From: Mr.E Solved! on
nospam(a)sbcglobal.invalid.net wrote:
> "JLC" <jc(a)nospam> wrote in message news:otednfy73rUs5ODanZ2dnUVZ_iydnZ2d(a)comcast.com...
>> this was dropped in the end. When I bought my CPU I was trying to get the
>> best GPU&CPU combo for Crysis (and other new games as well!) and I found
>> this http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182806/p-6.html to be very
>> interesting. As you can clearly see the game is much more dependent on the
>> GPU then the CPU.
>
> Gamespot's review is astonishingly inadequate. All we know is,
> many current generation cpus/video cards are enough to run
> Crysis at 1024x768 Medium quality, but no combo is enough
> to run it at 1600x1200 High quality.
>
> How about 1024x768 High? Very High? Or 1280x1024,
> which is the standard/native resolution many, many gamers
> run at? We just aren't told by Gamespot's review. STUPID!
>
>

Sadly, no rig yet runs Crysis at 1600x1200 with high IQ and sustained
FPS that we have come to expect.

But we still have reviews which hem and haw and measure low resolutions
and minimal IQ settings, as if to try and trick us into thinking we are
going to get a "next-gen" experience.

FarCry ran well enough at low resolutions with the 6800GT it was bundled
with, even better with the 7800GT that came out the year after, today
you can run two copies of FarCry on a dual core, 8800GT PC simultaneously.

So, we patiently wait on the next batch of hardware (which will likely
be two 8800GTs on one board) to see if Crysis will be playable at
1600x1200. Farcry was a exciting game and I'm sure Crysis (FarCry2) will
be worth the wait.
From: Matthew on
>> waiting for my pc, but most of the time my pc is idle. To be honest
>> most applications can't even take advantage of dual core.
>
> Maybe so but I do like the fact that I can have my dual-core PC doing
> something heavy-duty like encoding and still have it responsive and snappy
> if I want to check email etc. Encoding on my old single-core was an
> overnight job as the PC was useless for anything else once I hit "start".

I find myself in exactly the same position as the original poster.

I've found the same problem with single-core video encoding, but how to
decide between dual and quad core? With quad would I be able to do some
dvd compression, burn a dvd, encode some wavs to mp3, and still have a
responsive pc to do some text editing, web browsing, etc.? In other words
would each of the processor intensive tasks get assigned a core and stick
with it?

What about the OS, do I need 64bit xp or vista with dual/quad processing?
I've heard that if you get 4GB RAM, a 64bit OS is recommended - is that true.

Thanks all.
From: Sir-Les-MP on
Matthew wrote:
>>> waiting for my pc, but most of the time my pc is idle. To be honest
>>> most applications can't even take advantage of dual core.
>>
>> Maybe so but I do like the fact that I can have my dual-core PC doing
>> something heavy-duty like encoding and still have it responsive and
>> snappy if I want to check email etc. Encoding on my old single-core
>> was an overnight job as the PC was useless for anything else once I
>> hit "start".
>
> I find myself in exactly the same position as the original poster.
>
> I've found the same problem with single-core video encoding, but how to
> decide between dual and quad core? With quad would I be able to do some
> dvd compression, burn a dvd, encode some wavs to mp3, and still have a
> responsive pc to do some text editing, web browsing, etc.? In other
> words would each of the processor intensive tasks get assigned a core
> and stick with it?
>
> What about the OS, do I need 64bit xp or vista with dual/quad
> processing? I've heard that if you get 4GB RAM, a 64bit OS is
> recommended - is that true.
>
> Thanks all.
you don't need a 64bit O/S to use either a dual core ore Quad core cpu
however you are correct if you intend to use 4gb or more Ram then a
64bit O/S is recommended as it will be able to address all the memory
available where as 32bit xp/vista will have some issues past 3gb
depending on the motherboard and memory set-up you may see just over
3.5Gb using a 32bit O/S