games are getting demanding

just played the fear demo and it plays great on my machine,but i read the read me file and for optimum game play it recommends a 3.0 ghz cpu and 2 gigs of memory. geez my mother board only supports 1 gig of ram. guess i better find me a new motherboard. im clueless when it comes to picking one though lol

 

yeah game gets xtremely demanding, check out my machine specs even for me the game runs on medium/high settings.

 

Wow... someone doesn't have way too much money

I'm yet to play it... but i'm sure you can tweak it... well, I hope so, if you can't i'm not gonna bother... With it running at med/high on yours I don't think it would run at all on my machine...

 

i have a p4 2.8ghz non ht cpu 1 gig of ram and a bfg 6800. when you 1st start the game it auto detects what it think your machine can do and it set everything to high on mine,but there is a maximum also but i didnt try it. hope the game is as good or better than the demo im all for it.

 

Games are getting more detailed and demanding of hardware, but they are also very scalable if well written.

For example, on my second computer, a lowly PIII 866 and GeForce 4 MX 440, I can enjoyably play Far Cry and Half Life 2.

Doom 3 on the other hand was unplayable.

 

i think you musta checked out grhpx only, it also has a setting for the CPU side of the game too.

 

Well of course, the reason games are getting more demanding is because graphics are getting better and better (anyone seen the Final Fantasy movie(s)? The animation looks almost human like!) Thats why they have become more demanding, although i think they should change their programming or lower computer part prices... To play something like FEAR at recommended settings almost all GAMERS (thats right GAMERS) would most likely have to UPGRADE their computers (gamers prefer AMDs, AMDs dont really go over 2 ghz...)

ITS REDICULOUS!!!

 

Insomnica how does CS Source run on that second rig of yours.... i know u can play Half Life 2 on it but what about the online games?

i got a 1.6 ghz, 512mb ram, and a 128mb video card and i didn't even bother getting HL2 (i would only play CS Source with it) because i figured it wouldn't run smoothly...

i'm a long time CS player (5 years) and i can't go from 99 fps down to a lower amount because it will be too frustrating for me lol...

 

I can play deathmatch okay, but I get kicked off CounterStrike Source with the message that my ping is too high lol.

I've never been a huge multiplayer fan, although if I had a better connection I probably would be.

Your rig would play Half Life 2 easily.

I play it at 1024 x 768 (32bit) with no problems, and that goes for Far Cry.

 

Not sure what Final Fantasy CGI animation has to do with gaming. The reason graphics are more demanding is because of the higher output of technologies and their uses, like FSAA / AS bump mapping, complex shadows, LoD and LoS. Amd has alot of processors over 2ghz, but raw speed doesn't matter, since my 3700+ is barely 2.2ghz its performance is of a Pentium 4 3.5-4ghz. Its all about how fast the process gets churned out after the request is sent to the CPU.

1.6ghz what? processors matter, 512mb what? ddr? sdram? ddr2? 128mb video card ok but what type?. Saying you cant go below 99fps is stupid, since beyond 60fps gaming is at a solid state; unlike 30 or 40fps.

 

AMD Athlon XP1900 (1.6 ghz), 512MB DDR

let me put it this way... i already get FPS drops on maps like Aztec (in/near water), so i don't expect my fps to be great on CS Source maps... therefore i envision it will be frustrating to try to play

 

FPS drop on your system most likely means a crappy video card.

 

Typically, if the FPS drops, this is due to what is actually beeing represented on the screen at that time. If there were a lot of, lets say bots, then your graphics card has to run a bit harder to attempt to keep up. Hence the drop in frame rates.

What people should really look into, is not how many F/S they get, but what the average frames per second they get. Though, I tend to just look at the lowest frames I get, I could care less about the max fps. If you were to move straight to a wall in any game, your frames per second will skyrocket up. Since there isn't all that much that is being represented on your screen.

Also, as Omegamerc says, today what megahertz or gigahertz your cpu is, doesn't really matter anymore, which is the reason the intel never release their P4 4ghz cpus, they finally realized this isn't a race of speed, but more on features and performance.

 

just to drift slightly back to the fear demo,when fear auto detects,it sets my vid card to maximum and my cpu to high,on these setting its awful to look at the fps are so low,I'v set vid card to performance in windows and played around with a few settings,but I cant seem to get the visuals at an acceptable level without sacrificing performance,any tips or links to guides much appriciated

 

i have a good video card for HL1 based games... a Geforce 4 Ti4400 128MB... but that's not really the issue at hand...

i'd say it definetely matters the speed of your cpu... 1.6 ghz would not run games like BF2 very well now would it (regardless of my video card)

 

BF2 is a memory / video hog, you can play at lower settings and on 32 player servers just fine.

