Switched from Nvidia to ATI and will never go back.
Sic semper tyrannis "Democracy broke down, not when the Union ceased to be agreeable to all its constituent States, but when it was upheld, like any other Empire, by force of arms."
Well as the guy said,that was not released tech,that is their demo and their card.What will be sold to the public will be a much lesser version and it will need to actually play real games,not a home made demo.I am not sure why the Black Ops demo,nothing special was shown there.
What did intrigue me was how they got 5 million light sources in that one demo,the rest imo was actually nothing special.One mob,VERY bland terrain they picked a very easy scenario to showoff some tech,in an actual game ,tons of spells/weapons/better background scenery probably makes that tech unplayable in a real game.
Also not able to show the video card,but they showed a picture of it is very suspicious,probably a card that is not even doable as far as selling to the public,probably an overblown out of proportion 5 thousand dollar version of a card.Also no public Q/A in that demonstration,just lots of telling the poeople to raise their arms and say YAY !.
As for the lighting query,there is no way soembody put those light sources in there,so it must be generated,that is the part i wish they described in more detail.However what i did notice was like games often do is they did limit the actual colours to about 2 a whitish and a bluish hue,it also looked like most of the geometry/brushes were repeated,both of these tactics do lower the stress on a engine,but really wouldn't look too realistic in an actual game.This is similar to what FFXIII did in it's ice caverns,looks real good but you walk through entirely repeated geometry/scenes all blue ice structures all 1/2 colours.Even the Alien scene was just bascially two colours black and whitish or grey.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
480 and 580s in SLI really spelled freedom for me.
I was able to go into Pure Linux and break 60 FPS in every game that runs Wine. Thanks to WINE being the WIndows Binaries, but it uses the actually Linux Netcoding and I am not running a million protection programs like antiviruses and spyware removers...along with everything in Windows that uses your CPU Power and Bandwith, *smiles*, I get lower ping in practically every game that runs and I also have access to all Linux games too.
480 and 580s in SLI really spelled freedom for me.
I was able to go into Pure Linux and break 60 FPS in every game that runs Wine.
So in order to play games in Linux, you needed $1000 worth of video card hardware? Or is your point that people who have $1000 worth of video card hardware are able to play games in Linux, while everyone else should stick to Windows?
Originally posted by Shinami 480 and 580s in SLI really spelled freedom for me.
I was able to go into Pure Linux and break 60 FPS in every game that runs Wine. Thanks to WINE being the WIndows Binaries, but it uses the actually Linux Netcoding and I am not running a million protection programs like antiviruses and spyware removers...along with everything in Windows that uses your CPU Power and Bandwith, *smiles*, I get lower ping in practically every game that runs and I also have access to all Linux games too.
You'd break 60 fps with 1 580 if you were in Win7. Most D3D games don't get the performance in Wine they do in Windows. You also get access to all Windows games instead of just the ones that work with Wine + the abundance of Linux games.
480 and 580s in SLI really spelled freedom for me.
I was able to go into Pure Linux and break 60 FPS in every game that runs Wine. Thanks to WINE being the WIndows Binaries, but it uses the actually Linux Netcoding and I am not running a million protection programs like antiviruses and spyware removers...along with everything in Windows that uses your CPU Power and Bandwith, *smiles*, I get lower ping in practically every game that runs and I also have access to all Linux games too.
You'd break 60 fps with 1 580 if you were in Win7. Most D3D games don't get the performance in Wine they do in Windows. You also get access to all Windows games instead of just the ones that work with Wine + the abundance of Linux games.
Not only is this true, but honestly, Wine has such a propensity only run relatively old games well, that you should be able to break 200fps with just 1 580 In Win7 on any game that's Wine-compatible enough to get 60 fps on high settings. Even after all this time, running a game like Crysis (which is now getting to be old itself) requires numerous tweaks, and only runs on one version, and still won't run nearly as well as on Windows. Installing and getting Linux to run even a semi-modern game like that is nothing but a giant convoluted process that gets me nothing but an inferior version of the same experience I get on Windows with 1/10 the effort on the day a game comes out (instead of having to wait a year for the game and Wine to both get enough updates for compatibility). COD MW2 is another example. Here's a video of it running as of a year ago (). Notice how the game is extremely laggy, and even flat out freezes for several seconds at points, and even when it's "running", clips horrendously leading to very poor image quality? That same game would have simply installed right on Windows, and on that hardware, would have run absolutely flawlessly (COD6 isn't that hardware intensive on a proper OS).
That's why I gave up Linux about a year ago, even Ubuntu; It took an unecessarily large amount of work to make the OS do everything I wanted, and after I was done, I realized that I was just doing the exact same things I would do on Windows anyways, in exactly the same way (minus having the universal game compatibility), and so I switched back to Windows and haven't looked at Linux since.
FIrst of all, don't patrionize me. ^_^ Afterall I am opening up all of you and don't want to come across as some sassy jerk beyond the pole. This will be a long post.
I dualboot Windows 7 and Linux. I run Linux Games that beat 60 FPS. Remember that Nprotect Games do not work on Linux, and they shouldn't since I and every other hacker on the planet has used the Nprotect/Gameguard bypass method to protect themselves and have also rewritten that kernel-level rootkit.
I get over 60 FPS on one card (in most games that i play), but I run on two cards because I create games and have fun doing it. I can go between Linux and Windows Games and I can use the Wine Binaries for any game that gives me over 60 FPS, I don't need to run it on Windows. Remember, I am into programming and I help the WineHQ Apps Database a lot. I have recompiled some parts of my OS and run under different settings.
