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Any games that really use the 7800/X1800/1900 really

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Are games such as COD2, BF2, FEAR and the like fully DX9 HDR with SM3 features enabled ?

What I seem to be seeing is benchmarks with massive resolutions and massive aa/af. Does this mean that no games really push the hardware ? I mean ATi and Nv seem to be having another massive round of releases of increasingly complex chips (346 million in the X1900) at seemingly accelerating rates. Are consoles a major factor here in that more money is available for PC grafix research ?
 
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If you ask questions like this, you are less likely to want the latest board with the hoogest fancy heatsink imaginable...

Why not stop asking questions and just click buy?
 
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im not 100% about this, but i cant see any games push the hardware At the minute,

my setup is AMD Athlon 64 3700+ @2.42Ghz, 1GB RAM, X800 Pro

thats plays COD2, F.E.A.R, BF2 etc. highest settings with quick load times,

i cant imagine you would get a massive improvement with a lot more power than that! as no game utilizes it

but the games that do are coming, real fast!
 
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Only get something if you feel that your current gaming experience is poor enough to warrant it. If you are happy, earn some interest on that cash....

I recently upgraded, but that was because BF2 was only playable at medium details at 800x600 on a 9800 pro. WIth a 7800 GT I'm back at native res of the monitor and happy at high details.
 
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it's the age old conundrum... to cut a long story short, if cost is a factor but you insist on bleeding edge technology, then buy the model below the best - that way you wont be paying silliy money for the latest, and besides, the latest is only the latest today - it will be second hand and out of date tomorrow. I paid silly money for the latest and greatest 2 months ago, and already a faster dual core chip is out and there's talk about a successor to the 7800. That's the way it is - hell - if everyhting stayed the same, we'd all be crying out for something better! Personally, I upgrade every 12-18 months regardless - but it's a personal choice.
 
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Robbo123 said:
im not 100% about this, but i cant see any games push the hardware At the minute,

my setup is AMD Athlon 64 3700+ @2.42Ghz, 1GB RAM, X800 Pro

thats plays COD2, F.E.A.R, BF2 etc. highest settings with quick load times,

i cant imagine you would get a massive improvement with a lot more power than that! as no game utilizes it

but the games that do are coming, real fast!

I do not believe for 1 second that your system can play F.E.A.R. at it's highest settings.

With 2GB of ram, an opty 175 @ 280x10 and an X850XT overclocked to 639/612 I still had to drop the resolution, run without AA and disable soft shadows to have a playable game.
 
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In short, yes. Actually this hardware cant keep up. Take for example native res of the 2405 and 3007, i know the 2405 is 1920x1200 and to play at this native res with all this eyecandy then youre going to need a top card. I believe the x1900xtx can get reasonably good frame rates at this res.

But if your running a piddly 1024x768 monitor then the answer is no you dont need something this powerful.

Everyone buys or should buy their graphics card that they will need to play games at the resolution with the amount of eyecandy they deem necessary.

And if no games did need this much power then i would still say they should release them, cause if that amount of power is out there then game developers will use it.

I personally cant afford the top all singing all dancing card, but im glad they release em and im glad people who have more money then others buy them as it helps everyone in the chain and not just them, let alone we might bash them slightly for a bit of willy waving :p

Its a win win for the consumer, if you can afford it then great, if you cant then well its going to push down the prices of some other hardware that you can buy.
 
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I'm happy with my 7800GTX and BF2/CoD2 performance, so no need to upgrade the gfx card just yet, i'm waiting till UT2007 comes out and see what the Unreal Engine 3.0 needs to run at full settings... :)
 
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FEAR is the only game thats not totally smooth for me @ 1280x968 with some AA and AF. It varies from 25-50fps (7800GT) and thats why I am upgrading to an x1900. Should keep the fps above 40 and I will be able to keep the AA and AF high.
 
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speeduk said:
FEAR is the only game thats not totally smooth for me @ 1280x968 with some AA and AF. It varies from 25-50fps (7800GT) and thats why I am upgrading to an x1900. Should keep the fps above 40 and I will be able to keep the AA and AF high.

what card you using currently?
 
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Robbo123 said:
im not 100% about this, but i cant see any games push the hardware At the minute,

my setup is AMD Athlon 64 3700+ @2.42Ghz, 1GB RAM, X800 Pro

thats plays COD2, F.E.A.R, BF2 etc. highest settings with quick load times,

i cant imagine you would get a massive improvement with a lot more power than that! as no game utilizes it

but the games that do are coming, real fast!

lol.. so speaketh someone who doesn't understand high res...

I had an x850xtpe and my 2405 brought it to its knees with F.E.A.R.. BF2 could just do it if I added AA or AF and I never tried COD2 but that did give even the sli GTX's a push.

So yes.. lots of games use the max power but you have to have the right res to go with it.
 
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lemonkettaz said:
ah ok. before today i had the x800 and that obviously struggled in fear, x1800 is comfortable.

id thought the 7800gt would do well, especially at 1280x1024

Looking at reviews the GT gets about 36fps in the benchmark 1280x1024 4xaa 16xaf. I run at 2xAA 2xAF almost all settings on max and the test turns in 48fps avg but in the game it can struggle a bit to the extent its annoying.

Its not a bad card but its not really a max I.Q and speed card thats why it only cost me £240 instead of £411. :)
 
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Theres only two games that I've played that really pushed me pc, FEAR and COD2. I had to drop the res down and adjust the detail level and turn off soft shadows to maintain what I consider to be a good framerate in FEAR. Thats with an X1800XL, 3700 @ 2.5ghz, and 2g of memory. Not exactly a slouch, but I had those probs stated earlier with FEAR.
COD2 is a joke as far as I can see, a badly ported X-box game iirc, and runs like a dog on anybody's pc. You need a monster just to keep the framerate with a high res and all the eye candy.
Lotsa games will run really well on some systems, depends wether they're openGL based, D3D based and what type of vidcard is being used, nvidia or ATI. Theres a lot of variables atm, but you can hedge your bets as it were by buying a fast, powerful card say, X1800XT or 7800GTX second hand, as theres probably going to be a few for sale in the MM shortly.
 
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lemonkettaz said:
bit extreme saying cod2 is a joke... a cheap ported xbox360 game?

I reckon it is a joke meself, good game to play though, but considering that other games of the same type run so much better, I honestly think the ppl that did the porting could have done a better job and optimised it to run smoother on high end hardware at least. Cosidering I was getting 20-25 fps at one point with my pc (see sig) when half life 2 'frinstance runs like butter on lower spec systems, let alone mine, which albeit is not the most powerful, but its no slouch either. I tried running it in DX7 mode and hated the way it looked, so I persevered with it and got it running sort of ok, but I feel that I shouldn't have had to do that. Just my opinion.
 
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cleanbluesky said:
If you ask questions like this, you are less likely to want the latest board with the hoogest fancy heatsink imaginable...

Why not stop asking questions and just click buy?


click , buy, work , work , work and pay


LOL
 
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My setup struggles at 1600x1200 4xaa in FEAR and is a bit laggy at the same settings in COD2, so is King Kong. Quake's fine, as is Far Cry and Doom3. Most newish cards are fine at the "lower" resolutions being discussed (1024 etc) but with1600x1200 and above you really need fat cards to not run around at 20-30fps (which is unplayable imo). If you can't run them in all their glory then i'm not interested, I find it very frustrating chugging along.
 
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