No...Open beta is not to give people a good impression. It is to stress test and optimize. There are breaking points in the code of any MMO that you can't tell are there with only a thousand or so online. The goals of an open beta are as follows...
1) Stress test
2) Fix breaking points to ensure stability
3) Determine a "Critical Mass" of a server (The number of people required to create a moving economy and make sure it is easy to find groups)
4) Finish up the polish job
It is also to show off the game and raise interest. The devs have stated that the game is being rushed out the door due to running out of money and they'd prefer more time on it. This means that open beta had to come earlier than they would have liked.
I admire the devs for being transparent about this, but I wish (like they do) that they could get running at a playable FPS for grouping on less than top-of-the-line PCs.
I sure as Hell notice a big difference between 35 FPS and 60 FPS in World of Warcraft, so what you're saying is a lie.
Actually, the guy you were replying to (that said that 35 FPS is more than can be seen by the human eye) is both right and wrong. If you just leave the camera completely still, then you can't tell the difference between 35 and 60 FPS. However, when you start moving the camera around, moving, and actually playing the game then the 60 FPS becomes apparent because you don't have slowdown (that you can tell with the human eye) when you turn the camera. That's why so many FPS gamers desire 60 FPS. It's because they want it to stay above about 35 FPS all the time - even if there are crazy explosions and stuff going on, etc.
I'm really tired of everyone simply dismissing performance complaints. Some of us know what we're talking about. I'm not in the video game industry, but I have been a software engineer for the last decade and know a performance issue when I see it. I also know when it is clearly my system and clearly NOT my system.
While my system is no longer top of the line, the only thing worth upgrading at this point is the video card. The performance difference between the CPU I have and the top of the line price-break-range CPU today is minimal (I'm not going to spend $1,000 for a quad core and an E6600 Core Duo is only about 20% faster than what I have).
My system is an AMD64x2 3800+ with an A8N-Sli board, 2gb RAM, 10,000 RPM Raptor (SATA) and a 7800 GTX. I have it connected to my 30" Apple Cinema Display and I play nearly all games in 2560x1600.
I can play Battlefield 2 with very high to highest settings at 2560x1600 and maintain consistent 35+ FPS. I have no problem in any game, though I do play Oblivion in 1600x1200, instead of 2560x1600.
In Vanguard, I run at the low resolution of 1280x800 with everything turned very low and my average framerate tends to stay between 15fps and 35fps. And it looks like complete crap. So I find it hard to believe that people with a lot of the systems they claim to be running (3200+ with GeForce 6600 and 1gb ram, for example) are really playing in a decent resolution with everything turned high and pulling down 50 FPS. That's just ridiculous.
I'm not averse to dropping cash on a new machine when it is warranted. I tend to build a new top of the line machine every 12 months. At this point, however, there isn't a lot other than the 8800 GTX that justifies the expense since the improvements one can expect are not even really of modest levels. However, if I knew that "with X, Y and Z systems, you can run this game in the highest resolution with the highest settings", I would be all over it. No sweat. But I haven't seen that. All I've seen is choppy, fuzzy looking videos and still images from people claiming to have one machine or another and getting one result or another.
Now, I won't say that nobody is getting great performance on any particular machine. But stop being dumbasses and sticking your heads in the ground and drawing the idiotic conclusion that because the game works fine for you that it has absolutely no problems and any flaws or lacking performance MUST be due to poor hardware or stupid end-users.
I'm really tired of everyone simply dismissing performance complaints. Some of us know what we're talking about. I'm not in the video game industry, but I have been a software engineer for the last decade and know a performance issue when I see it. I also know when it is clearly my system and clearly NOT my system.
While my system is no longer top of the line, the only thing worth upgrading at this point is the video card. The performance difference between the CPU I have and the top of the line price-break-range CPU today is minimal (I'm not going to spend $1,000 for a quad core and an E6600 Core Duo is only about 20% faster than what I have).