 

The first thing you should do on fear is turn down the shadows. I myself didnt notice a difference in the shadows but then again I dont care much for overdone shadowing.

I was able to run it a 1280 x 1028 ( is that it? ) with x4 AA with high settings after messing with the shadows.

 

As someone hoping to go into the industry: CGI films have a totally different view on graphics. They want to have renders done so they look as good as possible without taking too long. Having said that, some frames in Shrek took over 40 minutes to render each, and that's on a huge render farm cluster of nearly 200 machines (not including idle cycles on the desktop workstations).

Games on the other hand want to be fast as possible without looking too bad. If it wasn't real time, it wouldn't be interactive. Or at least not for a normal person. (imagine entering a few commands for your player, pressing go and coming back a day later to watch the video of what happened ).

Back on the case: Sometimes graphics hardware has "support" for certain things, like Pixel Shader 2.0 or DirectX 9 API calls, but it only just supports them. It will not perform well if you try to use them. So the game will detect them as being present and enable them, but they will significantly slow down the game.

So if you can, try and disable certain advanced features on your card at the driver level that you know the card will have problems with (pixel shader 2.0 is notoriously badly supported in mid-range cards), and you might see a performance increace.

 

""Games are getting more detailed and demanding of hardware, but they are also very scalable if well written.

For example, on my second computer, a lowly PIII 866 and GeForce 4 MX 440, I can enjoyably play Far Cry and Half Life 2.

Doom 3 on the other hand was unplayable.""

Well this dosn't make sense. The quality of coding in the D3 engine far outshines that of Far Cry's, and is more efficient that HL2 but by what measure I don't know. As has been true with all Id's games in the past 6 years. A 866Mhz processor with a decent graphics card should in theory be able to run most new games, but with lazy programming this is not the case. If a game is well programmed the Hardware requirements will be half that of a game which is not optimised, thereby making us all have to buy a new CPU, Graphics Card etc. IMO fear dosent look as impressive as HL2 yet needs twice the spec. Look at the old XBOX internal specs, and the games written for the console are far better looking than the PC games of 1999 (when a p3 733Mhz + GF3 were l337).

Thats what I reckon anyway.

 

If it doesn't make sense, then with your vast programming knowledge, explain it to us all?

 

"coding a game" for it to be used across lower end platforms is just that, they would have to create low poly / low graphical settings using older dx7/8 extensions. If you think that every game maker will recode absolutly everything onto 2-3 diffrent extensions well thats not going to happen.

The only reason 2005 games working for xbox are better looking then 1999 games is that the technology is older, people are more acostumed writing it, and tricks/loops have been discovered that made some tasks impossible when the tech was new. This is like any other technology, 3 years from now you will get super impressive games to work with xbox360 in comparison to its games now, and your gonna think what the hell were they thinking back in 05'? Its beyond any reasonable "optimization", do you think that most mainstream games arent optimized to fit a variety of platforms low and high?

There is always a medium to reach in any industry as to who your going to please. FEAR on one hand pleases the very high end audience that have it all and just want something to stress their hardware out. Just like HL2 did back when it was released. Now HL2 is more of a mainstream game playable by most pc's right out of the box w/o a hitch. Back then you had an army of people upgrading just to get the damn thing working.

And about your "in theory" theory, thats BS, you can run wow with 800mhz 256mb and 64mb video card. Will the experience suck? will you lag so back you go back into the past? hell yeah. Sure at one point or another they thought "make it the lowest possible sys req" but in truth the game takes minimally 800mb / 2gb virtual memory / 2ghz / 256mb "6600" and up video card if you have the specs.

 

valid points, and insom I don't pretend to know anything about coding games, but just saying what I've learned from reading articles online over the past 9 years.
Take one example - Fatal Racing. This game was made around 1996/7 I believe. It was a software game, released about the same time as Screamer 2, both were polygon graphics software games. Fatal racing had far less impressive graphics, sound and engine. However, S2 ran much smoother on any spec machine. Why? They took their time in optimising the code and it showed. Fatal Racing shipped with many 3D cards in the box, and this was my point : it was a badly made game which relied on the hardware it came with. You needed a Voodoo 2 to play it, whereas S2 used the Voodoo to make it even more lush. You see it all the time now, where one game looks no better than one released last year but needs another £100 of graphics hardware.

 

And some games are designed to perform better on a certain make of graphics card. Like HL is designed to play better on ATi and Doom is designed to play better on Nvidia... But if you have a good card of either then shouldn't really make a difference

Now i'll let you guys get back to where you were

 

For example?

 

What he said.

 

Medal of Honour Allied Assault
to
Call Of Duty
to
Pacific Assault
to
Call Of Duty 2 - you're telling me the increase in system requirements warrant the improvment of visuals in these games? Seriously...

