New GPU's/Crysis and DX10 v DX10.1

[yogibbear]

With the Crysis demo now in our hot little hands, and the release of the 8800gt nvidia card like only a few hours ago, and all the rave reviews it's getting basically it's a 250 USD card (350 AUD) with the performance at about 95% of an 8800gtx. Now the problem is... DX10.1

The 8800gt is only dx10 compliant (not dx10.1) hence, although it's cheap, powerful and available right now, it might mean that in a couple of months with new cards coming out, i'll feel stupid for the purchase.

There's the supposed "9800gtx" that should be dx10.1 coming sometime... (anyone got an eta?)

And there's the ATI/AMD R670 "3800" coming out on nov 15th which will be dx10.1 compliant.

So... i want to upgrade for Crysis/the Witcher/COD4 etc etc etc... as i'm still on my pentium 4 so i'm going for the whole new 2-3k AUD rig upgrade like many people probably will be doing for the dx10 games being released. But the big question is whether to opt for the 8800gt now, wait to see how the 3800 ati performs in a couple of weeks, or stick it out for the yet-to-be-officially-announced dates on the 9800gtx and the ati card that'll be going up against that.

Now Discuss...

[Bioshock_FTW!]

well I need an upgrade, for sure. Crysis struggles at 1680x1050 on High settings, which is the least quality I'll let myself get away with. Anything below that is shoddy and virtually DX9.

I want to sell my mobo and CPU to upgrade to Intel, so if anyone's interested in some cheap gaming hardware (AMD), PM me.

[yogibbear]

well I need an upgrade, for sure. Crysis struggles at 1680x1050 on High settings, which is the least quality I'll let myself get away with. Anything below that is shoddy and virtually DX9.

I want to sell my mobo and CPU to upgrade to Intel, so if anyone's interested in some cheap gaming hardware (AMD), PM me.

yeah well at the moment i am running the demo in all medium on my 7950gt, 1280*1024 lcd, 2gb ram, p4 3.6gHz.

So the idea for me is to upgrade to something like:
q6600 g0
p35 mobo
4gb ram
vista 64 bit
22" 1680&1050
+GPU

GPU = 1 of: 8800gt, RV670 "3800", RV700, 9800gtx.

[Yabbering Yeti]

well I need an upgrade, for sure. Crysis struggles at 1680x1050 on High settings, which is the least quality I'll let myself get away with. Anything below that is shoddy and virtually DX9.

I want to sell my mobo and CPU to upgrade to Intel, so if anyone's interested in some cheap gaming hardware (AMD), PM me.

hey matie, hang on to that equipment: Vista is the issue. XP performance over Vista in crysis is just insanely better (I tested it out for about 2 hours), plus you can enable all the dx10 beauty in dx9 PLUS is runs better still. So re-install XP (dual boot?) if its a possibility - cause anything you buy to run crysis on Vista isnt going to help you much at all. As I recall you have a nice rig, which you have played top $$ for - You will get so much more out of it on XP.

[shocked]

hey matie, hang on to that equipment: Vista is the issue. XP performance over Vista in crysis is just insanely better (I tested it out for about 2 hours), plus you can enable all the dx10 beauty in dx9 PLUS is runs better still. So re-install XP (dual boot?) if its a possibility - cause anything you buy to run crysis on Vista isnt going to help you much at all. As I recall you have a nice rig, which you have played top $$ for - You will get so much more out of it on XP.

Yeti is dead on with this.

[greylantern]

my rig

8800GTX
e6850 @ 3.6ghz
2gb 800mhz ram (getting another 2gb soon for dev/daw reasons mainly)
ANTEC 900 CASE! (yes, same as posted)

Anyway, Crysis demo @ 1440x900 in DX9 without the 'DX 10 features trick' is pretty decent, could do with AA but I take too much of a hit for me to be comfy (25-30fps), I prefer in the 50s and before anyone says "the human eye can't see blah de blah...", this is not about seeing it's about feeling, i'd rather play crysis close to 60fps with less eye candy than have it lagging and treacle like (which it is if you put everything on high + DX10 hacks + AA).

So, I have all on high but water,shaders and post pro on medium, you only loose god halos (dx10 features config trick remember), water on visor, rays through water, better waves etc... and I can get between 50 - 90fps and it plays beautifully at that speed and still looks ok. It's using the 'cheap' depth of field and no motion blur at these settings but i'm ok with that, as I said i'd rather have the speed than the 'pretty lag'.

