HALF-LIFE 2 GOLD

Oh I almost forgot.

Gorb, I've officially marked you as class: Mr. OverKill.

I talked to a friend of mine who was telling about some guy he knows getting all this free crap through intel and nvidia. Basically, he got a 3.2 EE CPU and a Nvidia NX6800 Ultra ... for jack s**t. He had to buy a board and ram. And yes, it's true, he was telling me how different Doom 3 looks on his computer because of the texture compression differences.

wil5on said:
You obvoiusly spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on that peice of work. Sell the neons and get a decent camera.

Best advice I have heard in a while.

i can't help thinking of all those spare parts gorby must have lying around.. why do you have to live in canada ol man :sad:

on a brighter note, a local bank has recently upgraded to newer PC's, i may get 12 old comps .. sadly not till around thanks giving, and the hard drives will be missing.. they don't trust a reformat with the info, so they are destroying the hard drives..

What's it got under the hood you ask?

Actually... no, I don't think anybody asked that. I agree with Spartan 34 / wil5on - you guys with glowy cases are worse than boy racers with blue tinted headlights and over the top body kits...

scary_jeff said:
<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quote:</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>What's it got under the hood you ask?</DIV></DIV>

Actually... no, I don't think anybody asked that. I agree with Spartan 34 / wil5on - you guys with glowy cases are worse than boy racers with blue tinted headlights and over the top body kits...

you gotta admit though, as far as hobbies go, its one of the least destructive i can think of.

i say, if it makes them happy, go for it.. personally i go for functionality over looks, i cannot afford otherwise, but i think i'd still be the same even if i had unlimited resources.

i know guys/women who spend themselves broke over fishing/hunting and clothes.

my best friend was one of these destructive sorts, always going for looks/image, he was buying a large 2 story house, in a nice neighborhood.. couldn't afford furniture, but when people drove past, it looked good from the outside..

anyways..its harmless computer nonsense.

Harmless yes, but that doesn't stop it from annoying me :smile: If I was having a conversation with somebody about how expensive fuel is, and some guy came up and started saying 'speaking of fuel, i just got a GT twin turbo bla bla bla', it would annoy me, as I'm sure it would annoy you. Has it done any harm? No.

scary_jeff said:
Has it done any harm? No.

no.

i understand, more than you know.

I know what you mean Jeff. When I built my new PC I just went for the Antec Plus 1080AMG, a beautiful case, solid steel construction, gun metal grey, beautifully cooled and hell easy to change hardware like cd-drives/HD drives/etc. Stylish yet not over the top :biggrin: .

scary_jeff said:

What's it got under the hood you ask?

Actually...
no, I don't think anybody asked that. I agree with Spartan 34 / wil5on

• you guys with glowy cases are worse than boy racers with blue tinted

headlights and over the top body kits...

i know guys/women who spend themselves broke over fishing

Even the most learned scholars remained baffled by this one, Orph. My
experience of fishing (being talked at in the pub about deep sea
fishing by a guy who drank pints of mild) is limited at best, but it always
struck me as an extremely dull hobby :razz:

And yes, down right expensive..

You have the same mobo as me Gorb - the yellow one right? I decided to
keep a bit of a theme going to bought a yellow akasa cpu fan to go with
it, which was cheap at only ?10 or something but it keeps my 2800XP o/c
to 3200XP at a reasonable enough 48 idle / 55 load. When I was running
a Prime 95 "torture test" I managed to run the temps up to 63 somehow
though, but I've never seen it anywhere near that while gaming or
anything!

Crono, the ti4200 is a great card but its now just beginning to show
its age. To me this has been the best buy of any computer hardware I've
bought - it only cost me ?140 or so when I got it 3 years ago, and it
STILL manages good framerates on decent settings in most games
(Splinter Cell:PT, UT2004, etc...). Doom 3 and CS:S have heralded the
end of its life - even on medium settings I get low FPS, so I end up
turning off most visual features in order to get it running as smooth
as I like (>50fps). HL2 is said to be more demanding than CS:S (and
the videos and screenshots certainly make it look more demanding) so
I'd wager I'll have a harder time getting good framerates in that.

Regardless of whether you mind having all the visual features or
wonderful framerates, you have to admit that it is the bottleneck in my
system. It kinda defeats the point in having a brand new cpu, ram and
mobo if you are running a 3 year old card.

Would you guy stop bitching about having a Ti4200. That card runs HL2 just fine.

