238 réponses à ce sujet

[SSV Enterprise]

Where would the ATI Mobility Radeon 5400 series fall on your list, Gorath? Just wondering, because my laptop has a 5470.

Also, I noticed your remark on laptop GPUs and manufacturers- I think that the makers of Alienware laptops would strongly disagree with your statement that no laptop manufacturer cares about gaming performance.  The disadvantages of laptops compared to desktops is that they are dead ends since you can't upgrade the GPUs, and due to the smaller size it takes significantly more money to buy a laptop than a desktop with the same performance.  But as long as you are willing to pour in well in excess of $1000, laptops can contend with desktops in gaming performance.

Modifié par SSV Enterprise, 28 juin 2010 - 11:38 .

[Gorath Alpha]

Since Alienware is Dell, you can go to the bank with my statement.  Bottom line there is money, not games. 

Somewhere in the first two messages that form the reference article portion, I mention that while NTK went to the trouble of sorting and including Low End stuff like the HD 54n0 pair of Radeons, I consider it a waste of time to include junk falling below the borderline zone where the HD 5570 sits. 

Here's a current review.  I haven't taken time to read it yet.  http://www.overclock...-5450-lp-512mb/

Some old stuff still in my list probably ought to be taken away by now as well, given that the list was written before DA: O was released, and originally appeared almost a year ago on Bioware's legacy forums. 

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 29 juin 2010 - 10:40 .

[SSV Enterprise]

Dell is bad, I take it?  What about something like Asus?  Would you still say that something like this laptop: usa.asus.com/product.aspx; wouldn't be suited for gaming?  It has a Mobility Radeon HD 5870 video card, and is marketed specifically for gaming.  Who would need a video card with that performance, other than gamers with a desire for mobility?

You seem to have unconventional conceptions of what a game's "minimum specifications" should be.  I have always thought of them being simply the bare minimum needed to play a game at all, and that if you do settle for minimum you are going to get rather crappy performance.  Whereas you seem to think that "minimum" means the minimum specifications needed to run the game "properly".  Or am I the one being unconventional here?

By the way, I am in fact able to play DA:O on my laptop's Radeon 5470 at 1360x768 resolution, full textures, and full details.  I play without frame buffer effects, anistropy, or antialiasing to optimize performance.  It gets a couple performance hiccups, but it looks good enough and runs well enough for me.  It's not like limited graphics are necessarily a bad thing, or else computer gaming wouldn't have existed for the past 25-30 years.

EDIT:  How can I ascertain how many FPS my laptop is managing with the game?

Edit 2:  Ok, I installed a program called Fraps to detect the FPS.  The game had 20 FPS when standing still, and dropped down to ~15 in moments of action.  That's not good, I take it?  I guess I'm just tolerant of low frame rates. Also worth noting is that it seems Fraps caused the game to crash when I cast the "Tempest" spell- it's never done that before.

Modifié par SSV Enterprise, 29 juin 2010 - 12:55 .

[Doofus42]

The minimum is like you said, the game will run like a piece of Sh.... (POS). The recommended system is the true minimum of decent performance with a modest screen size, like 1280x1024.



About Dell, they are no better or no worse than any of the other PC manufacturers. All the less expensive PC desktops have POS power supplies that cannot support a video card that requires PCI-e power. If you spend too much money and get a "gaming" machine then you will have a better power supply and be able to support a good graphics card. But this will cost you a pretty penny, well no a pretty g-note+. Building a gaming PC is still cheaper than buying one from Dell, HP, Acer, etc.



Laptops are at best very modest gaming systems unless you spend $1500 to $2000+ USD on a gaming laptop. Since I game at home this just seems to be a total waste to me, in my biased opinion.

[SSV Enterprise]

Oh, undoubtedly, if you game at home, it's better to have a desktop than a laptop. I just got a laptop because I'll be headed out to college come spring and I need a more portable device.

[Gorath Alpha]

In order to play anything more strenuous that 2D games, or five year old, very primitive 3D games, a laptop must be heavier (much more cooling capacity -- bigger heat sinks and fans, a bigger battery, a bigger power supply), as already commented, and it's no longer nearly as conveniently portable.  The basis for a gaming laptop is what is called a "Desktop Replacement", to which you specify a decent video card before it is assembled. 

