. Wow. Everything is dripping a with cinematic "Aliens"-like quality.

Sound: 9/10 - Very creepy sound. Like Sam says, absolutely rocking sound design. The whole game has excellent sound. Everything that makes a noise sends shivers down my spine. Everything generally sounds fantastic and the voice work is pretty good. -1 point for not hitting my subwoofer like CoD2 does though

Gameplay: 8/10 - The over the shoulder view is a little weird, but livable. I am having none of the mouse lag people are reporting though. Chalk it up to luck The WASD controls seem pretty standard. Everything moves and responds as it should. The animations are nice

Replayability: I don't know. If it's a decently long game, I might go back to it later.

Stability: 10/10 - No weird bugs or graphical anomalies or crashes to speak of. The game starts and loads and plays without a single issue.

Performance: 10/10 - Agreed with you Sam. The performance is fantastic. I was able to quick get it installed and running on the 2.4GHz AMD X2/X1800XT machine. Handles it with maxed settings at 1280 res, so it should be old PC friendly. Rich's X850XTPE could handle this game decently. Currently averaging 100+FPS at 1920 x 1200 with the 4870 Crossfire setup.

Overall: Fun, creepy as hell, atmospheric game with jaw-dropping graphics and excellent performance. This is what all PC games should strive to be. I WILL be buying this one very shortly.

I give it a 92%

This game makes FEAR and Doom 3 look sick as far as scariness goes. The graphics rival Crysis and FEAR easily for the most part. I HAVE NEVER jumped out of my seat like I did in the very beginning. When you get in the elevator and the monster tries to crack it open. WOW, I seriously almost pissed myself!

EDIT:

I found some recycled/remixed sound effects too. When you find out about blowing their limbs off and then step into the cargo bay, you hear a howl. IT IS THE SAME EXACT HOWL AS THE FAST ZOMBIES IN RAVENHOLM IN THE ORIGINAL HALF LIFE 2. I know this for fact. That howl haunts my dreams

Also, something to look for. Dead Space uses some impressively subtle depth of field effects. I wouldn't have even noticed them if I wasn't looking.

And Sam is right about the buggy AA. It's not supported in-game, but it doesn't need it. Almost no jaggies at all at 1920 res. And I look for them

The blur shader used for the DOF effects is possibly the reason for no jaggies? Blurs objects slightly in the background which in turn blurs any jagged lines. This is obviously to help people on SD TVs with jaggies. But it's still a welcome addition to the PC version