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"I need a new PC!" 2010 Edition

I'm trying to play Crysis Warhead on an xfx 5770, windows 7 64 bit PC and it'll get to the first area and not allow me to move and the sound "kicks in" after a few seconds. Any help, searched the google per PC Gaf etiquette and found nothing.
 
The first mobile driver was 179.28, released in December of 2008.

My bad, I thought everyone knew.
 
Well my new pc arrived today finally, so far no problems. Installed AVG and then firefox and I'm also getting whatever windows update found for the time being(8 windows 7 updates and a driver for my monitor apparently) .

I'll post pictures later, NCIX did a bang up job on the assembly, no wire clutter and fantastic job packing it.
 
drkOne said:
So, I never got to understand much about how all those filters work.
I recently build my new rig with a 5850, and so I've started maxing everything in the settings for most games.
But there's one thing I'm always clueless when I tweak with it, and I just think of it as "the higher the better".

I read brain_stew's thread about Triple Buffering and understood that, have the D3DOverrider running and set V-sync both on my GPU Drivers and in-game always to off.

Now there are all those Anti-Aliasing, the AA modes and all, Anisotropic, Mipmap. I thought about reading it on Wikipedia, but it seemed too technical for what I wanted to understand.

So what I really wanted to know would be how to tweak with all those settings. I started by setting everything to best quality on Catalyst.
AA: 24X with Edge-detect filter
Mode: Super-sample
AF: 16X
Catalyst AI: Advanced
Mipmap: High Quality

I noticed that the gameplay on L4D2 started to have somewhat of an input lag. Checked with FRAPS and I was playing at around 25-30FPS
So I decided to tweak with the settings. AA was Bilinear and AF was off.
I set it to MSAA 8X and AF 16X. That solved it. Got it to 60 stable.

Did it override the settings on the Catalyst and thus lowering the settings a bit?
Should I just set the Catalyst to not force anything and always tweak the filters in-game?
Or any other software I should be using to control the filters?
I'm aiming for best graphics, but keeping most games at a stable 60FPS (except the ones that are acceptable to run at 30 average).
And I hope this was the right thread to ask, thought the members that come around here would be able to help.

Hopefully someone answers because I would like to know this as well. Getting my new PC with the same card tomorrow.
 
mileS said:
Hopefully someone answers because I would like to know this as well. Getting my new PC with the same card tomorrow.

The only thing I'd force is AF, stay the heck away from Edge Detect AA on any newer games and use Box AA unless you want a huge performance hit.
 
drkOne said:
So, I never got to understand much about how all those filters work.
I recently build my new rig with a 5850, and so I've started maxing everything in the settings for most games.
But there's one thing I'm always clueless when I tweak with it, and I just think of it as "the higher the better".

I read brain_stew's thread about Triple Buffering and understood that, have the D3DOverrider running and set V-sync both on my GPU Drivers and in-game always to off.

Now there are all those Anti-Aliasing, the AA modes and all, Anisotropic, Mipmap. I thought about reading it on Wikipedia, but it seemed too technical for what I wanted to understand.

So what I really wanted to know would be how to tweak with all those settings. I started by setting everything to best quality on Catalyst.
AA: 24X with Edge-detect filter
Mode: Super-sample
AF: 16X
Catalyst AI: Advanced
Mipmap: High Quality

I noticed that the gameplay on L4D2 started to have somewhat of an input lag. Checked with FRAPS and I was playing at around 25-30FPS
So I decided to tweak with the settings. AA was Bilinear and AF was off.
I set it to MSAA 8X and AF 16X. That solved it. Got it to 60 stable.

Did it override the settings on the Catalyst and thus lowering the settings a bit?
Should I just set the Catalyst to not force anything and always tweak the filters in-game?
Or any other software I should be using to control the filters?
I'm aiming for best graphics, but keeping most games at a stable 60FPS (except the ones that are acceptable to run at 30 average).
And I hope this was the right thread to ask, thought the members that come around here would be able to help.

