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PC Gaming

Started by AsparagusTrevor, February 20, 2010, 03:48:35 AM

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AsparagusTrevor

So who else is a PC gamer, rather than a console gamer? I've always predominantly aired towards the PC, first person shooters seem to be my most popular game and I can't see those played outside the keyboard and mouse combo. Plus there are many other advantages I can see.

Graphics are one thing too. Console players don't realise how crippled their experience is. HD gaming is a misnomer. Many PS3 and 360 games simply upscale SD resolutions. PC games have been proper 'HD' for years. I remember years ago when I had a CRT monitor and played games like Quake 2 at 2k/3k resolution. Now HD is the buzzword, and LCD is the technology of the moment and everyone is acting like HD resolutions are something new.

Well, PC games have given the option of high resolutions for many years. Console resolution is just catching up along with LCD and Plasma TVs. But the technology isn't powerful enough yet. Sure the consoles can push 1080 pixels, but doing that while rendering the polygons, lighting, shadows, it's too much. So there are compromises, i.e rendering at lower resolution and upscaling. An example: Me and my friend both bought Batman Arkham Asylum. He played it on the PS3 at 540p upscaled, I played it at native 1080p with 4x anti-aliasing plus extra PhysX effects. Very few console games are native true HD, it's quite a con.

Some people say "well yeah, it's better to sit on the couch in front of a big TV". Well, it isn't hard to hook a PC to a TV. I have a 40in TV, hooked to the computer via a sub £10 DVI to HDM cable. I prefer to play FPS games on the computer with mouse and keyboard for pinpoint concentration, but if I fancy playing Batman, DiRT2 etc then I can just switch over and play. For a party environment it's brilliant.

Anyway, that's the end of my rant. I'm quite drunk so I don't know if my arguements and opinions came off ok. I just feel it's a shame PCs are being undersold. Etc, ect.

vrailaine

My favourite first-person shooter is metroid prime, that'll give you an idea of how much I like first person shooters.

I honestly cannot comprehend everyone's obsession with images needing to be in higher and higher quality, the cost-benefit ratio swings hugely in favour of not bothering with any of it for me that it's difficult to accept people could think otherwise. Once I can see what's happening, I'm happy.

AsparagusTrevor

Very good point, something I also agree with. Everyone is going for hi-res when gameplay is the important part.
Incidentally I think the Wii has a brilliant control system for FPS games.

Still Not George

Quote from: AsparagusTrevor on February 20, 2010, 04:08:12 AMIncidentally I think the Wii has a brilliant control system for FPS games.
Really? I still find it crap. As it is for most things, really. The thing just isn't responsive enough, particularly on the waggles, but also on the pointer.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

It doesn't get any better (or sadder) than PC Gaming.


Slaaaaabs

Steam sales and the lovely legal Asian CD-Key sites have kept me gaming on the PC for the past few months. I think Alan Wake in May and Crackdown 2 in June will be the next time I buy on a console.

biggytitbo

I used to think FPS shooters could only work on the PC because of the controls, but since I got a PS3 I've played the whole half life series on it and enjoyed it probably more than I did on the PC. I still play lots of games on the PC, especially older ones, but that's only because they're not available on the PS3.

AsparagusTrevor

Quote from: Slaaaaabs on February 20, 2010, 01:48:46 PM
Steam sales and the lovely legal Asian CD-Key sites have kept me gaming on the PC for the past few months. I think Alan Wake in May and Crackdown 2 in June will be the next time I buy on a console.
God, I spent way too much money on those bloody Steam sales.

Quote from: Still Not George on February 20, 2010, 10:47:32 AM
Really? I still find it crap. As it is for most things, really. The thing just isn't responsive enough, particularly on the waggles, but also on the pointer.

That's because you're DRUNK.

Still Not George

No I'm not! Even the bloody BBC iPlayer is impossible to press the pause button off. The pointer's roughly as accurate as a giant white turd.

Quote from: Still Not George on February 20, 2010, 10:47:32 AM
The thing just isn't responsive enough, particularly on the waggles, but also on the pointer.

Only thing I find annoying is that it's easier to hold in the air, and my arms get tired after a bit.

mcbpete

Quote from: Still Not George on February 20, 2010, 02:09:21 PM
No I'm not! Even the bloody BBC iPlayer is impossible to press the pause button off. The pointer's roughly as accurate as a giant white turd.
Have you ran the configure thing in the system settings or have any shiny tables nearby? The pointer on mine now is a little bit shaky but that was mainly because I decided to play wii bowling using a cricket style bowling action and shattered a light fitting leaving a crack on the front of the wii remote sensor bit.