The nature of laptop economics is that in order to get the costs down so that they do not cost more than twice as much as desktops PCs do, they are permanently welded into a monobloc during final assembly.  The few companies that were offering video upgrades a few years ago charged quite a lot for the service because it was easier by far to replace both the mainboard and the video card at the same time. 

I know that Sager still sells laptops you can have upgraded for video, but I kinda doubt anyone else does any more. 

Lastly, it is the developing companies that have chosen the meaning they want to use for the words "Minimum" and "Recommended".  They have decided that a medium resolution is the standard they care about most, so Minimum becomes the lowest card that runs their games at 25 to 35 frames a second with the settings for image quality low, and screen settings at medium. 

Recommended is 50 frames a second at medium resolutions with the image quality settings at a balanced level between medium and high. 

Gorath

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 29 juin 2010 - 10:56 .

[basdoorn]

As far as gaming laptops go, yes there are laptops that can play Dragon Age. But these are very expensive and the buyer of such a laptop is very likely aware of what components it has and what performance can be expected from them. Then there is a cunning marketing trick you should be very much aware of when it comes to laptops: the exact same video card type number might have substantially differences in performance between desktop and laptop. For instance someone quoted the Ati Mobility Radeon 5870 as a very fast card, compare the specifications of the regular desktop 5870 to the Mobility 5870:

http://www.amd.com/U...5870-specs.aspx

http://www.amd.com/u...ifications.aspx

Only half the processing units (800 vs 1600) combined with a lower clock speed (700MHz vs 850MHz) and less than half the memory bandwidth (64GB/s vs 153.6 GB/s). Of course this is explained by the difference in power consumption (50W vs. 188W). If you expect your mobility 5870 will perform the same as a desktop 5870 you are in for a big surprise unfortunately. So please check your specifications especially with laptops and GTO/XL suffixes to the name. You might not get what you were looking for. In this case the Mobility 5870 is performance wise somewhere between the regular desktop 5750 (same clock speed and 10% less processing units) and regular desktop 5770 (20% higher clockspeed and same number of processing units).

http://www.amd.com/u...ifications.aspx

http://www.amd.com/u...ifications.aspx

For gaming laptops use the following rules of thumb to gauge your new laptop: a gaming PC of $ 1000 can only be matched by a gaming laptop of $ 2000 or more, if at all. A true high-performance gaming laptop is never light or slim and will always produce much (more) noise during gameplay and/or burn through your lap. A gaming laptop of $ 1500 is not at all bad, but never make the mistake of viewing it as a real high-end gaming platform. View such a laptop as the best the manufacturer could do within the inherently limited power and cooling envelopes. If you regard it as such, you will never be disappointed, as they can still give you a (very) decent gaming experience away from home.

Modifié par basdoorn, 30 juin 2010 - 01:58 .

[Tyrax Lightning]

It may be of interest to recent posters that i built myself a new Computer to play DA:O on properly, & it cost $800ish bucks for all the components of the Case. Details here. It will get it's final test when I get my new Monitor & can play at 1920x1200 Resolution, instead of my current 1280x1024, but for now at least, it's performing beautifully!

[Magnus of the Moon]

I requested information, many moons ago, regardng a Dell 530S and a GeForce 8400GS. For all intents and purposes, that little card should never have been able to run DA:O, but it did, until I switched the graphics settings to medium  and burned it up.

I am happy to report that I am awaiting the arrival of a MSI N250GTS 512MB, 256-bit GDDR3 and a Roswill 630W PSU. Total cost after $30 rebate..... $128.98 (free shipping on both).

I have moved the system into a Cooler Master Centurion5 case with an 80mm intake fan and 120mm fan out the back. The system is now off the floor and has plenty of space for venting. There is plenty of room for my new graphics card as it is 9 inches in length.

Thank you, Gorath, for all of your input and hard work maintaining this post. It has made a huge difference in my ability to gain accurate and informative information and make a good decision about what my needs are and what to look for while component hunting. Next up... a processor.

It may be of interest to recent posters that i built myself a new Computer to play DA:O on properly, & it cost $800ish bucks for all the components of the Case. Details here. It will get it's final test when I get my new Monitor & can play at 1920x1200 Resolution, instead of my current 1280x1024, but for now at least, it's performing beautifully!

Tyrax,
It is of great interest to me that you used the word "computer" in your post. Your machine is a monster and totally bad ass. Don't do it the disservice of ever referring to it as your "puder".

Magnus

Modifié par Magnus of the Moon, 06 juillet 2010 - 03:25 .