Ok, first off you should (almost) always use the in game settings for something if it there as opposed to the CCC settings. Exception is v-sync and triple buffering, which you should set the overdrive tool you are using. The exception is for source games like l4d, hl2 etc. I believe they have glitches with triple buffering but I do not play these games often and it may be fixed. Someone else will have to correct this if I am wrong which I may very well be. Now for the details.

AA: This smoothes edges. The 5850 has two windows in the CCC for it. One is simply AA and the other is AA mode. AA mode says what type of AA you are using.

For the "AA Mode" window: Multisample takes the least resources and has the lowest quality, Advanced multi sample is better and uses a bit more resources and supersample smoothes pretty much everything and takes the most resources. Basically, supersample takes your game, then renders it at a higher resolution and downsamples it back to what you are displaying.

For the AA window: You have a slider and a dropdown menu. The dropdown menu should have options such as box, narrow tent, wide tent and edge detect. Basically, these are quality settings with edge detect being the best and taking the most resources. I don't know exactly how they are different. On the slider, you have a range of 2x,4x,8x. This coupled by what you chose in the dropdown menu will be what your AA reading will display as ( for example edge detect + 8xAA will be 24x total AA.

AA is the hardest setting here on your card. Depending on what you want for framerates and what resoultion you are playing at will determine how much to use, but 24x supersample is the reason your framerates died.

Also, some games you cannot force AA or it will take more resources than you expected. And, as always, use the game settings if they are there.

AF: This setting determines how sharp ground and distance textures are. If you ever noticed a blurry ground near your char, this is because this setting is off. you can choose from 2,4,8,16x AF. It does not take alot of resources anymore and should be at 16x, maybe 8x minimum. If the game has settings for this, use them over the CCC.

Catalyst AI is basically driver optimizations that ATI have made. You need it on to use Crossfire if you have two cards or any optimizations that ATI has made for specific games. You can loose a little image quality but I have not noticed anything. Standard is the best option for this setting.

Mipmaps are a way games determine which texture to display at what distance. Have you ever noticed that you have a lower res texture on a something and then as you get closer a better one pops in and replaces it? Keeping this at HQ is the best option especially with a 5850.

Hope that explains everything a bit better. And remember, in game settings are better than forced settings. Only use the forced ones if the game does not have options for them. If it does, set AA and AF to "Use application settings".
 
I ordered a middle of the road laptop.
Its a Dell Studio, it has an ATI 4570, 4 GB of RAM and a 2.1 Core 2 Duo.

What can I expect from it gamingwise?
 
Guess this is the best place to ask. What are the chances of ATI releasing a 5790 sometime this year? I've been eyeing the 5770 for a while as a nice evolution from my 4670, but the fact that it's only around the 4870 in power is kind of a turn off, as I want something that's semi future-proof. I would go for a 5850, but my psu (and mayyybe my case) are holding me back and don't want to shell out to upgrade them.
 
Is there an official "I need a new laptop!" thread? If not, maybe I could ask in here.

I'm looking to buy a new laptop at the end of January. I'm in the UK, so it needs to be in stock on a UK online store, and because I'm looking at more expensive models than I normally would, it needs to be available on a finance plan (so e.g. stores like dabs.com, ebuyer.com, laptopsdirect.co.uk). I'm looking at the £750-£1000 price range and I'd like something that I can do some gaming on (e.g. Left 4 Dead 2, Modern Warfare 2). I'm not too concerned about battery life, though if I could find a laptop with the new switchable graphics where it can use a shitty Intel GPU for web browsing and email and switch to a good one for gaming, that would be cool. I'd also like to be able to watch Blu-Rays on it - I'll be visiting my parents in February, and they don't have a Blu-Ray player, so I could hook up the laptop to their HDTV and play stuff on it.

This is the one I've been looking at so far: Sony VAIO FW56E. I'm not sure how good a Mobility Radeon 4570 is but other than that it seems to do everything I want. Anyone got any other suggestions?
 
Dagless M.D. said:
Hey, was thinking about upgrading my graphics card on my computer, its a few years old, but i was wondering if it would be worth it? Just looking to be able to play new releases at a stable framerate, not bothered if the settings are low.

