Early word is that initial sales of Windows 7 are over 200% higher than the initial sales of Vista, and the overwhelmingly positive feedback from both critics and enthusiasts is ample evidence that Windows 7 is what Vista should have been. So, I'm gonna run right out and upgrade, right?
Yeah, not so much. First of all, I was never in the camp that had any problems with Vista. Vista can be configured to be plenty lean and mean, as Tweakguides.com creator Koroush Ghazi has pointed out. None of the features than Windows 7 has are really jumping out at me as being that big of a deal, and I sure as hell am not looking forward to re-installing 50+ games and innumerable applications.
But more so than that, I'm not really keen on yet another Windows installation on my aging Western Digital Caviar 250GB hard drive. It was a great drive back in '06 when I got it, and it's still more than adequate, but everyone knows the real performance is in solid state drives. If and when I eventually find it worthwhile to upgrade to Windows 7, I'd like to stick it on a solid state drive. But right now, SSDs are still prohibitively expensive. Some people have suggested using a 30GB or 40GB SSD as an OS boot drive, then using a larger drive for everything else. That's retarded. You're basically spending hundreds of dollars to shave some time off your system boot time. Given that I keep my machine very lean anyway, boot times are not exactly a problem for me. And I really don't see the point in investing in a high-speed drive unless it's large enough to store most of your apps.
Not only that, but SSD tech is evolving very quickly. If you bought one last year, well, you're a sucker. The new ones are far faster, far more reliable, and dramatically cheaper... errr, rather, "less expensive". A quality 250GB SSD will run between $800 and $1k. Quality 120GB drives, which I consider a bare minimum amount of space, run in the $400 range. Ridiculous. But the upside is that for reasons not fully understood by yours truly, SSDs are supposed to follow Moore's Law, which mechanical drives did not. This means that prices are going to drop significantly and technology will get better every year.
Now, I've considered grabbing a Western Digital Velociraptor, which is a performance-oriented mechanical drive that has a more reasonable price tag. It's not as good as the current SSDs, but it's supposed to outperform older SSDs in some areas. Only problem is that all those benchmark suites everyone runs to write their "reviews" don't mean shit to me. I want to see real-world benefits. But it's a least a possibility. A 300GB velociraptor can be had for around $225, which while expensive compared to a standard 7200rpm drive, is sure a shit-ton cheaper than those ridiculously expensive SSDs. Of course, I'd still have to reinstall everything. Ugh. So we'll see. Bottom line: I will likely not be moving to Windows 7 anytime soon.
Windows 7 can wait
Playing Resident Evil 5 makes me feel like a zombie
I normally rely on reviews and word of mouth to give me some idea of whether I want to buy a game. I mean, who doesn't? Every so often there's a game I'm interested in but I'm not so sure about. If there's no demo available, I have to decide whether I just want to spring for it. Most of the time, this works out fine. I don't really sweat paying $40 or $50 for a game that's going to give me hours of entertainment. Compared to, say, going to the movies, video games are an entertainment bargain. But every so often I plunk down the cash for a game and then wonder what the hell all the hype was about. Case in point: Resident Evil 5.
I bought the game because... well, because it was getting close to Halloween. Zombieland was about to hit theaters, and I'd just re-watched the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, which is a pretty kick ass movie. So I wanted some zombie-killing video game action. Since RE5 was getting 90%+ reviews and most gamers I knew loved it, I figured I should give it a shot. And while I wouldn't go so far as to say it's not worth owning, it's sure as hell not worth $50. A bargain bin price, maybe.
The zombie-shooting action is pretty cool. There are some challenging enemies, and the game looks very good and runs like butter. It shows its console roots, but it's still well-suited for the PC. But what just kills me about this game is how, after five iterations, it's barely grown up at all. Half of the game is spent smashing open crates and barrels to collect gold coins and bullets. When zombies die, they leave gold coins and bullets. The bullets, by the way, are always just the kind of bullets you need for the guns you happen to be carrying. As in the previous games, you collect a lot of herbs for healing. The game basically consists of one zombie-horde sequence after another, punctuated by the occasional boss. The bosses are generally well-done, but I'm never a fan of the boss that has that one weakness and you have to figure out that exact method for winning. Come on. I usually save myself the wasted time and just consult an FAQ.
There are also plenty of inane puzzles, but fortunately they take a back seat to the action. And the game, while definitely not scary, is at least atmospheric. But basically what you have here is a game that is stuck in the 90s. I can't see the game having much replay value, because it's basically just a hand-holding shooting gallery. There's no room for improvisation or strategy here, no sir. Crysis this definitely ain't. The whole gold coin & ammo shtick just slays me. It's so incredibly outdated and stupid. Not only that, but it actually detracts from the pacing of the game because if you don't want to get your ass kicked, it's worthwhile to spend a while smashing barrels to find random crap that nobody would actually stick in barrels, like gold coins and ammo.
So yeah. Buy this game when it's on sale when you just want to turn your tasty brain off and shoot stuff. Don't buy it when you want a forward-thinking, intelligent game.
Modern Warfare 2: What's the big deal?
Modern Warfare has sold something like 13 million copies, and the sequel already has so many pre-orders that it's already a blockbuster and is poised to be every bit as huge as the first. Or is that fourth?
The thing is, I just can't figure out what all the Call of Duty worship is about. They're fun games, to be sure, but the formula has been done a thousand times. The game is so heavily scripted and linear that you can forget about having any kind of meaningful strategic options. Unlike, say, Crysis, which is highly unscripted and nonlinear and never plays the same way twice, the Call of Duty games are nothing but heavily scripted thrill rides that tell you where to go, and exactly what to do, every time.
Not that there isn't an art to great in-game scripting. There certainly is, and those games are certainly fun. But if you're one of the masses who thinks Modern Warfare is the apex of first-person shooters, you are probably, well, a console gamer.
Update on ArmA II vs. OFDR, while Dragon Age downloads...
I've been consistently dabbling in both ArmA II and OFDR, per my last post, and I have to say... I'm coming around to prefer OFDR. ArmA II is still awesome and lots of fun. But it's just so damn clunky, and the interface is such a pain in the butt. The gameplay is a little hit and miss. My current mission involves me tracking down some terrorist. I had to visit a few camp sites to "gather intel", which translates to "take a long, scenic drive through the countryside and talk to a few people, then drive some more and shoot some people, then get another message telling you to take another long drive elsewhere." Now, in a weird way, that's actually alright. The landscape in ArmA II is incredibly realistic and richly varied. There's just a lot of downtime where you're walking or driving long distances, only to arrive at your destination to find that there's nobody there and you should go somewhere else. I tend not to play any video game in super long stretches — especially when I have multiple games on my plate — so a lot of times my entire play time would be spent driving down a highway from one spot to the next, without any real action happening.
Dragon Rising is just a lot more focused. There are down times, but you're always feeling the tension of being on a mission. The action is also a little faster paced and responsive. ArmA II has good gunplay, but again, it's just more clunky. Dragon Rising also shows off more impressive visuals as you get farther into the game. It never reaches the level of ArmA II, which can look photo-realistic at times, but it's pretty slick nonetheless and it sure as hell runs a lot better than ArmA II.
So, despite dividing my time between these two games and still, STILL trying to get through The Witcher (I will probably never finish that freaking game), I bit the bullet on Dragon Age after a cascade of positive reviews. I'm a sucker for a good Tolkien-inspired RPG, and nobody makes better RPGs than Bioware. Mass Effect still ranks as quite possibly my favorite game of all time, perhaps tied with Crysis. Although, now that I think about it, I never really liked Neverwinter Nights 2 that much. I tried different kinds of characters, but it never held my interest long enough for me to get all that far. Hopefully Dragon Age will be closer to Mass Effect than NWN2 in terms of quality.
Arma 2 vs. Operation Flashpoint 2: Which Sucks Less?