 

What card do you have? until you see first hand the lighting effects capable of modern cards on a new game you cant say its not worth it for example,in HL2 when I saw barneys stubble on his face I was amazed how real it looked I thought this is awsome you could almost make out the different hairs,then in FEAR you could see not only what seemed like individual hairs on guys faces but the reflection of light within the stubble which I think is incredible,similar detail is seen in COD 2,if you have your graphical settings set low especially the texture shaders the detail will not be apparent,I first noticed how detailed games had become when I turned max payne 2 detail to max on the game and in my vid card controls on my fx 5700,I actually told my friends to come round to see it,more specifically the wood grain in the tables and the graffiti on the walls it blew me away

JMHO not tryna railroad you jed

I might do a few screenshots to show the detail difference of stubble lol

 

What card do you have Ricky, I wouldnt mind seeing the stubble as well, if you can capture it at a good res.

I personally have an ATI 9800pro, and a GF 6600GT ... but most of my friends with PC's have 7800GTX's (it's alright for some). I know what you mean by the wow effect some new games (or new cards) can have on you, but even seeing an averagely good looking game like Tron 2.0 running silky smooth is better IMO than far cry, which needs a beast to run 60fps + and dosent warrant it. I know the scenes are massive in polygon count but some of the outdoor areas in Doom 3 are better looking and run smoothly. Im starting to bore myself now so I'll close

It's true that some games run better on ATi's or Nvidia's though, Tron 2 ran better on my old GF6200 than it does on the 9800pro, even though 3DMark scores doubled when I installed the ATI.

 

Sig 6800gt, you should get pretty much the same detail with a 6600gt I dont know off hand what effects the 6800 has the 6600 doesnt,Ugh I'll have to download the FEAR Demo and reinstall HL2 and steam if I can remember my account details,prolly be tommorow I'll try and get it done tonight

I'll get some skin texture shots aswell which are also awsome

 

Here they are thenAll taken at 11x8 everything max in fear and 16 anistropic and 4 AA in HL2, first barneys face and stubble and then his clothing detail not bad,then check out the stubble and the lighting in the bald guys head and then check the detail in the guys white shirt compared to barneys uniform it looks amazing and all the light reflections you see in the fear pics move around on the model depending on the position of the lightsource its quite amazing IMHO, I can play both games looking like this with good framerates not so much fear I have to drop them all down a notch to smooth out fast paced scenes,if there are other examples of surface textures you want I'll take some pics of them

 

Ye very impressive FEAR screenshots. I see what you mean, though I've yet to play Q3/Fear/HL2 in highest detail options. They do look realistic though.
Thanks for taking the time to post this, but all my previous points I stick to. But they do look good


I was never a fan of the original HL game, but HL2 seems to have been the best game in recent years baring doom 3. They two are different games though, but both are standard bearers for the PC game scene.

 

That's your opinion, it's certainly not mine or most.

Doom 3 isn't better in gameplay, storyline, voice acting or graphics.

Unless you call running around in pitch black with things jumping out of walls impressive.

In fact, I can't think of one thing it's better for, and that includes using it for benchmarking.

As far as the other nonsense you posted, anyone can ramble on with excerpts from various sites and publications, but it needs to make sense and be relevant.

 

Doom 3 was the best in over hype and let down, just like Q4.

 

Doom 3? I played it for half an hour just messin around checking out the game engine interacting with anything I could I thought this looks great,I played on the corridor went dark-DARKER monsters came from nowhere a few inches away I think I just span round firing then ran out of ammo

turned it off and eleted the demo,I then borowed it again off a friend becaudse I thought I hadnt give it a good enough chance,did the same again

Its crap,I more fun playing serious sam a least you can see then coming

 

"That's your opinion, it's certainly not mine or most." Yes it is. Well done for spotting that.

"Doom 3 isn't better in gameplay, storyline, voice acting or graphics." Thats your opinion, it certainly isn't mine. Can't say about most, don't know most people that well.

"Unless you call running around in pitch black with things jumping out of walls impressive." Great gameplay though, and thats what happened in Doom wasn't it? This is DOOM 3, isn't it?

"As far as the other nonsense you posted, anyone can ramble on with excerpts from various sites and publications, but it needs to make sense and be relevant." Yes I spend my time cutting and pasting to forums from various other sites all the time. And I think all of my posts have been relevent to the topic. At least I don't reply to posts just trying to diss people or trip them up all the time. Whats your beef with me anyways?

 

None most likely, your playing a very odd path in terms of oppinion and some of the stuff is unfounded/not true; and since were a buncha geeksperts here we have strong voices

 

" and since were a buncha geeksperts here we have strong voices "

Then I bow down. Having played computer games every day 19 years since I was 6, and pc games since 1991 with a 286, I'm not as qualified as some of you people to state an opinion. Plus it does seem he has a problem, in my opion that is.