Core 2 Duo 2.13
2gb ram
x1300pro

Definitely, especially if you can OC that CPU (3ghz will do) and add a couple of gigs of RAM. If you want to avoid buying a new CPU a 4670 or 9800GT Eco would be a good fit.
 
gsarjeant said:
Thank you both. PC GAF is a helpful place.

I have the latest drivers installed now and have D3DOverrider going. I get the happy chime and everything when I start a game. Looks like all is well.

One last question (for now): Should I also force triple-buffering in the NVIDIA control panel, or just use D3DOverrider for that? The NVIDIA control panel is for OpenGL games and D3DOverrider is for DirectX games, correct? Are there any conflicts that would be caused by enabling both?

Go ahead and force it in the control panel for OpenGL games, shouldn't cause any conflict. Don't enable vsync in the driver settings though, just set vsync to on in any OpenGL game you use and you should be good. Leave it off in D3D titles (pretty much everything worth a damn these days).


MotherFan said:
The exception is for source games like l4d, hl2 etc. I believe they have glitches with triple buffering but I do not play these games often and it may be fixed.
.

Nah, they work fine. There'll be the odd exception like Crysis where you can use its inengine tripple buffering (enable through its config file) instead, and for those rare games just create a new profile within D3DOverrider that disables it for that specific game. Its pretty rare.
 
Bidermaier said:
I ordered a middle of the road laptop.
Its a Dell Studio, it has an ATI 4570, 4 GB of RAM and a 2.1 Core 2 Duo.

What can I expect from it gamingwise?

Not as much as you might have hoped. Despite the name suggesting a decent part its still the same 80 SP core used in ATI's lowest end discrete parts. FWIW, a DDR3 4650 (found in plenty laptops in that sort of price range) is a good 3-5x upgrade. Most games will play but you'll have to get used to lowering settings, resolution and AA will be the big killers so keep them as low as you can tolerate.

Here's some benchmarks:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4570.13885.0.html

Hover over the "high", "medium" or "low" to see the actual settings used for each game.


Danj said:
Is there an official "I need a new laptop!" thread? If not, maybe I could ask in here.

I'm looking to buy a new laptop at the end of January. I'm in the UK, so it needs to be in stock on a UK online store, and because I'm looking at more expensive models than I normally would, it needs to be available on a finance plan (so e.g. stores like dabs.com, ebuyer.com, laptopsdirect.co.uk). I'm looking at the £750-£1000 price range and I'd like something that I can do some gaming on (e.g. Left 4 Dead 2, Modern Warfare 2). I'm not too concerned about battery life, though if I could find a laptop with the new switchable graphics where it can use a shitty Intel GPU for web browsing and email and switch to a good one for gaming, that would be cool. I'd also like to be able to watch Blu-Rays on it - I'll be visiting my parents in February, and they don't have a Blu-Ray player, so I could hook up the laptop to their HDTV and play stuff on it.

This is the one I've been looking at so far: Sony VAIO FW56E. I'm not sure how good a Mobility Radeon 4570 is but other than that it seems to do everything I want. Anyone got any other suggestions?


4570 is no good for gaming.

You want a 4650 DDR3 as a minimum from the ATI side, 9600M GT, GT130M, GT 220M if its an Nvidia chip. Anything less and you're in for serious disappointment.

Is the netbook (or 10-12"CULV) + desktop route not in anyway possible? If you care about gaming and portability, its probably the way to go. Consider ditching the BD requirement if you can, its going to seriously restrict your choices, and I don't see why you can't just rip a 5mbps 720p h.264 version for viewing on the go, the battery life savings alone are worth it.
 
So how much of a boost would running Crossfire 5850s give? Its nothing I want to do anytime soon but something Ive kept in the back of my mind since building this PC.

I can currently run Crysis at 1920x1080 on mostly Very High settings with very little drops below 30FPS and its so gorgeous. However, Im finding myself to be something of a graphics whore now that I have a PC that can display these games so beautifully. I just want to know if in the future when games start surpassing Crysis, would running Crossfire 5850s give me enough of a boost to keep playing them at mostly max settings and a decent FPS?

I know its hard to predict the future but I figured you guys might be able to give an idea since youve probably been around this block before.
 
vocab said:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5850-review-crossfire/


There's your answer. Overall you'll see noticeable gains. A 5850 crossfire will probably last you a hell of a long time the way current game development is. Is it worth it? That's up to you. I would personally wait till the price drops or gets on sale.

