ATI's answer to Nvidia's SLI - Page 2

[Catweazle]

....its only a slight increse in performance, but for some real gamer itll make a diffrence and give you that edge.

That's the thing about SLI or Crossfire that I disagree with the most! For the 'real gamer' it makes no difference whatsoever, because the performance difference is beyond that point where it makes any difference at all to frame rates and respinsiveness in actual gameplay. Instead, it's at the point where the only detectable difference lies in benchmark tests of the hardware.

I once saw a games journalist describe the concept of the ungamer - the person who maintains a high performance games system, but for whom the hardware itself is the passion in his or her activity, rather than the games. It is the ungamer for whom small differences in SLI or Crossfire performance is meaningful.

The 'real gamer', as implied in your comment, can maximise games performance with a single, high-end display card. The person playing at a competitive level where small differences in hardware performance will give an 'edge' in currently available games is not going to be worried about a difference which is not going to have an impact until the hardware becomes outdated.

[belama]

There are even gamers that will minimize all graphics options for better performance. Would you play in wire frames? lol.. not me I would rather play with decent graphics.

I think in my opinion, graphics is the most or second factor that would persuade me in buying a game. I said second because it still has to have somewhat decent gameplay. ;)

[Catweazle]

That's one extreme, belama. But more realistically in terms of high performance cards and SLI/Crossfire configuration is that the extra performance on;y impacts on the extent to which you can have graphics options turned up high. Currently, ATi gives better performance than NVidia in Anisotropic Filtering. That's its 'strength'. On very recent games, that means you can have more 'realism' in the textures displayed onscreen. When it comes down to competitive gameplay, who on Earth is going to care that the surface details of close up objects looks more realistic than it does on your opponents machine, or that the metal grate you're running accross is more believable? Those things are only of importance to the person who is taking their time travelling through the game world, and marvelling at the scenery!

[belama]

:D Yeah!!

But I would also like people to play multiplayer with high graphics settings. Unfortunately not everyone can buy these high performance cards.

Sometimes I play Joint Operations: some people will actually reduce their graphics so they dont see the grass. When I first played I played as a sniper and hid in the grass because the same guys kept finding me everywhere I went. I soon figured: low graphs equals no grass. That really brings down the reality and fun of games. There should be an option in games that allow server creators to set a minimum in certain category of video settings.

[goaliemike]

:D Yeah!!

Sometimes I play Joint Operations: some people will actually reduce their graphics so they dont see the grass. When I first played I played as a sniper and hid in the grass because the same guys kept finding me everywhere I went. I soon figured: low graphs equals no grass. That really brings down the reality and fun of games. There should be an option in games that allow server creators to set a minimum in certain category of video settings.

Wow, that sucks pretty bad lol. But is there a reason for this, i play UT 04 at max graphics and all. But i reduce the numbers for the graphics on Far Cry to the bare minimum and when i got to the "vally" right after you swim past the river and steal the jeep in the base, my card displays 1 frame every 3 seconds. Is it possible that UT renders graphis a bit better, because i can see better graphics in unreal without it skipping unlike Far cry.

I dont think this should be in this fourm tho, but y not u both seem to know a lot

[belama]

Far Cry demands much more form your computer. All the graphical effects in this game and up to 4x AF and high AA will suck all of your low end video card's capabilities; still not enough. It's mostly the surrounding nature that is real eye candy. Maybe you put the water quality to ultra high or some other option at very high. With the x850xt you can pump it up at max.

UT2004 can run well on almost any computer. I run UT2004 very well on my centrino 1.4ghz with 9200 mobility video. It is difficult to play far cry on a p4 2ghz with the 9200 or more like impossible, the pc doesnt take it well!

In my opinion, Far cry has way better graphics than UT2004.

Far Cry:

Minimum System Requirements Single Player Only
- Computer: AMD Athlon 1 GHz or Pentium III 1 Ghz (AMD Athlon XP 2000 / Pentium 4 2 Ghz recommended)
- Memory: The game requires 256 MB of RAM.
- Video: A 3D accelerator video card with support for DirectX® 9.0b and at least 64 MB of video memory is required.

For Multiplayer play only the following configurations are supported

Recommended System Requirements
- Computer: A 2 GHz AMD processor or better is recommended.
- Memory: We recommend 512 MB of RAM
- Video: A 3D accelerator video card with support for DirectX® 9.0b and at least 128 MB of video memory is recommended

High System Requirements
- Computer: A 3 GHz AMD processor or better is recommended.
- Memory: We recommend 1024 MB of RAM
- Video: A 3D accelerator video card with support for DirectX® 9.0b and at least 128 MB of video memory is recommended

UT2004:

1.1 Minimum System Requirements
-------------------------------
Processor: Pentium III or AMD Athlon 1.0 GHz processor
Memory: 128 MByte RAM
Video: 32 MB Windows compatible video card

1.2 Recommended System Requirements
-----------------------------------
Processor: Pentium IV or AMD Athlon 2.0 GHz processor
Memory: 512 MByte RAM
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 4 or ATI Radeon Hardware T&L card with
128 MB VRAM recommended