[Gorath Alpha]

You are welcome, of course, and Basdorn's contribution is thankfully received.  Because of the serious variations that laptop producers introduce into their versions of mobile video processor cards, few game developers try to test any such cards, and I have never chosen to include any such cards in my rankings lists, not even to name the official reference cards' shader performance levels. 

. .  and all reading this should understand that it has been how well these cards will run "shader-intense" games that has always been the basis.  Early on, the Radeons had a sizable advantage there, and the first two nVIDIA video graphics generations of the SM-2 era fell behind, until the large jump represented by the Geforce 8n00 generation, and the GT 200 as well, however, they allowed their lead to slip away, while concentrating on the ideal of massively parallel computing for super computing type applications, and never regained it until the advent of the GTX580 late in 2010. 

Meanwhile, there have been OTHER measurements that have been used outside of these rankings, with which some readers have been more intrigued, generating occasional disagreements.  That can't be helped. 

(Edited) P. S. Perhaps a purpose-made thread should exist in which system-building / upgrading generally is the subject matter, rather than the more specific area here, the graphics systems. 


Gorath
-

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 20 novembre 2010 - 11:43 .

[Tyrax Lightning]

Magnus of the Moon wrote...

I requested information, many moons ago, regardng a Dell 530S and a GeForce 8400GS. For all intents and purposes, that little card should never have been able to run DA:O, but it did, until I switched the graphics settings to medium and burned it up.

I am happy to report that I am awaiting the arrival of a MSI N250GTS 512MB, 256-bit GDDR3 and a Roswill 630W PSU. Total cost after $30 rebate..... $128.98 (free shipping on both).

I have moved the system into a Cooler Master Centurion5 case with an 80mm intake fan and 120mm fan out the back. The system is now off the floor and has plenty of space for venting. There is plenty of room for my new graphics card as it is 9 inches in length.

Thank you, Gorath, for all of your input and hard work maintaining this post. It has made a huge difference in my ability to gain accurate and informative information and make a good decision about what my needs are and what to look for while component hunting. Next up... a processor.

It may be of interest to recent posters that i built myself a new Computer to play DA:O on properly, & it cost $800ish bucks for all the components of the Case. Details here. It will get it's final test when I get my new Monitor & can play at 1920x1200 Resolution, instead of my current 1280x1024, but for now at least, it's performing beautifully!

Tyrax,
It is of great interest to me that you used the word "computer" in your post. Your machine is a monster and totally bad ass. Don't do it the disservice of ever referring to it as your "puder".

Magnus

That word got stuck in my head in my kid days. I've had a bugger of a time trying to get it weeded outta my head, but i've been working on it. I'm 27 years old, as of the time of this Post. My language needs to act the part.

For the Topic: This is a shamelessly biased opinion, but I think only people that don't have the House Space for a PC, & people that need Computer power abroad should bother with a Laptop. Otherwise, PCs rule completely & utterly!

Modifié par Tyrax Lightning, 06 juillet 2010 - 05:42 .

[Truby-Liz]

@ SSV Enterprise

I've also got a 5470 (I've posted on this thread a while ago when I was just buying my laptop).

With everything up as high as I can get it, Fraps says the average frame rate is about 18 FPS - ideally it should be around 25ish.

I generally have my settings to have anti-aliasing off, texture detail lowest and graphics detail medium. This generally nets me between 20 and 30 FPS, in conversations and fighting. Cutscenes go up to 60. I haven't tried a really big fight yet (there's a few in Denerim I want to try) but fighting the ogre and outside the Tower in Ostagar is fine.

I have noticed frame rate seems to drop to 20 whenever there are trees, fire, smoke or Morrigan's face on screen. Now, fire and smoke I can understand, but Morrigan? XD Otherwise it's at 30.

I intend to do some more Fraps tests at different graphics settings, see how high I can get the graphics up and still have between 20 and 30 FPS.

Truby-Liz

[Menageryl]

' Hehehe... Go Truby-Liz!!!
' I'm sorry guys - I've been a computer enthusiast for many, many years now... And I've ALWAYS built my own system from the ground up - ever since I discovered how badly my family was ripped off as a kid when my parents bought my first PC - an 8088 XT (with EGA graphics... Hmmmm...). And hell yeah, building a PC yourself is the way to go!
' HOWEVER! I have, of late, become a devotee of laptops. There is just nothing like being able to plug everything out, close the lid, and swing your computer under your arm to take with you ANYWHERE!!!

