The two-step guide to neglecting your blog.
by AC - permalink
No posts in a while, but I have an excuse: I work full time, and I've spent every minute off basking in the warm, comforting glow of my new video card. I added an ATI X800 XL to my new PC a couple weeks ago, and I haven't done much but play with it since. Sure, it's last-gen, but that's why it cost me just $250. And the specs are so good, why spend twice as much for a marginally faster X1800? I only have one PCI-e slot, so Crossfire capability does me no good, and the X800 series doesn't need a dedicated power connector, which would have forced me to upgrade my power supply. The X800 XL has 256MB GDDR3, 16 pipes, DX9.x/OGL2.0, DVI, etc. I spent over a week looking at benchmarks - which makes for a long fucking week - and decided this card is well matched with my box (Athlon 64 3500+ and 1GB 3200 DDR).
And damn if it isn't the best $250 I've spent in a long time. Call of Duty, which ran surprisingly badly under my onboard video compared to Quake III Arena and Medal of Honor, is absolutely crushed by this card. I'm running 1600x1200 with every single setting maxed out, and it's locked in at my monitor's 1600 refresh rate of 70fps. Benchmarks indicate it's moving at around 150fps gross. Only the first Stalingrad map show that the X800 is actually working, as the fps drops into the mid-thirties, which is better than the 4fps I was getting previously (no, really). Quake III and MoH run so fast - nearly 300fps at 1600 - that they're having trouble synching up with the refresh rate and chopping up somewhat. Dropping to 1280x1024 fixes that issue, and they're still gorgeous.
I'm finally able to run Doom 3 to it's potential, and I have to say that it's the best-looking game I've ever played. At 1280x1024, with all graphics turned up and with 4xAA and 4xAF, it's solid at the 70fps v-sync cap. Online benchmarks indicate that it should be worse than that, but it ain't. And Half-Life 2... what can I say. At the same settings as Doom 3 it runs even more smoothly (especially in a firefight), and I just end up sitting here in front of the greatest gaming experience I've ever had.
Ghost Recon is also running flat-out. With all settings turned up full, 1600x1200 is no problem at all, and enabling AA and AF via Catalyst doesn't slow it down a bit. Even the heavy GR: Island Thunder maps can't tax this vidcard in the slightest. This morning I picked up Far Cry (it was that or Halo, both $20), and it's running as well as any of my other games. Again, it seems to be well above the Far Cry benchmarks I've seen with the X800 XL on machines generally slightly faster than mine.
I'll update again after I've picked up Quake IV Special Edition and maybe Call of Duty 2... I know I won't be able to run it under DX9, but I can live with DX7 if it's even remotely as good as CoD 1.
by AC - permalink
No posts in a while, but I have an excuse: I work full time, and I've spent every minute off basking in the warm, comforting glow of my new video card. I added an ATI X800 XL to my new PC a couple weeks ago, and I haven't done much but play with it since. Sure, it's last-gen, but that's why it cost me just $250. And the specs are so good, why spend twice as much for a marginally faster X1800? I only have one PCI-e slot, so Crossfire capability does me no good, and the X800 series doesn't need a dedicated power connector, which would have forced me to upgrade my power supply. The X800 XL has 256MB GDDR3, 16 pipes, DX9.x/OGL2.0, DVI, etc. I spent over a week looking at benchmarks - which makes for a long fucking week - and decided this card is well matched with my box (Athlon 64 3500+ and 1GB 3200 DDR).
And damn if it isn't the best $250 I've spent in a long time. Call of Duty, which ran surprisingly badly under my onboard video compared to Quake III Arena and Medal of Honor, is absolutely crushed by this card. I'm running 1600x1200 with every single setting maxed out, and it's locked in at my monitor's 1600 refresh rate of 70fps. Benchmarks indicate it's moving at around 150fps gross. Only the first Stalingrad map show that the X800 is actually working, as the fps drops into the mid-thirties, which is better than the 4fps I was getting previously (no, really). Quake III and MoH run so fast - nearly 300fps at 1600 - that they're having trouble synching up with the refresh rate and chopping up somewhat. Dropping to 1280x1024 fixes that issue, and they're still gorgeous.
I'm finally able to run Doom 3 to it's potential, and I have to say that it's the best-looking game I've ever played. At 1280x1024, with all graphics turned up and with 4xAA and 4xAF, it's solid at the 70fps v-sync cap. Online benchmarks indicate that it should be worse than that, but it ain't. And Half-Life 2... what can I say. At the same settings as Doom 3 it runs even more smoothly (especially in a firefight), and I just end up sitting here in front of the greatest gaming experience I've ever had.
Ghost Recon is also running flat-out. With all settings turned up full, 1600x1200 is no problem at all, and enabling AA and AF via Catalyst doesn't slow it down a bit. Even the heavy GR: Island Thunder maps can't tax this vidcard in the slightest. This morning I picked up Far Cry (it was that or Halo, both $20), and it's running as well as any of my other games. Again, it seems to be well above the Far Cry benchmarks I've seen with the X800 XL on machines generally slightly faster than mine.
I'll update again after I've picked up Quake IV Special Edition and maybe Call of Duty 2... I know I won't be able to run it under DX9, but I can live with DX7 if it's even remotely as good as CoD 1.
2 comments:
I also added the ATI X800XL to my eMachine T6425 and it is running Great. It was well worth the $250.00 I spent to have one of the best affordable gaming machines around. I just beat Call of Duty 2, and it was maxed out. Great Graphics and so smooth. No problems with the 300 power supply either.
That's nice to know about CoD2. I realized after reading your comment that it runs in D3D, not OpenGL like CoD, and the X800 should run it reasonably well.
You're right, this is a fairly nice little gaming platform for not a ton of money. I've been a little worried about the power consumption because I've already added a second hard drive (before the vidcard) and I'm about to slap in a PCI SoundBlaster.
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