Sneak on 6/5/2007 at 15:58
Well Peter,
Am not finding much in the way of the 6800gt PCI-e. And the ones I am finding are pricey considering the age of the technology. There are some nicely priced 7950's out there that are not all that much more and some have rebates.
And since there is a way to get one set of drivers working with the 7950; and I only need one set; well I am reconsidering! :cool:
smithpd on 6/5/2007 at 18:10
If you do decide to get a 7950 GT, (
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814150189) this is the one I have. I like its passive cooling. It looks and runs cool.
One thing I should say is that I have no experience comparing a 7950 GT with an 8800. I can only say that my 6800 GT and 7950 GT look identical to me in AB comparison with a KVM switch. I am not sure what Biker's (and your) "8-bit rendering" looks like in comparison. Biker's pictures only compare an 8800 with an ATI on his laptop, which is like night and day. There is a possibility that you will not see much improvement when comparing a 7950 GT with an 8800.
Biker, I am curious now. Could you post a comparison between your 7900 and your 8800? Maybe your 8-bit thread would be the place for it.
If Biker's test of dual cards in one board, one ATI and one Nvidia, is successful, then that may be an option. The ATI to keep your eye on is the new (
http://www.dailytech.com/ATI+Radeon+HD+2900+XT+Performance+Benchmarks/article7043.htm) HD 2900 XT, which is creating a lot of buzz but is not out yet. I would not be the first to buy one, though. That is Biker's job. :)
bikerdude on 6/5/2007 at 20:32
Quote Posted by smithpd
Biker, I am curious now. Could you post a comparison between your 7900 and your 8800? Maybe your 8-bit thread would be the place for it.:)
The sky will crappy on the 7900, but everything else will be fine.
I picked up a X800XL - I will be testing this tomorrow
biker
smithpd on 7/5/2007 at 00:11
Quote Posted by Bikerdude
The sky will crappy on the 7900, but everything else will be fine.
Yes, but it is the "everything else" that I really want to see. I think everything else is not fine. Compared to ATI and the Ti 4200, the 6800 GT and 7950 GT both look bad in areas other than the sky. There is an issue with dark textures being rendered incorrectly on both of these recent Nvidia cards. An example is shown below of a bedspread in a dark room. This is above the kitchen in Lord Alan's Fortress. The first image (dark texture) is in the darkened room. Then I lit a torch and displayed a lighter image (light texture). The torch gives it a greenish cast in this case, but a room with a light switch gives natural colors. All of these images were rendered using my present 7950 GT.
Inline Image:
http://home.comcast.net/~smithpd1/thief/bed_dark_texture.jpgdark texture
Inline Image:
http://home.comcast.net/~smithpd1/thief/bed_light_texture.jpglight texture
Here is another example showing a window shutter (behind glass) in the same room: dark and with torch.
Inline Image:
http://home.comcast.net/~smithpd1/thief/window_dark_texture.jpgdark texture
Inline Image:
http://home.comcast.net/~smithpd1/thief/window_light_texture.jpglight texture
The light textures are fine with all video cards I have tried. The dark textures shown above look blotchy on the 6800 GT and the 7950 GT. The dark textures look much less blotchy, i.e., have a finer color gradation, with ATI and the Ti 4200. I don't have an example right here, but I can get one later. With the "good" cards, the dark textures look much more like the light texture, except with a different shade of color, less green (green is caused by the torch).
What I am looking for is detailed pictures like the above that show how some of the dark and light textures compare between the 7900 and the 8800 so I can see it for myself. In other words, I want to see in detail what the 8-bit rendering problem really looks like, comparing the 7900 and the 8800, not ATI and 8800. Is it possible to do that?
bikerdude on 7/5/2007 at 07:53
Those screens above are exactly what the differences are like!!!
biker
smithpd on 7/5/2007 at 14:17
I know that. But what I would like to see is whether there is a difference between light and dark textures (as I have shown above) on the 8800, just like there is for the 7900. Does the 8800 now do the blotchy display in light textures, too? If it is only blotchy with dark textures, then the 8800 is no different from the earlier cards.
bikerdude on 7/5/2007 at 15:12
Quote Posted by smithpd
I know that. But what I would like to see is whether there is a difference between light and dark textures (as I have shown above) on the 8800, just like there is for the 7900. Does the 8800 now do the blotchy display in light textures, too? If it is only blotchy with dark textures, then the 8800 is no different from the earlier cards.
Smithy
The 8800 completely
Fubars the game, every texture, every object, every corona, every light texture and finally the sky etc are all butchered to 8bits. There is no graduation to the textures between light & dark, the banding on objects where there is a light source is also fubard.
The only solution/workaround for the time being is my second card approach.
biker
Sneak on 7/5/2007 at 16:19
Peter,
Biker is right. The 8800 is not like all other cards with Thief. It is worse as far as what the game looks like. It is certainly playable, plays fast, smooth, and perfect. Just looks like crud compared to what we are used to. As I said somewhere, T Gold looks better than T2 on my 8800. It munges all textures in T2.
The gameplay is still there; if you like dark shadows so dark they are black and you can not see in them at all. And the lighter shadows look like green slime. I started a replay of A Night in RocksBourg. There seems to be a lot of updated or custom textures in there. I stopped after about 10 minutes because it looked so bad in darker areas that it was distracting. And that FM is normally sharp.
smithpd on 8/5/2007 at 01:39
Thanks, Biker and Sneak. Your descriptions "fubar" and "green slime" are all I need to convince me not to consider an 8800 for the moment. :)
So, that keeps 7950 GT at the top of the list if you are willing to do the dance with the driver and INF file. Others below that if you are not.
bikerdude on 8/5/2007 at 01:41
smithy
What you doing up at this hour? me - I went to the bed so early 7pm that I just woke up, so I thought i would ttlg for a bit untill im sleepy again
biker
