Topic awaiting preservation: Serious Gamers

I'm looking to build a new rig, a 3rd one... dedicated to gaming.

Right now, my fastest rig is a P4 3.0 with a 9800 PRO and it runs HL2 and Doom 3 very well.
It also serves for content creation - digital video, photoshopping, and some sound editing,

For the new rig though, I would go the AMD route , with an overclocked FX55 - air cooled.

For the Mobo, i'm very much interesting in SLI.
I would go with 2 NVIDIA 6800 Ultras (assuming i stay within a budget).
Add 1 Gig of Corsairs on board.
For sound, the newest Audigy.

Does anyone have experience with SLI..particularly with 2 cards?

Perhaps you could o for something like this

HL2 Mod case

No Sig ?

Talk about a serious gamer.

I hate this new trend of saying serious gamers. Most people know fucking jackshit about games, for real. Just because you play your fukcing boring and already cliched (well, most of 'em) FPS and similar crap thats all about fucking stupid 3d graphics with a serious lack of style, subtance, and originality. I'm even getting sick of seeing the same stupid blue interface with pseudo fixed size font. What happened to creativity in videogames? When was the last time we saw a bizarre idea like using mushrooms to become large that actually worked?

Fuck you CD media storage. You started everything with PS. Fuck you games like Halo. You made the words Master Chief the talk of the town, for no interesting reason at all.

*sits and plays Umihara Kawase*

*and later plays Earthbound*

*and to spice it up, puts on an Ogre Battle cartridge*

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Something else

Sexy Demoness cel

^ I agree wholeheartedly - *goes back to playing NWN*

I have a real toolset.

Wesnoth 0.9 is out =) Theres your serious gaming right there!

Wow... people still play NWN? I still have my gamebox (with CD et al) sitting up there on my shelf... alas, it is time that eludes me.

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Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup | "Hooray for linguistic idiots and yak milk!"

Well I guess the term 'serious gamer' has arrisen through the fact that you've got to be pretty damn serious about wanting to play games on a machine taht costs a small fortune!

Yup - NWN is still going strong. I have been playing now for 2+ years, I have a PW and my own server running.

The Toolset is just...unbelievable. Being able to host a Server (with the Stand alone Client) for free is also really great!

And the custom content on the Vault is mind-boggling!

Dang... that almost tempts me to reinstall the game and hop on your server! Maybe one of these days I'll actually have time for stuff like that again... that would be nice.

I do remember fooling around with the toolset back when I was into NWN. It was indeed pretty amazing. I started building an adventure but never finished it.

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Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup | "Hooray for linguistic idiots and yak milk!"

Suho:

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Maybe one of these days I'll actually have time for stuff like that again...

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Make time... 'Old' too fast. Or as friend says... ' ahhh... the smell of old people setting in.' =)

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Blaise said:

Well I guess the term 'serious gamer' has arrisen through the fact that you've got to be pretty damn serious about wanting to play games on a machine taht costs a small fortune!

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That's a big part of it Blaise. 2 Cards on an SLI Mobo will cost more than most ppl's PCs or Macs.

The other part of serious gaming, at least for me, is having games with excellent gameplay in combination with great graphics..i want both - and pushing the hardware (overclocking, water-cooled, phase cooling whatever) to get the max out of the game.

I build 3D worlds as a hobby (for the web) and I see the quality of the graphics of a game like HL2 - at high resolution and high FPS, and the quality of the physics engine...it 's damn impressive how far we have evolved from pong.

I though 'getting the max out of the game' back in my days (when I was 10 years old in 1994 :'D) was actually about mastering the game to levels even programmers never expected.

Look to what happened to Super Metroid. Being a high quality game back in its days, what people really did for 'getting the max out of the game' were (in some instances, still are) insane speedruns, alternate routes, the least item percentage possible, and many more stuff that made your game go insane. Not opening your snes and overclocking its gpu just to get twice the resolution, neither dynamic interpolation for a better sound quality.

The games have envolved graphically, yes, I do concur, but most games, even in such fucking important aspect nowadays, lack a lot of substance and style. They don't have personality, and just look like a bunch of boring models with clothes that even at this point, look damn plastic. The only one that has graphically grapsed my attention lately is Oddworld: Munch's Oddissey, and to some degree, warcraft 3 (I'm not counting fighting games, though, but anything along the quality of Capcom vs SNK 2 is good enough for me ).