' As such, I can completely understand and wholly support anyone and everyone who is making an effort to get some proper gaming done via a lappy!
' YOU GO GIRL! :-p

(Happy with his 17" 1920x1200 Unibody MacBook Pro. Despite not being able to game at full-resolution generally... Dragon Age at: 1600x1050, 2xAA, Max Details & Medium Textures and averaging 30 FPS.)

Modifié par Menageryl, 21 juillet 2010 - 12:04 .

[Truby-Liz]

@Menageryl - Well, I'm gonna be on my laptop for probably 4 years, since I bought it for uni and it's a four year course. There actually weren't many good laptops for under £700 that actually had any kind of decent graphics card. This one works, and I was kinda pushing the price mark... but yeah.  It's an awesome laptop so far.

ANYWAY! Just did the Talisen fight, medium graphics, no anti-aliasing, high tex detail, and vertical sync on. This was with my mage character - I centered it on her, and, in an attempt to cruelly punish my card, used Inferno, Blizzard and Tempest on my charrie *Yay for easy difficulty!* and also a few fireballs. Min-Max-Avg according to Fraps is 11-31-17 so... It dropped down the most when I had all three spells running on my charrie and I was still centered on her. So, lots of things going on, but... 11 fps... Though tbh I don't mind slow fps during a fight, it sometimes gives you more time to react. *Or it did with Batman...*

With me lowering graphics options so I could get the most FPS possible, it turned out 13-57-24, so better, but looks horrible  Turned graphics up as high as possible, that got me 5-18-11. XD I think I'll stick with having slightly-worse-than-average graphics, that does me fine...
Truby-Liz

[DABhand]

I disagree with your placement of the 480, in some instances the 5970 can do well in others the 480 is better.



Bear in mind the 5970 is also a dual GPU card, and 480 is a single GPU. Which would raise questions if the 480 can beat the 5970 in some respects and its a single GPU then why is the 5970 considered a better card?



To be fair and to truly compare the two you need 2 480's SLI'd. And we all know the 5970 will have problems keeping up there in most cases

[Gorath Alpha]

Let us not forget, these are in order of performance with seriously heavily loaded shader code, not the bottom line with some synthetic benchmark such as 3Dmark.  NTK set that as his stanard before Oblivion was released four years ago, and when he stopped updating it two years later, I kept on looking for games with similarly loaded code as the benches to use.  

HOWEVER, it does seem to me that a far better way for publishers / distributors to state the System Requirements would be in terms of some appropriate benchmark number, since the naming, particularly from nVIDIA, is so totally worthless as a guide to the ordinary PC owner. 

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 26 juillet 2010 - 09:54 .

[DABhand]

I agree the 5970 will benefit people who like to play some of the older (3 yrs) games, but latest games and future will be more beneficial to run on a 400 series+, although ATI GPU's rely on more stream processing it also forces the CPU to work more also, so in essence you need a decent CPU along with the GPU to get a good performance.



Same can be said for Nvidia GPU's to a point, but with hardware support for CUDA, Physx and better tesselation Nvidia will come out of this one with the upper hand I feel, and they are not as pricey overall.

[Gorath Alpha]

Gorath Alpha wrote...

. . . OTHER measurements that have been used outside of these rankings, with which some readers have been more intrigued by, generating occasional disagreements.  That can't be helped. 
-

I see someone naming a poor little HD 2400 (barely better than an Intel Tinker Toy, and perhaps worse than a couple of those) as a "perfect" card for Dragon Age, which is silly, in the extreme. 

Here it is, two months after this last comment I've made into this thread (it's October11th), and I've just read this review of the latest Low-End Geforce, the GT 430:

www.anandtech.com/show/3973/nvidias-geforce-gt-430

It can barely outrun the Radeon HD 5570, which amounted to a borderline device a year ago.  AMD's Radeon HD 6n00 cards are literally already just offstage now, promising some sizable improvements to performance, while the GT 430 design obviously bows out of competition, other than at the HTPC level.

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 11 octobre 2010 - 04:09 .

[mousestalker]

The reality is that while there are some decent gaming laptops out there (I know, I have one), a similarly denominated desktop graphics card will almost always outperform the lappy card. The cards that are equal in performance are usually at the lower end of suck and are therefore unacceptable.



