"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:497d8f76$1@news.povray.org...
> >>   With a new GTX 260 you'd be laughing.
>>
>>   Oh, I missed that it was a GTX. Yep, should play fine.
>
> *All* of the GPUs in the 200-series are designated "GTX". (I don't know 
> why... Perhaps something to do with nVidia's new naming scheme?)

     Hmm, you're right, my bad.


>
> So anyway, I asked Wikipedia:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units
>
> Comparing your high-end 6-series to my low-end 200-series, we have:
>
>                     | GeForce 6600GT | GeForce GTX 260
> Gigapixels / second |      2.000     |       16.128
> Gigatexels / second |      4.000     |       36.864
> Gigabytes  / second |     16.000     |      111.900
>
> The GeForce GTX 260 also generates approximately 715 gigaFLOPS peak 
> processing power (single-precision only).


    <sniff> Don't do that to me. I'm sad now... <sniff>  :/


>
> Given that you claim your 6600GT "handles" Crysis, and all of the 
> performance data I can actually obtain for both cards gives the GTX260 has 
> roughly ten times "better", in theory the GTX260 should eat it up...
>
> We shall see!

    You won't be disappointed! :)

     When will you get the 260? Today?

       ~Steve~

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>> Comparing your high-end 6-series to my low-end 200-series, we have:
>>
>>                     | GeForce 6600GT | GeForce GTX 260
>> Gigapixels / second |      2.000     |       16.128
>> Gigatexels / second |      4.000     |       36.864
>> Gigabytes  / second |     16.000     |      111.900
>>
>> The GeForce GTX 260 also generates approximately 715 gigaFLOPS peak 
>> processing power (single-precision only).
> 
>     <sniff> Don't do that to me. I'm sad now... <sniff>  :/

Heh. Well, yours is a 6-series. Then they made the 7-series. After that 
came the 8-series. Then there was the 9-series (which is really just 
rebadged versions of the 8-series - hence unpopular). Now we have the 
200-series. And... according to the numbers above, it's "only" 8x 
faster. 2004 for the 6-series, 2008 for the 200-series. So in 4 years, 
it's "only" got 8x faster. Ho hum!

Well, I guess if I feel rich enough I could always add a second GTX260 
at some point... I *do* have an SLI motherboard. >:-D

(No, seriously. I'm kidding. I really can't afford to do stuff like 
that. Besides, the CPU is old enough already...)

>> We shall see!
> 
>     You won't be disappointed! :)

I ****ing will if it doesn't work with my motherboard! o_O

(The card is PCI Express 2.0 - and I'm not sure that my motherboard is.)

If not then I guess I'll be replacing the entire PC rather than just the 
graphics card... but let's hope not, eh?

>      When will you get the 260? Today?

I bought it using the super-hyper-ultra-mega-saver delivery option. 
So... next week? Maybe?

(It's daft really; if you want it tomorrow, gotta pay lots of money. But 
if you go with the cheap delivery option, often it arrives the next day 
*anyway*! :-P But we'll see...)

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:497d9d5b$1@news.povray.org...
>>> Comparing your high-end 6-series to my low-end 200-series, we have:
>>>
>>>                     | GeForce 6600GT | GeForce GTX 260
>>> Gigapixels / second |      2.000     |       16.128
>>> Gigatexels / second |      4.000     |       36.864
>>> Gigabytes  / second |     16.000     |      111.900
>>>
>>> The GeForce GTX 260 also generates approximately 715 gigaFLOPS peak 
>>> processing power (single-precision only).
>>
>>     <sniff> Don't do that to me. I'm sad now... <sniff>  :/
>
> Heh. Well, yours is a 6-series. Then they made the 7-series. After that 
> came the 8-series. Then there was the 9-series (which is really just 
> rebadged versions of the 8-series - hence unpopular). Now we have the 
> 200-series. And... according to the numbers above, it's "only" 8x faster. 
> 2004 for the 6-series, 2008 for the 200-series. So in 4 years, it's "only" 
> got 8x faster. Ho hum!

      Well, that's ok.


>
> Well, I guess if I feel rich enough I could always add a second GTX260 at 
> some point... I *do* have an SLI motherboard. >:-D

      I was going to suggest that but people seem to have problems running 
it.


