So I walked into a killer PC. I was planning on making a VM server and the budget was $1100-ish. I was looking at basing it around the new 6 core AMD proc. All was going well til I went to Microcenter and the guy mentioned he had an open box special. Alienware. He’d talk to the manager.
So for the same amount of money I was going to send on a 6 core, 4 gb, 1 Tb kit, I got a 8 core, 9 Gb DDR3 built system. (MSRP $1550) I realize it’s stupid, but pushing the little alien head on the front and having the CD drive cover smoothly drop out of the way, with mood lighting the CDROM just makes me giggle.
So, before I relegate this thing to the basement, running pentesting and intrusion detection duties, what’s the latest cool thing I can run on this that’ll make me boggle at how far we’ve come?
I hit Nvidia’s demos and I suspect they’re moving on to bigger and better things than demos. Most of it was a)old n busted or b)Fermi/400 related, and thus more than the 260 could handle.
Still, it’s pretty wild having it run the crysis demo and NOT having the fans spin up.
Unfortunately Crysis is still the gold standard and likely will be for years to come. Crysis 2 is due out soon but it’s a multiplatform game so we may see the first time where the sequel to a technically ambitious game is actually technically inferior to the original. They claim they’re spending a lot of dev time on the PC version and that it won’t be a compromised experience and yada yada but I’ve heard that before. I guess if anyone can pull it off, it’s Crytek.
Dirt 2 is pretty good if you like racing games. and BFBC2 is pretty good graphically (not crysis level, but way better than its contemporary competitor MW2). Stalker: Call of Pripyat has some fairly advanced technology.
Otherwise, due to developing for the lowest common denominator, and having people stuck with the same console system for 10 years (and being happy about it), the technical advancement of games has pretty much ground to a halt. Games are barely more technically advanced now than they were in 2005, even though the hardware has gotten several times faster - which ends up meaning that you can play technically stagnant games at really high resolutions with really good post processing effects at high frame rates, but there won’t be anything that wows you.
Doom 3 is pretty damn funny. And by funny, I mean: EVERYTHING turned up, and all cores idle. it timedemo’d at 274 fps. I remember turning nearly everything off and getting 20 fps on the computer two-generations ago.
With Crysis it can actually be better to leave the AA off. When MSAA is set at 0/off, they do their own custom AA which is more aware of the foliage and looks better in some way, and the performance is better. It doesn’t quite do the full job of MSAA, so you might want to compare, but try it out.
1024x768, all settings high, no AA: 34 fps
1680x1050 (native LCD resolution), All settings maxed, no AA: 14 fps
1280x1024, all settings high, no AA: 28 fps
All this with no real drama…the old box (CoreDuo + 9800 GTX+) would have had the GPU fan blazing…no clue what the results would be, but it was pretty playable, IIRC
That sounds lower than what you should be getting, but I’m making some assumptions (you didn’t really list specific specs). In any case you’d be better off running at medium at a higher rate. You can also force DX9 for better performance.
Yeah, for the amount of unused cores (and RAM??) you’re claiming while it runs, I thought you’d still be pushing 60 fps with that rig. 14 is pretty choppy. Perhaps I lack understanding about how your resolution is affecting performance.
keep in mind, that was with everything turned up, at the highest resolution the screen could run. I’m pretty sure it’s GPU bound at this point, which makes some sence…otherwise, why would folks bother with Crossfire/SLI?
I’m sure there are ways to tune it for better results.