I never really thought I'd get into Arma 2. I played the demo, and just thought it was weird and kind of excessively complicated. I've always loved military sims, but I also like my games to be fun, and Arma 2 seemed complicated to the point that it simply wasn't fun. On a whim and based on a number of reviews — since my appetite was whetted for a good military sim — I decided to buy Operation Flashpoint 2. I played a bit of it, then got sidetracked with life stuff for a few days. Then I saw on Direct2Drive that they were having a sale — half off Arma 2. Well, what the heck. Word of mouth was good, so I decided to grab it. I'm now a bit into both games, and can at least give my initial impressions.
Presentation
It's an interesting comparison between the two games. OF2 is far more polished. I haven't had any problems with bugs or glitches, the game runs very smoothly, and it has an overall much more slick and professional presentation to menus, cutscenes and so forth. However, OF2 was also clearly not developed with the mindset of pushing PC hardware. The game is on par, visually, with the more recent Call of Duty games. Which is to say, nothing impressive for a PC gamer. It doesn't even use motion blur, and I love motion blur. It's a pet peeve of mine when devs don't at least stick in the option. The lighting and textures in OF2 are good, but not outstanding. This is a bit of a disappointment for me, because realistic graphics can really enhance the sense of immersion.
Arma 2, on the other hand, has a much more advanced graphics engine. The only problem is that it's a bitch to run, and it's riddled with weird bugs. The lighting, texture detail and post processing are all far more advanced than what's present in OF2. There are plenty of moments where the game looks almost photo-realistic. However, this is marred by inconsistent performance and inconsistent quality. While some parts of the game look exceedingly impressive, other parts look very clunky. Character detail and animations leave a lot to be desired. And the performance... well, that's a whole other problem. Strangely, I could never get more than 25-30 fps regardless of the settings. There was a negligible performance difference on my system between the lowest and highest settings. The real killer is the view distance, which when cranked looks quite impressive but causes massive stuttering. According to the buzz on the intrawebs, the game engine never uses more than 2GB of RAM, which if true is a damn shame because the texture streaming can be downright awful. I also found the "very high" post processing to be a little exaggerated for me; fortunately you still get a nice touch of motion blur on the "high" setting.
But, is it fun to play?
Both games feel quite different. Arma 2 is undoubtedly the more hardcore of the two, and overall it looks and feels considerably more realistic. In OF2, you can run and shoot. Huh? In Arma 2, properly, you can walk and shoot, albeit with significantly compromised accuracy. Running and shooting? Not happening. In OF2, you can't lean. Really? Really? Ugh. Arma 2 also has a larger open world, more weapons, and more complex interactions. But don't go thinking it's the better game just yet.
OF2, despite not feeling as demanding or as realistic, gets some things done very well. It uses a very elegant radial menu system for issuing all kinds of orders that makes commanding a squad a snap. Arma 2 also does some things that just seem unnecessary, like requiring you to right-click to raise the scope, then hold down RMB to zoom. I'm not sure why developers the world over haven't realized that tapping RMB to raise the scope then using the scroll wheel to zoom in or out is the most elegant solution. But in Arma 2, the scroll wheel is used to access contextual commands in the "action menu". This is one area where OF2 is just far superior; it's just much easier to use contextual commands and navigate the in-game menus. Arma 2 also has a lot more weird bugs, but the scripting and AI are also a bit more complex which, coupled with a bigger open world, predictably creates problems. However, as of the current 1.04 patch, I haven't encountered any serious bugs. My biggest complaint is that the friendly medics take their sweet damn time getting around to patching you up. It's lame to just lie there helpless on the ground, so when I get shot I usually just revert to my last save. Oh, and the in-game dialogue in Arma 2 is painfully bad, as this amusing demo review from Shacknews quite accurately describes.
Masochism 101
Both games are hard and unforgiving, but Arma 2 is a little harder. Again, it feels more realistic. Stupid behavior and slow reactions get punished quickly. However, you can save anywhere, anytime. OF2 is a little more forgiving and, accordingly, feels just a bit more video-gamey rather than like a hardcore sim. But it also doesn't allow you to save anywhere, and the checkpoints can be pretty far apart. Personally, I am not a fan of no quicksaves. I like being the one who decides how much a section I should have to repeat; starting somewhere I was a half-hour or hour ago is annoying, not fun, especially in games where one shot is all it takes to go down. Arma 2 has the added bonus of allowing extensive customization of the various difficulties, so if there's one particular element you dislike about a difficulty, you can change it.
