Be Excellent To Each Other

OK, I've almost got to the end of TDU. Marvellous game. Really enjoyed it. And because I've been feeling a bit down, I treated myself to GTA IV. Bearing in mind that Ninja PC is a Quad Core, 4Gb beastie running Windows Vista 64 bit.

So far I've had to sign up for Games for Windows. Sigh... At least I now have a LIVE Gamertag for when I get me a Funsquare Superplus.

And I've had to sign up for Rockstar Social Club.

I've had to clear some disk space. 16Gb it says as a recommended install. I had 10Gb, but meant to have a bit of a clearout. Which reminded me to get some partitioning software - the free one on the Computer Shopper disk (Paragon HD Manager 8.5) is Vista 32 bit only. Sigh. Off to Acronis and download Disk Director. Paid for, because some things in life are worth it. Especially coming to the end of the business tax year.

GTA IV installs... eventually. Fuck me that took a while. Set up login, set up signin. Fuck it might as well install Acronis while I wait. Reboot. Sign in. New video drivers available. Bugger, bit behind there, better download.

Can't be arsed to wait, lets try the game. Games for Windows needs an update. FFS. Of course, right now is the time when my broadband is running super slow - download speed from ATI? 17.5Kb. From Microsoft? 12.2Kb.

Started this two hours ago. With making tea, seeing the wife etc, it is 10.20pm and I still haven't got as far as the intro.

If you spent less than 250 notes on a Funbox, and a game, you would have completed it by now.

LOL, etc.

Whereas a normal person puts disc in xbox drive, 1 minute later we're playing.

I'm fucking hi5ing that.

My encripped arms cannot reach that high, consequently you slapped me in the face.

They weren't my arms....

I don't have 250 notes for a Funsquare right now. Nor do I have the space in the living room. Nor do I have a HD telly to get the most from it, or have I run a cable down to that room to do the Live thang. I will get one, and fairly soon, but Not Right Now.

Sooner or later your PC will start to play the game and give you severe electric shocks if you get too close to it.

Aaaaand... the ATI Driver install crashes. Well done you cunts.

Are you channelling He-who-must-not-be-named ?


http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/world/digi/digi16.htm

God, I hope not.

First run... crashed.

Second go, it asked for a Games for Windows LIVE update. And took ages to download it. Now, it is installing a patch.

I know it's not a solution, but the funsquare superplus does support VGA.

I only mention this because your views on TDU mark you out as a man of taste and distinction.

Finally made it to the intro.

Now faffing with game settings - X1650 Radeon, 512Mb. Auto configures to 800x600.

Argh!

Fuck it, redownload the Ati drivers in the morning, plus rejig the HDD. Too late for this fucking about.

Oh, and finally proof that I might be channelling.. Him

The game is designed for the XBox 360 controller. Can I redefine the controls? Not that I can fucking work out, no.

To be fair, none of this is really "PC Gaming". It's more "Fucking lazy 360 port".

Red Alert 3 for instance, DRM and all, has given me zero trouble, and I've not touched a thing from the Vista x64 install.

And an x1650 isn't that much of a gaming card these days. 800x600 sounds about right for GTA4.

SixteenGB install?

I haven't paid attention to my recent PC game installs, granted, but Jesus.

Just to pile on further, I think you're wrong about TDU having rubber banding. I achieved the effect you described just now.

It's just TDU being slightly zealous with the slipstream, which gains you a lot and from a lot further behind than in reality.

It's NOT catch up though. Wait 5 minutes at the start and you'll still only be able to do 192ish, as soon as you catch a car you'll rocket up to as high as 209 in passing them.

Interesting physics (but hey, that's TDU) but NOT catch up or rubber banding of any sort unless the PC version is very different which given these results I think I'll doubt.

In other news, anyone playing TDU on the 360, install it on the HDD right fucking now. Not only is the map and transitions more pleasant it seems to be having a lot less trouble with the scenery, resulting in a better frame rate too.

I'll have to give that a crack. I never really did get in to it, maybe making it slightly more fluid will help that.

Having just given it a better run it's actually another chapter in the amusing and charming excentricity of the damn thing.

It's better in towns, things don't pop up right in front of you any more.

Problem is, it's actually loaded in too much, so you get slowdown not because it's desperately trying to page the DVD drive but because there's a lot more scenery on screen than the designers ever banked on.

It's still much better from HDD I think (and this should only really occur in high scenery areas whereas on DVD it can jerk anywhere) but it remind me just how horribly flawed this game somehow manages to be on almost every level, but as I blasted around in my new stock Z06, how it's still the best game ever made.

Sorry to tell you mate but you have bought your xmas turkey early.

Install Fallout 3 instead.

I have the same gfx card in my dual core systerm and its not going to cut it man. Thats why in the summer I built a quad core rig with a 9800gtx, because the old one didnt run the latest stuff.

the x1650 can't even run san andreas on high settings.

Also, did you say you are using windows Vista? please tell me you didnt say you were using windows vista.

Out of interest, how much does it cost for a minimum spec PC to run fallout 3?

I'm asking as Kern asked about it earlier...

Honest.

Dunno, but if you're looking at building a cheap computer, you can have the GeForce 7900 I've got laying about if you want. It was quite happy with Fallout on medium quality last time I tried.

I can't do the pricing now, but you'd want a 2.4ghz dual core intel (or an older one overclocked) with at least a 9600gt.

Then of course a cheap mobo, ram and other stuff.

For motherboard I use a Foxconn a6vmx. Its about 25 quid and takes the tri and quad core phenom. Onboard sound, video and nic.. Also has a 16x PCIE.

