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Rage & graphic card limitations

Heffer23

Heffer23

Heffer23

Associate
Joined
12 Aug 2009
Posts
193
Location
Swindon
Hi all,

Firstly apologies if this is in the wrong section. Its about graphic cards but specifically relating to Rage... so I was a tad confused.

Ok my friend, we shall call him 'Bob'
'Bob' is currently playing Rage on an OC'd 480 & 6 core black edition athlon CPU... with trimmings. Now he like many is having issues with textures being drawn in as he looks left & right.

'Bob' says its due to his card only having about 1300MHz memory & suggests to run it & other modern games I should be looking at a card with more i.e. 2GB +

Firstly is 'Bob' correct ?

Secondly, I am in the market for a new GPU & am torn between the following:
- R6950 lightning 2GB (can't guarantee the flash BIOS up to 6970 so don't all shout this card out as winner straight away)
- R6970 lightning 2GB
- GTX580 MSI Twin Frozr II
Thirdly, the 580 only has 1500MHz(approx) so will this suffer the same texture pop up as the 480

Many thanks in advance
Heffers
 
First: You're confusing MHz and MB. But yes, games seem to be using a lot more vram lately.
Second: It depends on the rest of your pc, is it the Q6600 rig in the signature? If so, your CPU will be a bottleneck on whichever of the 3 GPUs you end up buying. Is a full system upgrade a possibilty?
 
Ah... see, this is why I love OCukF, every day is a learning day.

Yep, just looked & yes I meant MB.

Yes, my PC is the signature one. I have about £590 to spend currently.
I eventually want to add:
- 2500k i5
- P8P67
- Be quiet Advanced
- DDR3 4GB

Happy with rest.

Will be gaming on 1680x1050 (have 22" wide screen monitor) & nothing else
 
The problems with RAGE and textures "popping in" is a complex one, you need a mixture of fast system buses, fast GPU RAM and a disc to store the texture lump that has quick access times, with a tiny bit of fiddling my GTX470 runs RAGE pretty well with very minor texture pop in. RAGE should not be used as a guide for any other game tho as the way textures work in it is very different.
 
The issue isn't with your hardware, it's with the game.

I'm playing Rage at 2560*1600 on a single GTX480 (no need to enable SLI for this game), and I get solid 60fps. GPU utilisation stays below 60% for the most part, so it's not taxing the GPU.

I wouldn't look to upgrade from a GTX480 on account of VRAM, unless you're running a triple screen setup.
 
Well, Duff-Man is right, it's the game. I've seen videos from John Carmack saying it himself, that's the kinda stuff they build in to let in run smoother. So no use blaming it on the graphics card/system...
 
Yep it's the game itself mate and not your hardware. Rage is very poorly optimised even with the recent update. Disable SLI and try forcing Vsync in your Nvidia profile. I'm playing on a stock 480 with a quad core AMD 940 @ 3.6Ghz and everything runs smooth. Get the update and 'tweak' the profile and you'll be fine. I had the same texture issues before I did this.
 
I think it's in one of the parts from this keynote that he says something about it:
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/715177/quakecon-2011-john-carmack-keynote-video-all-about-rage-doom-4-is-a-no-show/

Something is actually quoted on that page, bullet 6:
"I know that we're going to get dinger by some people on the graphics. There will be people who turn on the highest movement sensitivity and walk backwards into town and then spin around quickly. And things might be a bit fuzzy at first before you see all the details. (Seriously, who does that?) We do a lot of work to make sure this is not an issue."
 
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I get the same as well. Mad amounts of tearing across the screen but seems fine in all the other games i run. Really dissapointed because its a great game aside from those issues :(
 
Howling said:
First: You're confusing MHz and MB. But yes, games seem to be using a lot more vram lately.
Second: It depends on the rest of your pc, is it the Q6600 rig in the signature? If so, your CPU will be a bottleneck on whichever of the 3 GPUs you end up buying. Is a full system upgrade a possibilty?
Click to expand...

I actually disagree with this. If you OC your Q6600 to ~3.5GHz there'll be very few (if any) modern games that it'll bottleneck.
 
daveash said:
I actually disagree with this. If you OC your Q6600 to ~3.5GHz there'll be very few (if any) modern games that it'll bottleneck.
Click to expand...

Not to deviate from the OP but I have a 680i mobo... can't OC my Q6600 past 2.5GHz but see my other posts for more on that.

So back to the OP, cheers for the info, Maybe Rage is not the best game to base my next card on.

Thank you for list Howling... tres interesting & soooo tempting.

Lastly, my gut feeling is many more games will be developed this way ie requiring more & more vram. I see a 3GB 580 has just been released... possibly to answer / ease a few (rich) peoples needs.

I'll keep post open as the info received is top & interesting - yes, I am a noid & need to get out more :D
 
With the latest patch and AMD drivers I get very good performance (8xAA, max settings) and haven't noticed any texture popping, whereas before the patch / drivers it was terrible. And I'm still waiting for AMD to release drivers with Crossfire support, which are meant to be any day now - currently it uses about 40-60% of just one GPU, with the other idle. I think some of that is down to my CPU, as apparently the game is quite sensitive to the processor for computing the textures.

Still, some of it seems to be luck. I've seen people posting with similar systems to me with quite serious issues.

As for your upgrade, I'd ditch your CPU as a priority if it doesn't overclock. Even though it doesn't look like much on paper there is a big difference in architecture and there's no point going for a decent GPU if it's only going to be bottlenecked by other parts. Also, if you are going for that sort of upgrade it would be highly worth considering a display capable of at least 1920x1080 / 1920x1200. If your budget allows.
 
TAC4U; said:
Also, if you are going for that sort of upgrade it would be highly worth considering a display capable of at least 1920x1080 / 1920x1200. If your budget allows.
Click to expand...

Not enough bucks...2 kids & crimbo approaching fast

Think it's going to be pretty much the list above apart from the gpu...still a 6950 but the msi one
 
Hi, just wanted to close thread but also show off my new signature

Proper proud me & thank you Overclockers forum for getting me there

:D :D :D :D
 
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