On a final note, Arma 2 gives you a better sense of your insignificance. During one early campaign mission, I was tasked with taking out a sniper that was pinning down an allied team. On one playthrough, I shot him; on another, my teammates shot him; on another, a third team took care of him before I got there; and another time, the sniper managed to kill all the members of the allied squad and it was mission failure, but the game kept going and I was issued new orders. So unlike OF2, where it seems more reliant on the player to get everything done, Arma 2 throws you in more unscripted combat situations and basically leaves everything up to you.
The Verdict
So, what's my pick? I'm actually glad I bought them both. They're both lots of fun, and a nice break from all the recycled, stylized action games flooding the shelves. Neither game is perfect; Arma 2 needs more polish and optimization, but feels very immersive and realistic; OF2 doesn't push technical boundaries or feel quite as immersive and realistic, but it's much more polished and user-friendly. Right now, I would have to give the nod to Arma 2, if just by a hair. It just feels more like a true sim, and though more flawed, it's also more ambitious. The cumbersome menus and performance issues detract some from the fun, but overall, it's a damn cool game. OF2 is certainly no slouch though, and if you're not really all about the ultra-realism and you're willing to sacrifice some scope for playability, you might prefer it. And on Direct2Drive at the time of writing this, OF2 is ten bucks cheaper than Arma 2.
About the screens: OF2 is maxed out with 4xAA; Arma 2 is on all maximum settings except for distance, which is at half-value, and there is no AA (I tried... it killed frame rates).
The forthcoming DX11 revolution, and why enthusiasts shouldn't care
Personally, I cannot bring myself to care. Performance-wise, I have so much headroom with my two GTX 260s that upgrading just seems silly. I'm currently playing through STALKER: Clear Sky (I'll post my thoughts later), and I'm playing everything max with 4xTSAA and getting buttery-smooth frame rates. Just like I greeted the release of the Core i7 with a yawn since I'm running a Core 2 at 4ghz, the next generation of video cards seems a little ho-hum for me. But it's not just because I'm happy with my setup. I am not exactly foaming at the mouth for DX11, and I don't think anyone else should be either.
We all remember the debacle that was DX10. It was supposed to bring a leap in visual fidelity thanks to improved programming pipelines. Didn't happen. In fact, it seemed like in most games that used DX10, the performance was actually worse, with the IQ "improvements" barely even noticeable, if they were noticeable at all. Moreover, a simple .cfg tweak in Crysis showed us all that the DX10 hype was hot air, since you achieve virtually indistinguishable IQ in DX9, with better performance to boot.
Despite graphics card companies trying to hype up DX11 and a handful of games coming out next year that will support DX11, the reality is that these games, just like the DX10-supporting games, will still be built on DX9 with DX11 "support" simply tacked on. It will be years before DX11 is actually a standard and games are being built with it from the ground up, assuming that even happens. And the last thing to remember is that DX11 is not so much for gamers as it is for programmers. DX11 might make some features easier to implement, but you're unlikely to see some big leap in visual fidelity from DX11 alone.
Right now, graphics cards are cheap and powerful. Upgrading to DX11 requires not only a new graphics card, but Windows 7 as well. The requirement of a new OS, and the fact that support from games will be a trickle rather than a flood, means that unless you are in the market for a new rig, there's no compelling reason to upgrade just yet.
Quick update: overclocking the 260s
Final clocks on the new cards: 756/1620/1053 (core/shader/memory). Stock was 576/1242/999. Big overclocks, and very noticeable performance improvement. To overclock, I used EVGA Precision combined with Furmark. (Not to be confused with Futuremark.)
Also: addendum to the previous post. With the newest WHQL drivers, AA has a significantly reduced performance impact. It's enough that I've got transparency supersampling enabled by default in my driver settings. Shamwow!
