The Raven Council

Half Life 2: Episode 2 (and Portal and Team Fortress 2) hit the shops in a bit over 2 weeks. Just warning you that I'll probably disappear for a few days as soon as I can get my paws on the fabled orange box.

Anyone else almost wetting themselves in anticipation?


Or what about Halo 3?

Personally, when picking the best FPS's I've played, I run out of fingers well before I even consider Halo - but you can't say anything against the following it's managed to get.

hmm yeah ep 2 will be nice.

halo 3 bleh halo was ok from a shallow console perspective halo 2 was crap imo.

crysis on the other hand, looks the dogs

I'm in the beta for crysis, without a better gfx card it looks pretty much like more of its kind. Have to run it on medium or so.

meheh

8800gtx all ready for it

Ordered new gfx card, but the store's slow.

you should order 2 and have sli on the go. no i havent but you should! and tell us how it is

Did someone mention gfx cards? Thought I'd share some recent experiences.

Had an old card in one of my spare machines die the other week so I bought a cheap Gecube 512Mb HD2600 card for it. In theory it should have been a good card. In practice, repetitive BSOD's and inability of any more recent drivers to even recognise that the card was there meant it went back to the store.

Having seen similar with Ati in the past I decided to go back to Nvidia and got an Asus 7600GS silent (ie no fan, large heatsink) for about £50. Imagine my disgust when Starch booted said machine up and maxxed out all the settings in WoW (something I can't currently do on my X850XT platinum edition Ati).....

Much as I now want to throw some green stuff at a bigger better card, I've heard there's the next iteration just around the corner?

yeah november apparantly

The next iteration is always around the corner.

Unfortunately I'm trying to save a deposit on a house and gfx card's are waaaay down the list of priorities.

I'll just sit here with my 6600GT and cry.

hhehe

/comfort

Ordered the 8800gts 640mb, which had good reviews and isn't the priciest for 1% more performance.
It's a large card though, hope it fits. It's cheap enough perhaps to buy two for SLI, but not sure I'd go for that, can always buy a second if performance drops.

Ooooh, the Orange Box! I've been waiting for that one as well, especially since I haven't even played HL2 or HL2EP1 yet

However, the version for PS3 has been delayed I think

khila wrote:Ordered the 8800gts 640mb, which had good reviews and isn't the priciest for 1% more performance.
It's a large card though, hope it fits. It's cheap enough perhaps to buy two for SLI, but not sure I'd go for that, can always buy a second if performance drops.

1%?? in a lot of cases 1 gtx out does 2 gts's

anyways good card though grats

Pyx wrote:Ooooh, the Orange Box! I've been waiting for that one as well, especially since I haven't even played HL2 or HL2EP1 yet

However, the version for PS3 has been delayed I think

well for a start sell the PieceofShit3 and get a real pc! a manly one that can run hl2 ep 2! much more fun with proper fps controls

anyways you are in for a good time if you like the hl series

Jaera wrote:

khila wrote:Ordered the 8800gts 640mb, which had good reviews and isn't the priciest for 1% more performance.
It's a large card though, hope it fits. It's cheap enough perhaps to buy two for SLI, but not sure I'd go for that, can always buy a second if performance drops.

1%?? in a lot of cases 1 gtx out does 2 gts's

anyways good card though grats

Well, most charts seem to disagree with your bold claim. Also, the ultra is just an overclocked version of the normal gtx.
I'm not very interested in SLI yet, since it doesn't mean twice the performance (or even close to it) in lots of cases. It's not living up to its expectations, whether you put a GTS or a GTX in.

So, ofcourse, a gtx would not outperform 2 gts's, it's only that SLI doesn't make 2 cards perform as 2.
Otherwise, a gtx would have to have at least 200% the speed of a gts and I know you know you were just speaking folly just for the heck of it.

I've always bought the latest, most expensive card and in my experience, it's not worth it.

yeah the ultra is not worth the huge price imo

have a look here

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=33 ... pert&pid=4

ok so in these tests sli'd gts is faster, JUST, its very close and considering its 2 cards

but there is a much bigger than 1% diff between single gtx and gts, i did a load of research on it - check the benchies on the site

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_ ... &chart=279

gtx ftw! but the 640 is nice i had the 320 and it wasnt cutting it which is why i changed. but it has a problem with higher res as low memory

oh and mine is oc'd to 650 core so its faaaarster

I'll have a look. I'm gonna cancel my order anyway since they take too long (ordered sept 2nd and now the have an 'expected' delivery time of oct 5th after lots of shifts of the date already).

If the gtx isn't at most more expensive than the performance gain, I'll consider it.

yeah you should, lots of online stores here all have in stock. dont know what its like over where you live, guess the bamboo houses and such cant take the heat from the gtx without spontaneously combusting or such.

burn! hehehe

Rhianne wrote:Half Life 2: Episode 2 (and Portal and Team Fortress 2) hit the shops in a bit over 2 weeks. Just warning you that I'll probably disappear for a few days as soon as I can get my paws on the fabled orange box.

Anyone else almost wetting themselves in anticipation?

Wetting myself doesn't begin to describe... although it's best not to hold our breath for Ep3!

I ordered the orange box btw, got tf2, waiting on ep2 and portal now. I ordered via steam.
Btw, I'll have at least an extra ep1, since I already bought that before, so I can give that away as a gift to someone. Anyone who doesn't have it yet?