Still Not George

Quote from: mcbpete on February 20, 2010, 04:29:59 PM
Have you ran the configure thing in the system settings or have any shiny tables nearby?
Yes, no, and the equipment's in perfect condition. It's every bit as rubbish now as it was when I was stuck developing for the thing.

I've no doubt you can probably get used to it if you're really determined to play PowerArmourSlut Prime, but there's quite simply no comparing it to a mouse and keyboard setup.

AsparagusTrevor

I never had a problem with it beyond random jiggles when I was sat at the wrong angle. Sure it doesn't beat keyboard and mouse, but it definitely beats control pad for FPS games.

mcbpete

God I can't stand using control pads for FPS, I've never been so angry at a game than when I played the Killzone 2 demo - I felt what it must be like when I tried to get my parents to play computer games about 20 years ago, the sight for the guns would be all over the place.... Good job games like Fallout 3 completely freeze the action when you're aiming or the thing would've gone straight in the bin.

thugler

Right, I've just bought a monster pc, with my current one getting a bit old and slow after 5 or 6 years (the last straw being unable to run the 3d match engine in the new football manager! So I'll be very much back in the world of PC gaming soon. I've also got a big hdtv to use it with, so will have all the fun of a console really. Any recommendations in terms of what recent games I may have been missing out on due to my lacking technology?

AsparagusTrevor

Can't go wrong with the Orange Box for starters.

vrailaine

Quote from: thugler on March 01, 2010, 09:44:07 PMthe last straw being unable to run the 3d match engine in the new football manager!
To be fair, FM 2009 was a whore on RAM.

samadriel

Quote from: thugler on March 01, 2010, 09:44:07 PM
Right, I've just bought a monster pc, with my current one getting a bit old and slow after 5 or 6 years (the last straw being unable to run the 3d match engine in the new football manager! So I'll be very much back in the world of PC gaming soon. I've also got a big hdtv to use it with, so will have all the fun of a console really. Any recommendations in terms of what recent games I may have been missing out on due to my lacking technology?

I recommend The Witcher (if you're don't mind ARPGs, but you shouldn't, it's a great game) and the STALKER games (Clear Sky being optional).

_Hypnotoad_

Borderlands
Arma II
Battlefield Bad Company
Modern Warfare 2
Empire Total War
Company of heroes
Mass Effect 2
Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising
Saboteur
Stalker - call of pripyat
Tropico 3

Uncle TechTip

If you've not played it before GTAIV is the nuts even on PC and it's only a tenner.

AsparagusTrevor

Quote from: thugler on March 01, 2010, 09:44:07 PMRight, I've just bought a monster pc, with my current one getting a bit old and slow after 5 or 6 years (the last straw being unable to run the 3d match engine in the new football manager! So I'll be very much back in the world of PC gaming soon. I've also got a big hdtv to use it with, so will have all the fun of a console really. Any recommendations in terms of what recent games I may have been missing out on due to my lacking technology?
Just out of geeky interest, what are your new PC's specs?

thugler

Cheers for the recommendations!

It has a quadcore intel i7 (920 I think) processor, 6 gigs of (ddr3? I think, 1600mhz) ram, asus motherboard, I forget the model. radeon hd5870 graphics card, terabyte hd (plus i'll shove in my old hd, I did consider a solid state hd but I'd spent too much money already). Probably not all that amazing in the world of dual graphics cards and heavily overclocked setups, but it's a big step up from my old box. 

_Hypnotoad_

Sweet!

Let's have a "spec off"

Intel Core2Duo 2.8
8gb DDR2
ATI HD4870 (absolute beast)
Vista SP2 x64
2x1TB and 1x2TB SATA
Virgin 50mb to fill those disks

Runs everything real nice. Like yours, probably pales against the truly monster setups these days, but it was very cheap to put together buying all the bits separately.

Fuck me, that 5870 looks like a nice card. Must.......resist.......amazon.co.uk.......

falafel

My standards are slipping... When I got my Radeon 9800 back in 03 I was busy notching everything up to Max and watching it fall over even though it was top of the line at the time. I just picked up a 5750 which is supposed to be midrange apparently and I think most games now look awesome at medium settinngs so I tend to leave it at that - but when I have bothered to turn everything up it has handled it really well. What the hell are the really fast ones supposed to do then??

AsparagusTrevor

#25
SPEC OFF!!!

Mine is a bit old, I built it about 4 years ago (cost about £1200 back then) and have only doubled the RAM since. Still runs most things well on high settings though. I've overclocked the graphics card, RAM and processor slightly.

Intel Core 2 Quad (2.4GHz)
Nvidia 8800GTX (768mb VRAM)
4GB RAM DDR2
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit
640MB HDD (2x320MB in RAID0)
500GB External HDD
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music 7.1
This case (Antec 900) but I changed the LEDs from blue to green.