Sorry! In fairness, with drivers
and updates the GF4 I've got has run UT2004 really well with decent
graphics, but that was designed for a GF card. HL2 on the other hand is
designed for ATi, so slow downs are to be expected...

consider, my taboo version is prolly not compiled worth a s**t.. so it is not the best comparison material.

my card runs UT2K4 without a hitch, smooth as silk..
it runs the taboo stressfully!

the point? you cannot compare unreal engines to anything other than unreal engines.. they have been running smooth on almost any decent card at the time of their releases since the unreal engine 1st came out.

HL2 will require more power than unreal.

/me stares at trusty GF4MX440
/me shakes head and walks away

I've now got a Radeon X800 SE. I don't know how it compares to other things but I can max out almost everything, play at 1024x768, and get at least 50fps. The only slowdowns I experience is around water. Buying a new computer this summer was the best idea I've ever had. :biggrin:

/me stares at trusty GF4MX440
/me shakes head and walks away

same feeling, pal.

Call me sad, but, the first thing I'll be doing is figuring out the cheats! I just want no clip so I can fly over those stalkers!

Renegatus said:
Call me sad, but, the first thing I'll be doing is figuring out the cheats! I just want no clip so I can fly over those stalkers!

they are the same..

Orpheus said:
they are the same..

Ah ha ha ha. Silly heads.

So what video cards will you guys be using for HL2?

I will probably buy a Radeon 9800pro.

I've got me a Radeon 9600 Pro, which is adequate enough. I may get a 9800 Pro at some point and double my fps.

i'll see how i get on with my 5900fx ultra.

i don't think i should have any problems though.

i have approximately 3 weeks? to get up enough for my 9600XT 256, and the game..

i fear, i won't make the deadline.. its the slow time of the season, and the bills always go up in winter :sad:

but it will be a 9600XT..

Spartan 34 said:
So what video cards will you guys be using for HL2?

I will probably buy a Radeon 9800pro.

Using my Radeon 9600 (256MB VRAM). But, I will be purchasing an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ and an Asus K8N. Mind you, those'll be around Christmas so I'll have a fair whack at it on my current specs.

I don't have a good enough comp to handle HL2 yet but I should be getting one for Christmas.

Spartan 34 said:
I don't have a good enough comp to handle HL2 yet but I should be getting one for Christmas.

ahh, spare parts.. *points spartan to my thread..*

whispers

its not that far from there to here :biggrin: get the new one before christmas.. i could use the parts in enough time to make something :razz:

ReNo said:
Crono, the ti4200 is a great card but its now just beginning to show
its age. To me this has been the best buy of any computer hardware I've
bought - it only cost me ?140 or so when I got it 3 years ago, and it
STILL manages good framerates on decent settings in most games
(Splinter Cell:PT, UT2004, etc...). Doom 3 and CS:S have heralded the
end of its life - even on medium settings I get low FPS, so I end up
turning off most visual features in order to get it running as smooth
as I like (>50fps). HL2 is said to be more demanding than CS:S (and
the videos and screenshots certainly make it look more demanding) so
I'd wager I'll have a harder time getting good framerates in that.

Regardless of whether you mind having all the visual features or
wonderful framerates, you have to admit that it is the bottleneck in my
system. It kinda defeats the point in having a brand new cpu, ram and
mobo if you are running a 3 year old card.

First off, your bus is the real bottleneck of your system. :razz:

Secondly, I didn't say the Ti4200 would play HL2 at maximum settings with zero problems or anything like that. I said, it can run Hl2 decently with good settings.

As far as I know my card will be able to run HL2 on fairly high settings. If I take into account that I activate every visual option in CS:S and turn everything up with no hiccups, I can assume that it will run HL2 very well, maxed? no, but well.

I run D3 on medium settings with little problems. Every once in awhile when there's a new lighting style (dramatic, as in, the light that rotates under the connection tunnels), it looses some frames, but that's because of the CPU.

My video card is actually damaged and it runs these things just fine. Most people interpret "just fine" as "best settings evah".

This is why I am confused about people's complaints. Maybe the manufacturer wired them differently, who knows? (Jeff, don't even think about answering that rhetorical question)

Shoulda expected a smart ass answer like that from you Crono :biggrin:

Seriously though, while perhaps bottleneck wasn't quite the
right word, its obvious what I meant. The performance of my games is no
longer limited by my CPU or RAM, but by my graphics card. Its my
graphics card that is holding back my performance in games. Replacing
the graphics card with a better one will get me better performance. I
want better perfomance. I will replace my graphics card :smile:

I know. I want a new video card too. -> This one to be exact

All I was saying is a Ti4200 will run HL2 well. That's it. A lot of people act as if it wont run HL2 at all or something.

