My Evolution To PC Gaming

[resultsmayvary]

Go here http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest look at the list, pick a game you've heard of and click it.

I love that site.

 

[megalomania]

Although I am ATI to my core I actually have to agree with him.

I would disagree with him. The only thing nvidia really wins in is the raw performance category, when you consider value for your dollar, ATI actually pulls out ahead at certain price points. Take a look at this review on mid/high end cards from both companies [http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3539&p=16] and compare the results. Then keep in mind the prices of these components:

(prices from newegg.com)
GTX 285 - $315
GTX 275 - $205
4890 - $190
GTX 260 c216 - $160
4870 1GB - $150

You'll see a $190 GPU from ATI trading blows with and sometimes handily beating the more expensive nvidia cards. The 4870 1GB ($150) also puts up some impressive numbers. If someone was in the market for a new GPU right now, I'd more than likely suggest an ATI card. This is coming from a guy who's using 8800 GT SLI right now.

Never thought about it that way, I guess you are right that the bump in price doesn't justify the bump in performance. Also the GTX 200 series only supports 4.0 pixel shaders which surprised me, the ATI 4xx0 series supports 4.1 shaders. I know it doesn't sound like much but if you have better pixel shaders it takes some of the work of off the anti-aliasing which occurs right before the output, so it can give you a (slight) render speed bump.

Also I hope you enjoyed my critique on the G-Card comparisons. You should always think critically about stuff like that!

Edit: What are the criteria for the points system for comparing the cards? It can't be FPS because you can't have a fractional number of FPS...unless it is an average of the frame rates on multiple different rigs?

 

[Sevre]

So recently, my laptop decided to be a dick and stop working and since my warranty is up I just ordered my new one (yay!). In any case, I have no experience with PC gaming (outside of RTSs and a few select classics that my laptop could easily handle). My question: what kind of quality of games can I expect to run with these specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo (2.66 GHz)
6 GB DDR2-SDRAM
ATI Radeon HD4650 1GB dedicated

On the scale of Crysis at full-specs to 8-bit graphics, where do I fall on the list of current PC gaming standards?

Also: feel free to drop suggestions for sweet PC games. The first two on my list are System Shock 2 and Deus Ex.

Pretty much anything. Try Empire Total War while you're at it for some hawt stuff. I hope you are using a 64-bit OS though otherwise that 6GB RAM goes to waste and you can only use 3GB of it.

 

[AbuFace]

Edit: What are the criteria for the points system for comparing the cards? It can't be FPS because you can't have a fractional number of FPS...unless it is an average of the frame rates on multiple different rigs?

The scores are the average framerate the card put out over a set time. They have demos or other benchmarking tools they use to run the various cards through the same workout and then take the average framerate over the course of the benchmark. Say you have a 30 second demo and your system rendered 1404 total frames. 1404/30 = 46.8 FPS average.
They use the same hardware in all tests (except the component being tested - in this case video cards) to keep the results comparable, and to make sure there's enough memory and CPU power to push the cards to their limits. It wouldn't make much sense to pair a monster GPU like the GTX 295 with 10 year old pentium II now would it? =P

 

[Nutcase]

Edit: What are the criteria for the points system for comparing the cards? It can't be FPS because you can't have a fractional number of FPS...unless it is an average of the frame rates on multiple different rigs?

The scores are the average framerate the card put out over a set time. They have demos or other benchmarking tools they use to run the various cards through the same workout and then take the average framerate over the course of the benchmark. Say you have a 30 second demo and your system rendered 1404 total frames. 1404/30 = 46.8 FPS average.

Some places like HardOCP.com show minimum FPS in their video card reviews and comparisons. IMO, that's the figure which matters most. When you stroll around the scenery admiring it, it's irrelevant whether you have 40 or 80 FPS average. When you are in the middle of ten enemies with all kinds of effects going off at once, and the hardware is being pushed to the limit (which is when minimum FPS occurs), having 10 or 20 FPS is a life-and-death difference.

 

[AbuFace]

Yeah, I browse hardocp frome time to time and would never downplay the significance of min fps, but I wanted to try and keep things simple for now. If this were a thread discussing about going to a dual GPU setup, I'd definitely bring it up as dual GPU solutions are more prone to low min fps.

 

[Riding on Thermals]

Vampire the masquerade: bloodlines...

Added to my list, thanks for the suggestion! I've heard good things about that one, but forgot about it. (I've got the other two for my xbox)

Go here http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest look at the list, pick a game you've heard of and click it.

I love that site.

This site is awesome! As soon as my computer gets here that's the first one I'm bookmarking.
+1 internets for you sir

Pretty much anything. Try Empire Total War while you're at it for some hawt stuff. I hope you are using a 64-bit OS though otherwise that 6GB RAM goes to waste and you can only use 3GB of it.

Yeah, it's 64bit. Anyway, I've read mixed reviews about ETW: I heard the AI was really broken among other things. But if that's not true then I'm all for it, I love RTSs.