I'm going to try to save up some money to upgrade the graphics card sometime this year. I'll probably just still blow it on DVDs, alcohol and Steam sales.


@Thugler: Sounds like a very good machine, you shouldn't come across any games that don't run well on that for quite a while.


Quote from: falafel on March 05, 2010, 09:11:19 AM
My standards are slipping... When I got my Radeon 9800 back in 03 I was busy notching everything up to Max and watching it fall over even though it was top of the line at the time. I just picked up a 5750 which is supposed to be midrange apparently and I think most games now look awesome at medium settinngs so I tend to leave it at that - but when I have bothered to turn everything up it has handled it really well. What the hell are the really fast ones supposed to do then??
Trouble is, not many games are pushing the envelope graphics-wise as far as they could these days. Maybe because there aren't many PC exclusives, cross platform means a lot of companies don't put much more effort into the PC versions over the console ones, just the minimum higher resolutions, anti-aliasing and V-sync usually. Makes me wonder why I built my PC 4 years ago, bumped all games settings to Highest and they run well, and today I still bump  new games to Highest settings and they still run just as well.

Games like Crysis and GTAIV which are designed to be futureproof are where more effort has been put in. Crysis looks great and runs great on lower settings, but if you have the power you can keep bumping the settings higher. GTAIV will run on a decent PC at medium settings and still look better than its console counterparts. But Rockstar added higher settings too, for bastard-powerful machines which gives a massive bump in quality but won't run great on mid-range gaiming PCs.

Plus Nvidia are pushing their technologies such as PhysX and the recent 3D stuff. PhysX is taking the load off the CPU for physics calculations, so obviously you need a bit more power there to get a decent quality image at the same time. With 3D the GFX card is essentially having to render twice as much information, so it needs a beefier card to keep going at a steady framerate.

There's also other applications that can use the powerful cards well, stuff like 3D/CAD Programs, or even Photoshop these days is enhanced by using a graphics card.

falafel

I guess I'm cheating a bit because I've got mine hooked up to a 36 inch telly and I honestly can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p when I'm sat playing away on my sofa. I can tell the difference with things like lighting, view distance & pop-in, polygon counts, bump mapping, filtering and all those other things I don't know the name of, though. Looks like GTA4 will run at around 60fps on average maxed out on my rig at that resolution so I'm quite happy really.

So far it's been mainly console ports I've picked up for cheap at CEX, which as you mentioned probably goes some way to explaining things. Mass Effect, Condemned, Mirror's Edge and Assassin's Creed all run wonderfully with the bells and whistles on maximum. STALKER runs perfectly as well, that one was pretty cruel to my last setup, barely ran at all to be honest.

I might give the Crysis demo a go, see how far I can push it, just for fun. And I've still got my GeForce 9400 around which I gather if you fiddle about with dodgy drivers can be used as a dedicated PPU - only catch being that my mini ATX mobo only has one PCI-E x16 slot so I can't put the bloody thing in. I expect by the time I get a new mobo I will be after replacing the rest of the lot anyway so - oh well.

AsparagusTrevor

Quote from: falafel on March 05, 2010, 10:51:06 AM
I guess I'm cheating a bit because I've got mine hooked up to a 36 inch telly and I honestly can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p when I'm sat playing away on my sofa. I can tell the difference with things like lighting, view distance & pop-in, polygon counts, bump mapping, filtering and all those other things I don't know the name of, though. Looks like GTA4 will run at around 60fps on average maxed out on my rig at that resolution so I'm quite happy really.

I might give the Crysis demo a go, see how far I can push it, just for fun.
I manage to get around 30fps on Crysis with most things maxed out, 1680x1050 resolution with 2x anti-aliasing. 30fps isn't ideal for a PC shooter, but the great thing about DX10 mode on Crysis is it has proper object motion blur (not the cheap camera swishing one a lot of games have) which tricks the eye into thinking everything is going smoother. Looks great actually, very cinematic.

With Crysis Warhead, the stand-alone expansion, they managed to optimise the engine further to squeeze a few more FPS out of it, and even made it look better. Also I think it's a much more fun game than the original.

falafel

Hmm, looks like our cards are roughly evenly matched, but I only have a dual-core (still very nippy though) and 2 gb RAM so may fall back a bit there. Lower resolution will help though. Maybe I'll be able to hit 30fps, I never really saw that as a problem framerate, although I don't think I have the keenest eye (or perhaps brain). I guess the thing with 30 is it sometimes drops down to 10 or maybe 5 which is fairly horrid.

Slaaaaabs

75% off Operation Flashpoint 2 on Steam this weekend. It might not be a proper sequel but at that price it is definitely worth a pop.