You've got an increase in lag, stutter and general headaches/incompatibility to go with those perforamce gains as well of course.
 
vocab said:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5850-review-crossfire/


There's your answer. Overall you'll see noticeable gains. A 5850 crossfire will probably last you a hell of a long time the way current game development is. Is it worth it? That's up to you. I would personally wait till the price drops or gets on sale.

Thanks for the link.

Yeah, I agree about waiting. I wont do this until I start to see games lag behind on my PC but Id just like to have an idea of what Id get beforehand.

brain_stew said:
You've got an increase in lag, stutter and general headaches/incompatibility to go with those perforamce gains as well of course.
So issues like that are pretty common? Are they gamebreaking?
 
So, here i am.
It's like 5 years, since i'm out of PC gaming(i've been playing a bit with a 2005 laptop, but nothing serious)and i'm willing to come back(not going to abandon console gaming, though :lol); the problem is, i'm a complete newbie about PC specs, assembling etc etc etc--

So i don't even know how much i should spend and i didn't really set a budget('cause i have not really an idea of what i need).. but i think it's time to start organize things a bit, for that matter, so i made a list of PC games i'm interested in, that i'd like to play to high/very high(not necessarly all maxed out with 1200p resolution and 32000xAA :lol, but again, i'm not an expert)and i would love if someone here could help me, telling me what parts i should need to run them properly.
I'm European(Italy)so if you can't tell me exact prices, i can check that myself, just tell me the specs and i'll google them. :P

Here's the list:
Stalker(clear Sky/call of Pripyat)
Settlers 7
Tropico 3
the sims 3
Mirror's Edge
Street Fighter 4
Oblivion(possibly with graphic tweaks mods)
empires total war
Resident Evil 5
Star Wars FU
Cryostasis
ArmA2(i heard this one is really though to handle)


and, it's Crysis still unplayable at high settings, or was that just a metropolitan BS?I'd like to try it, also.
And a hell of a lot of adventure game that, i guess, will run good anyway.

Thanks to anyone who's going to bother helping me. :D
 
This graphics card . . . Yeah or Ney?

gts250.png
 
Salaadin said:
Thanks for the link.

Yeah, I agree about waiting. I wont do this until I start to see games lag behind on my PC but Id just like to have an idea of what Id get beforehand.


So issues like that are pretty common? Are they gamebreaking?

They're just part of the package of SLI/Crossfire due to the way they work. Its upto you if they're worth dealing with, for me personally they're definitely not.
 
UrbanRats said:
So, here i am.
It's like 5 years, since i'm out of PC gaming(i've been playing a bit with a 2005 laptop, but nothing serious)and i'm willing to come back(not going to abandon console gaming, though :lol); the problem is, i'm a complete newbie about PC specs, assembling etc etc etc--

So i don't even know how much i should spend and i didn't really set a budget('cause i have not really an idea of what i need).. but i think it's time to start organize things a bit, for that matter, so i made a list of PC games i'm interested in, that i'd like to play to high/very high(not necessarly all maxed out with 1200p resolution and 32000xAA :lol, but again, i'm not an expert)and i would love if someone here could help me, telling me what parts i should need to run them properly.
I'm European(Italy)so if you can't tell me exact prices, i can check that myself, just tell me the specs and i'll google them. :P

Here's the list:
Stalker(clear Sky/call of Pripyat)
Settlers 7
Tropico 3
the sims 3
Mirror's Edge
Street Fighter 4
Oblivion(possibly with graphic tweaks mods)
empires total war
Resident Evil 5
Star Wars FU
Cryostasis
ArmA2(i heard this one is really though to handle)


and, it's Crysis still unplayable at high settings, or was that just a metropolitan BS?I'd like to try it, also.
And a hell of a lot of adventure game that, i guess, will run good anyway.

Thanks to anyone who's going to bother helping me. :D

ATI 5770 (5850 if budget allows)
500w PSU from a decent brand
AMD Athlon ii X3 435 (Phenom ii X4 925 if budget allows)
4GB DDR3
770 AM3 DDR3 motherboard (probably from Gigabyte or MSI)
500GB Samsung F3

That should cover it on a very reasonable budget.
 
brain_stew said:
4570 is no good for gaming.

You want a 4650 DDR3 as a minimum from the ATI side, 9600M GT, GT130M, GT 220M if its an Nvidia chip. Anything less and you're in for serious disappointment.

Is the netbook (or 10-12"CULV) + desktop route not in anyway possible? If you care about gaming and portability, its probably the way to go. Consider ditching the BD requirement if you can, its going to seriously restrict your choices, and I don't see why you can't just rip a 5mbps 720p h.264 version for viewing on the go, the battery life savings alone are worth it.

Well, I guess I can do without the BD requirement, but the thing is I am going to be visiting my parents for 3 weeks next month and I am gonna need some entertainment; none of the PCs left up there are game capable, so if I want to do any gaming I've gotta bring my own gear and I'm not humping my desktop up there on the train.

As far as Nvidia's concerned, what are the 330s like? Are they just rebadged 230s? If so, are they any good? I see the new VAIO F series uses them and it's also in the price range I was looking at, though so far it's only on Sony Style and not any of the other suppliers.
 
Danj said:
Well, I guess I can do without the BD requirement, but the thing is I am going to be visiting my parents for 3 weeks next month and I am gonna need some entertainment; none of the PCs left up there are game capable, so if I want to do any gaming I've gotta bring my own gear and I'm not humping my desktop up there on the train.

As far as Nvidia's concerned, what are the 330s like? Are they just rebadged 230s? If so, are they any good? I see the new VAIO F series uses them and it's also in the price range I was looking at, though so far it's only on Sony Style and not any of the other suppliers.

Can you not just rip your DVDs/BDs? Why would you want to take a bunch of discs with you anyway?

GT 330M seems to be the the same as a GT 240m so that should be decent enough. Check here for the performance you can be expecting:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-240M.17654.0.html

Note, this is assuming it uses DDR3/GDDR3, if it specifies DDR2 RAM for the GPU then stay away.
 
brain_stew said:
Can you not just rip your DVDs/BDs? Why would you want to take a bunch of discs with you anyway?

GT 330M seems to be the the same as a GT 240m so that should be decent enough. Check here for the performance you can be expecting:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-240M.17654.0.html

Note, this is assuming it uses DDR3/GDDR3, if it specifies DDR2 RAM for the GPU then stay away.

I can't rip BDs, we only have one BD capable device in the house and it's not mine, it's my housemate's PS3. Can't download BD rips either as they are too big for our shitty broadband connection. But yeah, I guess I don't actually need the BD capability, it'd just be nice to have.

As for the graphics of the F series, yes it is GDDR3, here are the specs.
 
I have a Intel Core2 Duo CPU E7400(2.80GHz) 2.0 Ram and a Nvidia Geforce 9800 GT. Nothing special, custom built machine that is rock solid.

Tell me there is no reason to buy a i3 530/540 chip and a new board because I have just enough money to buy both and I am getting that twitchy feeling because by all reviews it would be a nice starting upgrade to the next level.
 
So I'm looking to use CryEngine 2 and UE3 to do some work in but my current rig is struggling to keep up with anything remotely intense.

I've been out of the loop on hardware lately. Can someone recommend a good CPU and GPU that are powerful enough to run Crysis on max but relatively cheap? I looking to spend maybe £300 on everything in whole.
 
To make a long story very, very short, either my graphics card (512MB 8800GT) is dying/dead, or my motherboard/CPU is. (I'm lumping those two together because if I have to spend the money to replace one of them, I'd rather put it toward something better than my E6400.) I've already made plans to go and pick up a bare-bones Radeon X1300 from my local Micro Center to test the video side, but if that doesn't help...