As far as performance goes....in multiplayer games. Once you break 60 FPS, The WINE binaries utilize the Linux Netcoding, which in every test I have ran, I have gotten between 10 - 20% LOWER PING and its narrower. In short, it means its closer to a constant rather than shooting around all the place. Its true that hops are the leading factor of pings, but the Linux Netcoding is more secure and optimized as well for both IPv4 and IPv6. Windows users have to deal with all sorts of transmissions being sent across the internet. From pop up ads, to software updates...to protection programs using your local bandwith and generating local lag...
Of course, I should state the following. A while back people yelled at me, claiming that more memory doesn't help games because there is a limit. Sure, until you learn how to Rdisk a game or an OS.
Linux by default comes with /dev/shm (This is a directory)
What this is, is a RAMDISK, a disk made out of SYSTEM MEMORY that can allocate up to half your memory by default. There are restrictions to this. I am going to list some of them below:
1) If running a 32-bit process, the maximum amount of addressable memory is 4GB. Ramdisk contents add to that amount. If your memory pool goes over 4GB, the process will crash. If running a 64-bit Executable, you can go over this amount.
2) If running a 32-bit process within a 32-bit OS, the whole OS can support 4GB in total. It means the limit a 32 bit process being executed. (example is Oblivion in a 32 bit OS environment) is a lot lower than 4GB, since the OS being a 32-bit process, a game that would be allowed to use 4GB would OVERWRITE the memory addresses at the lowest levels and cause the OS to collapse. The OS will not ALLOW this ^_^.
3) Multiuser (Linux) vs Singleuser OS (windows): Processor scheduling is handled differently as well as the approach to programming in both environments. Ramdisks are much better in Multiuser Operating Systems. They were originally designed for them and then came the singleuser OS versions which unfortunately each perform differently (though I recommend RAMDISK on Windows 7). There are advantages and disadvantages to both....
4) If running a 64 bit Executable, you can throw what you want in there....but for the fastest speed, throw in the files to zones you are playing. If you plan on playing in one zone for 3 hours, Only put the files to that zone that you will need. I've ran 24GB RAM machines and thrown in 12GB on RAMDISK...Even that is inefficient because I wont use all 12GB. So the rule is to really use what you need.
5) If you plan on running game servers through a Ramdisk, change your configuration files and truly test them. Servers mess up if asked to run settings it can not run. I found the settings made a server too slow in some configuration files for a ramdisk to handle....and this caused a lot of problems, but thank to the changes when ran outside of a ramdisk, the settings are too fast for a HDD to maintain. I run servers to old games 100% ramdisked. Helps a lot in Endgame (last 2 minutes of an FPS match)
6) If you dont know how the game filestructure works or mess up on things, a game WILL become unstable and crash.
Ok, I should give you an example of what to use it for....
Ever played an MMORPG and entered a heavy PvP area? Or played a shooter and entered a very high texture area? Basically you walk and all of a sudden everything must load and since we are Online Gamers, we cant JUST stop and Load, the game will run it in realtime and as a result our framerates will take hits from a Hard Drive moving the files you need into system memory. In that time, you get your ass kicked and in MMORPGs the death penalty is very high while in shooters its just "annoying" to die because your framerate is rolling all over the place and it becomes harder to setup for a shot thanks to all the latency.
Take a Ramdisk and throw in the Textures, Meshes and favorite maps you guys all know and love. What will happen is that since they are loaded already into System Memory (and point to them), the System won't take as large of a performance hit. In short you have a much higher fighting chance. In games like OBLIVION, the loading times are reduced by around 90% and you dont take a large hit running around in the overworld switching regions.
This is why if you are a PvP gamer and you know you have 8GB of RAM at least, and are running 200MB as the process executable itself, It doesnt hurt throwing in 2GB of files you know you will need and not have garbage collected in a Ramdisk.
You will feel better when all those textures from characters in PvP, along with their weapons and all the magic and combat on screen won't wipe you out from the slowdown.
Another advantage is that your game is in System Memory which is faster (faster than any SSD out there) and because its one point less of travel, you can get on the internet quicker as well and have more stable gameplay. Ramdisking does require you at times to adjust setting files to games, or even point to files at times, but its definately worth it.
Ive ran experiments on Ramdisking for the last 15 years....and it really is worth it. However, it requires some knowledge, testing and getting used to. Once in RAMDISK you won't have to deal with unnecessary garbage collection. In short, Ramdisking is the same as assuming all responsibility on what is in memory.
For Example, In Linux, when I am running Guild Wars, the ENTIRE GAME Is in System Memory and I tend to be the first to enter the PvP arenas and zones. As soon as a large attack goes on screen, everything is loaded and I take minimal performance hits, while the rest of my team drops in Frames, making them temp. vulnerable. In PvP or Shooters, every second counts.
Aside from Ramdisking, there are other things I do on Linux (and Windows) that I do for increasing performance. However, I am one of those people who believes any GAMER out there should not be without a 64 bit OS, and without a ramdisk. Games keep getting bigger, files keep getting larger to load and times do come when its necessary to run those Ramdisks.
In short, I am not really losing anything. I am gaining something by being able to apply my knowledge and experience.
See guys, I never said Linux gives me a HIGHER FRAMERATE Than Windows in all the games out there. I said as long as Linux gives me over 60 FPS, I wont see a difference on Windows, so that higher number (unless I want to Vsync a 120hz monitor), makes no difference in the performance of a game. its when you get below 60 FPS where you start skipping frames and that is always bad. I can then optimize things...
So yes, I have Windows 7 and Linux and thanks to this I can have Win7 for JUST some games I like playing and three special programs, not to mention have Linux and run everything else (including favorite games that give me over 60 FPS already)...which spares both operating systems from becoming cluttered.
One reason I also use Linux (And I am opening up with you guys on this). I was a pure windows user (as far as games went) and part of an abusive online gaming community. Abusive to the point malicious mods were made to capture the configs files users had and to attack computers. No one cared about coding security mods for the game outside the people who used them to control others. I started programming fixes and did some work. In the end I nearly lost my mod because a server came up that upon downloading its mod, it crashed many systems and attacked the file system. To actually survive I had a Hardware firewall put on my servers. I went from Windows to Linux to run the game servers and game and I also decided to manually download all mods and attach them.
On Windows when you enter an FPS server, the files get copied to the right directories if downloads are allowed. I DID NOT WANT THAT TO HAPPEN because there were malicious mods being programmed. I set the game directories to only allow execution on what needs to be executed, disallowed execution on everything else and disallowed writes. When a modded server launched and I logged in, I got the famous "Error: Can not write to file. Closing" and I was very happy. I was one of four systems who survived a massive scale attack that ran servers. Despite the community suffering, we kept our servers together, because if not us, then who? I became very defensive afterwards and started using Linux for gaming. I started Linux Gaming in 2002, back when it wasn't great...and today its better..I can run Linux Games and can run a lot of Windows Games.
Nvidia can play Windows Games + Linux Games + Mac OX X Games. Most LINUX GAMES (Which some have better AI programming and are tougher than Windows Games) fail under AMD video cards (I am not using ATI anymore since the name was phased out) due to poor linux drivers. I want to play games, develop and have fun. I don't have access to the full library of games under AMD, but under Nvidia I can play anything.
I have been petitioning lately for AMD to develop Linux Drivers, because I feel bad that AMD users talk so much about Game Performance, but cant even have access to the full library of games out there thanks to AMDs inability to make a decent Linux Driver.
Sure, loading stuff off of a hard drive is slow. But a good solid state drive will mostly fix that problem. The real problem with hard drives is the latency from waiting for the drive to physically spin to the right spot before it can do anything. A good solid state drive reduces that latency by about 99% as compared to a hard drive. That's not a perfect fix, but it's close.
A ramdisk can fix that, too, but that's a lot more expensive and a lot more finicky. SDRAM is a lot more expensive per GB than NAND flash. If a game takes 20 GB on your hard drive, having enough memory to load that whole thing into a ramdisk is prohibitively expensive. For smaller games, it's more doable, but do you really want to have to wait for a game to load completely from the hard drive into a ramdisk every time you boot the computer or want to switch from one game to another? Isn't the point precisely to not make you wait? NAND flash isn't volatile, so a solid state drive doesn't impose any such problems. Solid state drives can be arbitrarily large, so you can load all the games you want onto a single drive without having to compete for space.
Sure, having to load things off of a hard drive in the middle of action can cause hitching in some games. But a good solid state drive fixes that hitching entirely in all but the worst coded games. Furthermore "some games" is not "all games", and Guild Wars doesn't try to load information on the fly. Guild Wars loads everything you need for a zone into memory when you enter the zone, precisely so that it doesn't have to try to do so later.
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So basically, using Linux magically makes routers hundreds of miles away process and forward your packets faster, even though they neither know nor care what OS you're using? Right. There are some issues with Windows networking, but it usually adds only a few milliseconds to your ping time. If it does become a problem for you, then that's what Bigfoot network cards are for. And yes, they internally run Linux.
I enjoy games like COD:BO, however, for me it is the action that draws me in over grapics. If you got close enough to someone else in COD 4 you could see the weave in the cloth, pretty cool for back then, but, most of the time I was busy staying alive and killing someone. The cool graphics are a nice side addition; for me game play rules.
The video link was cool in places, especially after the guy finally shut up and let us see some video.
As others have said, I do not see this kind of quality in MMOs any time soon. COD:BO is not considered an MMO because of the limited number of people per map. I never understood how GW was considered an MMO because of the same reason, limited number of people per map [after stepping out of a city].
My initial impression was that the video would put me to sleep, I was wrong, at least in part. However, regarding MMOs I am not excited because it will be a long time coming, except in large space games where there is nothing on screen in most areas.
Game makers know that they will have to build for a platform or PC, and if PC then they will be limited to current hardware on the market. Most people will not trott out and lay down $600 for a new video card or CPU, motherboard, and RAM every time a new game comes along.
Intel Core i7 7700K, MB is Gigabyte Z270X-UD5 SSD x2, 4TB WD Black HHD, 32GB RAM, MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning LE video card
Guild Wars is not an MMORPG. ArenaNet has labelled it since creation a CORPG to seperate itself from MMORPGs and start with a clean slate. Its considered to be MMORPG by the masses of ignorance out there who love to label things out there. I do understand where you are coming from though..
There are shooters where large maps have been built. So large that they were able to break into 32vs32 and 64vs64. FPS vs MMORPG arguments started between the playercounts associated with player vs player combat...back then 50 vs 50 was not common in MMORPGs. Today you have few games still where PvP reaches a large scale amount. Where MMORPGs took a page out of the FPS playbook and created maps for special types of play, while FPS took a page out of the MMORPG playbook and introduced class-oriented play for Objective Based Gametypes. ^_^
How does 2 billion polygons and multi-layer tesselation sound?