My system is an AMD64x2 3800+ with an A8N-Sli board, 2gb RAM, 10,000 RPM Raptor (SATA) and a 7800 GTX. I have it connected to my 30" Apple Cinema Display and I play nearly all games in 2560x1600.
I can play Battlefield 2 with very high to highest settings at 2560x1600 and maintain consistent 35+ FPS. I have no problem in any game, though I do play Oblivion in 1600x1200, instead of 2560x1600.
In Vanguard, I run at the low resolution of 1280x800 with everything turned very low and my average framerate tends to stay between 15fps and 35fps. And it looks like complete crap. So I find it hard to believe that people with a lot of the systems they claim to be running (3200+ with GeForce 6600 and 1gb ram, for example) are really playing in a decent resolution with everything turned high and pulling down 50 FPS. That's just ridiculous.
I'm not averse to dropping cash on a new machine when it is warranted. I tend to build a new top of the line machine every 12 months. At this point, however, there isn't a lot other than the 8800 GTX that justifies the expense since the improvements one can expect are not even really of modest levels. However, if I knew that "with X, Y and Z systems, you can run this game in the highest resolution with the highest settings", I would be all over it. No sweat. But I haven't seen that. All I've seen is choppy, fuzzy looking videos and still images from people claiming to have one machine or another and getting one result or another.
Now, I won't say that nobody is getting great performance on any particular machine. But stop being dumbasses and sticking your heads in the ground and drawing the idiotic conclusion that because the game works fine for you that it has absolutely no problems and any flaws or lacking performance MUST be due to poor hardware or stupid end-users.
I'm really tired of everyone simply dismissing performance complaints. Some of us know what we're talking about. I'm not in the video game industry, but I have been a software engineer for the last decade and know a performance issue when I see it. I also know when it is clearly my system and clearly NOT my system.
While my system is no longer top of the line, the only thing worth upgrading at this point is the video card. The performance difference between the CPU I have and the top of the line price-break-range CPU today is minimal (I'm not going to spend $1,000 for a quad core and an E6600 Core Duo is only about 20% faster than what I have).
My system is an AMD64x2 3800+ with an A8N-Sli board, 2gb RAM, 10,000 RPM Raptor (SATA) and a 7800 GTX. I have it connected to my 30" Apple Cinema Display and I play nearly all games in 2560x1600.
I can play Battlefield 2 with very high to highest settings at 2560x1600 and maintain consistent 35+ FPS. I have no problem in any game, though I do play Oblivion in 1600x1200, instead of 2560x1600.
In Vanguard, I run at the low resolution of 1280x800 with everything turned very low and my average framerate tends to stay between 15fps and 35fps. And it looks like complete crap. So I find it hard to believe that people with a lot of the systems they claim to be running (3200+ with GeForce 6600 and 1gb ram, for example) are really playing in a decent resolution with everything turned high and pulling down 50 FPS. That's just ridiculous.
I'm not averse to dropping cash on a new machine when it is warranted. I tend to build a new top of the line machine every 12 months. At this point, however, there isn't a lot other than the 8800 GTX that justifies the expense since the improvements one can expect are not even really of modest levels. However, if I knew that "with X, Y and Z systems, you can run this game in the highest resolution with the highest settings", I would be all over it. No sweat. But I haven't seen that. All I've seen is choppy, fuzzy looking videos and still images from people claiming to have one machine or another and getting one result or another.
Now, I won't say that nobody is getting great performance on any particular machine. But stop being dumbasses and sticking your heads in the ground and drawing the idiotic conclusion that because the game works fine for you that it has absolutely no problems and any flaws or lacking performance MUST be due to poor hardware or stupid end-users.
