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New Graphics Card Advice For a strange Friend

smogsy

smogsy

smogsy

Soldato
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9 Dec 2006
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I have a friend who will only play hes game on absolute maximum graphics or not at all, however!. to do this he waits sometimes 5 years to play a game to do this.

any new games he cannot wait for he uses hes xbox, weird i know, and only will buy it on ebay for the lowest price that game has every sold for even if its 1p over the lowest price, he waits 6 + more months to buy it.

for example hes only just started playing Fear/crysis on hes pc.
which was released on November 16, 2007!! time flys huh!:p

yet on xbox hes playing deus ex, & hitman < hitman hes favourite game of all time

i specced him a pc some 5/6 years ago
Q6600
4GB ram
8600GT
2x 500GB i believe
600w psu (from memory)
(built by ocuk)

however he recently got a new 1080p screen so needs a new gfx card to replace the 8600GT

i reacon he would spent around £120-150
 
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Well, to get a solid 60fps on Crysis 1 with max settings and 4xAA, he would still need at least an overclocked i5 Sandy or above (my old Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz didn't cut it for Crysis 1 with frame rate often dips down to low 20s due to the game only using two cores) and a 7850 2GB~7950 I'm afraid, and that would cost more than £120-£150 :p
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
Well, to get a solid 60fps on Crysis 1 with max settings and 4xAA, he would still need at least an overclocked i5 Sandy or above (my old Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz didn't cut it for Crysis 1 with frame rate often dips down to low 20s due to the game only using two cores) and a 7850 2GB~7950 I'm afraid, and that would cost more than £120-£150 :p
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Crysis is one of those games (like Doom 3), where it feels pretty smooth even with a fairly low average fps (25-35). The graphic demand is high and constant, so there are only a few points where the game is more demanding than others (the tank battle and the opening of the assault level, for instance), and you can run it at a low frame rate without feeling like its low most of the time.
I imagine that's the way he's running it. Running okay on MAX, and running well on MAX are different things.

Also, AA is pretty much a waste of time on Crysis. It's implementation of AA is very costly for the limited benefits it gives (e.g. it doesn't work well with all those leaves). The edge filtering AA in config settings is much more efficient and maybe even works better. The only reason to use full AA is because cards are now so powerful you may as well. So he may well be saving his card some work there.
 
MeMeMeMe said:
Crysis is one of those games (like Doom 3), where it feels pretty smooth even with a fairly low average fps (25-35). The graphic demand is high and constant, so there are only a few points where the game is more demanding than others (the tank battle and the opening of the assault level, for instance), and you can run it at a low frame rate without feeling like its low most of the time.
I imagine that's the way he's running it. Running okay on MAX, and running well on MAX are different things.

Also, AA is pretty much a waste of time on Crysis. It's implementation of AA is very costly for the limited benefits it gives (e.g. it doesn't work well with all those leaves). The edge filtering AA in config settings is much more efficient and maybe even works better. The only reason to use full AA is because cards are now so powerful you may as well. So he may well be saving his card some work there.
Click to expand...
While I agree dropping graphic setting can help reducing the burden/stress being placed on the graphic side, my point is that the Q6600 would still not be fast enough to deliver a smooth gameplay experience, and I speaking from my own experience having played the game with Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz.

Due to the game only utilizing two cores, it is one of those games would actually get higher frame rate even with a E8x00 Core2Duo overclocked to 4.25GHz or above than an overclocked Q6600.

And I'm guessing OP's friend's Q6600 is most likely running at stock clock 2.4GHz, so there no way his friend would enjoy the gameplay experience, when I found even the Q6600 at 3.6GHz was not good enough.

My point is...overclocked or not, the Q6600 struggle to hold the minimum frame rate above 25fps...and frame rate dipping to the low 20s are frequent occurrence, not just those 1-2 times split-seconds dips.

It would had been different if the game would utilize the use of all 4 cores, but unfortunately it only uses two, and there's not much can be done about it except for using a faster CPU.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
While I agree dropping graphic setting can help reducing the burden/stress being placed on the graphic side, my point is that the Q6600 would still not be fast enough to deliver a smooth gameplay experience, and I speaking from my own experience having played the game with Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz.

Due to the game only utilizing two cores, it is one of those games would actually get higher frame rate even with a E8x00 Core2Duo overclocked to 4.25GHz or above than an overclocked Q6600.

And I'm guessing OP's friend's Q6600 is most likely running at stock clock 2.4GHz, so there no way his friend would enjoy the gameplay experience, when I found even the Q6600 at 3.6GHz was not good enough.

My point is...overclocked or not, the Q6600 struggle to hold the minimum frame rate above 25fps...and frame rate dipping to the low 20s are frequent occurrence, not just those 1-2 times split-seconds dips.

It would had been different if the game would utilize the use of all 4 cores, but unfortunately it only uses two, and there's not much can be done about it except for using a faster CPU.
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My Q6600 @ 3.6 handled Crysis fine, ran at 1080p but no AA. From memory it dropped into the 30's at times with the GTX 295. It was awhile ago though!

I need to upgrade mine as well if I want to play BF4 on it (it barely copes with BF3). Although I'm keeping an eye on the Playstation 4 now, especially if World of Tanks comes to it...
 
Rojin said:
My Q6600 @ 3.6 handled Crysis fine, ran at 1080p but no AA. From memory it dropped into the 30's at times with the GTX 295. It was awhile ago though!
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Well, I completed the game on on Q6600 at 3.6GHz as well, but while it handle it mostly "ok", the gaming experience would have definitely been better if the frame rate was higher.

And I'm pretty sure you didn't have the frame rate dipping down to only as low as 30s, but down to 25fps or below. Even reviews back then have shown Q6600 at 3.7GHz with minimum frame rate of 24fps, CPU such as i5 750/760 overclocked to 4.15GHz managed minimum frame rate of around 32-35fps using the same graphic card (think it was a 5870), so the overclocked Q6600 was definitely bottlenecking.

And let's not forget, OP's friend (most likely) don't have a Q6600 running at 3.6GHz, but at 33% slower stock clock of 2.4GHz instead.
 
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