Father Xmas
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Posts
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As an ATI card you should look at Bill Z Bubba's ATI guide stickied on this board. There are certain graphic options that don't work well together.
Now whether or not that's the cause of your dips, a kind of doubt it. -
Well if you posted a CoHHelper report we would have seen that earlier.
You can turn Character Detail and Physics back up. Character detail simply changes when Player and NPC models shift from detailed to simple. It saves a few polygons but I haven't ever noticed an area where that changes framerate one bit. Physics may do a bit more math but there isn't that many instances where physics is used.
World Detail determines how far you can see (until the fog). CoV is chock full of objects, way way more than CoH, and if they can't be simply tossed away because they are to far from you they will be fed eventually to your video card, even if they end up behind six other things. The Z buffer gets quite a workout in CoV. -
I only look at vet badges when giving away goodies to low level characters. See if I can convert short term players into long term.
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Quote:Don't see anything I would disagree with.Originally Posted by Mr. NoPants
My sister in law asked for some recommendations on a system she is building that would "play CoH and web games".
I threw together a quick list at Newegg and was wondering if anyone could give it the once over.
I would double check to make sure your sister in law's case is full size, as in it can fit an ATX motherboard. Just to be on the safe side. -
Just making sure here but could any of those phantom doors be underground. Bricks have a history of mission doors in the underground parking areas throughout the zone.
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The game needs to be updated to the proper version to connect to the server. I'm not sure why the updater isn't. Not sure if it's a problem with steam or not. You should be running the game via the updater, CoHUpdater.exe in the game's folder.
You also need to update your video card driver. Version 186 is known to cause a black screen with CoH/V.
Here is the latest for your video card and OS. -
Same here. Fortunately I made a trial account once and that account gets the newsletters.
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People are forgetting the tentacles in the water in Faultline. Not a full fledge monster or GM but it does add flavor.
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Quote:Apologies for sticking my head over here from across the pond but I was bored and noticed this thread.Originally Posted by Sapphic_Neko
Well, i've been thinking on retiring my old warhorse. Currently on a a intel dual core 2.67ghz with 4gb ram and a 8800gts graphics card. Starting to feel a little slow (well not really slow, but i've been forced to tone down settings in some games now) to me and i've started poking around for a new one.
Now i'm probably not gonna buy one anytime soon (guessing after x-mas), definatly not before windows 7 is out tho.
What i'm looking for is a gaming machine mostly, but i'm not really uptodate on everything.
I don't wanna skimp out on stuff because it's cheap, but at the same time i don't wanna overpay for minimal gains.
I've been glancing somewhat at this machine: https://www.inet.se/datorer/stationa...gamer/1517094/
Now my biggest questions are probably.
The processor, i understand i7 is the newest one out and i was looking at some prices.
why is the 3.33 Ghz almost 4 times as expensive as the 2.66 one? is it four times as fast? what makes it that much more spendy?
And the graphics card, how much better is a 285 or even a 295? i know the 285 is about 50% more expensive and the 295 is over twice as much as the 275. Is there a point with SLI? how many games are actually gonna take advantage of that? (note, i do not want an ati)
And how much benefit am i gonna see if i get a velociraptor harddrive, they're pretty small only 100-150gb, but i guess they're faster. Should i put the OS on that if i get one or games? and how much of a diffrence do they really make?
Would i notice any diffrence with more than 6GB memory? if i should say double that.
And is there something else coming out in the near future that might be worth waiting for, either for being really good or due to it's gonna drive prices down on other parts.
I'm asking here for some info prior to going into a computer store cause for some reason i tend get odd looks when i ask for a gaming rig and not taken seriously. When i was looking to buy the comp i got now, in one store a clerk even said "do you really a machine that fast for blogging and chatting?", suffice to say, he did not make a sale to me that day.
-- CPU --
The major differences between the 3.33GHz i7-975 and the 2.66GHz i7-920, other than 25% faster CPU clock speed are an unlocked CPU multiplier, higher clocked L3 cache and memory controller and higher clocked QPI bus to the X58 Northbridge.
It is not unusual that in very high end gaming system to have 3 single GPU high end video cards or a pair of dual GPU (like the GTX 295 or HD 4870 X2) cards in the system. High end GPUs want to be fed. Since the video cards are connected to the X58 Northbridge, a faster bus between the CPU and the Northbridge seems desirable. The i7-975 runs at 3.2GHz while the i7-920 and 950 runs at 2.4GHz.
Games are also sensitive to memory performance. The faster L3 cache and memory controller of the "uncore" (Intel's term) portion of the i7 improves performance by a bit. The uncore of the i7-975 runs at 2.66GHz, the i7-920 and 950 runs at 2.13GHz.
