Gears of War PC

nice collection you have there.

 

You're not using features I consider needed for me, again I'd personally drop resolution before other features. I'm also sure many others would as well.

 

thanks ive been collecting pc games since 1980 i reckon i have about 1200 to 1500 games

ps: you can play the first game i ever bought here:
Zork - the Great Underground Empire :
http://thcnet.net/zork/index.php

ps: not sure if you need a dx9 card

 

Like ?

you seem to be saying that i cant be playing games at high detail @ 1280x1024 on a 7600gt
so i googled a few benchmarks

all done at 1280x1024 4xaa 8xaf
splinter cell 3 : 40fps
far cry : 67fps
fear : 32fps
quake 4 : 38fps

 

Like the sliders maxed in the game, for example in Oblivion you're clearing not doing so. Also AA and probably AF. A 7600GT will not do that in Oblivion especially at above 1280x720.

 

I wonder who finished that game? Did you?

 

Er well no....
/hangs head in shame

in my defence if i would of had the internet in those days i may of found a walkthrough
like this:
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Castle/2701/z1walk0.html

 

Skyring i did mention oblivion + gothic3 as the exceptions
but thats 2 games out of 167 so i think im doing o.k condsidering im on a midrange card thats a generation old
a current gen midrange card would have no probs doing 1280x1024 you dont need to be bleeding edge and 1280 isnt considered high these days

ps: you really need to drop below 1280 on a 1950pro ?

 

For max in Oblivion, yes, very much so. That's with a C2D at 2.8Ghz, X1950 Pro, and 2GB.

 

well oblivion is known for running like a dog

 

Yeah it is a bit low for this times, a 'bit old-genish'. Minimum of 1280x1024 for me (or widescreen version of that res for others), wich is about 40-45% more pixels to render. And with his 7600GT he doesn't need to have the settings on maximum to have it look good.

But about GoW then I hope they dump the (according to many others in this forum) quite large use of prebaked shadows and use real dynamic shadows instead, no need to cut down the graphics on the PC, hehe.

 

It shure is but I run quite well on a 7900GT (almost always better fps than the console versions) and that with what I would call extreme settings and mods which makes the default game look like a PS2 game!

OT rant/
But I see many PC players cry over low framerates saying they have 30fps/20fps constantly. Most of them have VSYNC on which will make your fps half or one third of youre monitor Hz if the PC can't mantain fps update as fast as the monitor Hz.

I myself use D3Doverrider (RivaTuner subprogram) which let's me force on tripple buffering to overcome the fps limitation. This makes in many games a huge fps increase. For example without tripple buffering in BF2 I get 30fps at one spot (offline no bots), with tripple buffering on I get 54fps on the same spot (offline no bots)!

I should add that the driver CP (Nvidia, ATi<-?) settings for tripple buffering is worthless for DirectX games so therefore one has to use another program to enable it (like D3Doverrider). /rant end!

 

This is another one of those games were you will be best served investing in a 360 pad me thinks. I don't doubt it will be a recommended requirement on the box like Lost Planet and TR:Legend.

Hell im really tempted to buy this game for the PC even though I already have it for the 360 and have completed once! If it has extra content and improved graphics then I think im up for another run through

 

Im no expert either but I think the feature they are referring to in DX10 is the ability to perform a custom AA resolve in the shader hardware.

Does Xenos even have that ability? I wasn't aware that it did but perhaps its getting around the problem in a different way due to it being in a console environment. Then again, perhaps Gears just has no AA on the 360??

 

I´m not much for games that comes first to a console and later to the PC.
If they would have wanted it to be good for PC they should have done it first to PC and then downgraded it, (and that goes for all multiplatform games) but I hope they do it good for PC.

 

Again, on X360 they`re doing some selective-edge blurring(something that GRAW1 and 2 on PC and Stalker, who are also employing deferred rendering(to a greater extent than UE3), are doing). I don`t think they implemented proper AA in Gears, my understanding is that it`s a fairly recent addition to UE3, made possible on the PC side by the way DX10 gives access to MSAA samples before the resolve step. DX9 did not allow access to the samples prior to resolve. On Xenos(or PS3 for that matter), you`re hardly limited by an API, you`re quite close to the metal, coding in a fixed environment, so AA+deferred would/should be pretty doable.

 

Cheers for the explanation. So your saying the lack of ability to perform MSAA with deferred rendering isn't a hardware limitation but simply a limitation of the API?

Or when you say AA+deferred should be possible on Xenos and RSX are you referring to methods other than MSAA (such as edge smoothing)?

 

It's a combination of hardware and software. You still have to have the pathways!

There's an excellent post from Shifty:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1024663&postcount=39

As for the exact method of AA in Gears, close-ups of environment geometry reveal edge blurring that would be consistent with MSAA.

Wonder if that means dynamic branching ............

 

As Alstrong said, it`s a combination of both. I`m presuming that MSAA+deferred rendering are possible on Xenos and RSX as the HW should be capable of doing it if the artificial limitation imposed by DX9 is removed(like it is on a closed-box console environment). How fast it would actually be is a tad up in the air, as there are still some peculiarities with deffered rendering that make it non-trivial to achieve good MSAA performance even if you have proper access to the pre-resolved samples and the hardware oomph required.

 

Don't forget, Thrustmaster, for one, also has a gamepad with dual analog + analog triggers, so you're not really tied to an X360 pad. Though they're nice if you've got the cash!

I think if GoW has the gameplay (it seemed decent when I played it at the x360 kiosk) then it'll still be fun, just like Halo for the PC. Its not the most complex shooter so it doesn't take full advantage of a PC interface but the action is still fun.