Transparency supersampling in Crysis Warhead: teh awesome
Anyone who has used anti-aliasing in the Crysis games knows that while it does a fine job of smoothing out edges on solid objects, it doesn't really help with transparent objects like trees and foliage. By default, I set the nVidia drivers to transparency multisampling, but unfortunately its negligible performance impact is paralleled by its negligible visual impact. The only way to really smooth out transparent textures like foliage and fences is to use transparency supersampling (TSAA), which carries a significant performance cost to coincide with its visual upgrade.
The new rig has been performing really well, so I thought hey, why not try TSAA with Crysis Warhead? I had tried it with Mirror's Edge and it worked great (the game has a lot of fences). I figured that, since Crysis uses so many transparent textures, it would kill performance. But guess what? It didn't. In fact, while the frame rate drops in a few situations with very dense foliage, overall the impact is surprisingly negligible. And to the extent that there is a performance impact, I have to say that the visual upgrade in this case is quite dramatic and well worth it.
Alright, so, I'll let a couple pictures do the talking. Here we are with multisampling:
And here with supersampling:
The difference is obvious, even in still shots. However, it's actually much more noticeable during gameplay, and this is why the performance impact is worth the visuals. With multisampling, there's still a lot of "shimmer" on foliage; as you move around the game world, you'll notice that transparent textures have a sparkly, unnatural look to them. This shimmering is virtually eliminated with TSAA, resulting in a dramatically more lifelike image quality.
I'll finish off with a few more screens. Notice how clean the foliage is, particularly with fine textures such as leaves. If you've got a PC that can handle it, TSAA is amazing, and well worth implementing. 
p.s. I tried using TSAA in the original Crysis, and it just wasn't worth it. It looked great of course, but the engine isn't as well optimized and TSAA makes for a much bigger performance hit. This is one of those things you really need to test on a game-by-game basis, and use your nVidia profiles.
Good things come in twos
First item: I recently replaced my 9800GTX cards with a pair of GTX 260s (216 core version). It was basically a total steal: the two cards together cost the same as one GTX 285. Granted, it's not a cheap option or anything, but you know what? I can play Crysis at maximum settings with 4xAA at 1680x1050, and get around 50 frames per second. Suck on that, Charles Q. Huddingsworth! Or something.
Anyway, I had been having some trouble with my rig. My pump was simply not powerful enough to get coolant all the way through the loop. I had way too much air in there, and my temperatures were suffering as a result. I contemplated returning to the Swiftech MCP 655, but the orientation of the pump would mean major re-organization of my rig, plus the DB-1 I had was virtually silent, which can't be said for the MCP 655. Plus, the MCP is like $80 or something, and I knew I wouldn't get more than $20, if I was lucky, for my DB-1.
But see, I never really liked the way I had two cards dumping their heat onto the CPU either. So, one option made the most sense: get a second pump, and use dedicated loops for both the GPUs and the CPU. That's exactly what I did. The system is still very quiet, the loops are totally full, and temperatures are way down. It took about three hours to put it all together and my apartment looks like a war zone, but it was totally worth it. Now, to get to overclocking those 260s!
p.s. At one point, it occurred to me that it might make things a little more aesthetically pleasing if I inverted the front 120mm radiator so the CPU tubing wouldn't have to run in front of the graphics cards. But anyone who's tried to remove that front fan fixture from the Silverstone TJ09 knows better than to screw with that.
GPU loop runs from a pump at the bottom of the case, to the bottom then top card, to the 220 radiator at the top of the case, to the res in the 5.25" drive bay, and back to the pump.
CPU loop runs from the pump located on the top of the fan fixture, to the CPU, down to the front radiator (intake fan), and back to the pump. It's filled with a fillport that sits conveniently to the side of the drive bays.
Bonus: here is what this new rig can do. These shots are from Crysis with all settings at maximum and 4xAA. Check those frame rates!
About Me
- Mike D
- I earn my bread as a personal trainer, but spend most of my time playing guitar (mostly metal), reading (mostly science stuff), working out, enjoying a good movie or videogame, and spending time with my awesome friends and family. Occasionally I try to cook, but I make sure to have the fire extinguisher handy.
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