Depends if the card will cost half as much as a regular computer. I would use it more for GPU renders than the occasional game that makes use of that particular tech though. With the GPU on my GTX260 I can render out a HD picture with a global illumination rendering engine in minutes instead of hours on the CPU. I can imagine what it would be like on one of these new models. Probably much much faster. That would promote animations with realistic lighting of a quality only seen in the most advanced movies up to this point. I am talking full caustics and multiple refraction/reflections with unlimited AA. That would be pretty awesome. No need for a render farm at those speeds.
I won't go ballistic over GPU's till they are designed to accelerate raytraced engine games, that would be a whole new world of reality in gaming. Till then it's mainly just which sales gimmick do you want to invest your money into.
Meh, I just wanna play an mmo and watch faces literally melt off when I throw a fireball at 'em.
play age of conan, a dmeonologist, they throw fire that causes targets to burst into flame and smolder down to blackened corpses as a fatality, in glorious dx11 stunning graphics.
For Example, In Linux, when I am running Guild Wars, the ENTIRE GAME Is in System Memory and I tend to be the first to enter the PvP arenas and zones. As soon as a large attack goes on screen, everything is loaded and I take minimal performance hits, while the rest of my team drops in Frames, making them temp. vulnerable. In PvP or Shooters, every second counts.
You're the one who brought up Guild Wars, not me. I only replied to point out that you don't know what you were talking about. That sort of massive slowdown didn't happen to me on my old computer with a Radeon X1300 Pro and a rather slow hard drive. It didn't even happen to me on my computer before that, with a 2.26 GHz Pentium 4, a GeForce 4 MX something or other, 768 MB of system memory, and a really old hard drive. That last computer did have to run the game on low settings, though.
For Example, In Linux, when I am running Guild Wars, the ENTIRE GAME Is in System Memory and I tend to be the first to enter the PvP arenas and zones. As soon as a large attack goes on screen, everything is loaded and I take minimal performance hits, while the rest of my team drops in Frames, making them temp. vulnerable. In PvP or Shooters, every second counts.
You're the one who brought up Guild Wars, not me. I only replied to point out that you don't know what you were talking about. That sort of massive slowdown didn't happen to me on my old computer with a Radeon X1300 Pro and a rather slow hard drive. It didn't even happen to me on my computer before that, with a 2.26 GHz Pentium 4, a GeForce 4 MX something or other, 768 MB of system memory, and a really old hard drive. That last computer did have to run the game on low settings, though.
By claiming that you were running the game on Low Settings, specially under a Direct X 7 video card (Geforce 4 MX is a Direct X 7 card, The TI series was Direct X 8), where the game itself on a minimum asks for Direct X8 with the game made for Direct X9 invalidates your argument. Sorry, you were below specifications...
Furthermore, I won't believe that you had steller performance in Guild Wars under an X1300 Pro on a 133mhz * 17 (2261mhz) processor, when I ran Guild Wars under an Athlon 64 2.4ghz (200 x 12) with 2GB of 2-2-2-5-1T Corsair Memory on an Asus motherboard and a fast hard drive under a clean install just for Guild Wars through an X850XT Platinum at 1600x1200 @ 120hz - 2048 x 1536 @ 85hz (and I still own that monitor today) under max settings and experienced brief slowdown in Alliance Battles and GvG along with Heroes Ascent with all the skills flying through.
Either you were playing at low resolution to have playable and enjoyable experiences or you were lying to your teeth considering my specification at the time was a lot higher than yours and still experienced problems. There is nothing more than I despise than people who are willing to conjure up lies to try to "win" an argument.
Back then the game that demanded the most was doom 3. High Settings under 1024x768 on a x1300 under a 3.4ghz (200 * 17)Pentium 4 was 42 FPS under a X1300, where a 2ghz A64 running Doom 3 under a X850XT Platinum delivered 85+ FPS at 1280x960. Your Processor's performance was a bottleneck in your video performance back then due to how low the FSB was. I feel bad for you. The same happened to me at an earlier time than you.
I've never been a fan of ram disks. Either way you have to load the data into memory, you can do it up front to a ram disk and wait 2 minutes before playing, or let it load while playing and add 15 seconds per load screen. Instead of buying $120 of extra memory I'd rather spend $120 on an SSD and get the speed of a ram disk without the preloading issue. Course SSD's are a relatively new development.
Don't see why a ram disk is going to matter for Guild Wars anyway, since you run the same maps over and over again they will all be cached in memory after the first load anyway so your load times will be just as quick as ram disk without having to double load it.
They're not exactly priced to sell, either. I think there's a statement about launch quantities here somewhere.
Both Nvidia and ATI have launched cards in small numbers to get good press before, Toms had an article about it. They do it to hype up cards that they are a few months early to actually release. If I remember correctly was it actually ATI that started with it a long time ago but I hardly see why that matters.
The company get in some extra money and some good press, so what.
But I won't say if this or the upcoming ATI card is best before I at least seen a benchmark test. I know that you are competent on hardware but you are also somewhat of a ATI/AMD fanboi. Lets wait until both cards are tested against eachother in a fair benchtest.
To be honest matters it little who is best, no MMO will actually use the really cool stuff for a long while, we have to play FPS games to use cards like this.
Furthermore, I won't believe that you had steller performance in Guild Wars under an X1300 Pro on a 133mhz * 17 (2261mhz) processor, when I ran Guild Wars under an Athlon 64 2.4ghz (200 x 12) with 2GB of 2-2-2-5-1T Corsair Memory on an Asus motherboard and a fast hard drive under a clean install just for Guild Wars through an X850XT Platinum at 1600x1200 @ 120hz - 2048 x 1536 @ 85hz (and I still own that monitor today) under max settings and experienced brief slowdown in Alliance Battles and GvG along with Heroes Ascent with all the skills flying through.