Bad news! You won't be playing any new games at that resolution on a 7800 GTX. Your machine isnt bad at all but it's just plain nuts to expect to run at that resolution with those specs. It's not just Vanguard, try and play R6:Vegas or Armed Assault at that resolution and you will experience the ultimate slideshow. I run Vanguard at 1920 x 1200 (Max everything) and its perfect, I can even see myself being able to extend the clipping plane (when the devs stop it from auto adjusting ). That's running on a QX6700 with an 8800 GTX. Conroe's are up to 100% faster than AMD X2, depending on how CPU based the task is, so it is a worthwhile investment. Your expectations are a little high tbh, I wouldnt plan on gaming at that resolution (with eye candy maxed) in 2007 unless you are running SLI 8800's.
**EDIT** Your FPS is a bit low for 1280 x 800 tbh, not sure why that is.
Thats fair for that box TBH (1600 x 1200) I'm guessing so correct me if I'm wrong. The real shame for a lot of you guys who want to lay this performance deal on Vanguard is that there are plenty of other games coming this year that are not going to run well for you either. This is just one of the first. 7800s are almost 2 years old now. I know a lot of people have trouble with this concept but gaming on a PC requires an upgrade every 1 to 1.5 years in order to play the latest and greatest.
You can fight it and tell me Im wrong etc but it won't change the reality. Are Sigil excluding some gamers with lower end PCs? Yes, they are! But unfortunately that's the way PC gaming has always worked. Are there new games that work on dated hardware (exceptions to the rule)? Yes there are! But games that use the latest effects, high poly counts, bloom, HDR, AA, AF etc demand horsepower.
Thats fair for that box TBH (1600 x 1200) I'm guessing so correct me if I'm wrong. The real shame for a lot of you guys who want to lay this performance deal on Vanguard is that there are plenty of other games coming this year that are not going to run well for you either. This is just one of the first. 7800s are almost 2 years old now. I know a lot of people have trouble with this concept but gaming on a PC requires an upgrade every 1 to 1.5 years in order to play the latest and greatest.
You can fight it and tell me Im wrong etc but it won't change the reality. Are Sigil excluding some gamers with lower end PCs? Yes, they are! But unfortunately that's the way PC gaming has always worked. Are there new games that work on dated hardware (exceptions to the rule)? Yes there are! But games that use the latest effects, high poly counts, bloom, HDR, AA, AF etc demand horsepower.
i hate to agree with ya, but yeah ur right sharky. its the nature of the beast. you either roll with the punches or you move on. I myself got to admit I need a new system, im not gonna quite get a new system now, gonna get a X1950 pro 512 agp. one more upgrade. hehe
gonna wait til the quad cores are out. and the new dx 10 cards are more established and have more competition (i like to have choices :P) but yeah its a uphill battle with pc's.
you can probably get away with 2 years or so with some games. but when u talk about games like rainbow six las vegas(although single player and multplayer game not a MMO just statingout the type of graphics requirments needed) Huxley using unreal 3.0 engine, cell factor which is gonna be a beast of a game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., taba ralusa, Star Gate WOrlds (using Unreal 3.0) Crysis is gonna be a defnite stress test on whether or not your system is up to snuff. but what can you do? you make a conscious choice on whether to upograde. I for one admit its expensive, but no console can beat the experience I get with a PC. it may get close, but its neverf the same. sorta like ONCE U GO PC, U NEVER GO BACK! lol
comparing consoles to PC is like comparing analog to digital, Record player to cd there is no real comparison.
either way well put sharky, short and sweet.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
Thats fair for that box TBH (1600 x 1200) I'm guessing so correct me if I'm wrong. The real shame for a lot of you guys who want to lay this performance deal on Vanguard is that there are plenty of other games coming this year that are not going to run well for you either. This is just one of the first. 7800s are almost 2 years old now. I know a lot of people have trouble with this concept but gaming on a PC requires an upgrade every 1 to 1.5 years in order to play the latest and greatest.
