What RELEASED games actually need an awesome graphics card?

[DarkKnight21]

Chock up Rainbow Six Vegas for the list too.

It runs nicely on my card, but anything below that I imagine would have trouble.

 

[mactronix]

To steven t what wonderwill is getting at i think and im sure he will let me know if im wrong is that in the kind of games he is playing ie battlefield more frames per second means he gets an increase in his reaction times as there are more potential segments when he pulls the trigger.
Im not explaining it very well its like timing a runner to 1000th of a second instead of 100th its more exact.
Well when you both seem to shoot at the same time someone has to shoot first right !

Mactronix

 

[Spikke]

Vanguard SOH

QFT, this game destroys graphics cards, I get lower fps in VG than in Oblivion.

 

[Dr_asik]

A word about FEAR: it scales very well. I put everything to medium, except for textures (high) on my configuration (P4 2.8Ghz, 1GB of RAM, X800XL), and at 1024x768 2xAA both the framerate and picture quality are flawless. Higher settings for that game are either detrimental (soft shadows are ugly) or psychological, even though I wouldn't mind 1280x1024.

Neverwinter Nights 2 was just a bit too laggy for my tastes. Constant stuttering gets on my nerves pretty quick. From the little eye-candy there is to be seen, that is caused by bad programming.

Oblivion is also too laggy at medium-high settings to be enjoyable, although there has been a recent breakthrough in performance optimizing with the Streamline mod, I'd have to give it a try.

Medieval 2 Total War is fine but I wouldn't mind just a wee bit more graphic power in large scale battles.

C&C3: fine in the campaign, but in skirmishes I need to turn down options seriously.

I think for perfectly fine performance in all these games, all you would need is a more solid processor like an A64 and a more recent graphic card like the X1950Pro, but nothing really requires a 8800 of any kind or even a Core2Duo (except SupCom).

And Half Life 2? Half Life 2 has been playable at 1280x1024+ for years with a Radeon 9000+ at moderate to high detail. That's the beauty of a well designed engine. Unlike all of these rushed engines nowadays.

Hell yeah! HL2 is so well optimized, it sets the bar for every other game, although few gave any sort of try to reach it. I'm not sure though if it's really just the Source engine: I think it's efficient programming throughout. Dark Messiah is also on Source and not that optimized at all.

 

[jbscotchman]

I have a strong feeling Crysis will not hold up well on a 8800GTS. 1280x1024, and expect very low eye candy.

My two cents.

I'm gonna have to disagree with that. I seriously doubt the second best card available at the moment will only be capable of playing crysis on low settings especially at that resolution. I'd imagine the 640mb GTS should have no problem using high details at that resolution.

 

[blade85]

you said it ur self "the second best card available at the moment"

crysis is not at the moment...its 5-6 months away. Who knows what sorta card you'd need to play it at its best.

 

[jbscotchman]

I know there will be other cards out at the time the game does release, but that doesn't mean the 8800GTS is gonna be worthless. All I'm saying is that I think a 640mb 8800GTS will be very capable of playing Crysis at atleast 1280x1024 with some really good eye candy.

 

[DarkKnight21]

News flash:

ALL of the Tech Demos for Crysis have been done on a X1900 (until recently where they have been using advanced copies of the HD 2900XT)

Considering that card is emulating DX10 (which, as you can imagine would be extremely taxing) and it's running at 1600x1200, I'd say that the 8800 GTS will handle Crysis fine with max eye candy at 1280x1024.

People are still playing games with first gen DX9 cards at 1280x1024 with max detail. I really don't understand where a lot of you feel that because they're more recent that these games should be any different, at least not for the current generation (X1950/8800).

 

[sirheck]

Oblivion, turn up all the settings and all the detail at 25x16.
Your 7600 GT will choke.

Fear, turn on soft shadows and all the settings and all the detail at 25x16.
Your 7600 GT will choke.

Sorry I meant at 1280 by 1024. I thought that was what we were talking about...







Here is the 8600gts getting 40fps (avg) with pretty high settins in oblivion.

 

[rodr]

I imagine I'll have a hard time playing Crysis, Bioshock, Quake Wars, Alan Wake and Jericho .

wow.. i havent heard of Alan wake for ages.. i saw the trailer once and i thought i looked pretty cool... is it gonna be DX10?

 

[The_Abyss]

Yes, and multi-threaded.

 

[hatsurfer]

With more graphics power you can enable Verticle Sync. This does wonders for gaming with large LCD's. Most people can get away without needing it.

 

[Habeed]

A comment : as part of my library, I have played most of these games on my card, at 1080p. For the most part, the only 2 good games, available now, that I know of, that need an 8800, are the two I mentioned.