>
> (No, seriously. I'm kidding. I really can't afford to do stuff like that. 
> Besides, the CPU is old enough already...)
>
>>> We shall see!
>>
>>     You won't be disappointed! :)
>
> I ****ing will if it doesn't work with my motherboard! o_O
>
> (The card is PCI Express 2.0 - and I'm not sure that my motherboard is.)


    I found these quotes just now:

 "It doesn't matter, PCI-E 2.0 cards will work on PCI-E 1.x systems as well. 
The PCI-E 2.0 spec is a fairly new one (Jan 2007). Currently, only the X38 
chipset from Intel and the nForce 7 from NVIDIA support PCI-E 2.0."

  And:

   "A Short 2-3 inch black slot is usually a PCI Express slot (usually PC 
less than 2 years old will have these)"

   So you should be ok if you have these slots.




>
> If not then I guess I'll be replacing the entire PC rather than just the 
> graphics card... but let's hope not, eh?
>
>>      When will you get the 260? Today?
>
> I bought it using the super-hyper-ultra-mega-saver delivery option. So... 
> next week? Maybe?
>
> (It's daft really; if you want it tomorrow, gotta pay lots of money. But 
> if you go with the cheap delivery option, often it arrives the next day 
> *anyway*! :-P But we'll see...)

      You'll get it tomorrow then.

        ~Steve~

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>>>     <sniff> Don't do that to me. I'm sad now... <sniff>  :/

>> Heh. Well, yours is a 6-series. Then they made the 7-series. After that 
>> came the 8-series. Then there was the 9-series (which is really just 
>> rebadged versions of the 8-series - hence unpopular). Now we have the 
>> 200-series. And... according to the numbers above, it's "only" 8x faster. 
>> 2004 for the 6-series, 2008 for the 200-series. So in 4 years, it's "only" 
>> got 8x faster. Ho hum!
> 
>       Well, that's ok.

LOL!

>> Well, I guess if I feel rich enough I could always add a second GTX260 at 
>> some point... I *do* have an SLI motherboard. >:-D
> 
>       I was going to suggest that but people seem to have problems running 
> it.

In the majority of benchmarks I've seen, SLI is either the same speed, 
or *slower* than a single GPU. (!!) o_O

However, with more recent benchmarks that seems to be changing. In the 
very latest benchmarks, 2-way and 3-way (and even 4-way) SLI does 
actually come out (sometimes a lot) faster. I have no idea why this 
would be the case; maybe until now games tended to be CPU-bound? Or 
maybe it's a bandwidth issue somewhere?

Anyway, I only have 2-way SLI available, so... ;-)

(And as I say, I'd sooner build a new PC then run two GPUs. Probably 
much bigger return on investment there!)

>>>     You won't be disappointed! :)

>> I ****ing will if it doesn't work with my motherboard! o_O
>>
>> (The card is PCI Express 2.0 - and I'm not sure that my motherboard is.)
> 
>     I found these quotes just now:
> 
>  "It doesn't matter, PCI-E 2.0 cards will work on PCI-E 1.x systems as well. 
> The PCI-E 2.0 spec is a fairly new one (Jan 2007). Currently, only the X38 
> chipset from Intel and the nForce 7 from NVIDIA support PCI-E 2.0."

Well that's nice to know. :-}

Seriously, Tom's Hardware is great for figuring out the latest 
up-to-the-minute trends. But if you haven't been following this stuff 
for a while, it's really hard to find a good overview for quickly 
getting up to speed again...

>> I bought it using the super-hyper-ultra-mega-saver delivery option. So... 
>> next week? Maybe?
>>
>> (It's daft really; if you want it tomorrow, gotta pay lots of money. But 
>> if you go with the cheap delivery option, often it arrives the next day 
>> *anyway*! :-P But we'll see...)
> 
>       You'll get it tomorrow then.

Heh. Actually this time it looks like they're going to purposely not put 
it in the mail until Friday. Presumably this is a ploy to force more 
people to hand over extra cash. :-P

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> OK, so I've wondered about this before... If I were to install Crysis on 
> my PC, would I actually be able to play it? Or would my PC melt into a 
> pile of liquid metal?

