Official PC Gamers Topic V3

[Creed Bratton]

 

Oh yeah Ubisoft is bad because of DRM blah blah...Well at least they tend to remove their DRM unlike other companies. On december 25-26th they've removed their 24/7 online DRM from AC2 after only 9 months.

Can you provide a link for that cause I can't seem to find anything about it.

[OverTheBelow]

All this talk of the i5 has got me thinking about getting one. My 9650 (@ 2.3 GHz) was no great CPU to begin with, now two years after first purchasing it I'm fairly certain it's not going to be able to run games at highest settings for much longer. Would it be worth upgrading that, but leaving my GPU alone? I don't think a 4870 512MB would be that much of a bottleneck, but then again I'm not the most tech-savvy guy out there.

 

I'll probably not be going through with this in the near future, but it'd put my mind at ease just knowing.

 

and dayumn, you guys sure put those HDDs to good use:

 

 

You guys have more games than I have anything.

Just overclock it. The Q9650 is a great CPU for overclocking.

[Sunrise Driver]

Oh yeah Ubisoft is bad because of DRM blah blah...Well at least they tend to remove their DRM unlike other companies. On december 25-26th they've removed their 24/7 online DRM from AC2 after only 9 months.

Can you provide a link for that cause I can't seem to find anything about it.

You said you've played AC2? Just log in to your account, start the game, disable internet connection and see what happens.

[Creed Bratton]

Oh yeah Ubisoft is bad because of DRM blah blah...Well at least they tend to remove their DRM unlike other companies. On december 25-26th they've removed their 24/7 online DRM from AC2 after only 9 months.

Can you provide a link for that cause I can't seem to find anything about it.

You said you've played AC2? Just log in to your account, start the game, disable internet connection and see what happens.

I uninstalled AC2 a long time ago. And when I had it installed I used a crack because their servers never worked properly.

[The Killa]

Posted this in Tech chat but figured this thread would probably be better to ask..

 

Have a new notebook coming in, wondering if the following specs:

 

Core i5 2.53 GHz

Nvidia 310m

4GB RAM

 

can run these games reasonably well:

 

Fallout 3

Bad Company 2 (lower settings)

Left for Dead 2

Day of Defeat Source

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

 

About to splurge on these Steam deals and want some games for my new machine. Most of them meet the requirements, but the 310m is a semi-weak card so I can't be sure those can run so smoothly.

 

I also heard New Vegas is poorly optimized for the PC and should stay away for now.. correct?

[Brown Sugar]

you could run left 4 dead 2 and probably bad company 2 but i don't know about the rest

[OverTheBelow]

Posted this in Tech chat but figured this thread would probably be better to ask..

 

Have a new notebook coming in, wondering if the following specs:

 

Core i5 2.53 GHz

Nvidia 310m

4GB RAM

 

can run these games reasonably well:

 

Fallout 3

Bad Company 2 (lower settings)

Left for Dead 2

Day of Defeat Source

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

 

About to splurge on these Steam deals and want some games for my new machine. Most of them meet the requirements, but the 310m is a semi-weak card so I can't be sure those can run so smoothly.

 

I also heard New Vegas is poorly optimized for the PC and should stay away for now.. correct?

You could probably run all of them.. to a certain extent.

 

However don't expect premium framerates even on lowest. ;/ Oh and make sure to keep an eye on your temps when gaming on a laptop, if it gets too hot the performance will go down.

[The Killa]

I'm aware of such things, thank you. Said notebook is actually a Samsung Q430, snagged it for $599 figured it was a steal at that price. Suppose they were clearing it out for new models with that Sandy Vagina or whatever that thing is soon

 

I feel comfortable it will be able to run those games, now. BC2 is gonna be hit-or-miss I reckon, though with lowest settings. Suppose I can overclock it a bit and see how it'll fair then. Then again I won't be doing a whole lot of gaming on this notebook, mostly the mentioned games and WoW as well.

 

Planning on building my own computer in a few months (hoping it won't catch fire just by touching it; I'm awful with technology)

[NinjaWJ]

Posted this in Tech chat but figured this thread would probably be better to ask..

 

Have a new notebook coming in, wondering if the following specs:

 

Core i5 2.53 GHz

Nvidia 310m

4GB RAM

 

can run these games reasonably well:

 

Fallout 3

Bad Company 2 (lower settings)

Left for Dead 2

Day of Defeat Source

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

 

About to splurge on these Steam deals and want some games for my new machine. Most of them meet the requirements, but the 310m is a semi-weak card so I can't be sure those can run so smoothly.

 

I also heard New Vegas is poorly optimized for the PC and should stay away for now.. correct?

i have the same notebook. new vegas runs fine

[The Killa]

 

i have the same notebook. new vegas runs fine

 

^ nice mate, hows it been treating you so far? Heard the display screen is a bit sh*t but I haven't had a chance to properly sit down with it. Hasn't even arrived yet, hurry up UPS

[Fnorg]

All this talk of the i5 has got me thinking about getting one. My 9650 (@ 2.3 GHz) was no great CPU to begin with, now two years after first purchasing it I'm fairly certain it's not going to be able to run games at highest settings for much longer. Would it be worth upgrading that, but leaving my GPU alone? I don't think a 4870 512MB would be that much of a bottleneck, but then again I'm not the most tech-savvy guy out there.

 

I'll probably not be going through with this in the near future, but it'd put my mind at ease just knowing.

 

and dayumn, you guys sure put those HDDs to good use:

 

http://i.imgur.com/D4G3B.jpg

 

You guys have more games than I have anything.

Just overclock it. The Q9650 is a great CPU for overclocking.

It's an AMD Phenom, not an Intel. Should probably have mentioned that.

[mkey82]

 

My 9650 (@ 2.3 GHz) was no great CPU to begin with

What kind of gaming are we talking about here? Bad-f*cking-heavy-on-the-CPU-console-f*cking-ports-gaming? 9650 should do you well for a while, don't worry. Just start up some proper or semi proper PC game, open up the task manager resource monitor and watch in real time as your CPU is having a laugh while staying fresh and minty.

 

thanks /sarcasm

Edited December 31, 2010 by mkey82

[anus]

All this talk of the i5 has got me thinking about getting one. My 9650 (@ 2.3 GHz) was no great CPU to begin with, now two years after first purchasing it I'm fairly certain it's not going to be able to run games at highest settings for much longer. Would it be worth upgrading that, but leaving my GPU alone? I don't think a 4870 512MB would be that much of a bottleneck, but then again I'm not the most tech-savvy guy out there.

 

I'll probably not be going through with this in the near future, but it'd put my mind at ease just knowing.

Don't buy an i5 or i7 now. It really isn't worth it since Sandy Bridge is coming out on the 5th of January and the prices are pretty cheap for launch prices too.

 

Not to mention SB is faster than 1156 and 1366 chips.

[OverTheBelow]

Speaking of Sandy Bridge CPUs, you can actually order some off Ebay from Malaysia, where they're already being sold.

 

[Creed Bratton]

My Q6600 OC'd to 3.6 still works like a charm and I plan on OC'ing it to 4Ghz when I get a new cooler. I don't have any intentions of changing the CPU any time soon. There was an article not so long ago that stated that only 2% of video games actually use quad core CPU's and even those games run just fine on dual cores. After all, it's GPU that matters the most.

[OverTheBelow]

My Q6600 OC'd to 3.6 still works like a charm and I plan on OC'ing it to 4Ghz when I get a new cooler. I don't have any intentions of changing the CPU any time soon. There was an article not so long ago that stated that only 2% of video games actually use quad core CPU's and even those games run just fine on dual cores. After all, it's GPU that matters the most.

Everyone has different definitions of 'fine'. Some think it's 30fps, others think 60fps. I am a die-hard 60fps guy, because of my troubled youth with terrible, fluctuaty performance in games. Hahaha.

 

 

It may seem like 'just' 2% of games, but if that's true then they must be all PC games after 2009! I don't have more than 5 games that I didn't have bottlenecked performance with on my old Duo.

[anus]

AMD and Intel really need to push for much faster chips. Their chips are way behind compared to GPUs.

 

I mean take a look at this. The i7 965 (the fastest chip on there) has a floating point performance of 53.28 at 3.33GHz (Turbo) which I assume is double precision.

 

Now take a 6970 which is the video card with the highest floating point performance right now (yeah MUCH more than the GTX580, imagine how badly AMD cards would destroy nVidia cards if nVidia didn't bribe devs and if AMD made better drivers), it's got 683 GFLOPS (!).

 

So even with a 980x there'd be a huge bottleneck using even a single 6970.

[OverTheBelow]

I want 5ghz processors. ._.

 

 

Oh and Mkey, not trying to seem creepy or anything.. but after randomly checking how many replies I had made, I discovered you've made 666 replies to this topic.. .. ..and it's about to be 2011..

Edited December 31, 2010 by OverTheBelow

[mkey82]

666 is the number of the beast. And matter of past right now.

 

Warlord, it would be a bottleneck if you expected the same data flow coming from both the CPU and GPU, but you don't. If processors were more "capable" you wouldn't need the GPU, but I think Larabee has shown us something in that regard.

[Sunrise Driver]

I think it's clear Ubisoft do not want to actually develop PC games anymore, and I'll just be glad if they leave, AC is a great game and one of the best story games I have played. But with their DRM and delaying AC: Brotherhood, I think it's time for them to go and just exclusively develop on the consoles.

You prefer buying a console, paying additional money for stuff cut from game and playing with some glitches and freezings (I've heard PS3 versions had issues in all AC games)? Dunno about you but for me Ubi DRM is still much better then "buy-console-for-couple-of-games" DRM. Not to play the game isn't the option. So Ubisoft should stay. Oh and as I said now you don't have to be permanently online to play AC2.

 

 

[Fnorg]

You know what would be an even better option?

 

No DRM at all.

[mkey82]

Not to play is an option, where I'm looking from it's a viable one.

[anus]

Warlord, it would be a bottleneck if you expected the same data flow coming from both the CPU and GPU, but you don't. If processors were more "capable" you wouldn't need the GPU, but I think Larabee has shown us something in that regard.

True, but the CPU is what provides the data requiring GPU processing, so right now, with the current floating point performance, you're not getting the performance that most video cards are capable of. So there is a bottleneck caused by the CPU.

[FullMetal]

You know what would be an even better option?

 

No DRM at all.

Services that WORK are an option. Look at STEAM.

 

in before fanboy.

[Sunrise Driver]

 

You know what would be an even better option?

 

No DRM at all.

Yeah it would...but it's for "non-important" games like Call of Juarez 2 and SWS. AAA game like AC2 and DRM-Free? Only CD Projekt can make this happen. (actually CoJ2 is very good too but it's not AAA in Ubisoft CEO's views).

[mkey82]

Warlord, it would be a bottleneck if you expected the same data flow coming from both the CPU and GPU, but you don't. If processors were more "capable" you wouldn't need the GPU, but I think Larabee has shown us something in that regard.

True, but the CPU is what provides the data requiring GPU processing, so right now, with the current floating point performance, you're not getting the performance that most video cards are capable of. So there is a bottleneck caused by the CPU.

But doesn't the CPU feed "raw" data to the GPU for processing? If the CPU was a big bottleneck, why would most PC games use about 10-15% of CPU clocks while doing above 90% on the GPU?

 

When it comes to ports, they're based on systems that have loads of CPU processing power, but weak GPUs, so it's no wonder that a standard gaming PC will be CPU bottlenecked when the exactly opposite situation is true in PC gaming. It's plausible that heavily optimized PC games would run like crap (yes, even more so) when shabbily ported to consoles.

[Creed Bratton]

 

You know what would be an even better option?

 

No DRM at all.

Yeah it would...but it's for "non-important" games like Call of Juarez 2 and SWS. AAA game like AC2 and DRM-Free? Only CD Projekt can make this happen. (actually CoJ2 is very good too but it's not AAA in Ubisoft CEO's views).

Call of Juarez 2 is an awesome game. Amazing atmosphere and a very good story. Graphics were also great apart from hair. Multiplayer was also awesome until cheaters came along.

[OverTheBelow]

Warlord, it would be a bottleneck if you expected the same data flow coming from both the CPU and GPU, but you don't. If processors were more "capable" you wouldn't need the GPU, but I think Larabee has shown us something in that regard.

True, but the CPU is what provides the data requiring GPU processing, so right now, with the current floating point performance, you're not getting the performance that most video cards are capable of. So there is a bottleneck caused by the CPU.

But doesn't the CPU feed "raw" data to the GPU for processing? If the CPU was a big bottleneck, why would most PC games use about 10-15% of CPU clocks while doing above 90% on the GPU?

 

When it comes to ports, they're based on systems that have loads of CPU processing power, but weak GPUs, so it's no wonder that a standard gaming PC will be CPU bottlenecked when the exactly opposite situation is true in PC gaming. It's plausible that heavily optimized PC games would run like crap (yes, even more so) when shabbily ported to consoles.

This is exactly what I was thinking on the subject of bottlenecks. If the GPU is showing 100% usage then surely you have a gpu bottleneck as opposed to cpu?

 

 

GTAVanja: I hate CoJ2 because the engine eats your graphics card overclocks alive! I don't know why, but even if the voltage is proven stable 100% by heaven.. furmark.. etc.. Chrome 4 still makes your card force VPU recoveries every few minutes. Gah!

 

I still played through the entire game though.. thought the end was a tad cheesey.

[CharmingCharlie]

Wow Star Wars Dark Forces actually works the game is 16 YEARS OLD and it fires up on a quad + GTX260 + Win7 64bit machine without any tweaking or anything (think steam have sorted it with dosbox or something). This was one of the first games I ever played on the PC (Pentium 1 75mhz). Yep I bought the Jedi Knight bundle and so far they ALL WORK. The only downside to the Jedi Bundle is that it makes you desperately want Lucasarts to get off their arse and do a PROPER Jedi knights game instead of the crappy force unleashed rubbish.

 

I also picked up that "Flight Control HD" had a quick play around with it and it seems to be a lot of fun and was only £1. Along with Farcry 1 and 2 (really picked it up for farcry 1). sh*t I am really going to miss the steam sales when they are over.

[mkey82]

100% usage doesn't necessarily mean a bottleneck, but it usually will, especially when you have significant difference in CPU/GPU load.

 

CC it's DOSbox and it's used for many old games.