 

*runs into his closet and sobs*

 

I'm still waiting for you to tell me why Doom 3 is better.

I'm more than happy to accept someones' view, but I need a reason why and not just opinion.

And this isn't having a beef with you, but if you come on a forum and post comments, be prepared to back them up with facts, especially in this place which has more knowledgeable people than any other forum.

Telling us how many years you have been playing PC games or using a computer doesn't make you or what you say any more qualified.

As I said, give me valid reasons why rather than "my dad is bigger than yours", which is a game I can assure you would lose.

Until then, I won't bother posting back, as you can't debate someones opinion.

 

posted by jed

This is the point of the thread really do games look good enough to warrant the increase in hardware,the examples I have posted are from games released 6 months "not sure of the exact release dates and cant be bothered looking " apart, the graphical quality difference to me "again just opinion" is quite an improvement,I looked at HL2 and thought it looked amazing and then saw FEAR and that looked amazing,FEAR has reminded me of the CGI in Final Fantasy the movie back then I thought how amazing would it be to be able to play in world like that,well now with the latest games you almost can

check out these scenes from final fantasy when the film was made 1999- 2001 it was a pipe dream for video games to look this good but with fear and other titles they now do,so again in my opinion the increase in specs is not only worth it but also quite a long time coming

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0173840/Ss/0173840/july2_19.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0173840

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0173840/Ss/0173840/july2_22.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0173840

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0173840/Ss/0173840/july2_23.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0173840

The next arguement to overcome is the scalability of newer games,will they work on older systems,in the past this was an easy obstacle you could just turn down the detail and play would smooth out.

One of the things I have noticed with modern games for example the character faces and models have become more round and detailed this goes all the way back to 2D games you could see Marios face become rounder as more pixels were added,this is similar to polygon count,the more polygons you cram in there the rounder and more detailed things will look,so unlike in the past were we could remove shaders,lighting effects and textures by turning the graphical settings down to smooth out play,we cannot turn down polygon count as this would remove the actual structure of the image,even if everything else was turned down and the scene had no colour you cannot get around the polygon count

 

Rikky I remember the first time I saw that film it blew me away 2, wish I still had it. Even the opening story from Animatrix isn't rendered to that quality (in my opinion - if anyone would like to disagree I will try to back up this comment with facts). Perhaps I shouldn't be arguing in this thread without the right tools, ie. only owning the latest hardware and experiencing a new game in all it's audio and visual glory will I be able to properly decide if the increase in hardware required is worth it. Obviously the main factor is that like someone said this increase in visual quality is driving the hardware sector, and it's all economics. My argument is hopefully, developers will continue making quality games with not just eye poping graphics but groundbreaking playability and originality. As regards to the "my dad is bigger than your dad" comment, this was not my intended angle at all by saying I am a veteran gamer.

As a side note, check this out - a new game that would fit onto a floppy disk 20 times. Found it on the Wiki under free FPS games

http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger.html
http://kk.kema.at/files/kkrieger-beta.zip

 

"The next arguement to overcome is the scalability of newer games,will they work on older systems,in the past this was an easy obstacle you could just turn down the detail and play would smooth out."

I think this is the more important issue. I mean, i just tried to play the FEAR demo on my computer: Athlon XP 3200+ 512 PC3200 RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro. Now, we can argue why my computer isn't up to it (which it isn't), but I should be able to play it at 800x600 resolution with medium detail. As soon as I see more than 2 enemies, or someone starts firing, or god help me if a grenade goes off, the framerate drops to like 10. However, I can play Counter-Strike:Source/HL2 @ 1680x1050 with medium detail. It looks better than FEAR at 800x600 and the framerate rarely drops below 30. You tell me there isn't something wrong here... BTW, Quake 4 plays even more horribly than FEAR.

I am somewhat irritated that I need to drop $700 just to get my computer to play these games.

 

I know what you mean m8 ,the simple fact is to make images look this good again you need to use lots of polygons to make the shapes look smooth and detailed this takes alot of computing power,reducing the res doesnt reduce the amount of polygons in the scene nor does reducing the detail

I have no idea if or how a polygon reducer could or would work,the effect would be the models became less rounded and more box shaped as in the past or just exclude parts of the scene completely,I think it would require the game to be completely recoded with an older game engine,maybe theres a thought two different coded versions of the same game for higher and lower spec machines,the cost my be absorbed by higher sales figures from more casual gamers

I'm not gonna argue that the gaming industry should try something to make games more compatible with lower end machines,just the fact that you need alot of computing power to make games look this good