Physics engines mean something only in games that aim for realism. Puzzle, strategy (not specifically rts, mind you, I think something more along the lines of Fracas), fighting, rpgs, adventure (which reminds me, I must get all the endings from Clock Tower ), graphic novels (yes, I'm counting such as a genre), sports (well, and handful might be benefited for), and a few more I cannot think at the moment (if we exclude bomberman as an unique genre), have no actual relevant purpose for realism. The only genres I can think of that might actually need it are the now overexploited fps (and a few third person shooters, like GTA), and 3d platformers; well, porrasturvat and worms too. And even then, I challege anyone to make a physics engine that can support something like the T-1000 (or heck, even better: Batman's Clayface) correctly.

In any case, all I can see an fps higher than 60, a resolution larger than 1280x960, are useful for is to, let's be honest, show off. If the game lacks appeal, no matter how awesome does it look and apparently plays, it will end up in your closet a few months after you bought it.

A quality of a game isn't measured on how awesome does it seem, or how entertaining is at first instance. It is measured on the consistence of its fun factor. Then again, fun factor is something nearly impossible to calculate and predict.

Nothing in my rant or blabbering is aimed towards you, ZaddyDog, and I apologize if I gave such impression. It's just that I have had really bad moments dealing with several hundreds* so-called serious gamers, and how many many nowadays PC and home console games fail to impress me. Well, the only thing that I really really like nowadays is control response. Reaction is very smooth, unlike several pre-y2k games.

*That's almost literal, for the record.

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Something else

Sexy Demoness cel

(Edited by Alevice on 04-13-2005 07:00)

Oh, FinalFantasyTactics! Nothing like trying to beat that game with "pure" builds...

They have taken this to unbelievable heights!

I'm still playing this game, years after it came out.

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NoJive said:

Make time... 'Old' too fast. Or as friend says... ' ahhh... the smell of old people setting in.' =)

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Haha... the smell of old people settling in.

I am trying to make more time in my life these days. When I do get free time, though, I rarely spend it playing games. Maybe my priorities have changed. Maybe that's the smell of getting old...



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Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup | "Hooray for linguistic idiots and yak milk!"

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Maybe my priorities have changed.

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~Long slow~ yaaaah.... you couuuuuld say that. =) Like right now for example I'm just reading a manual trying to make sense of the EOC F1 thru F10 codes. "ELECTRONIC OVEN CONTROLS" !! <LOL>

Just got it today... Real Convection... glasstop... oooh oooh ooh. = ) So when was the last time you thought a 'stove' might be a priority! But I haven't lost all perspective. Orville R was first up. =)

All sorts of fun & games... Games... yes that's the topoic... back at it then. =)

Alevice, and the rest of you, have you ever played Any Gamecube games? In particular the ones from Nintendo and Sega are most inventive.

The likes of Mario Sunshine and the absolutely amazing Super Monkey ball, that game is kiddy crack it's absolutely fantastic! If you want to play computer games that bring the fun back and aren't all about the latest graphics and special effects then I'd certainly recommend a Gamecube, Mario Sunshine, Viewtiful Joe, Super Monkey ball, Super Mario Smash Brothers, and Mario Party are jsut a few games that have amazing originality are super slick and everyone no matter what Age, skill, gender, sexual deviation, race, or creed can enjoy!

Cheers,

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Alevice said:

ZaddyDog, and I apologize if I gave such impression. It's just that I have had really bad moments dealing with several hundreds* so-called serious gamers

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np
what's ironic is my post was more about the tool than the application, i.e. the gaming platform's hardware rather than the game.

This ranks right up there with 'serious gamers' I would think.

The company's less than an hours 'drive' from me so I think a 'test-drive'is in order. =)
http://www.vrx.ca/products_vrx.php

For SLI cards going with 2 6600 GT gets the most increase in performance though it is thought that drivers issues are currently holding the 6800s back so they will likely be improving more when the drivers are sorted out. Keep in mind few games will see a 2x performance increase despite you having spent more then twice as much.

But its game support that has the main hold back for SLI. Unless the driver is programmed to support SLI in a game it won't run that game in SLI automaticaly. You will have to set it manualy. Manualy setting SLI is not overly difficult but you will likely need to test the game to see what mode works best.

Supported game
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzExLDM= for setting manual SLI profiles.

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Eagles get sucked into jet engines and weasels are oft maligned, but beavers just make nice hats.
tj333- the semi-Christ

(Edited by tj333 on 04-15-2005 04:36)

(Edited by tj333 on 04-15-2005 04:37)