But obviously if you want a card that can run it at maximum settings ... I honestly suggest waiting a year or two for cards to come out which have 512Mb onboard ram. So you can kill two heavy graphics games with one ... purchase. Doom3 and HL2.

I couldn't really care about Doom 3 performance anymore - I don't own
the game and while single player was reasonable enjoyable for a while,
I doubt I'll ever go back to complete it. Deathmatch was fun for an
evening on LAN but wasn't particularly memorable - not enough to
replace UT2004 as my current deathmatch game of choice anyway. Unless
some very good mods appear on it, I wouldn't be surpised if I never
play the game again. I guess the engine will resurface in a crapload of
games though, so perhaps it would be silly to ignore the engine as one
I want good performance in.

Do you think it is really worth waiting for 512mb video ram? Benchmarks
and reviews rarely show ANY difference between 128mb and 256mb versions
of the same cards, so will 512mb make any worthy difference? I was
thinking a 256mb 6800GT would probably prove a nice mid/top range
purchase sometime just after christmas, but I'm not gonna set that in
stone as I'll get the best I can afford at the time.

I'll be playing HL2 using a Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro Toxic 256MB. It
har extra cooling so I should be able to flash it to a X800 XT without
adding any more cooling, however, I will most likely not flash it in a
while.

ReNo, it's really a pointless question. Because the only reason why you would ever need 512 Mb of video memory is to hold every texture uncompressed (thus making everything look better) along with the (now becoming norm) of ten gazillion polys at any given moment.

The real difference between having 256 and 512 right now is nothing except D3 (becauase of the texture issue).

But I'm fairly sure more and more games will depend on it. But. There's really no point right now. I suppose skipping a generation is good enough. I usually suggest skipping 1.5 generations. Otherwise your new purchase just isn't worth it.

So in short, no. I was being nit picky. But, if you REALLY looked at the larger span in accordance to money, waiting for a (good) 512 card would be well worth it.
It'd probably give you a flare to go back and play HL2 again in super spinkee mode.

But I doubt it'd be mandatory or even really needed for at least 4 years or so.

the problem of waiting is a paradox we all suffer from, if one waits, a better card comes along, if we wait a bit longer, that card drops in price, but a new one catches our eye, and we don't feel as good about the great card we already waited for, so we wait again, because this new card is f**king awesome, but then again, it cost more so we wait, in the mean time the card we waited on for so long finally is purchased, but its so far behind now that we feel cheated for waiting so long for a card that isn't even 1/2 as good as a card costing 30 dollars more a week later..

the moral is, if its what you want today, and have the money to buy it, do so, cause waiting only leads to more waiting you will never feel cheated for buying it when you really wanted it.

The key is to buy the card you want, then don't look at any new cards for at least a year. That way you don't get to see how yours gradually drops in value, or how it has been replaced by something better :smile:

That's what I've been doing, I still think my Radeon 9000 family edition is the best ever :biggrin:

That isn't true, Orph. I don't know anyone who thinks that way. I never said "wait forever".

In all actuality, there's not much more in speed that they're going to do to video cards (besides adding memory and registers and optimizing it in different ways).

Look at what would actually need something better then a 512mb card in forseable future.

That's what I'm talking about ... Not, "s**t I don't have the most powerful card on the market".

Orpheus said:
i can't help thinking of all those spare parts gorby must have lying around.. why do you have to live in canada ol man :sad:

on a brighter note, a local bank has recently upgraded to newer PC's, i may get 12 old comps .. sadly not till around thanks giving, and the hard drives will be missing.. they don't trust a reformat with the info, so they are destroying the hard drives..

I have about 12 old computers from other people in different states from about '90 to '97 in age.

As for the camera, it's a good camera digital camera, it's the fact that that picture was in the dark ffs. I know how cameras work and such, it's a good one just doesn't have variable shutter speed, and I purposely turned the flash off for that picture. It's not a webcam, it's a cropped picture from a digital camera. I have others with an outside light source and it looks just fine. They're on my girlfriend's computer and haven't gotten around to transferring yet.

Yes, Crono, it's overkill, just for fun because I can. It's overkill without overbudget.

[edit]I assure you its quite functional. I posted once for fun for f**ks sake, I see countless post after post about other people's mods and such and and soon as I post mine it's just an esthetic crit. I think after being here this long I'd be able to get some constructive conversation but apparently that isn't so. I'll not be coming back here again.