New idea for case material: Gallium. Then it most definitely would melt 
into a pile of liquid metal. XD

> 
> My current graphics card is an nVidia GeForce 7900GT, but it's dying. 
> I've just ordered an nVidia GeForce GTX 260, but it hasn't arrived yet.
> 
> The official Crysis website *claims* that anything better than a GeForce 
> 6800GT should work - but it that like M$ telling us that Vista will 
> "work" with a Pentium III? What do you need for the game to play 
> *properly*?
> 

I would think it would run acceptably, but I haven't messed with Crysis, 
so I don't really know from a practical standpoint.

-- 
~Mike

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> - I lose count of how many alien creatures you have to do battle with. 

  Really? You lose count quite easily, then.

  Let's see, the non-boss enemies are: The headcrab, the zombie, vortigaunts,
the barnacle, the houndeye, the bullsquid, the alien grunt, the soldier and
the alien controller. That's 9. Plus the bosses.

  In HL2 we have 3 different types of headcrab (regular, fast and poison),
3 different types of zombie (regular, fast and poison), the barnacle, the
antlion, 3 types of combine soldiers (metrocops, combine soldier and
combine elite), turrets, combine gunships and striders. That's about 14,
depending on how you want to count them.

> - Weapons? Again, a pistol, an SMG, a shotgun, a rocket launcher, and 
> that's about it. (Oh, and the very cool but mostly useless gravity gun.)

  HL has 14 weapons, HL2 has 11 (plus various fixed weapons here and
there).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> - I lose count of how many alien creatures you have to do battle with. 
> 
>   Really? You lose count quite easily, then.

You noticed? :-P

>   Let's see, the non-boss enemies are: The headcrab, the zombie, vortigaunts,
> the barnacle, the houndeye, the bullsquid, the alien grunt, the soldier and
> the alien controller. That's 9. Plus the bosses.
> 
>   In HL2 we have 3 different types of headcrab (regular, fast and poison),
> 3 different types of zombie (regular, fast and poison), the barnacle, the
> antlion, 3 types of combine soldiers (metrocops, combine soldier and
> combine elite), turrets, combine gunships and striders. That's about 14,
> depending on how you want to count them.

Maybe that's just it - there are several slightly different versions of 
enemy, but the numer of actual enemies is quite small. And of those, 
only the antlions really have that "other-worldly" feel to them that was 
so awesome about HL1.

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Invisible [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
> Also, I wonder: Will games ever reach the stage where textures are
> sufficiently high resolution that you can actually read the writing on
> stuff?? Will we ever get believable character animation?

If you mean read the writing on walls, then they're already there in a
lot of games.

As for "believable character animation," the answer is yes.  Many
current generation games use motion tracking for the animation,
resulting in quite realistic movement.

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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>> Also, I wonder: Will games ever reach the stage where textures are
>> sufficiently high resolution that you can actually read the writing on
>> stuff?? Will we ever get believable character animation?
> 
> If you mean read the writing on walls, then they're already there in a
> lot of games.

OK. I guess I just haven't played any of them yet. (Hey hey, I'm 
probably gonna try Crysis in a little while... heh.)

> As for "believable character animation," the answer is yes.  Many
> current generation games use motion tracking for the animation,
> resulting in quite realistic movement.

Hmm. That's not actually what I meant. Perhaps I should have said 
"believable character performance". Lots of the dialogue sequences I see 
still look scripted and static.

Post a reply to this message

Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> If you mean read the writing on walls, then they're already there in a
> lot of games.

> As for "believable character animation," the answer is yes.  Many
> current generation games use motion tracking for the animation,
> resulting in quite realistic movement.

  One trend in gaming which seems to be becoming popular is to try to make
the games as immersive as possible.

  First-person shooters are pictured from the point of view of the
character itself, but still the vast majority of FPS games fail to be
*really* immersive, like you *really* were there, rather than feeling
that you are simply watching the TV.

  Some games are slowly making the way to more immersiveness. There was
a game demo, which name I now fail to remember, about some kind of soldier
in a heated battlefield, which was awesomely immersive. I don't know if it
was just a pre-rendered demo or real-time, but at least it could have been
real-time.

  Another game which succeeds pretty well in immersiveness is Mirror's Edge.
I was so impressed by the demo that I had to buy the game.

  Mirror's Edge also has a rather peculiar style. Rather than aim for
absolute realism in how the environments are rendered, there's a mixture
of realistic models and stylistic texturing. The texturing may not be
realistic, but more artistic, but it works surprisingly well.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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