Samapico Posted March 18, 2007 Author Report Posted March 18, 2007 Just confirmed my order... I should get that stuff soon this week...
SVS Posted March 18, 2007 Report Posted March 18, 2007 (edited) There need to be better drivers for Vista first. There's about a 10%-40% video card performance loss with Vista. On top of that, there's zero SLI/Crossfire support at the moment Games aren't going to play better with Vista unless you... 1) Have a directx 10 card2) Are playing a directx 10 game However as time continues to p!@#$%^&* and better drivers come out the performance loss should continue to decrease. With a good rig it won't hurt you to use Vista to play directx 9 games. Edited March 18, 2007 by SVS
Dav Posted March 18, 2007 Report Posted March 18, 2007 There were always bound to be teething issues, most of the hardware is still optimized for XP. I should think it will be a while before the vista issues are all ironed out... or never as is the case with all windows so far
Samapico Posted March 24, 2007 Author Report Posted March 24, 2007 Ok... I installed the stuff... First weird thing I noticed, there isn't anywhere to plug the 'PCIexpress' connector from the power supply... does that mean the motherboard itself provides the power for it? Where would that connector be anyway, on the motherboard or on the video card itself? Everything seems to work fine... However, it suddenly crashed when I was playing Need for Speed Underground 2...I noticed the heatsink of my video card was quite hot... and it took like 5-10 minutes before I could boot up again...The side panel of my PC was removed during the whole time... so its not a ventilation issue The error report windows gives says the error came from 'ghosttray.exe' (Norton ghost tray application)... that doesn't make much sense to me though. Could it be a faulty card?Or some power supply issue?Or just some badluck that can happen during the first minutes of usage of a video card?Is there any way to monitor temperature of components (I know there are some programs for that, but do all cards have temperature sensors?)
Dav Posted March 24, 2007 Report Posted March 24, 2007 well im building a new system with PCIe for someone on Tuesday so if i have an answer on the power connector ill let you know. Give it time woth the crash issue, may be some bad luck (similar has happened to me a few times i remember)
SVS Posted March 25, 2007 Report Posted March 25, 2007 Ok... I installed the stuff... First weird thing I noticed, there isn't anywhere to plug the 'PCIexpress' connector from the power supply... does that mean the motherboard itself provides the power for it? Where would that connector be anyway, on the motherboard or on the video card itself? Everything seems to work fine... However, it suddenly crashed when I was playing Need for Speed Underground 2...I noticed the heatsink of my video card was quite hot... and it took like 5-10 minutes before I could boot up again...The side panel of my PC was removed during the whole time... so its not a ventilation issue The error report windows gives says the error came from 'ghosttray.exe' (Norton ghost tray application)... that doesn't make much sense to me though. Could it be a faulty card?Or some power supply issue?Or just some badluck that can happen during the first minutes of usage of a video card?Is there any way to monitor temperature of components (I know there are some programs for that, but do all cards have temperature sensors?) What card do you have? For instance, recent Nvidia cards you can track the temperature using the control panel (amoung other things). And on a side note (not that this explains your problem but it is good for you to know), on well built cases it is actually less efficient at ventalation if you have the cover removed then if the case is closed.
Samapico Posted March 25, 2007 Author Report Posted March 25, 2007 woot.. just found the temperature thing.. 73 degrees right now... It says it starts to slow down at 12585 degrees after playing some...It was quite hot in my room though... Just let some fresh air in, and it's down to 64 degrees idle And for the case... It's just that I don't have much choice to leave it open now, until I get some tie-wraps to tie all these unused wires together... else they would be no way for air to circulate with all that stuff hanging around in the case...
Aileron Posted March 26, 2007 Report Posted March 26, 2007 Remember the good ole days when you didn't need a video card at all to run games? Forget Microsoft requiring Vista for Halo, that extortion amounts to nothing. What about the entire software industry's need to constantly require more and more hardware to do what is ultimately the same !@#$%^&* thing? I remember a little game called Descent. That game was friggin awesome. It was a truly 3D game, wheras its hard to find a game nowadays with true complete 3D gameplay. Most PC games nowadays are RPGs where you walk around on a 2D surface that may have some elevation, which gameplay wise they had in the 1970s, but now they have pretty graphics that disguise the fact that the game stinks conceptually. You know what the requirements for Descent was? About 16mb of RAM and a basic soundblaster. It ran on nothing and from a gameplay perspective was better than Halo in my opinion. Granted, it doesn't compete in the graphics department, but...I don't care. If I want to watch something pretty I'll go to the movie theatre. However, you can't buy a game nowadays without it requiring a gig of RAM and 128 MB of Video RAM. I'm tired of being told that in order to run a $20 PC game I need to buy a new computer. (My computer was designed by a group of monkeys and while I have a gig of RAM and a good processor, it is incapable of supporting video hardware.) That's insane, and clearly shows why PC games aren't selling any more. Software designers no longer design their software based upon their customer's needs, but they expect the customer to have enough hardware to be worthy of their product. That's not how capitalism is supposed to work! Sama, you want my advice? !@#$%^&* the video card. Buy a PSIII, Xbox, or Wii. In the long run you'll be able to play more !@#$%^&*les, it will be less stressfull, it will be less costly and you won't have that moment of dread of whether or not the game you just bought that you can't get a refund for will actually work on your computer. With the direction these computer nuts are going a 256MB Video RAM card will be obsolete in a couple years anyway.