I think $1,600 US is way too much to spend on a computer. My limit tends to be about $800 US Maximum ($1,000 CAN). If you can't get it done in that bugdet, then wait, because it's honestly not worth the extra amount of money.

Granted it isn't as bad as some people who spend close to $3k (US) on a computer.

it's a good one just doesn't have variable shutter speed

Hmm. The reason it's blurry is because it does have variable shutter speed. It's taken ages to do the exposure, and because the camera wasn't perfectly still for the whole exposure time, it's blurred. What you want for dark scenes is a variable aperture size that would facilititate a shorter exposure time for a sharper image.

Don't be such a drama queen. What would you have us say about it? Nobody specifically said it's bad, we all just said it's not the kind of thing we like, and that we don't see the point in it. I'm not trying to take a jab at the camera, but how are we supposed to make constructive criticism when the only things we can see about it are that it has a window, a blue light, and two fan controllers? Orph even defended you. It seems to me you are simply upset because we didn't go all googly-eyed...

scary_jeff said:
Don't be such a drama queen.

that one sentence kept me away the whole 3 months last time..

guys, there are words one can say, and words one cannot.. these are in the cannot category.

this one action reduces his pride and joy to the significance of dog s**t.

i am not attacking/defending anyone, but certain things effect certain people in different ways. maybe gorb won't read those 6 words the way i do, but.. we'll see.

as to his PC, its specs exceed mine, i have no valuable input so i drifted, in the usual snarkpit fashion. but seriously guys, some words cut deeper than others.

/ 2 cents

Orpheus said:
this sites hostility level, although considered low, is much higher than it was a couple years ago.. maybe we are tired of the familiarity, maybe its something more.

think real hard on this guys..

i got a 2800xp barton (now watercooled)

msi k7n2delta 2

1.5gb ddr (333mhz)

msi fx5700le (default core speed 250 default mem 400) (but running at 450 core and 533 mem) (18k aqua marks on default settings 25k on overclocked (aquamark 3))

plenty of hdd space

thinking of getting a 6800gt in 2 weeks time (PAY DAY :biggrin: )

pc should be up to specs

i also modified the 5700 with heat sinks over the ram so it doesnt heat up as much.

Main Entry: drama queen
Function: noun
Definition: any person who overreacts to a minor problem or situation

If saying "I'll not be coming back here again" because people didnt want to see a picture of a case isn't an overreaction, I don't know what is.

Kage_Prototype said:
I've got me a Radeon 9600 Pro, which is adequate enough. I may get a 9800 Pro at some point and double my fps.

Got me a 9600 pro aswell :biggrin:

scary_jeff said:
<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quote:</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Main Entry: drama queen
Function: noun
Definition: any person who overreacts to a minor problem or situation</DIV></DIV>
If saying "I'll not be coming back here again" because people didnt want to see a picture of a case isn't an overreaction, I don't know what is.

jeff, do really need to remind you that knowing a thing and saying a thing, is not always an option?

while you are looking up words why don't you try "TACT" when you have, get back to me. :rolleyes:

I was deliberately not tactful, because I thought gorby was being a fool. I'll be tactful when I feel that somebody just made a mistake or has been slightly misguided.

What does "gone gold" mean anyway? he he ehh

I always thought 'gone gold' was when it had sold a certain number of copies, but that can't be right... Maybe it comes from records... maybe the very first master copy of a record used to be made from brass, only brass sounds lame, so they called it gold? As you may be able to tell, that is a complete guess :smile:

scary_jeff said:
I was deliberately not tactful, because I thought gorby was being a fool. I'll be tactful when I feel that somebody just made a mistake or has been slightly misguided.

lets assume "tact" didn't apply then..

lets say someone is indeed a "drama queen" wouldn't saying so increase the tension, instead of soothing it?

obviously, the situation required some thought (stop looking at me like that, i eventually admit my lack of tact). the computer had been modded, obviously it had some value or it would have still been an old tan job.. so, deduction dictates "its his baby, keep the derogatory replies to a bare minimum"

my comment was negative, but not harmfully so..

anyways, the situation went awry.. maybe, for the sake of his friendship, you could say something...

either way, i off, gotta run to town..

be good

"Gone gold" means that the game has passed all manner of pre-requisites as set by the developer and publisher, and is officially considered "finished'. It is then sent to the reproduction companies for duplication, packaging, and shipping.

I wasn't rude about his PC, I was rude about his reaction to us not being impressed by it.

And no, I refuse to be good :heee: