There's a new card cruncher in town...

I've been playing (and very much enjoying) the Call of Juarez demo. It's still over a month from release, so hopefully by the time it's out it'll be better optimized.

But extra optimization or not, this one is shaping up to be a real beast to run. It uses HDR, which unfortunately means no anti-aliasing for us nVidia users. But what really makes it tough on the cards is all the foliage and shadows. This game has superb textures and looks very, very good. Think Oblivion in the Old West. Like Oblivion, this game features a lot of trees and grass that are very complex and cast their own shadows. That means crunch time even for high-end systems.

At all maximum settings, I averaged about 30 frames per second in the town areas. In really heavy forest areas the frame rate stuttered into the teens. The in-game settings are surprisingly limited, and as such they all have a noticeable effect on the frame rate (unlike Oblivion, which has a lot of settings that don't seem to really affect the frame rate significantly).

The more I play of this game, the more I'm impressed. Phenomenal sound and voice acting, amazing graphics, and unique gameplay. This is on my list as a must-have of 2006. It's simply awesome.

Here are some pics from the game. As you can see from the frame counter in the upper left hand corner, those outdoor areas really crunch the graphics cards. This is with all settings at max except for shadows, which are set to medium. Enjoy the screens! Click for full-size.











For optimal gameplay, I found that turning shadows to medium helped the most. Turning foliage quality down helped too, but I prefered the look of high quality foliage even if it meant losing a few frames. But the interesting thing here is that even when I put all medium settings on, I was still only hovering around 30 frames per second in that dense forest area.

However, one thing I really like about the performance is that it's very consistent. Unlike Oblivion which can be 50 frames one minute and 20 the next, Call of Juarez hovered right around 30 pretty much the whole time. It got into the 40s in some indoor areas and into the teens in some outdoor areas, but overall it was very consistent, meaning that even when my frame rate wasn't that great, it felt playable.

Games like this make the prospect of an 8 Series card that much more appealing. In fact, both this game and nVidia's 8 Series are slated for September... maybe I'll be selling my current card off, depending on what the 8 series offers.

Surgery! *updated*

*update* I went back in and again redid some stuff. Full details below.

I decided I was not satisfied with the wiring job I had done, so I spent some time tonight redoing it. I disassembled everything and re-routed just about everything. I tightened things up and freed up a lot of space.

I did the following:

- Rerouted all power wires (motherboard, PCI-E, HDD) to improve airflow
- Folded the floppy cable more tightly and secured it out of sight behind the drive cages.
- Tied and/or routed all fan cables
- Tied all main power cables into a bundle with a velcro tie and stuffed all the extra cabling in the space above the disk drive.
- Installed the hard drive "backwards" and routed the cables out of sight behind the drive cages (I had actually tried this before and couldn't do it, but I figured out a trick to make it work)

The best part? Checking the temps with AI Booster, it turns out my computer has dropped a few degrees. Good wiring definitely makes a difference!

Here's a look at my handywork. Click the images for a larger view.

Here's what it looked like when I originally wired it. The angle isn't as good, but you can still see the clutter by comparison:



And here it is now. Remember that since then I have added a floppy drive and a sound card:





Oh, and just for a fun comparison to give you an idea of the work and pride I've put into my PC, here is a picture from [H]ardOCP of the insides of a custom-built PC from CyberPower PC... to think that at one point I almost bought my PC from this company:



You know what they say... If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself!

New experiments with tweakery

Just a few minor things tonight. Ever notice the icky "texture crawl" effect in games, where it sort of looks like there are a million ants all over a surface? Well, those are actually in part the result of certain settings in Forceware. You can actually improve image quality pretty significantly, if with a minor performance hit.

From the nVidia Control Panel, under 3D settings, Advanced Settings:

Anisotropic Optimization: Off
Anisotropic Sample Optimization: Off
Negative LOD Bias: On

Btw this is according to the new nVidia display as of the latest drivers (I use the 91.33 Beta). In previous driver versions, you set "LOD Bias" to "clamp" if it isn't there by default already.

It sounds counterintuitive that turning off optimizations would improve image quality, but hey, I don't know how it works, just that it does.

As with most things, the issue comes down to performance vs. quality. I enabled the above settings and found the performance hit to be negligable with a very nice improvement in quality, particularly in motion (i.e., where it counts). However if you're having a tough time running a game you could always just do one of the three, or use the Profiles options to enable the higher details just for the games you want.

Sound card!

Hooray! My birfday gift from the fam was a nice Creative Soundblaster Xtreme Music card. There's definitely a noticeable improvement in audio quality, especially in FEAR with the EAX thing.

However I haven't noticed any difference in the frame rate during games. But honestly, I never really bought the idea that sound cards made that big of a difference in that regard anyway. May a few frames or something, but overall it's nothing to throw a parade over. The improvement in sound quality is certainly nice, but it doesn't really change my mind about sound cards being more of a luxury than a necessity.

I've gone digital

I received my DVI cable today from NewEgg. I'd tried one before with the old card, and it didn't work. As far as I can tell the new one is the same kind. I did my homework on the different types and figured that I'd bought the right one. So I guess it was either a bum cable or an issue with the old card, because the new one works fine. Incidentally, I paid about $15 for it on NewEgg. The previous one was purchased at Circuit City and cost $60. Frankly I think it's kind of dumb that the monitor didn't come with one. It's a digital device and you get an analog cable with it? What corporate genius thought that one up?

So, the Big Question: Does it make a difference? Answer: Yes. I haven't played any games yet, and frankly without a side-by-side comparison I think it'd be tough to tell you what changed, but on booting up I noticed the picture was considerably smoother and more vivid. I was also able to enable the ClearType feature in Windows without making the text look all weird.

It's not the most amazing thing ever, but it's worth $15. Just don't buy your cable from Circuit City.

Direct X 10 cards, and why I'm not biting

nVidia will be releasing its first DX10-compatable card this Semptember, as the first of the highly anticipated 8 Series of cards. If that seems soon given that the GX2 is practically right out of the gate, well, yeah, it is soon. And, in my opinion, way too soon. ATI will also be releasing their next generation of cards soon, though nVidia is intent on being first to market. ATI will apparently be releasing 80nm versions of their current cards, much like nVidia did with the 7900 Series--they were essentially just 90nm versions of the 7800 series with a few tweaks and added shaders. And while ATI is already using unified shaders in the Xbox360 and will on their next cards, nVidia's first 8 series cards will still use a dedicated number of pixel shaders, texture shaders and vertex shaders.

Now, new cards cost some serious money. But in order to make use of DX10, you'll need to upgrade to Windows Vista, which makes an already expensive investment even moreso. What puzzles me is why you'd want to buy a first-gen DX10 card that is released months before Vista hit the shelves (it's slated for early 2007). In other words, for the first few months you'll just have the newest DX9 card.

But the really bothersome thing is power consumption. The new cards from ATI and nVidia are reportedly going to require up to 300w of power for a single card! OCZ has even developed a seperate video card power supply that's to be used in addition to your usual PSU. Talk about overkill.

What makes this so ridiculous is that ATI and nVidia are fully aware of how out of hand the heat and power issues are, and they've said that after this next batch of cards, they're going to try to tone things down. Really, that's what nVidia did with the 7900 series: they addressed the heat and power issues that plagued the 7800 series.

I can tell you right now that there's no way in hell I'm buying yet another PC component because manufacturers are letting the power issue get out of hand. I've got a 520w PSU, and dammit, that's how it's gonna be.

Also, in addition to DX10 requiring Vista, there's the fact that what a lot of people don't realize is that it's just a step forward in shader technology. You don't need DX10. Games will still be backwards compatable for quite some time. Even now, most games allow you to enable DX8 shaders, and if it's not in the game options it can be done using a simple tool like Rivatuner. DX10 is not the be-all, end all of next-generation gaming. Plenty of games still use OpenGL, and remember that Crysis was running in DX9 at E3. That looked pretty damn nice to me.

Whenever I visit message boards around the web, I inevitably encounter people who are panicking about upgrading. They don't want to buy something now because something else is right around the corner.

Well, I bought an AMD Socket 939 motherboard when I was getting my PC together. Then out of nowhere, no sooner had I assembled my computer then AMD has released Socket AM2, a new line of processors and support for DDR2 memory. Do I care? No, not at all. When I need to upgrade to maintain the great performance I have, I'll upgrade. I'll get what's available then without worrying about what's next. In the meantime there will always be newer and better stuff coming out. It's impossible to keep up with the PC tech curve without astronomical disposable income.

