Gamethread Mar 27 09

By Shamus Posted Friday Mar 27, 2009

Filed under: Notices 39 comments

My new graphics card is in. Radeon 4850. It was a gift. I would never have splurged for this much graphics card. (And certainly not after the hit my finances took earlier this week.)

It’s… It’s a lot of graphics card. I’ll review it later. In the meantime, I have the ability to view millions of extravagantly wrought pixels, and I intend to put this ability to use in Left 4 Dead tonight. I also might indulge in a little Team Fortress 2. Thread is open for any pre-game or post-game conversations.

Have fun.

 


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39 thoughts on “Gamethread Mar 27 09

  1. Wood says:

    Congratulations. Great guy whoever gave the gift.

    Heh… Left 3 Dead.

  2. Jabor says:

    Left 3 Dead? Is that the older version?

  3. Manticore Falco says:

    I’ll definitely try to make it to the TF2 bash!

  4. Veloxyll says:

    maybe he’s decided to kill one of the humans at the start to thin out their numbers

  5. Magnus says:

    Was expecting a thread about your latest article, but I guess you have more important matters to attend to, namely testing out that new card and letting us know if its worth the cash!

    For those interested, his article is up on the escapist.

  6. Scourge says:

    Its a good graphic card. They are still updating the drivers and increasing the perfomance.

    Its also semi backwards compatible, unlike nvidia cards, or so I have been told.

  7. CoarseSand says:

    I’ve gotta try to be on Left 4 Dead tonight then. I’ve been ignoring it lately just due to overplaying it, but I got a game in with someone from my friends list last night using the Dead Air maps in versus (some mod, and their server), and it was quite a bit of fun; can’t wait for the real, balanced versions of the maps to release.

  8. Rutskarn says:

    And, with impeccable timing, the steam friend servers are down for maintenance.

    Lovely.

    The game seems to be glitching a good deal as well. At the end of the match you (I’m assuming) inadvertently left, it just sort of remained on a black screen with the sound of zombies rustling in the background.

  9. vdgmprgrmr says:

    If there’s going to be a Twenty-Sided TF2 thingy going on, I am completely in. If I had L4D and a computer capable of running it, I would be in on that, too, but you know, whatever.

  10. Jericho says:

    I wanna get in on some L4D, but Steam servers are down. Blast.

  11. Rutskarn says:

    Aaand it’s back up.

  12. Spluckor says:

    I need to download me this left 3 dead!

  13. Kirin says:

    Played on the TwentySided server last night, it was a great time, with a little bit of lag all around and tank maulings.

  14. Mark says:

    Team Fortress? Two?! This is a thing with which I am down.

  15. WILL says:

    You probably already know this, but watch out for that GFX card, it reaches ungodly temperatures.

  16. Zel says:

    Quite a good gift you had there, best performance/cost ratio and in the top ten most performing cards (before ATI and Nvidia upcoming releases early April).

    I thought you wanted a low to mid-end PC to feel the joys of turning down quality sliders and stress applications and games with limited -but more widespread- hardware, do you plan on buying another cheaper card for this purpose ?

  17. vdeogmer says:

    Seeing “Left 3 dead” makes me wonder what Valve’s naming convention would be if L4D were ever to get a sequel. Number-named games always sound strange to me when they have sequels, such as Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 or Army of Two: The 40th Day.

  18. MuonDecay says:

    Left 3 Dead is what you have when the 4th human player leaves and you deliberately shoot the AI replacement to death to stop them from acting like a complete moron and getting everyone slaughtered. For example: running out of the safety of the safe room explicitly to shoot at the witch or set off a car alarm. Yes, I’ve seen it happen.

  19. Rutskarn says:

    Great game as always, Shamus.

    I think that’s the most times I’ve attempted any one level unsuccessfully. I swear to any six entities you care to name, that director had a serious hate-on for all of us.

    1. Shamus says:

      Agreed. I went through Death Toll on Expert and it wasn’t that savage to us. The penultimate level is the one that did us in, though. It kicked us really hard right in the final moments of the level, leaving us low on health and out of medical supplies. We began the final level more or less empty-handed.

      Great game.

  20. Rutskarn says:

    Yeah, I agree. That penultimate level savaged us beyond any recognition.

    The miracle was that we managed to limp our way to that safe-room door, all considered.

    I think the luck has dribbled out of my custom spray. Time for a new one…

  21. Lanthanide says:

    After all the ranting about how awful steam is, nary a mention of it lately while all this Left 4 Deading has been going on.

    Have you fallen to the Dark Side, Shamus? Or perhaps it really wasn’t as bad as you originally made it out to be…

  22. Kirin says:

    Videogamer: I’ve always thought that Left 4 Dead 2 Die would be rather funny.

  23. Broc says:

    The Radeon 4850 is now a mid-range card. I really ask this in a respectful way: why is a computer games enthousiast like you not inclined to invest, once in a while, in a high end card?

    I know graphics aren’t everything, Shamus, I’ve read a lot of your posts about that and I mostly agree. However, won’t good graphics and fast frame rates increase your immersion? Of course it won’t make a bad game good; but if the game is already good I think it’s really worth it to invest once in a while in at least a mid range card like the 4850. Furthermore you won’t have to upgrade as quickly down the line.

    I’m just surprised to see that much praise for a mid range card and I’m really honestly wondering why you’d never consider buying something better.

    1. Shamus says:

      Broc: More graphics does give you a little more immersion, but the rate of return falls off at a perilous rate. The difference between 800×600 and 2048×1024 is massive in cost, very minor in immersion.

      Also, I don’t WANT to ride the edge. I want to see what MOST gamers are seeing. Inasmuch as any hardware upgrade will form a bell curve, I want to be somewhere in the middle of that curve.

  24. Rutskarn says:

    Broc: Well, I obviously can’t speak for Shamus, but I personally find that having the absolute most awesomest tech is highly overrated. A lot of games worth playing on the PC* run just fine on my gaming computer, which hasn’t been upgraded in probably four years.

    *Read: Anything made by Valve.

  25. Rutskarn says:

    Alright, I did the math on the painkiller issue.

    We can start with one of two assumptions. The first is that when one consumes a bottle of painkillers, one is not starting a fresh bottle–it’s only what pills are left in there. Again, for convenience’s sake, call it the maximum safe daily dosage of painkillers (5 per day).

    If this is true, I consumed about 65 painkillers, give or take. Extremely addicted persons have been known to take as many as 30 per day, for comparison.

    Of course, if one assumes a fresh bottle, than the actual figure is hovering somewhere around 1,300 painkillers total. Best case scenario, I would have vomited far before the pills took hold. Worst case scenario, my heart would have exploded once I exerted myself physically. But hey, how likely is that? Not a lot of exercise out there, sprinting around, clawing and clubbing your way through hordes of restless dead.

    Yeah, I’m thinking this is one of those “suspension of disbelief” moments.

  26. Rutksarn says:

    PS:

    Topic for discussion–which 4 TF2 classes would you want as survivors? Assume more ammo carrying capacity.

    Personally, I think the best team would be Soldier, Heavy, Scout and Demo.

  27. Simplex says:

    “The difference between 800à—600 and 2048à—1024 is massive in cost, very minor in immersion.”
    In my personal opinion difference between 800×600 and a higher resolution (let’s say 1280×1024) is really big – at 800×600 you see big pixels and ugly aliasing which for me kills immersion quite effectively.

    However, I perfectly understand not wanting to spend bucketloads of money on a graphics card when you have a family to support.

    Radeon 4850 is a pretty solid card – I used it for a few months and I was happy with its performance. From what I remember it’s the most powerful card you’ve had so far so have fun. Left4Dead should run perfectly on it :)

  28. vdgmprgrmr says:

    I’ve always known I was weird for this, but I actually prefer 800×600 and even 640×480 over higher resolutions.

    The big pixels and bad aliasing make games feel more gamey to me, and make the things in the world look more authentic to me. I think it’s because if everything is forced to fit into a few pixels, the visual experience will be similar to looking at a blurred photograph, and the brain will translate the blurred image into a non-blurred image, and because the difference between a blurred photograph and a blurred CG image are not easily noticeable, the mental result will be an in-game image with the quality of a photograph.