You can fight it and tell me Im wrong etc but it won't change the reality. Are Sigil excluding some gamers with lower end PCs? Yes, they are! But unfortunately that's the way PC gaming has always worked. Are there new games that work on dated hardware (exceptions to the rule)? Yes there are! But games that use the latest effects, high poly counts, bloom, HDR, AA, AF etc demand horsepower.
i hate to agree with ya, but yeah ur right sharky. its the nature of the beast. you either roll with the punches or you move on. I myself got to admit I need a new system, im not gonna quite get a new system now, gonna get a X1950 pro 512 agp. one more upgrade. hehe
gonna wait til the quad cores are out. and the new dx 10 cards are more established and have more competition (i like to have choices :P) but yeah its a uphill battle with pc's.
you can probably get away with 2 years or so with some games. but when u talk about games like rainbow six las vegas(although single player and multplayer game not a MMO just statingout the type of graphics requirments needed) Huxley using unreal 3.0 engine, cell factor which is gonna be a beast of a game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., taba ralusa, Star Gate WOrlds (using Unreal 3.0) Crysis is gonna be a defnite stress test on whether or not your system is up to snuff. but what can you do? you make a conscious choice on whether to upograde. I for one admit its expensive, but no console can beat the experience I get with a PC. it may get close, but its neverf the same. sorta like ONCE U GO PC, U NEVER GO BACK! lol
comparing consoles to PC is like comparing analog to digital, Record player to cd there is no real comparison.
either way well put sharky, short and sweet.
Believe me, I would like my $$$'s to go further as much as the next guy. I just understand that you need to spend money if you plan on maintaining PC gaming as a hobby (for me, it's more of a lifestyle ). You are so right about consoles, generally they last 4 or 5 years. People have to start understanding that this is simply not the case with PCs.
Cheers
PS : R6 : Vegas is a very good example of the need to upgrade. It can slow even the best systems down.
I have a fairly good gaming PC. It isn't top-of-the-line, but it plays most games at maximum settings with at least 40-60 FPS. This is a 2.4 Ghz processor, 1 GB RAM, GeForce 6800 256 MB PC. It's not a race car, but it is definitely sporty.
However, I've been trying to play Vanguard and even with performance settings pushed to the ultimate low available (settings that make the game look WORSE than DAoC graphics), I am slideshowing whenever I play near other players or on occasion as I move through a zone and new graphics are streamed in.
Yes, it is a beta, and I am hearing from others that while their performance is bad compared to prettier games they can also run on their system, it is pretty much unanimous that the performance is just awful.
I've only been able to get to level 5 as I can't play on servers that have high populations (being near other people makes it unplayable - how will I ever group?), but from what I've seen so far, combat is fairly standard for MMOs. Auto-attacks and special skills. I did diplomacy missions all morning and had a really good time doing them as I enjoy stories, but they aren't rewarding - at least not so far as I have nothing to show for my efforts yet besides more skill in diplomacy which doesn't seem to have any use outside the diplomacy mini-game.
It's really surprising to me that the performance is so awful. I mean, I saw this at E3 and wondered why the graphics were so bad. Maybe they couldn't run the game with settings that normal games would use even on monster PCs back then. Unless I come into $3K and can by an uber PC with dual GPUs or they make huge fixes to this before release, there is no way that I would ever purchase this game. . .
If I can't play it even when it looks like ass (something I'm not interested in doing), then I'm pretty much SOL. I can't imagine even the high-end rigs being able to function in a raid environment. It just boggles my mind that the game is in this state during open beta.
I only read the first paragraph b4 I shook my head and laughed.. First off all,u should have 2 gigs of memory and a better graphics card,at least a 7800,and make sure the game is on "balanced" settings.. And my friend,your PC is def NOT considered a "good gaming pc" not with Vanguard mentioned in the same sentence,,,sorry..The performance has been increasing with every newer patch..