So just because Vista and DX10 are coming on the market doesn't mean you HAVE to upgrade. Far from it. While new PC technology comes out often and there is always talk of what's next, it's phased out rather gradually. Just ask people who are still getting great frame rates on their nVidia 6800 cards.

Personally, I've got the GX2 on the way, which is a little excessive, but I want the best card I can get. I'm not going to worry about upgrading to an 8 series when they come out. Better to wait until DX10 gets utilized more by game developers, Vista becomes more standardized, ATI and nVidia address this ridiculous power consumption issue, and my current card just doesn't give me top of the line performance. I only upgraded to the GX2 because of EVGA's step-up program which saves me lots of money, not because I HAVE to have the latest greatest video card. I expect my rig to keep up with the Joneses for a good while, and no amount of upgrade fever is going to send me into a panick.

Okay, so, seriously... PC or Mac?

I've had enough time with my nice new Windows PC to give a really solid verdict as to whether I like PCs or Macs better. I was a Mac user for a solid 8 or 10 years, so I think I can accurately address some of the common points that people use to differentiate the two.

Obviously I like the PC better. There's a little bit more maintenence, but it's all pretty minor and really, I feel a lot more in control with the PC. You can't get into the BIOS of a Mac and optimize or overclock. You can't download the latest drivers and tweak things. You can't even defrag a Mac, and I can tell you that Macs do in fact get plenty slowed down over time as you add, delete and alter programs. If you're a gamer, you really can't expect to have the best experience on a Mac. Even with the new Intel-based Macs that run Windows, you're running Windows *on top* of running OSX. So that's two operating systems eating resources, and two to maintain. Not really the way to go.

Myth: Macs are easier to use.
Fact: For some things, yes. It's easier to use a Mac than to build your own PC like I did. But in general, it's a tossup. Managing programs and finding what you need is easy on both systems, and actually I prefer the PC setup. For example, if you click and drag an item on a Mac, you actually move the file to the new folder. If you click and drag on a PC, you just copy the file. I actually prefer that because it helps me know where everything is. And the truth is, Macs have their share of problems. Despite what the marketing people say, Macs have issues with certain software, and in a lot of cases software just isn't available for the Mac.

Myth: Macs never crash
Fact: My PC has never crashed, at least not the infamous BSOD, and in the case of freezes I've always been able to diagnose the issue realitively easily and in every case it's been user-end error (i.e., I biffed). I've had some booting errors when I was optimizing for overclocking, but once the system was stable everything was fine. OSX never crashed on me, but OS9 crashed a ton on me--freezes, programs randomly quitting, etc. In OSX, Safari randomly quits on an almost predictable basis with the message, "the application "Safari" has unexpectedly quit." I do think that in general Macs are more stable only because you have a limited software suite running on pre-set hardware configurations. But then it comes down to whether you want the greater options and freedom of a PC at the risk of a little less stability.

Myth: You can't upgrade Macs
Fact: iMacs can't be upgraded aside from adding RAM. If you have a G5 tower, you can swap out some components, but of course with any Mac when it comes to upgrading you are extremely limited in your purchasing options. PCs give you a virtually limitless array of hardware possibilities. The question is, do you prefer simplicity or freedom? Upgrading is easy, but some people don't want to mess with it. They'd rather just buy a new computer than make a few upgrades because they think it's too complicated. It's really not, but I understand the sentiment.

Take my dad for example. He's got an old iMac G3, 400mhz. He has added some RAM (which I installed) and upgraded to OSX. That's about it. Now he's thinking about getting a new iMac. Frankly, he doesn't really need much of an upgrade. A little faster processor, a faster hard drive (not bigger--he hasn't even filled the stock 8GB!), more RAM, and a DVD+-R/W drive. You could make that upgrade on a PC for around probably $400-$500. He's going to spend triple that for a whole new computer. Times like that you have to appreciate flexibility of a PC.

Myth: Mac software is better
Fact: Some programs are, but in general, there are a ton more options on the PC than on the Mac, and most of the Mac's programs aren't anything special compared to their PC counterparts. And when it gets down to it, even though Mac has made huge strides in improving software variety and availability, they still aren't anywhere close to the options out there for a PC. Again, do you want freedom, or everything spoon-fed? And gaming? Don't get me started. Macs don't have squat for game support, and that's not going to change any time soon. They'll get the big-name games, usually months after the PC version is released, and with limited or no ability to optimize hardware or software for the experience.