    Maybe.

    Either way, the big pixels and bad aliasing help me get immersed into games.

  29. MuonDecay says:

    vdgmprgrmr, I think you just introduced a rough thesis statement on the concept of The Uncanny Valley with regards to game display resolutions.

  30. VTgamer says:

    If you want to see pretty pictures Shamus, the 4850 runs mass effect quite well even on the highest resolution.

    IMHO you dont need anything past a 4850 because honestly ATI and Nvidia have been spinning their wheels lately and graphic cards are only incremental upgrades. Hell nvidia were going to re-release the same card but just called it a different number… and because pc games are mostly console ports now games have hit a graphic plateau and they wont change until the next gen console game comes out. PC gaming is not dead, but bleeding edge graphic games that require bleeding edge hardware are sure going that way.

  31. vdgmprgrmr says:

    MuonDecay: Aw… I am just noticing that the Uncanny Valley wasn’t mentioned in my comment.

    It was actually there in the first few versions, but I guess I cut it out on the last one.

  32. Broc says:

    I guess it’s once again all in the eye of the beholder…

    Personally, gaming at 800 x 600 is unthinkable. I game at 1920 x 1200 and turn down the graphical settings if the frame rates get too low. Big pixels and blurry graphics ruin my immersion, as bad sound effects would. Not seeing every little graphical trick, though, doesn’t automatically break it.

    I guess it’s to each his own but all in all I think you’ve got an okay card for now. I understand your comment about playing games the way they are played by most people; however, I’m sure that the consumer segment that buys the latest games usually have an higher-end setup while most people with GeForces 6800 still play Diablo and World of Warcraft. Since you are interested in the latest releases, I’d have assumed you’d be inclined to invest in a 4870 or GTX 280 once in a while.

    By the way thanks for keeping such an interesting and active blog, happy to read you every week…

  33. Martin says:

    It’s always amusing to see screenshots of COD4 maxed out in detail and res (which I play at since my GTX 280 arrived) and think “Damn, that looks amazing”. In the game I’m too tunnel-visioned and focused on the next person to kill to notice specular highlights and flowing leaves or water and dust storms.

  34. Arzar says:

    “Just realized I can see what The Witcher is supposed to look & feel. I’m curious. But I’m also not eager to see Geralt in higher resolution.”

    You should try Shamus.
    It does the trick for me. The first time with a 5-year-old laptop (1.5Ghz, 512mb, radeon x600) was really painful. Constant lag and atrocious loading times nearly kill the game. Luckily, I updated my rig for other reasons in the middle of Act 1. Well, I have to admit that I witnessed my griefs slowly dilute dilute dilute, whereas I slowly fell back to my usual completionist mindset and start enjoying the game.

  35. Jabor says:

    I game at 1280×1024 when I can, turn it down to 1024×768 if I need to. 800×600 looks _too_ low for me.

    I can’t really tell the difference between 1280 and 1024, though – the reason I keep it up high unless I need to turn it down is because resolution changes are _horrible_ to endure.

  36. Dihydrogen says:

    If you guys decide to do another tf2 session I’ll try and see if I can join in this time.

  37. Avilan the Grey says:

    My laptop has a Nvidia 9650M GT* and it is good enough for me. It can do FO3 on “pretty damn good” setting (custom; if possible never ever just choose the presets, goes for any game, duh!) at 1440×900 (native), 4xAA and all.
    Native res is always preferred because that’s where the screen puts out the clearest picture.

    My preferred resolution goes as this:
    1. If possible, 4xAA and native. Tweak the heavy settings (water reflections, shadows from clouds etc, depending on game)
    2. If a little slow, go down to 2xAA.
    3. Go down to 1280, 4xAA
    2. Go down to 1024, 4+xAA

    Yes I demand AA. I cannot stand jagged graphics, I rather go down in resolution.

    *For the geeks: 1Gb DDR2 memory.

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