REMEMBER PEOPLE,YOU ARE NOT PLAYING THE RETAIL VERSION OF VANGUARD..ONLY THE BETA WHICH MEANS THE GAME HAS NOT BEEN FULLY OPTOMIZED YET,SHEEEESH!!
How many times am I going to have to keep saying this???
BTW,i only have a AMD 3200,,,7900 GT 2 gig of ram and I've pretty much done it all even back in october when the game was really "unplayable" Basically u lag more when in highly populated areas such as Khal..FPS for me is an average of 14-20ish right now..The wilderness areas is a good 40+ fps and hunting in dungeons in groups is around 20+ there are times I hit 5-10 second lag spikes but thats also cuz the game is still in beta and not fully optimized yet..Of course you will lag...YOU ARE NOT PLAYING WOW!!!!!!Their graphics belong in 1999,enough said!
Rallithon Oakthornn (Retired Heirophant of the 60th season)
I'm really tired of everyone simply dismissing performance complaints. Some of us know what we're talking about. I'm not in the video game industry, but I have been a software engineer for the last decade and know a performance issue when I see it. I also know when it is clearly my system and clearly NOT my system.
While my system is no longer top of the line, the only thing worth upgrading at this point is the video card. The performance difference between the CPU I have and the top of the line price-break-range CPU today is minimal (I'm not going to spend $1,000 for a quad core and an E6600 Core Duo is only about 20% faster than what I have).
My system is an AMD64x2 3800+ with an A8N-Sli board, 2gb RAM, 10,000 RPM Raptor (SATA) and a 7800 GTX. I have it connected to my 30" Apple Cinema Display and I play nearly all games in 2560x1600.
I can play Battlefield 2 with very high to highest settings at 2560x1600 and maintain consistent 35+ FPS. I have no problem in any game, though I do play Oblivion in 1600x1200, instead of 2560x1600.
In Vanguard, I run at the low resolution of 1280x800 with everything turned very low and my average framerate tends to stay between 15fps and 35fps. And it looks like complete crap. So I find it hard to believe that people with a lot of the systems they claim to be running (3200+ with GeForce 6600 and 1gb ram, for example) are really playing in a decent resolution with everything turned high and pulling down 50 FPS. That's just ridiculous.
I'm not averse to dropping cash on a new machine when it is warranted. I tend to build a new top of the line machine every 12 months. At this point, however, there isn't a lot other than the 8800 GTX that justifies the expense since the improvements one can expect are not even really of modest levels. However, if I knew that "with X, Y and Z systems, you can run this game in the highest resolution with the highest settings", I would be all over it. No sweat. But I haven't seen that. All I've seen is choppy, fuzzy looking videos and still images from people claiming to have one machine or another and getting one result or another.
Now, I won't say that nobody is getting great performance on any particular machine. But stop being dumbasses and sticking your heads in the ground and drawing the idiotic conclusion that because the game works fine for you that it has absolutely no problems and any flaws or lacking performance MUST be due to poor hardware or stupid end-users.
Ahh, very well said!
And I completely concur!i agree as well.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
Bad news! You won't be playing any new games at that resolution on a 7800 GTX. Your machine isnt bad at all but it's just plain nuts to expect to run at that resolution with those specs. It's not just Vanguard, try and play R6:Vegas or Armed Assault at that resolution and you will experience the ultimate slideshow. I run Vanguard at 1920 x 1200 (Max everything) and its perfect, I can even see myself being able to extend the clipping plane (when the devs stop it from auto adjusting ). That's running on a QX6700 with an 8800 GTX. Conroe's are up to 100% faster than AMD X2, depending on how CPU based the task is, so it is a worthwhile investment. Your expectations are a little high tbh, I wouldnt plan on gaming at that resolution (with eye candy maxed) in 2007 unless you are running SLI 8800's. **EDIT** Your FPS is a bit low for 1280 x 800 tbh, not sure why that is.