In the end, Macs are great computers for people who just want to fork out the dough and not think about anything. But if you want freedom, variety, options, customization, optimization, etc... you've gotta go with a windows PC.

Tweaking Oblivion with Tweakguides; Riddick on PC

In case you're not familiar with it, Tweakguides.com is a fantastic website for learning how to squeeze more performance out of your PC. I had used the site recently to get better aquainted with Forceware and Rivatuner with good results.

The site also has some great game-specific guides. The Oblivion tweak guide is full of some really great tips to help game performance, which is important since Oblivion is so friggin' rough on graphics cards. Staying around 30 frames per second with all the details up in outdoor areas takes an absolute beast of a system. Mine is about as powerful as you can get (well, sans the ludicrously expensive 10k rpm HDD) without getting into dual-everything, and yesterday I had everything cranked up in Oblivion and at certain points the frame rate was hovering in the 20s in the outdoor areas.

However Tweakguides has some really great things you can do in the Advanced Tweaking section of their Oblivion guide, and I got a really nice performance boost. Nothing as dramatic as say overclocking my graphics card, but it was still nice to see things get smoother.

Essentially the guide has you go into the initialization file of Oblivion and manually alter certain values. For example, if you experience stuttering in the game, which I did, you can change how much info is loaded into your RAM (depending of course on how much RAM you have) so things stay smoother. I also learned a great console command(that's the "~" button): "fov 90". This changes the field of vision so it looks more like a first-person shooter, and in my opinion makes it look a lot better.

There are also some really great user-created graphical mods that improve the image quality quite significantly. One, for example, gets rid of those ugly low-resolution textures on distant mountains and replaces them with very high-res ones, and manages to do so with literally no hit on performance. Unfortunately I don't have a "before" picture, but if you're familiar with what I'm talking about, check out this snapshot I took using FRAPS and notice how much more detailed the distant mountains look (click for full-size):



Finally, I also got DirectX Tweaker to work with Oblivion. You simply have to go into the game options and disable the auto saves, which for some reason cause the game to crash when it's running through DXT. I enabled Quad Buffering and got a very noticeable performance improvement--using FRAPS to keep track of frame rates, I have found that quad buffering completely eliminates the slowdown associated with V-Sync. Can't beat that!

In other news, I downloaded the demo for Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. It's one of my all-time favorite games, and I wanted to see how it looked on the PC. At first, I wasn't that impressed. It looked good, but I guess I was just used to prettier games like FEAR, Oblivion and Prey. So I booted up the Xbox version, and holy cow, my memory of the game was not reality. The PC version is so dramatically superior visually it's not even funny. And the controls! I always thought CoR played great on the Xbox, but I guess once you're used to the precision of a mouse, a stick will never be the same.

Anyway, wow, quite an update. I'll leave with a couple snapshots I took in Oblivion recently. Hot damn is that a pretty game.

Prey demo impressions

Downloaded the demo for Prey tonight. It takes maybe 30-45 minutes to play through.

It starts with a cool little intro where you navigate your character ("Tommy") through a bar and witness the coming of the alien species. Then it takes you through a few levels of action, including demoing some "spirit powers" which enable Tommy to leave his body to accomplish otherwise impossible tasks.

That, and the strange environment (including the much-ballyhoo'd anti-gravity walkways) make for some unusual and sometimes disorienting encounters.

Visually, the game has that distinctive Doom engine, OpenGL look, but it's generally more vibrant and cleaner than Quake 4, not to mention quite a bit more detailed and with better character animations. Maybe not the most jaw-dropping game around, but it's certainly fine-looking. EVerything looks really wet and shiny.

But after the first playthrough I have to say I'm on the fence about a purchase. It was decent, but didn't really grab me. The action felt like pretty pedestrian shooter stuff, and it lacked the sense of pacing and tension that makes FEAR the top shooter around in my book. The AI just doesn't seem terribly reactive; and the weapons, though they looked odd, for the most part felt like standard issue FPS weaponry. Though I have to say the wrench was pretty cool, especially the way it gets all bloody.

If I had a 360, I might go with a rental first.