However the i7-975 can be overclocked without changing the base clock speed making it arguably a more stable overclocking platform. Between that and the faster L3 cache, memory controller and QPI bus, it's a perfect CPU for gamers with a lot of cash and Intel knows it.
The thing is however that the i7-920 can easily be overclocked to the same speeds of the i7-975 by upping the base clock from 133 to 167MHz. Only the QPI will be running slower at 3.0GHz. Home builders know this and that's the route they'll take than paying through the nose.
-- Video Card --
Your 8800GTS has 128 streaming processors to do it's work. Both the GTX 275 and 285 have 240. The main difference between the two cards is the 285 has about 25% more video memory bandwidth than the 275 and 14% more memory. It's also clocked slightly faster. The GTX 295 can be thought of as two underclocked GTX 275s but as a single card, already set up as SLi.
It's easy for a game developer to design a game that shines when multiple video cards are used. It's much more difficult to make it look good and run well with a single card. It's easy to believe that SLi or Crossfire setups are required looking at video card reviews. But it is important to remember that those benchmarks are run usually with all the game options turned to 11. Also very high resolutions are also used, 2560x1600 is not uncommon to show off the advantage of a multiple video card setup. But the real question that reviewers should be asking, and a few do, is how far off of the extreme settings do you need to back off to get an acceptable frame rate at various resolutions?
I personally am of the opinion that a single "powerful" GPU card should be enough for most people and that a little tuning of game settings will give most people an acceptable trade off between performance and pretty. Multiple video card setups use a lot of power, produce a lot of heat and inconsistent benefit depending on the game. And by powerful I'm talking in the $250-350 US range.
-- Hard Drive --
This historical review of drives should give you and idea how much better a 150GB VelociRaptor drive is compared to a 1TB Caviar Black for instance. Yellow drives are 3.5 inch, Blue are 2.5 inch, 10000 RPM drives like the VelociRaptor is brown, solid state drives (SSD) are in green. Short version, the VelociRaptor is 6-10 times more expensive per GB than a 1 TB 7200RPM drive. The VelociRaptor still has better random seek times but transfer rates are nearly the same with the newest 7200 RPM drives. The really fast small drives are SSDs now but they make the VelociRaptor look cheap on a per GB basis. They are also not quite there yet, there are still a few problems that need to be cleared up, besides the price, before they go mainstream.
-- Memory --
Is 6GB of system memory enough? Tom's Hardware thinks so.
-- What's Coming? --
Both Intel and AMD will be introducing 6 core CPUs within a year. DDR3 is here to stay and it's price is nearly the same as DDR2 finally. 2TB drives are now out. ATI just released their next gen video card to compete with the GTX 275 and 285. nVidia's next gen GPU is rumored to be late. SATA 3 and USB 3 are coming soon to motherboards. Few devices can take advantage of the addition bandwidth they provide (SSDs basically).
That's all I can think of off the top of my head.
Edit: One last thing. Your computer store story reminds me of this. -
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I tagged five threads on this subject in Tech and Player Questions on this subject. There may be more in other boards.
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Well I was listing what the reviews at the time of it's debut had as a MSRP. I would imagine that like all hot top end cards, the price rise in the short term due to demand and availability.
Considering it was nearly twice as fast in AA and AF modes as the nVidia FX 5950 or the ATI 9800XT and had support for Dx9 and Pixel Shader 3.0, it was definitely a very sexy card at the time. -
Well a lot has changed in 7 years.
Hard disk and RAM is relatively cheap and with a 64-bit OS, 4-6GB of memory is becoming the standard along with 500-1000GB hard drives.
Dual core CPUs are a dime a dozen with triple and quad cores starting to become more common in mid range systems. Intel's Core 2 and now Core i5 and i7 CPUs have allowed Intel to catch up and go past AMD's Athlon series of CPUs. AMD has countered with the Athlon II and the Phenom II CPUs but they are now slower clock for clock than Intel's Core 2, Core i5 or Core i7 CPUs. However if you compare by price performance, a $200 AMD processor performs as well as a $200 Intel processor in most things.
Video card power has jumped expodentially in the last 7 years. The relatively modest 9500GT, a $50-60 card online, is on par with the 5 1/2 year old 6800 Ultra, which was $500 when it was introduced. And back then the 6800 Ultra simply outclassed any card from either nVidia or ATI that came before it. Of course nowadays, the 9500GT is considered to be on the low end of the performance scale with the current high end cards being around 8x as powerful. But that power comes with a price, both in money as well as the power needed to run them. Also 512MB is pretty standard for video memory while some cards come equip with as much as 2GB of memory with around 1GB becoming the standard. Whether 1GB is useful or not still depends on the performance of the card and the game settings you are trying to play at. -
Quote:There is part of me who would like to see a story focusing on a new young hero seeing Paragon through their eyes. His/her encounters with some of the various critter groups, Vahz, Clocks, Lost, CoT, Skulls and Hellions. Or maybe centering on the Hollows which is an interesting setting.Originally Posted by Dark_Respite
I know according to the sparse info out there on the Internet, IF this film were ever to get made, supposedly it's going to focus on the Rikti War. If done properly, I agree it could be quite cool. But I wonder if there might be other stories in the CoH canon that might be better suited to a movie, assuming we actually want plot, and not just Michael Bay explosions and the more-than-occasional T&A shots.