My point is, don't think that a 8800 GT is gonna let you run at max quality at a very nice frame rate, expect ~20fps even at that res you run at (mine is lower res and my GTX struggles!) for reference I get ~170fps in UT3 demo on high!

Crysis is definitely going to look it's best in future, for now we all need to lower our expectations about the graphics (and our settings) and make it playable first and foremost because that's where the true fun is to be had with slick frame rates and the lovely non linear-ish gameplay.

And on a decent card (8gtx/gt/gts) with those compromised settings it can still look good, just not as jaw dropping as everything on 'very high' in DX10.

I've also tried it in vista under DX10 on very high and frankly it's a slideshow! again you can tweak certain things down while leaving others (Textures quality for example has little impact on a 768mb GTX so it can stay high/very high) but SHADOWS, SHADERS, WATER and POST PROCESSING should all be knocked down a notch to make it fully playable/enjoyable. That's what i've found in my initial tests (new nvidia driver).

I expect a little more optimisation in the full game or at least a patch, and newer drivers from Nvidia should help.

tip: Bring up the console in game (press the key above 'tab' on the left hand side next to '1') and type in 'r_displayinfo 1' to see your frame rate and mem usage no need for fraps.

On 'high' settings in sandbox, loading the multiplayer map and running it I get 60fps average or above and that's while running it in sandbox so it is very much playable on these cards you just need to knock down the settings that are less important to you to up the frame rate and in my tests I am happy with those above on 'medium' as they actually impact little on the visuals while playing it as a game (rather than staring at it like art) yet I get double the frame rate!

[greylantern]

btw - for clarity I meant using the DX10 features config trick gives ~ 25fps all on high @ my res, if I use the default configs (the true DX9 ones) I get ~40 fps with all on high. So you can see that those extra features that are turned on with the 'workaround' are still a drain on the system and though they look very nice I don't think it's worth the hit.

And this was all on XP btw, I've also tried running in DX9 mode on Vista (with the 'config trick' and in pure very high settings) and in general it's slower.

[Freddo]

There's no reason to care about DX10.1. Crysis won't use it, and it will take a long while before there are games that require it.

[yogibbear]

There's no reason to care about DX10.1. Crysis won't use it, and it will take a long while before there are games that require it.

Yeah i get that. If you go over to the crysis forums you can see that most of the "DX 10 ONLY" features can be unlocked on the demo in xp anyways...

I was more implying that i don't want to spend 350 dollars on a gpu only to then be able to have spent maybe 200 more (AUD) and got the dx10.1 which would give my computer a bit more life in the long run.

Plus dx10 is more about taking things aaway from the processor to do, and making the gpu do them instead. So it's not exactly things that can't be done without dx10. The main reason is that dx10.1 will support better AA, so no more UE3 "deferred rendering" so no AA for you! tactics from devs. We can get AA + HDR. (not that we couldn't before, but now it's better use of AA/type of AA)

[shocked]

Yeah i get that. If you go over to the crysis forums you can see that most of the "DX 10 ONLY" features can be unlocked on the demo in xp anyways...

I was more implying that i don't want to spend 350 dollars on a gpu only to then be able to have spent maybe 200 more (AUD) and got the dx10.1 which would give my computer a bit more life in the long run.

Plus dx10 is more about taking things aaway from the processor to do, and making the gpu do them instead. So it's not exactly things that can't be done without dx10. The main reason is that dx10.1 will support better AA, so no more UE3 "deferred rendering" so no AA for you! tactics from devs. We can get AA + HDR. (not that we couldn't before, but now it's better use of AA/type of AA)

Yeah I posted the direct link to it. I upgraded my PC with the sole purpose of Crysis....well and that and Avid for the Mrs.

The tweak makes the demo even better and that will help when the full game comes out!

[yogibbear]

Shocked, got any suggestions on my rig?

[shocked]

Shocked, got any suggestions on my rig?

I am not too good at this as I had one of my soldier buddies who is a computer phenom help me with mine.

I have a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Processor
Got 4 gigs of PNY 5300 DDR2 RAM
XFX 8800GTS 320 Video card
Oh and a Gigabyte m61p-33 motherboard

I went with those. I wanted the 640 video card, but the Mrs. vetoed that and said if there is not that much difference between the two than we do not need it and most people said there is not that much difference between the two cards.

Here is my rig.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...y/DSC_0057.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...y/DSC_0066.jpg

I am going to redo some of the wire management in there, but for now it works beautifully. LOL