If that doesn't do it, I'm looking for a reasonably-priced CPU/motherboard duo. It can be an official combo or not; I don't really care. I've heard nothing but good things about Intel's i-series, but I'm not sure where the current price/performance sweet spot is. I'm looking to spend as little as possible (especially since I just bought an $80 Corsair power supply when I thought my old p/s was the problem); maybe $200-250?
 
i turned on my PC today and got this blue screen error message
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
***stop 0x000000D1 (oxFFFFF88011C00000,0x000000000000000E 0x0000000000000000 xFFFFF880100516DE

i haven't found anything that can help me. all i can think of is last night i installed a media card reader, installed another card for SLI (GTX 260) and installed mster config 3.01 for crysis, i was able to get into windows and restarted and got the error message again. help!!!
 
evil solrac v3.0 said:
i turned on my PC today and got this blue screen error message
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
***stop 0x000000D1 (oxFFFFF88011C00000,0x000000000000000E 0x0000000000000000 xFFFFF880100516DE

i haven't found anything that can help me. all i can think of is last night i installed a media card reader, installed another card for SLI (GTX 260) and installed mster config 3.01 for crysis, i was able to get into windows and restarted and got the error message again. help!!!


did u try last known good configuration or a restore point?
 
Was wondering if anyone else is having issues getting a 5870 to properly display on a 720p screen. Specifically a 42" Samsung Series 4. I'm getting a thick black border around my screen when using any resolution. This wasn't a problem when I was using a PC with a 4850.
 
Crunched said:
Was wondering if anyone else is having issues getting a 5870 to properly display on a 720p screen. Specifically a 42" Samsung Series 4. I'm getting a thick black border around my screen when using any resolution. This wasn't a problem when I was using a PC with a 4850.

Have you adjusted the HDTV scaling option in the CCC?
 
Now is not the wisest of times to be buying a gaming capable notebook. A ton of stuff with ATI's 5000 series has just been showed at CES, coming out in the next couple months, then Nvidia has more of G200 based mobile chips coming out around CeBIT, in the first week of to mid-March.
evil solrac v3.0 said:
i did. i was able to start normally but then i restarted it and got the message again.
Reinstall the SLI driver.
 
Metalic Sand said:
I use a GTS 250. Great for 1440x900. Anything higher and your looking at lower settings.
Really? Ouch. That is not even HDTV (1080p) resolution. And that was the high-end of the cards the have on sale.
 
Ok. I need some help. I'm looking for a great PCI-e 2.0 x16 card that does not require an extra 6-pin connection from a PSU. Any suggestions?
 
Vieo said:
Ok. I need some help. I'm looking for a great PCI-e 2.0 x16 card that does not require an extra 6-pin connection from a PSU. Any suggestions?

Do you know if your PSU has juice to spare? They have adapters that allow you to use a 4-pin molex to power a 6-pin PCI-E adapter. If you have a PSU with some capacity to spare it might work.
 
Is there a rather big jump between the new branded 250 compared to the 260 gtx? I know the 250 was called something else when I built my pc but does it still play games like dirt2 and arkham at 60? (not at full 1080p that's overkill for a lower end card)
 
Fragamemnon said:
Do you know if your PSU has juice to spare? They have adapters that allow you to use a 4-pin molex to power a 6-pin PCI-E adapter. If you have a PSU with some capacity to spare it might work.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139001

I'll be using that PSU since it's an old one that I had knocking around. I'm looking for a non 6-pin video card because the case I'll be using is crazy small and can't be fit with any cards over ~8inches in length.
 
Ripclawe said:
I have a Intel Core2 Duo CPU E7400(2.80GHz) 2.0 Ram and a Nvidia Geforce 9800 GT. Nothing special, custom built machine that is rock solid.

Tell me there is no reason to buy a i3 530/540 chip and a new board because I have just enough money to buy both and I am getting that twitchy feeling because by all reviews it would be a nice starting upgrade to the next level.

There is no reason. You might want to upgrade your graphics card if you want to spend on something, but just overclock that CPU if you want more juice out of it. The extra mileage you'll get out of an i5 is really, really not worth it.
 
Crunched said:
Was wondering if anyone else is having issues getting a 5870 to properly display on a 720p screen. Specifically a 42" Samsung Series 4. I'm getting a thick black border around my screen when using any resolution. This wasn't a problem when I was using a PC with a 4850.

Why are you outputting 720p to a HDTV? Use its native resolution (probably 1360x768).
 
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