(And before anyone makes the comment, we could probably have BOTH plot and the aforementioned explosions and T&A shots. But plot should fit in there somewhere.)
A few folks have said they'd rather the movie NOT focus on the Phalanx, and instead focus more on some of the lesser-known heroes. (Or as a couple people suggested, have a contest to see whose heroes/villains make it into the movie.)
What do you guys think?
(And for that matter, should it be animated? CGI? Live action?)
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Something similar to Top 10 with the new hero joining some established group of heroes. -
I hope they fixed the spawning rate for this year for critters. I remember that last year I think we had a problem with ghosts and vamps, I think.
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Oops, misread the question.
Still, it'll run but it's up to the OP's friend to first have reasonable expectations about performance and second tune it using /showfps 1 while adjusting the options to see which setting impacts frame rate by how much to fine the balance between acceptable performance and pretty. -
Also the counter to "to hit" is defense.
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I would imagine if 1000 players were soloing in there own instanced missions that would load the system differently than if the 1000 players were teaming in 150 instanced missions. The number of zones in the midst of a Rikti or Zombie invasion or other zone wide event.
Just guessing. -
Quote:Not this again.Originally Posted by Aggelakis
It says double influence.
Unless they tweaked the inf instead of XP code for SSK critter XP is converted on a 1 to 1 basis for inf.
Don't make me trudge through the patch notes to find. Never mind, too late, did it anyway. -
Quote:Depends on their target resolution.Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
My friends thinking of playing. She's got a geforce 9400 gt. Is this card capable of running CoH?
Eco
Driving a 1920x1200 display at 60Hz, no.
1440x900 at 30 Hz without some of the fancy shaders effects, maybe. It'll may require a bit of tuning of the individual settings to find the balance between pretty and performance.
The 9400GT has one of the worst performance/$ ratio out there (fix price for card manufacturing and packaging can only go so low). The 9500GT has twice the power for only a few dollars more, the GDDR3 memory version has twice the video memory bandwidth. I'm seeing a $15-20 price difference at NewEgg. -
Quote:The CoH/V uses OpenGL to render the game. Sound is still Dx.Originally Posted by Hart
It's most likely DX10 vs DX9.
If you find a way to install DX10 on XP, I'd love to hear about it. That would probably save me buying an operating system for another few years. -
Quote:Default generic Vista drivers implement OpenGL this way, via a Dx wrapper (which is limited to V1.4 of OpenGL) but for native hardware support graphic card companies, notably nVidia and ATI, provide an installable client driver in their graphics driver package which I believe both support at least OpenGL V3.0.Originally Posted by PumBumbler
I thought that it was a DirectX wrapper over OpenGL calls mostly, except for a couple of weirdo function calls. Still, it would likely give these virtualized rendering device managers fits. The only reason why I think things might have improved is that since the the Mac port has arrived, there might have been some good impetus to clean up some code for cross platform compatibility.
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They need to equip these guys with N-Gage like phones so they can be crabwalking and sidetalking.
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Since CoH uses OpenGL and not Dx for rendering so if either are a Dx only we're out of luck (which looks to be the issue with Hydra).
Note with Eyefinity, the HD 5xxx series can't currently run in CrossFire mode. So what you get is a very powerful card but pushing as much as 24 million pixels per frame, not an ideal solution at all for gaming.
And as Master-Blade points out, CoH's lateral field of view is fixed. Unlike a racing game or flight simulator which may recognize that a 48:10 ratio screen means a wider lateral FoV is desired. Here such a display would seriously reduce what you see vertically in a 3:1 monitor configuration. Might as well go first person mode and pretend you are looking out of the eye slit in your MK 1 armor. -
Quote:It's Boomtown, not even Alice and her friends go there.Originally Posted by Mutant_Mike
Run into any Cheshire Cats or Mad Hatters?
Except underground they intersect and jumbled together so they do look kind of like this.Quote:Originally Posted by Schismatrix
A landscape of buildings jutting at odd angles like giant crystals. Strange how that's so different from the regular Boomtown.
And since once you are on the flip side you can still see "out" into the real world so you do see the entire building jutting into the sky.