I surely don't expect Vanguard or any current gen games to be as playable at 2560x1600 as Battlefield 2 is (which is still an extremely demanding and taxing game). Actually, I wouldn't expect them to be playable at that resolution at all. But at lower resolutions, I would expect a game like Vanguard to perform better. Frankly, I just want the stunning graphics that I'm seeing in screenshots from Sigil. I would pay nearly any price for that (although dropping $1,000 on a quad core CPU might be a bit extending simply on matters of principal as I've never spent more than $320 on a CPU in the last 18 years).
Something has changed recently as I was able to get into Vanguard lastnight and play at 1280x800 with 20-30fps average and everything turned up to "highest quality" or very near. The only downside was that it dropped to 5-15fps at best whenever a few other people came into view. Even if they were NPCs. Cities are intolerable.
But even with all the settings cranked up and 1fps and not moving around, the environment is not quite as stunning and amazing as I have been preparing to encounter. I am sincerely hoping that is merely due to having a card with 256mb of ram and the 8800 having additional features and improvements in the way shading and other things are handled (man, I remember when I bought a HUGE 2mb Trident S3 video card -- ooooh!).
And just to clarify, I do have this system tweaked. I'm a Solaris/Linux/OSX guy and only use Windows for gaming, but I'm comfortable enough with it to tune it. I'm running Tweaks R Us drivers which have shown improvements in my system on the 7800 GTX. I'm running with a defrag'd drive and a 4gb pagefile on a separate drive and most or all of the vgclient.ini modifications configured (including the shader caching).
As for 1280x800 showing low FPS on my system compared to what it probably should be -- I would possibly chalk that up to the fact that I don't believe it is a native resolution on the 30" ACD. So it has to scale it at a cost. Of course, that cost allows you to add certain improvements that would otherwise be more costly, since it already has to do the math on every frame to begin with.
I am probably going to buy the 8800 GTX, regardless. My big decision now is whether to stick with my AMD64x2 3800+ or upgrade the rest of the system along with the 8800. Short of spending $1,000 just on the quad core CPU alone, I don't see anything out there today that offers more than a 20% to 30% (at best) improvement over the chip I have right now. And the idea of spending $1,500-$2,000 on a new system (not counting the video card) just for 20-25% improvement seems so awkward.
What I'm not willing to do, however, is keep my fingers crossed and have some fantasy that Sigil is just giving us a "watered down" game at the moment and that somehow by removing the debug binaries after beta will slingshot us from something that looks pre-WoWish to something that looks jaw-dropping. Yes, the game we are currently playing is a BETA. It is a beta that is ten days away from full release. People - please quit acting like this is a BETA of a game that is still two years away from going retail. It's not. It is very nearly the finished product. Do you really expect that in another week, we're going to have great new textures, a brand new gaming engine and some sort of magical optimizations that shoot all the 10fps guys up to 40fps? It's not going to happen. If it does, I'll eat my pubic hair.
Oh - I'm also really considering doing 8800 GTX SLI, but I can't imagine that I would see the performance out of it since we'd surely be CPU-locked for the time being. Gaaah!
Look, we all know that keeping up with gaming systems is not cheap. However, if you've been around the block for more than a couple of years (a I have - the last eighteen years), you know that you can expect to drop $1500-$2000 on a new machine every twelve months and DOUBLE YOUR PERFORMANCE.
All of these people saying "you gotta upgrade your crappy machine!" don't seem to be thinking this through. Upgrade to WHAT?! Yes, the 8800 GTX is great. But aside from that, what are you going to upgrade to?! Are you seriously going to spend $1500-$2000 on a new system just to achieve a 20% improvement over your current year old rig? That's absolutely ridiculous. And with a game like Vanguard, do you really expect that the graphics and performance will go from crap to blazingly beautiful on a mere 20% improvement? I am sincerely doubting that.
