My new PC!

So my job sponsered some different stuff for my home computer.

I got myself.

intel core2 extreme qx9650
Asus BlackPearl M.board
Asus 8800GTX
4GB Kingston HyperX ram

So hopefully this means i can play Crysis now.

What other PC games should i look in to?

ORIGINAL: Vx Chemical

So hopefully this means i can play Crysis now.

What other PC games should i look in to?

It does. The QX9650 is the 45nm refresh of my 65nm QX6850 and both are fuc.king blindingly fast. You should be able to overclock it to 4.0GHz too (if you wanted to).

The GTX will handle Crysis on High, but i' d probably recommend forcing DX9 over DX10, especially if you' re running Vista.

I think you should get CoD4, and Orange Box (if you don' t already have it). Don' t bother with Gears because it' s an awful port, ...but definitely get Supreme Commander, UT3, Medieval II, Company of Heroes, STALKER and the GRAW games if you missed them...

Im considering COD4 to play it on pc,m i have orange box.

Very nice! Is the case anything to write home about?

Very nice! Is the case anything to write home about?

boring black casing, thats hidden undernath a desk

Fooking nice.

Crysis is a must.

If you have that CPU and you don' t overclock I will have to kill you.

Alienware seem to have fuc.ked up badly with the m15x, so because i' m an impatient bastard i' ll probably just get an XPS 1730 instead. It' s big, (about the same size and weight as my Toshiba) but it has 2 x 8800m GTX' s and should play Crysis no problem. Strangely, you can' t choose a single GPU though - you have to get SLI. I' d complain, but i figure what the hell...

My desktop will be ok until the 9800 GTX is released. I' d buy a QX9770 but £900 is overkill.

Nice rig

As Agent said, Crysis is a must.. (playing it yestaerday, still loved every second of it).

Currently playing:
Korg DS 10 (ds) /  Metal Slug 7 (ds)
Rhythm Heaven (ds) /  Fire Emblem (ds)
Super Stardust HD (psn) /  Virtua Fighter 5 (360)
FSX (P

If you have that CPU and you don' t overclock I will have to kill you.

'
what custom cooler should i use for that? water is out of the question

ORIGINAL: Nitro

My desktop will be ok until the 9800 GTX is released.

The 9800GTX is now out. My friend bought it. He said it' s really not a significant boost over the 8800GTXs.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

what custom cooler should i use for that? water is out of the question

I would reccomend:
-Arctic Cooling MX-2 thermal compound
-Thermalright ULTIMA-90 heatsink (almost as effective as the ULTRA-120 but without the insane weight)
-Noctua NF-P12-1300 fan


You' ll be able to overclock you cpu to 4Ghz, good temps with this near silent cooler no problem.

-----------------------------------------

Yeah the 9800GTX is out in NA at least. It' s basically an overclocked 8800GTS (G92). Performance is above the 8800GTX in most cases. The 8800GTX can beat a 9800GTX in high resolution with a ton of AA.

8800GTX 90nm
128 SP @1350Mhz
64TMUs @575Mhz
24ROPs @575Mhz
768MB @86.4 GB/s

9800GTX 65nm
128 SP @1688Mhz
64TMUs @675Mhz
16ROPs @675Mhz
512MB @70.4 GB/s


Naturally the 9800GTX consumes a lot less power being a 65nm product.

I' m more interested in the upcoming ATI HD 4870 if the rumours are correct.

Compared with the HD 3870:

480SP (up from 360)
32 TMUs (up from 16)
16 ROP (same)
140.8GB/s (up from 70.4GB/s)
Vram 1GB

Clock: 1050Mhz (maybe 900) compared to 775Mhz. Note that these cards do not have the shaders clocked sperately.

The 9800 series is a refresh but the HD4000 series are next gen cards. AMD is targetting the bottneck that the 3870 had. I' m expecting performance in the worst case scenario equal to a 8800GTX, often far surpassing it.

holy shit. I have no idea what any of that means.

me neither but it sure does look good don' t it?

...

Everyone else reacted well to it. And it looks.. rather impressive, I guess.

ORIGINAL: Rampage99

The 9800GTX is now out. My friend bought it. He said it' s really not a significant boost over the 8800GTXs.

Huh...

I wonder what they' ll call the 9xxx GTX equivalent proper then!?