The tri core phenoms are cheap and you can bag a 160gb sata samsung spinpoint for about 30 quid. Just make sure to install XP, my rig took a 25fps hit in grid running vista..

I'd say about 200 quid, 300 if you needed a monitor ('cos you got to add a half decent videocard).

Oh go on then.

Phenom x3 -

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Qu ... ationKey=0

Ram -

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Qu ... ationKey=0

Board -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Foxconn-A6VMX-S ... 870&sr=8-1

Videocard of choice of PCF, PCGW and PCZ

http://www.amazon.co.uk/HD4850-512M-GDD ... 938&sr=1-2

But one of these will do the trick also -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/XFX-NVIDIA-9800 ... 019&sr=1-4

And then a case psu and hdd. Oh and an optical drive if you dont have one.

So my estimate was wrong, its probably closer to 300 with no monitor. Sorry, Im used to USA pricing

That's what I thought, too. I know I go budget, but bloody hell. Even Oblivion, which is about the most demanding thing my £90 pc can run, takes up less than half of that. You could install the entire GTA series and still have room for a dozen full games for that.

Same goes for Fable II, if anyone's playing that at the mo. The interminable wait while the pause screen loads is shortened to precisely nothing.

I don't want to run it on high settings, I want to run it on reasonable settings. My monitor is a 15" TFT with a max resolution of 1024x768. I'm not asking for the world here.



Speaking from a position of knowledge and experience or just regurgitating fanboy bullshit?

There is something going on, as I managed to win the Zonda challenge which is effectively a straight blast down the road despite having to reposition on the track.

Fair enough, I'll quite happily accept that, purely because TDU is such a great little game. I'll take ambitious, flawed but fun over generic and shiny any day.

(Incidentally... I run it on max settings with no problem. When was it out on PC? April 2007?)

I haven't looked but the 360 version was certainly early 2007 and I don't remember them coming out at different times.

In conclusion, XBox is still cheaper way to play recent titles than PC.

Sorry, but not surprised to hear of your plight Plissken.

According to Wiki, XBox in early Sept 2006 and PC/PS2/PSP at end of Feb 2007.

I hate you. I mean that with love, but I hate you.

That sounds about right, as I saw it out for the 360 before I had one and had to wait for the PC release.

I played it for about 30 mins then decided my PC wasn't up to it (plus I had a crap joypad).

I know dude, I know.

Sell a kidney.

Sell Britney.

Yeah so I discovered when I looked it up later.

the xbox may have some advantages, but this isn't certainly one of them

HE SHOOTS! HE SCORES!

hi5.

Of course. It's a mass produced low powered pc basically.

However, PCs can go much higher in res than a 360 and also do tons more. I agree that buying a pc purely to play games on is pretty crazy. Me? I dont have alot of room in here so I need it to do everything for me. Digital TV through a freeview dongle (about 12 quid) digital world radio through a dongle (15 quid) and so on. Im just building a high powered sound system.

I dont mind paying out 120 quid every couple of years for a new graphics card tbh, because consoles are more than 2 new graphics cards when released and have about the same shelf life.

In other words, I can plug it into my PC monitor, yeah?

Hmm...



Indeed. Brandy and cigars, sir?

With all due respect, it's much more than that. In the 360's case, the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.

TBH resolution isnt what totally kills the games now.Its more about the fancy doodads, FSAA Anistropic and all the custom things you can play with, like draw distances (have you seen how many sliders there are in FO3? enough to make you dizzy). Going on a recent article disable HDR as apparently it doesnt do that much, but kills FPS




Quick story. In July of this year I decided that to upgrade my older machine (1.8ghz c2d with x1650pro 2gb ram) would cost almost as much as building a new pc. Plus I had lugged it back from the USA in an Alienware MJ12 workstation chassis (my baby) so didnt want to pull it to pieces.
I went and bought a system from (gob spit) PC world for 400 quid (x4 phenom 2.2 oced to 2.6, 500gb sata150, 4gb ram) and added a 9800gtx.
It was running vista, which seemed really fast (but then I hadnt seen my system run xp). scored a 5.9 in the vista rating.
In crysis I got 18fps, grid about 29. Crysis was on medium high custom with 4xfsaa and 8xA. Grid was 16xqfsaa with 16xa.
Then a few weeks after getting it I got a really nasty virus, couldnt get rid because vista kept bsoding so I pulled the plug and put xpMCE on.

Crysis 29fps. Grid 52fps. Exact same settings, only the xp install took 4gb from me instead of the hundreds vista did (taking a dumb image of it's dumb self).

If you would like a slipsteam xpMCE sp3 pm me an address. It doesnt need a serial and passes all m$ validations for updates.

The only bit I really loved about Vista was MC (media center) and because i run a TV and a Vega world radio dongle I really couldnt do without it. So I simply use xpMCE. Honesly man, I'm not Vista bashing here, Vista really is that terrible.. And 64bit is apparently worse than terrible..

XP will see your 4gb ram, so theres really no point in using Vista man.

Yes. I do 90% of my Xbox gaming on a 20" TFT.

Only XP64, the 32bit edition won't. And XP64 can be very hard work with drivers.

This baffles me. The funsquare DVD size limit is, what, about 7Gb? From where has the PC version of GTA summoned up an extra 9Gb of stuff? I'll accept it is probably using higher resolution art assets but this is over twice the size!

A huge fuck off caching swap file.

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/wind ... y-2001102/

Here is what I'm being shown in my system properties (XPMCE SP3)

I looked into why only 3gb was shown and it appears that my video card is nicking the other 1gb.

Correct, 4GB is the total physical address space for 32bit. That will include all your graphics card memory and a few other sundries.