Planetarion Forums

s|k · 30 Jul 2005, 12:11

I bought one and upgraded to 2 gigs of ram and got a new motherboard/cpu/fan.

My old card was a nVidia 5800 and I fired up Splinter Cell Chaos Theory with my new card put all the setting on the highest level and OMFG it's an entirely different game. There's glowing green stuff on cave walls, there is light being reflected from the water, etc etc. So I had to reinstall Half Life 2 but the change wasn't as dramatic. Bizarre eh. Anyhow, I got Battlefield 2, will see how that looks tomorrow I think.

Luckeh!!!! · 30 Jul 2005, 12:14

yeah, rather large jump 5800 -> 7800, some games wouldn't have a great impact, like HL2 since it runs great anyway.

BF2 should run better, Doom 3 too

djbass · 30 Jul 2005, 21:00

I don't think he means performance so much as looks.

It's really the only thing that's pushing me to upgrade. My trusty Geforce 4200Ti runs everything I throw at it smoothly, yet I know I'm missing a large part of the gaming experience due to missing detail found on DX9 based cards. The only thing I can't run is BF2, and due to a minor niggle of not supporting newer pixel shading routines. I often wonder if that's why I don't consider HL2 for example anything special, maybe it's the extra graphics detail that enchances the experience, I don't know.

s|k · 31 Jul 2005, 16:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by djbass

I don't think he means performance so much as looks.

It's really the only thing that's pushing me to upgrade. My trusty Geforce 4200Ti runs everything I throw at it smoothly, yet I know I'm missing a large part of the gaming experience due to missing detail found on DX9 based cards. The only thing I can't run is BF2, and due to a minor niggle of not supporting newer pixel shading routines. I often wonder if that's why I don't consider HL2 for example anything special, maybe it's the extra graphics detail that enchances the experience, I don't know.

I turned on all the advanced options on hl2 and it it's just better shading. It's really not much different than what I had with the 5800. But like I said with Splinter Cell CT it is an entirely different game. In a place where everything is dark, detail really matters, and before I really didn't like the game much, but now it's pretty amazing. Also BF2 is about the funnest game I have played in a long time, man I love sneaking up to people and knifing them - everyone is getting into tanks and becomming anti tank so when I go special forces and jump into a speed buggy they don't even expect it for a second! It's great! The graphics aren't really all that spectacular, I mean they're good, but I'm never going 'wow' like I am with SC CT.

djbass · 1 Aug 2005, 16:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by s|k

I turned on all the advanced options on hl2 and it it's just better shading. It's really not much different than what I had with the 5800. But like I said with Splinter Cell CT it is an entirely different game. In a place where everything is dark, detail really matters, and before I really didn't like the game much, but now it's pretty amazing. Also BF2 is about the funnest game I have played in a long time, man I love sneaking up to people and knifing them - everyone is getting into tanks and becomming anti tank so when I go special forces and jump into a speed buggy they don't even expect it for a second! It's great! The graphics aren't really all that spectacular, I mean they're good, but I'm never going 'wow' like I am with SC CT.

Well for you there would be no difference since a 5800 is dx9 based, for me there would be a huge leap in realism, the reflections on water being just one of many examples.

As for BF2, that's just the way of things. Every developer will eventually fall into the niche of wanting to support the latest & greatest graphics trickery, even if they don't end up using it to its full potential. It just paves the way for everyone to require an upgrade at some point. As for my own system I'm not too fussed about the required upgrade, it's about 3-4 years old now, and in terms of a computer life it's done pretty well for itself. (P4 1.8Ghz without hyperthreading, GeForce 4 4200Ti (running at half its bandwidth 4x instead of 8x), Soundblaster Audigy Platinum Ex, & 512Mb 800Mhz Rambus memory incase you were wondering).

s|k · 2 Aug 2005, 06:13

The 5800 was directX 8.

djbass · 2 Aug 2005, 09:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by s|k

The 5800 was directX 8.

all the FX series are to DX9 spec.

meglamaniac · 2 Aug 2005, 09:58

Regardless of DX support, the FX range was widely regarded as "not very good", to be polite about it.

Anyway, I am now extremely jealous.
Do you have Far Cry by the way? It runs great on my 6600GT at 1280x1024, but I reckon you could probably get HDR working with it at a decent framerate - enabling HDR on mine causes it to drop from ~50fps to about 10fps.
Just wondering quite how powerful that card is.

s|k · 2 Aug 2005, 16:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by djbass

all the FX series are to DX9 spec.

I didn't have Dx9, I could tell because on HL2 it said hardware dx8 and software dx9. Anyways, I have dx9 now!

s|k · 2 Aug 2005, 16:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by meglamaniac

Regardless of DX support, the FX range was widely regarded as "not very good", to be polite about it.

Anyway, I am now extremely jealous.
Do you have Far Cry by the way? It runs great on my 6600GT at 1280x1024, but I reckon you could probably get HDR working with it at a decent framerate - enabling HDR on mine causes it to drop from ~50fps to about 10fps.
Just wondering quite how powerful that card is.

No I don't have Far Cry. These are the games I currently have installed:

BF2
Enemy-Territory
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
Half Life 2
Chronicles of Riddick
City of Heros

What is HDR?

Luckeh!!!! · 3 Aug 2005, 12:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by s|k

I didn't have Dx9, I could tell because on HL2 it said hardware dx8 and software dx9. Anyways, I have dx9 now!

IIRC ALL FX's apart from FX5900/FX5950 were set to DX8 in HL2 because they were too crap at DX9 to run the game smoothly

meglamaniac · 3 Aug 2005, 15:29

HDR = High Dynamic Range (it's for lighting). It trys to make the game more realistic by emulating how our eyes see the world.
So rather than a flat "this pixel is this brightness and always shall be", it adjusts the brightness of the scene to the current brightest lightsource, like our pupils do. It also emulates various "artifacts" of human vision, such as halos an coronas around objects that pass in front of a bright light source, and various other bits and bobs.

The net effect is that your journey through the jungle becomes even prettier, as you can look up at the canopy and see the sun flashing through the leaves etc. Unfortunately, like i said, on my machine the journey through the jungle proceeds at less than walking pace with that enabled.

s|k · 3 Aug 2005, 23:37

On BF2, I was co-piloting in a chinese MIG I think (not to much to do in there once you're out of ammo) and I looked up at the sky, and the sun piercing through the clouds in this dark brownish orange haze as this crazy pilot is flying over the field firing at troops and vehicles and I was left thinking 'f*cking wow'