My OC Ultra will (should) tide me over until the tail end of the year, and the XPS M1730 should last what, 12 months before i need to either upgrade or replace it!? The dual 8800m GTX' s should allow me to play most current games on max @ 1920 x 1200 so unless Far Cry 2 is more of a resource hog than Crysis it should be good for a while. I' m a little miffed about the m15x though - and they don' t offer the 8800m GTX in the m9750, so since i ain' t going to buy a Rock, i' m left with the M1730.

The whole ' 9' series from Nvidia are just overclocked versions of the ' 8' series. Same with AMD' s 3xxx series. Not worth the money really.

You' ll have to wait until the latter half of 2008 before you see any real performance leaps. Not much is really known about either new high end part from AMD or Nvidia. Only real solid info is that Nvidia' s is codenamed GT200, while AMD' s is R700.

just got the last part, so ill be assembling it tonight, ill order a cooler as soon as i have some cash for it.

Nitro there are already rumors floating about of the 9900. Wait until something more solid come out about that before picking up a 9800.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

Yeah, ...the 9800 doesn' t seem to offer much performance gain over my already badass overclocked Ultra.

Just installed Crysis, it runs pretty good on Very High with 1280x768 resolution and 4xAA.

It might get stressed when the bullets start flying ill optimize as i play.

ORIGINAL: Vx Chemical

Just installed Crysis, it runs pretty good on Very High with 1280x768 resolution and 4xAA.

It might get stressed when the bullets start flying ill optimize as i play.

What kind of monitor are you using? If it' s not a CRT then you' d be better off turning AA off completely (including in the NVIDIA control panel) and pumping up the resolution to whatever the native res of your monitor is. Scaling, or playing in a window is just daft, especially when in Crysis AA is one of the most demanding options. I' m playing in 1680 x 1050 with no AA and everything is pin sharp.

Also, make sure you download the 1.1 patch, and if your' re running Vista and decide the framerate isn' t good enough, you can force DX9 by adding -DX9 to the command line. The game runs better in XP, but almost as well in Vista if you run it in DX9 mode. DX9 doesn' t allow for Very High settings though (by default), so you' d either have to play in High, or use a custom CFG to allow for as close as possible to DX10 effects.

The difference between DX9 and DX10 modes is usually about 10fps.

On a related note, i' ve just ordered my XPS M1730. 10 days delivery is better than Alienwares 4 week lead time. I really wanted the Area 51 m15x, but it' s been plagued with problems and i' m not spending 2K+ on a notebook that will probably need repairing within weeks, so because that put me off the m17x i' ve gone for the DELL instead.

17" WUXGA @ 1920 x 1200
Core 2 Extreme X9000 @ 2.8GHz
2GB DDR2 SDRAM @ 667MHz (which i' ll be replacing with 4GB of 800MHz OCZ Ram)
Dual 512MB 8800m GTX' s
2 x 160GB Raid 0 Stripe Hard Drives
An Ageia PhysX Card (included in the price with no option to remove it)

At £2680 it' s the most expensive laptop i' ve bought, although my dscount with DELL brings it closer to £2K. The Alienware would have cost me a little less, but meh, i' m not atient enough to wait until they' ve ironed out the problems.

The M1730 is fuc.king huge though. Check out these comparisons with the MacBook Air...





...it' s fuc.king rediculously bulky.

However, it' s not much bigger than the Toshiba i bought as a desktop replacement 18 months ago and i see them as more of a portable desktop than a laptop. I' m not likely to use it in Starbucks... if you know what i mean. That' s what my MacBook is for

The XPS will play UT3 and CoD4 maxed out at the native resolution, and i' m guessing Crysis on High with no AA

My girlfriend told me to consider an EEE PC but i told her to go fist herself. They might run Quake 3 Arena an fit under my skullcap but c' mon...

Nothing should be compared to the Air. The Air is a piece of shit.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

ORIGINAL: Rampage99

Nothing should be compared to the Air. The Air is a piece of shit.

An impractical, plasticky, only-good-for-checking-your-emails piece of shit.

But still, ...it really drives homehow big the XPS is

That XPS is Godly. How much does it weigh?

Godly is right. The processor will overclock to around 3.2GHz so once i have my 4GB RAM it' ll be as powerful as most high end desktops. I' m not sure how the 2 512MB 8800m GTX' s in SLI will hold up compared to say a single 768MB GTX, but i' m guessing it' ll hold it' s own.

I think i read somewhere that it weighs about 10lbs...

So what about a monitor(s)?

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

I play at 1680x1050 with everything " very high" except shadows and motion blur (low/ off respectively), no AA. Looks great and runs ok. Like Nitro said, turn off AA, AA kills performance when it does very little.

