Overall i'm well impressed with my ATi 4870x2 (now that i've changed the fan speed settings) but the one thing that i'm not so impressed about is the drivers for the card.
I installed Crysis Warhead and on gamer settings with full AF I was getting 21fps. :o I updated the drivers to the latest catalyst 8.8 drivers and the fps doubled. It seems to me that the drivers are awful for the X2 and ATi seriously need to sort them out if they want to keep their lead over Nvidia.
I was struck with a bout of madness when I was buying my new graphics card because I got a 2GB ATI Radeon 4870x2.
The difference in frame rate between my old Geforce 8800GTX and this new 4870x2 in some games is astounding.
Stalker Clear Sky - between 90 and 140 fps maxed out, COD4 - between 110 and 150 fps maxed out, Painkiller - Between 200 and 300 fps maxed out, Half life 2 - maxed out reflect world 6xAA 16xAF Outside 140 to 240 fps, inside 250 to 300 fps, Sin episodes Emergence - maxed out reflect world 4AA 16AF between 130 to 280 fps, Crysis - maxed out on high, 8xAA 40fps Oblivion - maxed out with 8xAA between 40 and 100 fps outside.
On the whole i'm quite impressed with it but one thing that isn't so rosy is the fan noise. When the fan is on half speed it's not that much louder than the fan on my 8800GTX but when it hits full speed it's really loud, so much so that I had to turn up the volume on Crysis to be able to hear what they were saying.
I started playing Stalker Clear Sky last night and I was disappointed that my 768MB Geforce 8800 GTX only gave me 21 fps in the Clear Sky base. I started playing the Swamp level and it got to between 30 and 50 fps but i'm still disappointed. I started to eye up a 1GB Geforce 280 GTX (overclocked) and I would have ordered it while I was at work but the credit card details on the site are wrong. :( Now it's gotten to the point where i'm not too sure that I should get it, although it's one of the best cards out there at the minute. It's even cheaper than my 8800 GTX was, by about £50 :o
Just found this over at Shacknews, great stuff but I doubt many developers/publishers will adopt it.
1 - Gamers shall have the right to return games that don't work with their computers for a full refund. 2 - Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state. 3 - Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game's release. 4 - Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game. 5 - Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will adequately play on that computer. 6 - Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won't install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their express consent. 7 - Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time. 8 - Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers. 9 - Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play. 10 - Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.
Well I just finished Doom 3 again and I seemed to enjoy it much more than the first time I played it. It was still the same game I remember so why did I enjoy it more, I don't know?!?!? I must say though that the lighting effects are simply incredible especially when it's maxed out.
They say it's my PC causing the problem but I know darn well that's it their crappy copyright protection doing it. After over a month of going backwards and forwards Noobisoft (aka UBISoft) have finally admitted there's nothing they can do to help me fix my problem. I sorta figured as much but i'm kinda glad that they've finally admitted it instead of ignoring me like they did for two weeks. I managed to get a 1.03 crack for it and i'm now playing the game again. I even uploaded it with my response so hopefully they can use it to help other people with the same problem. Cheeky maybe but worth it! :P
I came into work this morning after a weekend full of geekiness and game playing. The game I played was Chrome a very overlooked title by Techland. Anyway back on topic, I came into work and found out email was not working, a quick server restart later and everything was working again. Well mostly working again except for the 700,000 emails each member of the IT department was receiving, after an hour or so I pinned it down to three emails bouncing from our Exchange server (email server) to our email filtering server and vice versa. Backwards and forwards; backwards and forwards all weekend. You would think that server software nowadays would be smart enough not to do something like this hmmm....obviously not. I killed the messages and now all is quiet.
Four hours later Outlook 2007 is still downloading all the emails in my mailbox, a mailbox that is currently 5.7GB.
It now appears that six of the biggest ISPs in the UK have sign deals with the music industry to help combat piracy. BT, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse have all signed up for it. I might be mistaken but didn't Carphone Warehouse say they wouldn't ever do anything like this? How times and minds change (maybe with help from a little bit of money from the music industry).
The new deal with ISPs would see persistent file sharers having their connection capped at slower speeds. Possible legality issues there maybe? How can an ISP cap your connection when you're paying for a higher speed? Anyway there doesn't seem to be any mention of the three strikes and you're disconnected measure they wanted to bring in.
In my opinion the music and film industries have both sleep walked in to the current state of affairs by not embracing the boom of the internet or mp3 players. They decided to simply ignore them and continue with an out of date business model.
We know that CDs are still expensive (in the UK) and cheaper in Europe but it's not all the industries fault. There are people out there that illegally download music for free just because they can and have no intention of buying any music, it's those that need to be stopped.
General layout of the site is quite good. Ability to edit articles, add games, add screenshots etc etc.
Bad Points:
There's no single page with all the different forums listed (or that i've found) it's just a single page of all the topics thrown on to one page. On some forums there is no navigation you have to use the back button on your browser. Font on the left border looks awful.
The site is new anyway so i'm sure the issues will be fixed. I hope that the Giant Bomb site and it's community continues to evolve into something awesome!
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