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The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Discussion in 'Building a new PC' started by abuzar1, Jun 25, 2008.

  1. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    I think Halo looks remarkably good for its age. Sure, the terrain geometry isn't the best, but the character/gun models, textures and buildings are pretty nice. Especially considering it was a launch title for the original Xbox. It matches UT2004 pretty closely at least. AFAIK, UT2K4 had its fair share of ugly spots.

    I played the hacked version of Halo 2. It looks even better but it performs like dump for its age and it's already been done to death on Xbox live. Halo 1 online is something you can't get with Xbox so the PC version holds a huge edge.
     
  2. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    It's been too long since you played UT2004 then. The original UT game of the year edition and Halo are about equal.
     
  3. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    Then you, my friend, haven't played Halo recently. Give the PC version a shot and tell me it matches the original UT. Bullcrap.
     
  4. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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  5. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    Forget it, you're determined to win so whatever...
     
  6. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Well no, I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing, but my point is that Halo was genuinely a fun game, but I don't play it any more, because as you'll see in that screenshot, the graphics offend me, and there are plenty of other shooters that are just as fun without horrible graphics, UT2k4/UT3, COD4, Quake 4 and so on.
     
  7. spamual

    spamual Guest

    how ever good they do or do notlook, they are not a patch on RA2 :D
     
  8. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Hehe, Red Alert 2 had that cheesy 'looks 3D but is actually 2D' top-down vibe about it.
     
  9. abuzar1

    abuzar1 Senior member

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    Umm, I havent played UT GOTY, but I have recently played Halo:CE, and UT 2004, and Halo:CE looks wayyy better. The character models are so much better on Halo it's not even funny.
     
  10. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    I must be missing something. I can only assume UT2004 is being played on Low, because the difference between the two games, especially in textures is vast. UT2004 is probably the best looking game of its era. Is there a graphical update to Halo I don't know about? I still remember it looking like this:
    [​IMG]
     
  11. harvrdguy

    harvrdguy Regular member

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    So, Sam, your final recommendation on PSU was Corsair 1000. Is Zardon the dude you bought your x2 from? I see that Corsair is two completely separate rails and transformers - actually two PSUs in one box - so a person will have to do some load balancing. Watched the tiger direct video - fairly quiet with that 140mm fan - a little pricey at $220, the 750 was going to run about $120. Still, maybe worth it to put it in, and never worry about it - has a long long mtbf rating of 11 years 24/7, 5 year warranty.

    Noise-wise, with double ball-bearing variable speed 140mm fan, 25db up to 50% load, which is probably where it would hang with just one 4870x2, then about 35db at maybe 75% load, 44 db at full load.

    I see that scythe doesn't make a pwm 140mm fan, but it does have full pwm at 3 smaller sizes - however those must not be the S-flex, because they don't show 150,000 mtbf, 17 years, they show 30,000, or about 3.5 years. I am curious as to why scythe doesn't extend the s-flex line to pwm variable speed control?
     
  12. Shamb1es

    Shamb1es Regular member

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    If Halo 3 was anywhere near as boring of a game as Halo 1 + 2 were I count myself lucky to not have it. Why worry about mediocre gameplay when there is so much better that is out this fall.

    It is interesting to see these older titles from SD consoles on PC now pumping 22-24" monitor resolutions. It is probably hypocrisy in this thread buy games really don't have to look all that good to be immersive, but stretching those old blurry messes to large monitors and HDTV's hurts the eyes.
     
  13. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    He is - I had signed up at driverheaven a week prior and was speaking to him about them when I looked for a 4870 (solo) on ebay. Turns out I found him selling one, so we dealt outside ebay. When he mailed me the following week to say he had an X2 for sale, I would have been mad not to take it. £255 delivered. Today they still cost around £350 delivered.
    If you check out Driverheaven's website, Allan Campbell his name is, he edits a lot of the reviews.

    I wouldn't worry about the load balancing on the Corsair, the PCI express outputs are tied to different rails, so as long as you do it right, one graphics card gets its own half of the PSU.

    Shamb1es: I quite agree on the latter comment. Graphics do not make a game, but poor graphics can ruin one. :)
     
  14. Ray92

    Ray92 Regular member

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    Either you are really confused, or confusing me with another ray :p

    All I have is a P4 rig, and my Acer laptop.

    DooM 3 wasn't really that bad, it was just the jump out of the dark nature and slow game play that made it freaky :p

    Quake 4 had the same engine, but because it was so fast paced, it wasn't as scary.

    Just beacuse I play on a 15.4" doesn't make a game any less scary :p

    And, true, bad graphics can ruin a game, as was the case with Halo 2.
    It looked fairly bad compared to what other PC games came out that time, even though the gameplay is fun
     
  15. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Sorry, I know it's not you, should have made that clear, I'm referring to Waymon3X6.
     
  16. Ray92

    Ray92 Regular member

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    No worries
    'S all good ;)
     
  17. harvrdguy

    harvrdguy Regular member

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    Yeah, it was waymon we were talking about, Ray, we started using everybody's real names on waymon's old gecube thread.

    Hey guys - my PSU arrives in a day or so - was shipped yesterday. Any special caveats? What's a big mistake I should definitely avoid?

    Also, I had one idea, let me know if this is good or bad.

    What if I were to leave the old PSU in, but just connect the main mobo power and signal lines from the new PSU, and connect its moly 4pin connectors to the 3850 so the monitor will display. The idea would be to just make sure that the Corsair is not DOA before I go through all the trouble of installing it. Would that work? Is that a good idea? Besides the graphic card, what is the minimum number of mobo connections I would have to make to start the computer?
    -Rich
     
  18. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    No, not recommended. Powering up a PC surges more power than it will usually require at load, 90% of all PSU bangs occur at startup.
     
  19. harvrdguy

    harvrdguy Regular member

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    Ok, thanks. Any special things I should be careful about - any common mistakes to not make?
     
  20. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Don't forget the 4-pin (sometimes 8-pin) CPU power connector, don't power anything you haven't connected the data cable for, and more importantly, vice versa (particularly IDE drives)
     

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