Majik the 8800GTXm is almost identical to the original 8800GTS. Except with 512MB on a 256bit bus. In SLI they should perform above a 8800ULTRA on their own. It' s the CPU that will make the difference.

Yeah i turned off AA and run it in 1680x1050 and it runs even better.

My monitor unfortunately isnt so good. its on my list of next upgrades. I think im going to redo my dads jobs internal network and upgrade it to Windows 2008 when its released, that might yield me cash for a new monitor and maybe a new Graphic Card when they are released.

I can' t overstate just how badass this notebook is. The build quality, the screen, the speakers... they' re all superb, ...and it' s blindingly fast. I think that it works out as powerful as my desktop, and games actually look better because the screen is both smaller and higher res. 22" @ 1680 x 1050 versus 17" @ 1920 x 1200. It' s really bright too. I' ve never seen anything like it in a laptop before.

I can run everything but Crysis on max, and even Crysis runs (in DX9) on high, with motion blur off @ the native res of 1920 x 1200 (no AA).

I took it into work today and one of the guys who owns a Rock Xtreme (which to be fair is actually pretty cool) has decided that he needs to upgrade his two 8700M GT' s to 8800M GTX' s so he can play Crysis properly...









I' m going to tweak my config files to enable some of the very high settings in DX9 at the weekend. The game runs smoothly so i can always drop back to this if a see a decrease in performance, ...but i reckon i can get sunshafts and very high textures without a framerate drop.

I even bought a Razer Deathadder to go with it. I just need to find a new mouse mat and some headphones...

I' m going to tweak my config files to enable some of the very high settings in DX9 at the weekend. The game runs smoothly so i can always drop back to this if a see a decrease in performance, ...but i reckon i can get sunshafts and very high textures without a framerate drop.

Cool, Do these Crysis Tweak guids really make much difference in perfromance? If so which one(s) do you recommend?

Currently playing:
Korg DS 10 (ds) /  Metal Slug 7 (ds)
Rhythm Heaven (ds) /  Fire Emblem (ds)
Super Stardust HD (psn) /  Virtua Fighter 5 (360)
FSX (P

ORIGINAL: Virtua fighter 5

Cool, Do these Crysis Tweak guids really make much difference in perfromance? If so which one(s) do you recommend?

They generally won' t increase your performance unless you' re using them to achieve the same results through tweaking the config file as opposed to just setting the game to a higher setting.

Resolution, AA and shaders have the biggest hits on performance, and the game runs better on XP than Vista, and better in DX9 than DX10. In DX9 you' ll have noticed that the very high settings are greyed out, so what most people have been doing is adjusting the config file to let them run in DX9 but get DX10-like very high features.

If you' re using and NVIDIA card then it' s best to switch the antialiasing mode to off in the NVIDIA control panel as well as off in the Crysis options menu. If you' re running in SLI then it needs to be set to Force Alternate Rendering 2 (again in the NVIDIA control panel). Other than that it' s pretty much trial and error with the config file (make sure you back up the one you' re replacing).

http://www.incrysis.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=11614 - is probably the best place to get started. There are other tweak guides, but this is where you need to start. Heh, you can even tweak the time of day settings...

ORIGINAL: Nitro

I even bought a Razer Deathadder to go with it.

Nice. I actually just got the Razor Copperhead. Got it brand new of woot.com for $25 when they normally go for $70.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

I even bought a Razer Deathadder to go with it.

I' ve been using mine for a while now, I love it.

ORIGINAL: Rampage99

ORIGINAL: Nitro

I even bought a Razer Deathadder to go with it.

Nice. I actually just got the Razor Copperhead. Got it brand new of woot.com for $25 when they normally go for $70.

I looked at the Copperhead but decided that the Deathadder was just more comfortable. I use a G9 with my desktop but i' m considering picking up another Deathadder to replace it because they' re just godly. All Razers products are badass, ...i' m even looking at their mouse mats, ...one of them comes with it' s own fuc.king protective sleeve...

...i' m even looking at their mouse mats, ...one of them comes with it' s own fuc.king protective sleeve...

I have their double sided mouse pad eXactMat Xcontrol and eXactmat Xspeed on the other side. I prefer the control side. I can' t say I' m more accurate with it but it feels better.

Actually VF, scrap that link i gave you. Just go here: http://www.incrysis.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=18999



You know it' s going to be something special when the guy updates his original post with testimonials