Samapico Posted March 26, 2007 Author Report Posted March 26, 2007 Hmm... I agree with you on the whole gameplay vs graphics thing... Didn't play Descent, but I played Freespace, which ran on the same engine as Descent II I think... anyways... I don't play shooters cause they suck... except half-life... which was cool... In the long run you'll be able to play more !@#$%^&*lesIf you buy each of them... Don't think I'll be spending a single dollar on a PC game that I don't even know if it's good or not it will be less costlyI doubt it... Actually I'd love to have a Wii... but I don't want to spend money on that now... maybe in a few years when they'll be cheap and clearly shows why PC games aren't selling any more.Everyone cracks them Anyways... I just played Simcity 4... and I'm happy I can run it smoothly now... Sure lots of games require lot of graphic ressources, but all that eye candy usually makes the game much more immersive... ...kinda replied to some parts in random order... tired now... sleep... and I won't buy a ps3, i hate sony, their games suckand I won't buy a xbox, I already have a computer, don't need another one
Bomook Posted March 26, 2007 Report Posted March 26, 2007 Remember the good ole days when you didn't need a video card at all to run games? Forget Microsoft requiring Vista for Halo, that extortion amounts to nothing. What about the entire software industry's need to constantly require more and more hardware to do what is ultimately the same !@#$%^&* thing? I remember a little game called Descent. That game was friggin awesome. It was a truly 3D game, wheras its hard to find a game nowadays with true complete 3D gameplay. Most PC games nowadays are RPGs where you walk around on a 2D surface that may have some elevation, which gameplay wise they had in the 1970s, but now they have pretty graphics that disguise the fact that the game stinks conceptually. You know what the requirements for Descent was? About 16mb of RAM and a basic soundblaster. It ran on nothing and from a gameplay perspective was better than Halo in my opinion. Granted, it doesn't compete in the graphics department, but...I don't care. If I want to watch something pretty I'll go to the movie theatre. However, you can't buy a game nowadays without it requiring a gig of RAM and 128 MB of Video RAM. I'm tired of being told that in order to run a $20 PC game I need to buy a new computer. (My computer was designed by a group of monkeys and while I have a gig of RAM and a good processor, it is incapable of supporting video hardware.) That's insane, and clearly shows why PC games aren't selling any more. Software designers no longer design their software based upon their customer's needs, but they expect the customer to have enough hardware to be worthy of their product. That's not how capitalism is supposed to work! Sama, you want my advice? !@#$%^&* the video card. Buy a PSIII, Xbox, or Wii. In the long run you'll be able to play more !@#$%^&*les, it will be less stressfull, it will be less costly and you won't have that moment of dread of whether or not the game you just bought that you can't get a refund for will actually work on your computer. With the direction these computer nuts are going a 256MB Video RAM card will be obsolete in a couple years anyway.I totally agree with you there, that gameplay matters a lot more than graphics. The other thing that really sucks about all the focus on graphics is that games' production values are skyrocketing, preventing creative small-time developers from getting off the ground. A lot of games back in the day were so much fun. Does anybody remember X-Com UFO Defense? or X-Wing vs TIE Fighter? Personally, I do agree that consoles do almost everything better than PC's. The only exception are online games and first-person shooters (I think it's stupid to try to aim with a joystick). I bought SLI 7900 GTX's which were top-of-the-line a little over half a year ago for about $900, and while they're not quite obsolete, they're far from the best - in just 7 months. Also it depends how nerdy someone is . I'm an ardent gamer, so I was willing to fork over the money to be able to play F.E.A.R. or whatever games on maximum settings, but I can understand others paying less than half the amount for a similar experience.
Samapico Posted March 26, 2007 Author Report Posted March 26, 2007 That's why I didn't want to pay more than 100$ for a gfx card... It does what it has to do very well... and having a gfx card that's worth as much as my whole computer would be just stupid
Dav Posted March 26, 2007 Report Posted March 26, 2007 gfx cards do seem to be one od the most expencive componts of modern computers, a goiod amout of then is quite cheap so much of the cost is in 3 or 4 parts alone (often one of these being windows)
SVS Posted March 27, 2007 Report Posted March 27, 2007 gfx cards do seem to be one od the most expencive componts of modern computers, a goiod amout of then is quite cheap so much of the cost is in 3 or 4 parts alone (often one of these being windows) An expensive component would be a Core 2 Duo EE
Dav Posted March 27, 2007 Report Posted March 27, 2007 the quad core ones? they are abour £650 over here atm but i think they will be reasonable by the end of the year.
Recommended Posts