faetal on 28/11/2015 at 12:00
Save some for later Augustus!
Jason Moyer on 30/11/2015 at 18:29
My gaming-related XMAS splurge was on a factory OC EVGA GTX 970 for $290 from Newegg. Still cleaning out my AMD bullshit and getting it setup, but I have to say that after my 7870 I'm not used to a card not needing to spin up the fans when it's idling; the silence is kind of creeping me out.
Sulphur on 30/11/2015 at 19:31
The card's a beaut. It'll see you through with 60 FPS at least for most everything you throw at it except, possibly, AC Syndicate with the Nvidia stuff on. (And Watch Dogs. Boy, that thing's still poorly optimised.)
Jason Moyer on 30/11/2015 at 20:32
Yeah it's sexy. FO4 requires a few things turned down but everything else is exceeding my expectations. My framerate in Assetto Corsa went from barely holding 60FPS with a few things turned down and post-processing disabled to 150+ with everything cranked except one setting. The Assetto Corsa benchmark is actually kind of hilarious, as with that one setting turned down (reflection rendering frequency, which doesn't really do much quality wise) my CPU usage is increasing from below 30% to over 70%, presumably because I'm not taxing it enough to power up. And somehow it reduced the benchmark loading time from 45 seconds to 15, which makes no sense but whatever.
Nameless Voice on 1/12/2015 at 02:17
What resolution are you running at that you need to turn settings in FO4 down?
I can run it with everything maxed at 1920x1200 on my somewhat dated 7950 (admittedly, not always at a high framerate, but enough for my definition of "smooth" - seems to average 50fps most of the time.)
Doesn't really sell me on the progress of technology if a brand new card isn't much better than my ~3-year-old one.
Jason Moyer on 1/12/2015 at 03:21
1080P, and yeah I can hammer the 60hz vsync cap outside, but inside even with shadow distance and godrays turned down a little the framerate tends to go in the shitter. Anything less than 60 fps for me is unacceptable,
anyway.
As far as a comparison between the 7950 and 970 goes, you're looking at a pretty substantial difference in cost (esp when released) and power usage. Seems weird you're getting that kind of performance though, the benchmarks I've seen put the 970 @60-80FPS on ultra and the 7950 @37-48.
Nameless Voice on 1/12/2015 at 20:41
Right, it does go down to 35 sometimes indoors (why is indoors slower than outdoors? That doesn't even make sense!), but mostly stays around 45, going up to 60 at times.
(In other words, the framerate is rather variable, but I don't tend to notice the slowdown unless it drops below 25-30.)
Volitions Advocate on 2/12/2015 at 01:47
Welp guess I'm done my shopping. Showed some restraint this time, but mostly because the front page tends to have more games that say "in library" that I haven't played from previous sales.
This time I walked away with:
Starcraft II Terran and Zerg
Shadowrun Returns
Elite: Dangerous (how did I miss this game? 2 minutes on youtube had me hooked!!)
all for less than $25 CAD. Not bad. Not over the top. And Now I should finally finish the Protoss campaign that I started more than 15 years ago, and play through brood war. Is that going to be painful? Probably.
Nameless Voice on 2/12/2015 at 14:39
Less painful than playing through Heart of the Swarm, I assure you.
Pyrian on 2/12/2015 at 15:22
Hmm? How is playing through Heart of the Swarm painful? I mean, I guess the plot is a bit melodramatic. But the gameplay really gives you the tools a non-RTS-fanatic needs to get through on Normal difficulty (e.g. starting most missions with a beefy Kerrigan, respawning zerglings). Which is not something I can say about Brood War. That expansion has more than a few brutal grinds.
To me, the simple fact that drones can be configured to start resourcing the moment they spawn puts Heart of the Swarm at the pinnacle of the series (haven't played the latest yet, though).