Either you were playing at low resolution to have playable and enjoyable experiences or you were lying to your teeth considering my specification at the time was a lot higher than yours and still experienced problems. There is nothing more than I despise than people who are willing to conjure up lies to try to "win" an argument.
Yes, you had higher video settings than me. As I said elsewhere in the thread, I turned anti-aliasing and shadows off. You ran the game at a higher resolution than me (and higher than most people, for that matter).
But my point is that I was able to get very smooth gameplay at appropriate video settings, without need a ramdrive to do it. If Guild Wars really had a hitching problem during intense action, turning video settings down wouldn't have helped. When trying to play Vanguard on the same machine, I had awful hitching problems even with video settings turned to the minimum in-game, and some settings turned below that by editing a .ini file.
Indeed, when playing Guild Wars on my current computer rather than the old one, what I appreciate most about the better performance is the reduced zone loading times due to the SSD--more so than being able to turn on anti-aliasing or keeping a higher frame rate.
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I'm not saying that Nvidia shouldn't have launched the GeForce GTX 580 when they did. I'm only saying that launch quantities were demonstrably limited, and yields of the chip that hit the GTX 580 bin were probably pretty low.
By claiming that you were running the game on Low Settings, specially under a Direct X 7 video card (Geforce 4 MX is a Direct X 7 card, The TI series was Direct X 8), where the game itself on a minimum asks for Direct X8 with the game made for Direct X9 invalidates your argument. Sorry, you were below specifications...
Actually, that's not true.
The Geforce 4 MX series is not only capable of running Guild Wars, but is specifically cited in the minimum system requirements, so he was not below the minimum system requirements. His GPU was capable of running it, and his CPU far exceeded the recommended system requirements.
Comments
Switched from Nvidia to ATI and will never go back.
Sic semper tyrannis "Democracy broke down, not when the Union
ceased to be agreeable to all its constituent States, but when it was upheld, like any other Empire, by force of arms."
I watched the video and it made my inner spoiled brat smile.
Well as the guy said,that was not released tech,that is their demo and their card.What will be sold to the public will be a much lesser version and it will need to actually play real games,not a home made demo.I am not sure why the Black Ops demo,nothing special was shown there.
What did intrigue me was how they got 5 million light sources in that one demo,the rest imo was actually nothing special.One mob,VERY bland terrain they picked a very easy scenario to showoff some tech,in an actual game ,tons of spells/weapons/better background scenery probably makes that tech unplayable in a real game.
Also not able to show the video card,but they showed a picture of it is very suspicious,probably a card that is not even doable as far as selling to the public,probably an overblown out of proportion 5 thousand dollar version of a card.Also no public Q/A in that demonstration,just lots of telling the poeople to raise their arms and say YAY !.
As for the lighting query,there is no way soembody put those light sources in there,so it must be generated,that is the part i wish they described in more detail.However what i did notice was like games often do is they did limit the actual colours to about 2 a whitish and a bluish hue,it also looked like most of the geometry/brushes were repeated,both of these tactics do lower the stress on a engine,but really wouldn't look too realistic in an actual game.This is similar to what FFXIII did in it's ice caverns,looks real good but you walk through entirely repeated geometry/scenes all blue ice structures all 1/2 colours.Even the Alien scene was just bascially two colours black and whitish or grey.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
480 and 580s in SLI really spelled freedom for me.
I was able to go into Pure Linux and break 60 FPS in every game that runs Wine. Thanks to WINE being the WIndows Binaries, but it uses the actually Linux Netcoding and I am not running a million protection programs like antiviruses and spyware removers...along with everything in Windows that uses your CPU Power and Bandwith, *smiles*, I get lower ping in practically every game that runs and I also have access to all Linux games too.
So in order to play games in Linux, you needed $1000 worth of video card hardware? Or is your point that people who have $1000 worth of video card hardware are able to play games in Linux, while everyone else should stick to Windows?
You'd break 60 fps with 1 580 if you were in Win7. Most D3D games don't get the performance in Wine they do in Windows. You also get access to all Windows games instead of just the ones that work with Wine + the abundance of Linux games.
Not only is this true, but honestly, Wine has such a propensity only run relatively old games well, that you should be able to break 200fps with just 1 580 In Win7 on any game that's Wine-compatible enough to get 60 fps on high settings. Even after all this time, running a game like Crysis (which is now getting to be old itself) requires numerous tweaks, and only runs on one version, and still won't run nearly as well as on Windows. Installing and getting Linux to run even a semi-modern game like that is nothing but a giant convoluted process that gets me nothing but an inferior version of the same experience I get on Windows with 1/10 the effort on the day a game comes out (instead of having to wait a year for the game and Wine to both get enough updates for compatibility). COD MW2 is another example. Here's a video of it running as of a year ago (
). Notice how the game is extremely laggy, and even flat out freezes for several seconds at points, and even when it's "running", clips horrendously leading to very poor image quality? That same game would have simply installed right on Windows, and on that hardware, would have run absolutely flawlessly (COD6 isn't that hardware intensive on a proper OS).
That's why I gave up Linux about a year ago, even Ubuntu; It took an unecessarily large amount of work to make the OS do everything I wanted, and after I was done, I realized that I was just doing the exact same things I would do on Windows anyways, in exactly the same way (minus having the universal game compatibility), and so I switched back to Windows and haven't looked at Linux since.