As for the price of laptops, you can find a bargain from time to time. It's more a matter of upgrading. Your lappy may be bleeding edge right now, but in six months it will merely be high end. In one year it will be middle range and in four years it will be out of date. A desktop owner can stay at any given point on the technology/price curve indefinitely simply by replacing cards.

[TileToad]

Hmph.. I can't believe my trusty Tseng Labs ET4000 isn't in that list.

What's this world coming to when everything is just about speed as opposed to distinction.

Why would anyone want to blurt around in a Bugatti Veyron when they could be cruisin' in a Lester MG? It's madness I tell you!

[Menageryl]

' Laptops have no upgrade paths. Full-stop.

' Desktops do. But even they cannot be upgraded "indefinitely" - there's a point beyond which it's still the same shell only, that's all. And every step along the way does cost!

' The point made about the often significant differences between specifications of similarly-named desktop and mobile cards is certainly valid too. The key, then, is to be properly informed - as always - before making any purchase.



' I personally, at this point in my life, see greater utility and value from spending the extra on a great lappy, then waiting longer without upgrades before doing the same again. The big picture is that I end up paying some more than I would for a desktop, with a deeper, longer spec.-slump between upgrades. But when I do upgrade it's a full-system spec.-jump, which I ultimately benefit from too.

' Then of course there are "peripheral" matters I benefit from too - a renewed, full-system warranty, for example.

' If I time it right and make the right purchases then it all works out great!



' There's nothing like having so sexy a piece of kit I can game with and slip under my arm on the way out the door... :-)

' As always the answer to the equation is quite dependent on the individual and his / her specific wants, needs, and of course, budget.

[Tyrax Lightning]

I've tested the buggers outta my Graphics Card - Monitor Combo now! It's passed it's Trial of Fire!!! It's a glorious victory!!!

Once again, Many thanks for your aid in the Graphics Card selection Gorath!!! :happy:

[Gorath Alpha]

Tyrax Lightning wrote...

I've tested the buggers outta my
Graphics Card - Monitor Combo now! It's passed it's Trial of Fire!!!
It's a glorious victory!!! [smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/w00t.png[/smilie]

Once again, Many thanks for your aid in the Graphics Card selection Gorath!!! [smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/happy.png[/smilie]

You are welcome, of course. 

The last full-fledged desktop member of the Geforce Fermi generation comes out today. It is their (low end) GT 430, and I still haven't plugged their GT 450 into its place in the rankings. Since the GTX200s, their "40" models were competing in the Mainline range with Radeon 670s, their "30s" in between the 500 and 600 in the borderline, and their "10" named products were matched to the Radeon 100s (IGP). The GT 430 is well below their GT 240, being equivalent to the HD 5470 or 5550 instead.

While I have it in mind, I need to add this next part (I'm in edit here a couple of days later).

Right now, Microsoft and Sony are holding back on updating their game consoles and the game developers are going along with the lack of progress that entails. (I don't know that any other console system has any major influence on PC gemes, but I've never had a moment's interest in any console.) The current pair of consoles above are still at Direct3d's Dx9 level, not Dx10.

Very little game software is being developed stricty for PCs, so Dx9 still rules, and the top end video cards from three years ago can still hang in there, with today's better Mainline graphics, or close to it, at least (HD 3870, 8800GTX). The imminent release of the Radeon HD 6n00 generation's Mainline cards (January 2010) would likely have left those two behind, if TMSC's 32 nm processes had gone as planned.

As it is now, an interim generation that will be much like the Geforce 9n00 cards were two years ago is appearing, with two new upper borderline cards just above the HD 57750 / 5770 pair out first, below the HD 5850 and 5870 in speed, while nevertheless numbered HD 6850 / 6870.  There will be an HD 6970 in January, when the planned-for Radeon card generation would have appeared, but in the meanwhile, nVIDIA's GTX580 has taken the top speed crown away. 

Crytek will push the PC envelope, I imagine, with Crysis 2, but they are a rarity as a PC-only developer.  Dx10 will probably carry at least two years forward from now before any of the few PC-only game releases start really pushing Dx11. 

www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php

Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 20 novembre 2010 - 12:00 .

[Viiper]

i am running with 2 gts 240s...so where do i stand on the list running sli?

The game runs fantastic with  maxed settings and 2x Anti aliasing but it just seems like my card(s) are ranked low on the list for running this game great

Modifié par Viiper, 20 novembre 2010 - 10:46 .