 

[Sevre]

Vampire the masquerade: bloodlines...

Added to my list, thanks for the suggestion! I've heard good things about that one, but forgot about it. (I've got the other two for my xbox)

Go here http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest look at the list, pick a game you've heard of and click it.

I love that site.

This site is awesome! As soon as my computer gets here that's the first one I'm bookmarking.
+1 internets for you sir

Pretty much anything. Try Empire Total War while you're at it for some hawt stuff. I hope you are using a 64-bit OS though otherwise that 6GB RAM goes to waste and you can only use 3GB of it.

Yeah, it's 64bit. Anyway, I've read mixed reviews about ETW: I heard the AI was really broken among other things. But if that's not true then I'm all for it, I love RTSs.

Don't worry mate, nowadays patches and mods have fixed the AI.

 

[megalomania]

Edit: What are the criteria for the points system for comparing the cards? It can't be FPS because you can't have a fractional number of FPS...unless it is an average of the frame rates on multiple different rigs?

The scores are the average framerate the card put out over a set time. They have demos or other benchmarking tools they use to run the various cards through the same workout and then take the average framerate over the course of the benchmark. Say you have a 30 second demo and your system rendered 1404 total frames. 1404/30 = 46.8 FPS average.
They use the same hardware in all tests (except the component being tested - in this case video cards) to keep the results comparable, and to make sure there's enough memory and CPU power to push the cards to their limits. It wouldn't make much sense to pair a monster GPU like the GTX 295 with 10 year old pentium II now would it? =P

Yeah I found the benchmark machine after I had posted and was too lazy to edit, still hadn't figured out the numbers though. Average FPS makes a lot of sense, not quite sure how I managed to not think of it lol!

EDIT:

Yeah, I browse hardocp frome time to time and would never downplay the significance of min fps, but I wanted to try and keep things simple for now. If this were a thread discussing about going to a dual GPU setup, I'd definitely bring it up as dual GPU solutions are more prone to low min fps.

I hope you weren't keeping things simple on my behalf, although I just exercised a great deal of stupidity, I am well versed in all of this stuff! It had occurred to mean that mean FPS isn't exactly ideal, but then again every method has inherent pros and cons, I guess a combination of averages and min frame rates would be more complete.

 

[AbuFace]

I hope you weren't keeping things simple on my behalf, although I just exercised a great deal of stupidity, I am well versed in all of this stuff! It had occurred to mean that mean FPS isn't exactly ideal, but then again every method has inherent pros and cons, I guess a combination of averages and min frame rates would be more complete.

No, it wasn't for you =P

I don't know the extent of your knowledge, but it's clear you know a few things about PC hardware. I was mainly trying to keep it simple and to-the-point for the OP (who openly claims to be not super savvy) and other readers who might not be as well versed on this sort of thing. While PC gaming intrinsically relates to PC hardware, this is a gaming forum first and foremost, not a PC hardware forum. I try to keep things in a language the audience can understand

 

[megalomania]

I hope you weren't keeping things simple on my behalf, although I just exercised a great deal of stupidity, I am well versed in all of this stuff! It had occurred to mean that mean FPS isn't exactly ideal, but then again every method has inherent pros and cons, I guess a combination of averages and min frame rates would be more complete.

No, it wasn't for you =P

I don't know the extent of your knowledge, but it's clear you know a few things about PC hardware. I was mainly trying to keep it simple and to-the-point for the OP (who openly claims to be not super savvy) and other readers who might not be as well versed on this sort of thing. While PC gaming intrinsically relates to PC hardware, this is a gaming forum first and foremost, not a PC hardware forum. I try to keep things in a language the audience can understand

lol the OP probably gave up on this thread about half way through the first page when me you and Malicious thoroughly derailed it! I've always been of the opinion that I should understand how something works on some level or another before I use it, so I suppose I had to learn this stuff, also it makes sorting out the inevitable glitches and crashes much easier, I'm sure you'll agree!

 

[Nutcase]

Yeah, I browse hardocp frome time to time and would never downplay the significance of min fps, but I wanted to try and keep things simple for now. If this were a thread discussing about going to a dual GPU setup, I'd definitely bring it up as dual GPU solutions are more prone to low min fps.

How spiky the FPS is depends primarily on the game. Arcade games usually try to hold very steady framerate; in WoW you can drop from 20fps into a catastrophic 0.2fps because a raid happened to walk into the area.

 

[dodo1331]

If you're interested in the shooting games, get Team Fortress 2 off Steam. Best Multiplayer FPS out there.

 

[Nutcase]

If you're interested in the shooting games, get Team Fortress 2 off Steam. Best FPS out there.

I can't say I agree with that, but Orange Box as a whole is very much worth grabbing.

 

[dodo1331]

If you're interested in the shooting games, get Team Fortress 2 off Steam. Best FPS out there.

I can't say I agree with that, but Orange Box as a whole is very much worth grabbing.

I didn't like Half Life 2 all that much, so it was a big money waster for me.