FIrst of all, don't patrionize me. ^_^ Afterall I am opening up all of you and don't want to come across as some sassy jerk beyond the pole. This will be a long post.
I dualboot Windows 7 and Linux. I run Linux Games that beat 60 FPS. Remember that Nprotect Games do not work on Linux, and they shouldn't since I and every other hacker on the planet has used the Nprotect/Gameguard bypass method to protect themselves and have also rewritten that kernel-level rootkit.
I get over 60 FPS on one card (in most games that i play), but I run on two cards because I create games and have fun doing it. I can go between Linux and Windows Games and I can use the Wine Binaries for any game that gives me over 60 FPS, I don't need to run it on Windows. Remember, I am into programming and I help the WineHQ Apps Database a lot. I have recompiled some parts of my OS and run under different settings.
As far as performance goes....in multiplayer games. Once you break 60 FPS, The WINE binaries utilize the Linux Netcoding, which in every test I have ran, I have gotten between 10 - 20% LOWER PING and its narrower. In short, it means its closer to a constant rather than shooting around all the place. Its true that hops are the leading factor of pings, but the Linux Netcoding is more secure and optimized as well for both IPv4 and IPv6. Windows users have to deal with all sorts of transmissions being sent across the internet. From pop up ads, to software updates...to protection programs using your local bandwith and generating local lag...
Of course, I should state the following. A while back people yelled at me, claiming that more memory doesn't help games because there is a limit. Sure, until you learn how to Rdisk a game or an OS.
Linux by default comes with /dev/shm (This is a directory)
What this is, is a RAMDISK, a disk made out of SYSTEM MEMORY that can allocate up to half your memory by default. There are restrictions to this. I am going to list some of them below:
1) If running a 32-bit process, the maximum amount of addressable memory is 4GB. Ramdisk contents add to that amount. If your memory pool goes over 4GB, the process will crash. If running a 64-bit Executable, you can go over this amount.
2) If running a 32-bit process within a 32-bit OS, the whole OS can support 4GB in total. It means the limit a 32 bit process being executed. (example is Oblivion in a 32 bit OS environment) is a lot lower than 4GB, since the OS being a 32-bit process, a game that would be allowed to use 4GB would OVERWRITE the memory addresses at the lowest levels and cause the OS to collapse. The OS will not ALLOW this ^_^.
3) Multiuser (Linux) vs Singleuser OS (windows): Processor scheduling is handled differently as well as the approach to programming in both environments. Ramdisks are much better in Multiuser Operating Systems. They were originally designed for them and then came the singleuser OS versions which unfortunately each perform differently (though I recommend RAMDISK on Windows 7). There are advantages and disadvantages to both....
4) If running a 64 bit Executable, you can throw what you want in there....but for the fastest speed, throw in the files to zones you are playing. If you plan on playing in one zone for 3 hours, Only put the files to that zone that you will need. I've ran 24GB RAM machines and thrown in 12GB on RAMDISK...Even that is inefficient because I wont use all 12GB. So the rule is to really use what you need.
5) If you plan on running game servers through a Ramdisk, change your configuration files and truly test them. Servers mess up if asked to run settings it can not run. I found the settings made a server too slow in some configuration files for a ramdisk to handle....and this caused a lot of problems, but thank to the changes when ran outside of a ramdisk, the settings are too fast for a HDD to maintain. I run servers to old games 100% ramdisked. Helps a lot in Endgame (last 2 minutes of an FPS match)
6) If you dont know how the game filestructure works or mess up on things, a game WILL become unstable and crash.
Ok, I should give you an example of what to use it for....
Ever played an MMORPG and entered a heavy PvP area? Or played a shooter and entered a very high texture area? Basically you walk and all of a sudden everything must load and since we are Online Gamers, we cant JUST stop and Load, the game will run it in realtime and as a result our framerates will take hits from a Hard Drive moving the files you need into system memory. In that time, you get your ass kicked and in MMORPGs the death penalty is very high while in shooters its just "annoying" to die because your framerate is rolling all over the place and it becomes harder to setup for a shot thanks to all the latency.
Take a Ramdisk and throw in the Textures, Meshes and favorite maps you guys all know and love. What will happen is that since they are loaded already into System Memory (and point to them), the System won't take as large of a performance hit. In short you have a much higher fighting chance. In games like OBLIVION, the loading times are reduced by around 90% and you dont take a large hit running around in the overworld switching regions.
This is why if you are a PvP gamer and you know you have 8GB of RAM at least, and are running 200MB as the process executable itself, It doesnt hurt throwing in 2GB of files you know you will need and not have garbage collected in a Ramdisk.
You will feel better when all those textures from characters in PvP, along with their weapons and all the magic and combat on screen won't wipe you out from the slowdown.
Another advantage is that your game is in System Memory which is faster (faster than any SSD out there) and because its one point less of travel, you can get on the internet quicker as well and have more stable gameplay. Ramdisking does require you at times to adjust setting files to games, or even point to files at times, but its definately worth it.
Ive ran experiments on Ramdisking for the last 15 years....and it really is worth it. However, it requires some knowledge, testing and getting used to. Once in RAMDISK you won't have to deal with unnecessary garbage collection. In short, Ramdisking is the same as assuming all responsibility on what is in memory.
For Example, In Linux, when I am running Guild Wars, the ENTIRE GAME Is in System Memory and I tend to be the first to enter the PvP arenas and zones. As soon as a large attack goes on screen, everything is loaded and I take minimal performance hits, while the rest of my team drops in Frames, making them temp. vulnerable. In PvP or Shooters, every second counts.
Aside from Ramdisking, there are other things I do on Linux (and Windows) that I do for increasing performance. However, I am one of those people who believes any GAMER out there should not be without a 64 bit OS, and without a ramdisk. Games keep getting bigger, files keep getting larger to load and times do come when its necessary to run those Ramdisks.
In short, I am not really losing anything. I am gaining something by being able to apply my knowledge and experience.
See guys, I never said Linux gives me a HIGHER FRAMERATE Than Windows in all the games out there. I said as long as Linux gives me over 60 FPS, I wont see a difference on Windows, so that higher number (unless I want to Vsync a 120hz monitor), makes no difference in the performance of a game. its when you get below 60 FPS where you start skipping frames and that is always bad. I can then optimize things...
So yes, I have Windows 7 and Linux and thanks to this I can have Win7 for JUST some games I like playing and three special programs, not to mention have Linux and run everything else (including favorite games that give me over 60 FPS already)...which spares both operating systems from becoming cluttered.
One reason I also use Linux (And I am opening up with you guys on this). I was a pure windows user (as far as games went) and part of an abusive online gaming community. Abusive to the point malicious mods were made to capture the configs files users had and to attack computers. No one cared about coding security mods for the game outside the people who used them to control others. I started programming fixes and did some work. In the end I nearly lost my mod because a server came up that upon downloading its mod, it crashed many systems and attacked the file system. To actually survive I had a Hardware firewall put on my servers. I went from Windows to Linux to run the game servers and game and I also decided to manually download all mods and attach them.
On Windows when you enter an FPS server, the files get copied to the right directories if downloads are allowed. I DID NOT WANT THAT TO HAPPEN because there were malicious mods being programmed. I set the game directories to only allow execution on what needs to be executed, disallowed execution on everything else and disallowed writes. When a modded server launched and I logged in, I got the famous "Error: Can not write to file. Closing" and I was very happy. I was one of four systems who survived a massive scale attack that ran servers. Despite the community suffering, we kept our servers together, because if not us, then who? I became very defensive afterwards and started using Linux for gaming. I started Linux Gaming in 2002, back when it wasn't great...and today its better..I can run Linux Games and can run a lot of Windows Games.
Nvidia can play Windows Games + Linux Games + Mac OX X Games. Most LINUX GAMES (Which some have better AI programming and are tougher than Windows Games) fail under AMD video cards (I am not using ATI anymore since the name was phased out) due to poor linux drivers. I want to play games, develop and have fun. I don't have access to the full library of games under AMD, but under Nvidia I can play anything.
I have been petitioning lately for AMD to develop Linux Drivers, because I feel bad that AMD users talk so much about Game Performance, but cant even have access to the full library of games out there thanks to AMDs inability to make a decent Linux Driver.
Sure, loading stuff off of a hard drive is slow. But a good solid state drive will mostly fix that problem. The real problem with hard drives is the latency from waiting for the drive to physically spin to the right spot before it can do anything. A good solid state drive reduces that latency by about 99% as compared to a hard drive. That's not a perfect fix, but it's close.
A ramdisk can fix that, too, but that's a lot more expensive and a lot more finicky. SDRAM is a lot more expensive per GB than NAND flash. If a game takes 20 GB on your hard drive, having enough memory to load that whole thing into a ramdisk is prohibitively expensive. For smaller games, it's more doable, but do you really want to have to wait for a game to load completely from the hard drive into a ramdisk every time you boot the computer or want to switch from one game to another? Isn't the point precisely to not make you wait? NAND flash isn't volatile, so a solid state drive doesn't impose any such problems. Solid state drives can be arbitrarily large, so you can load all the games you want onto a single drive without having to compete for space.
Sure, having to load things off of a hard drive in the middle of action can cause hitching in some games. But a good solid state drive fixes that hitching entirely in all but the worst coded games. Furthermore "some games" is not "all games", and Guild Wars doesn't try to load information on the fly. Guild Wars loads everything you need for a zone into memory when you enter the zone, precisely so that it doesn't have to try to do so later.
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So basically, using Linux magically makes routers hundreds of miles away process and forward your packets faster, even though they neither know nor care what OS you're using? Right. There are some issues with Windows networking, but it usually adds only a few milliseconds to your ping time. If it does become a problem for you, then that's what Bigfoot network cards are for. And yes, they internally run Linux.
I enjoy games like COD:BO, however, for me it is the action that draws me in over grapics. If you got close enough to someone else in COD 4 you could see the weave in the cloth, pretty cool for back then, but, most of the time I was busy staying alive and killing someone. The cool graphics are a nice side addition; for me game play rules.
The video link was cool in places, especially after the guy finally shut up and let us see some video.
As others have said, I do not see this kind of quality in MMOs any time soon. COD:BO is not considered an MMO because of the limited number of people per map. I never understood how GW was considered an MMO because of the same reason, limited number of people per map [after stepping out of a city].
My initial impression was that the video would put me to sleep, I was wrong, at least in part. However, regarding MMOs I am not excited because it will be a long time coming, except in large space games where there is nothing on screen in most areas.
Game makers know that they will have to build for a platform or PC, and if PC then they will be limited to current hardware on the market. Most people will not trott out and lay down $600 for a new video card or CPU, motherboard, and RAM every time a new game comes along.
Intel Core i7 7700K, MB is Gigabyte Z270X-UD5
SSD x2, 4TB WD Black HHD, 32GB RAM, MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning LE video card
Guild Wars is not an MMORPG. ArenaNet has labelled it since creation a CORPG to seperate itself from MMORPGs and start with a clean slate. Its considered to be MMORPG by the masses of ignorance out there who love to label things out there. I do understand where you are coming from though..
There are shooters where large maps have been built. So large that they were able to break into 32vs32 and 64vs64. FPS vs MMORPG arguments started between the playercounts associated with player vs player combat...back then 50 vs 50 was not common in MMORPGs. Today you have few games still where PvP reaches a large scale amount. Where MMORPGs took a page out of the FPS playbook and created maps for special types of play, while FPS took a page out of the MMORPG playbook and introduced class-oriented play for Objective Based Gametypes. ^_^
play age of conan, a dmeonologist, they throw fire that causes targets to burst into flame and smolder down to blackened corpses as a fatality, in glorious dx11 stunning graphics.
You're the one who brought up Guild Wars, not me. I only replied to point out that you don't know what you were talking about. That sort of massive slowdown didn't happen to me on my old computer with a Radeon X1300 Pro and a rather slow hard drive. It didn't even happen to me on my computer before that, with a 2.26 GHz Pentium 4, a GeForce 4 MX something or other, 768 MB of system memory, and a really old hard drive. That last computer did have to run the game on low settings, though.
will take a nuclear reactor to power it
will likely start housefires
will likely cost your fistborn male child
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=GTX+580&x=0&y=0
And so the GeForce GTX 580 is gone. Already. Not exactly a paper launch, but not exactly a hard launch, either. But that's just New Egg, you say?
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/search.asp?keywords=GTX+580
Tiger Direct doesn't have any, either.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=GTX+580&x=0&y=0
Neither does Amazon.
They're not exactly priced to sell, either. I think there's a statement about launch quantities here somewhere.
By claiming that you were running the game on Low Settings, specially under a Direct X 7 video card (Geforce 4 MX is a Direct X 7 card, The TI series was Direct X 8), where the game itself on a minimum asks for Direct X8 with the game made for Direct X9 invalidates your argument. Sorry, you were below specifications...
Furthermore, I won't believe that you had steller performance in Guild Wars under an X1300 Pro on a 133mhz * 17 (2261mhz) processor, when I ran Guild Wars under an Athlon 64 2.4ghz (200 x 12) with 2GB of 2-2-2-5-1T Corsair Memory on an Asus motherboard and a fast hard drive under a clean install just for Guild Wars through an X850XT Platinum at 1600x1200 @ 120hz - 2048 x 1536 @ 85hz (and I still own that monitor today) under max settings and experienced brief slowdown in Alliance Battles and GvG along with Heroes Ascent with all the skills flying through.
Either you were playing at low resolution to have playable and enjoyable experiences or you were lying to your teeth considering my specification at the time was a lot higher than yours and still experienced problems. There is nothing more than I despise than people who are willing to conjure up lies to try to "win" an argument.
Back then the game that demanded the most was doom 3. High Settings under 1024x768 on a x1300 under a 3.4ghz (200 * 17)Pentium 4 was 42 FPS under a X1300, where a 2ghz A64 running Doom 3 under a X850XT Platinum delivered 85+ FPS at 1280x960. Your Processor's performance was a bottleneck in your video performance back then due to how low the FSB was. I feel bad for you. The same happened to me at an earlier time than you.
I've never been a fan of ram disks. Either way you have to load the data into memory, you can do it up front to a ram disk and wait 2 minutes before playing, or let it load while playing and add 15 seconds per load screen. Instead of buying $120 of extra memory I'd rather spend $120 on an SSD and get the speed of a ram disk without the preloading issue. Course SSD's are a relatively new development.
Don't see why a ram disk is going to matter for Guild Wars anyway, since you run the same maps over and over again they will all be cached in memory after the first load anyway so your load times will be just as quick as ram disk without having to double load it.
Both Nvidia and ATI have launched cards in small numbers to get good press before, Toms had an article about it. They do it to hype up cards that they are a few months early to actually release. If I remember correctly was it actually ATI that started with it a long time ago but I hardly see why that matters.
The company get in some extra money and some good press, so what.
But I won't say if this or the upcoming ATI card is best before I at least seen a benchmark test. I know that you are competent on hardware but you are also somewhat of a ATI/AMD fanboi. Lets wait until both cards are tested against eachother in a fair benchtest.
To be honest matters it little who is best, no MMO will actually use the really cool stuff for a long while, we have to play FPS games to use cards like this.
Yes, you had higher video settings than me. As I said elsewhere in the thread, I turned anti-aliasing and shadows off. You ran the game at a higher resolution than me (and higher than most people, for that matter).
But my point is that I was able to get very smooth gameplay at appropriate video settings, without need a ramdrive to do it. If Guild Wars really had a hitching problem during intense action, turning video settings down wouldn't have helped. When trying to play Vanguard on the same machine, I had awful hitching problems even with video settings turned to the minimum in-game, and some settings turned below that by editing a .ini file.
Indeed, when playing Guild Wars on my current computer rather than the old one, what I appreciate most about the better performance is the reduced zone loading times due to the SSD--more so than being able to turn on anti-aliasing or keeping a higher frame rate.
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I'm not saying that Nvidia shouldn't have launched the GeForce GTX 580 when they did. I'm only saying that launch quantities were demonstrably limited, and yields of the chip that hit the GTX 580 bin were probably pretty low.
Actually, that's not true.
The Geforce 4 MX series is not only capable of running Guild Wars, but is specifically cited in the minimum system requirements, so he was not below the minimum system requirements. His GPU was capable of running it, and his CPU far exceeded the recommended system requirements.
http://www.guildwars.com/products/guildwars/features/default.php#support