 

[doolittle]

acquiring a PC gaming library of 40 games...
~$2000

8800 gts 640mb...
~$400

running all said games at 100% max gfx settings...
priceless

That sums up my feelings when I swiped my card to get my 8800gts 320mb, however I also had ulterior motives. My current 7800gt goes to my son's A64-3700 rig, his current A64-3400 & 6800gt goes to my brother. In essence, my son and my brother get a new rig for the mere $260 I purchased my 8800gts for.

I recall getting FarCry free with my A64 3400 mobo, and ran it on my 9800 Pro, was painful. After upgrading to 6800gt, not much better. Finally I was able to max it out with my 7800gt. Not surprised if Crysis is a hardware pig, there will always be more efficient / forgiving games that will perform similiarly to half-life2 when it was released.

 

[sirheck]

I recall getting FarCry free with my A64 3400 mobo, and ran it on my 9800 Pro, was painful. After upgrading to 6800gt, not much better.

8O I could play farcry great on my 68gt.
All settings maxed.

 

[ninjaspa]

silent hunter 4: wolves of the pacific

i imagine there are some nice highly modded rigs out there without an 8800 that can run this game max'd and smooth, but i have a wild imagination.

it seems to be up there with stalker in terms of high end cripplers, and damn is it pretty.

i dont know why they haven't started using it in benchmarks, maybe too glitchy as of yet. once it's patched smooth it ought be used for hardware reviews. i mean it looks closer to a synthetic bench than just about any other game out.

 

[sirheck]

Yeah patches can make all the difference in the world as far as gameplay.

 

[Heyyou27]

News flash:

ALL of the Tech Demos for Crysis have been done on a X1900 (until recently where they have been using advanced copies of the HD 2900XT)

Considering that card is emulating DX10 (which, as you can imagine would be extremely taxing) and it's running at 1600x1200, I'd say that the 8800 GTS will handle Crysis fine with max eye candy at 1280x1024.

People are still playing games with first gen DX9 cards at 1280x1024 with max detail. I really don't understand where a lot of you feel that because they're more recent that these games should be any different, at least not for the current generation (X1950/8800).

I thought Crytek was using the 8800s as they're currently the only commercially available Direct X10 videocards.

 

[doolittle]

8O I could play farcry great on my 68gt.
All settings maxed.

I recall having to drop to 1024 then it was better. The v1.2 patch helped a lot I think 1280 was good after that... hmm have to give it another run before taking the trip up there... will be loads better than the xp2400/9500 pro he currently has 8)

 

[sirheck]

Yeah if i didnt patch it, the sand was black 8O

It even played pretty damn good at 16x10 with max sttings.
On the 68gt.
I now use an 8800 card.

Fear was the same with the 68gt=sucked til i patched it.
Then it played fine.

Darkmessiah which came with my 8800
wouldnt even play on my 8800 and crashed on my 6800
but after i patched it=great.

 

[cwilliams255]

I have an ati x1950xt and the only game where i have had to made serious quality ajustments is rainbow 6 vegas. I play at 1680x1050 and it struggles at this resolution

 

[sirheck]

I have an ati x1950xt and the only game where i have had to made serious quality ajustments is rainbow 6 vegas. I play at 1680x1050 and it struggles at this resolution

Try realigning your fluxcapacitor.

That should fix your problem.

 

[Wonderwill]

You could always try remodulating the zero point modulator. That helps a lot.

 

[vic20]

Games that need an 8800 now? I dunno. Wish I knew.

Can anyone suggest a game that will really tax my X1800XT 512MB (On an Opty 170 @ 2.9) @ 1680x1050 with 2X AA / 16X AF?

Haven't found one yet that gives me an excuse to replace it.

Tried CoD2, FEAR/XP, Oblivion, HL2 Ep1, Titan Quest, Prey, BF 2, Genesis Rising, Dark Messiah, Spellforce 2, Halo, Mage Knight, WoW, Quake 4, Cold Fear, Fable, Tomb Raider Legends, Splinter Cell 1 2 3 4.....

EDIT. C&C 3 runs great too

They are all on the shelf behind me.

And they all run great with everything cranked up at that res. I admit Vista slowed SC Double Agent a bit, but I switched back to XP and all is fine.

I will buy an HD 2800XTX, but I need some eye candy for now. Am I missing something cool?

 

[dtq]

Ive got an 8800GTX on my system I run my games on an old CRT monitor (those big heavy dinosaur monitors) so I run resolutions up to 2048×1536.

My card struggles with all setting turned up occaisionally in oblvion and in x3 reunion, and in LOTRO particularly badly, Im seriously looking at going 8800GTX SLI for these games to play the way I want to play with the frame rates I want to see. All these games see performance benefits from me throttling things back a bit, which I dont want to be doing, I want everything the game can put out at a high fps constantly.

Dont get me wrong I CAN play all these games relatively well on my old computer with a 6600gt, BUT the difference in visual quality is night and day. I dont see the point in playing at 640x480. Hence I keep my dinosaur CRT screens around resolution to me means a lot.