Like I've said before, I usually drop about $1500-$3000 on a new machine every twelve months. This isn't an issue of money for me. It's an issue of performance. I was willing to spend that in 2004 to double my performance over my 2003 system. Then in 2005 to double my 2004 system. But I'm not willing to spend that same amount today to increase it by about a fifth to a third!
I suppose my overall point in posting here is that things seem to have become stagnant over the last eighteen months. We have a lot of new technologies and platforms, but we frankly aren't seeing the leaps and bounds in consumer performance in the same period of time that we have previously had as long as most of us have been alive.
I've been a PC gamer since my first PC in 1984 (VIC-20!) And have built my own machines every 12 to 24 months since 1990 (when I was 13). I bought my first gaming *console* this past year, when I finally broke down and bought an XBOX 360. Of course, I only bought the 360 because it played games in HD and it was a great excuse to then proceed to buy a $4,000 65" Sony SXRD LCoS/LCD (1080p -- whoo!) and the $18,000 Bowers & Wilkins 800 range home theater audio system with a killer receiver. Funny thing is, I haven't touched the 360 in six months! And I haven't even sat out there and watched television or anything in two months! I am RETARDED!
Look, we all know that keeping up with gaming systems is not cheap. However, if you've been around the block for more than a couple of years (a I have - the last eighteen years), you know that you can expect to drop $1500-$2000 on a new machine every twelve months and DOUBLE YOUR PERFORMANCE.
All of these people saying "you gotta upgrade your crappy machine!" don't seem to be thinking this through. Upgrade to WHAT?! Yes, the 8800 GTX is great. But aside from that, what are you going to upgrade to?! Are you seriously going to spend $1500-$2000 on a new system just to achieve a 20% improvement over your current year old rig? That's absolutely ridiculous. And with a game like Vanguard, do you really expect that the graphics and performance will go from crap to blazingly beautiful on a mere 20% improvement? I am sincerely doubting that.
Like I've said before, I usually drop about $1500-$3000 on a new machine every twelve months. This isn't an issue of money for me. It's an issue of performance. I was willing to spend that in 2004 to double my performance over my 2003 system. Then in 2005 to double my 2004 system. But I'm not willing to spend that same amount today to increase it by about a fifth to a third!
I suppose my overall point in posting here is that things seem to have become stagnant over the last eighteen months. We have a lot of new technologies and platforms, but we frankly aren't seeing the leaps and bounds in consumer performance in the same period of time that we have previously had as long as most of us have been alive.
I've been a PC gamer since my first PC in 1984 (VIC-20!) And have built my own machines every 12 to 24 months since 1990 (when I was 13). I bought my first gaming *console* this past year, when I finally broke down and bought an XBOX 360. Of course, I only bought the 360 because it played games in HD and it was a great excuse to then proceed to buy a $4,000 65" Sony SXRD LCoS/LCD (1080p -- whoo!) and the $18,000 Bowers & Wilkins 800 range home theater audio system with a killer receiver. Funny thing is, I haven't touched the 360 in six months! And I haven't even sat out there and watched television or anything in two months! I am RETARDED!
Regards.
Good god man are you insane? I was playing EQII from release till last fall on a machine I built 6 months before it's release, and could get 30 + FPS one notch above balanced. I also played single player games like Half Life II, Fear, and Farcry and coulf get better performance with prettier graphics than I can with this game.
I figure I will upgrade my video card this fall when Vista stabalizes and the DX 10 cards drop to about 300 bucks.
anyway more horsepower will not hel the bad textures, poor animations, database lag and otehr problems this game has. Bad performance is just the tip of the iceberg
Good god man are you insane? I was playing EQII from release till last fall on a machine I built 6 months before it's release, and could get 30 + FPS one notch above balanced. I also played single player games like Half Life II, Fear, and Farcry and coulf get better performance with prettier graphics than I can with this game. I figure I will upgrade my video card this fall when Vista stabalizes and the DX 10 cards drop to about 300 bucks. anyway more horsepower will not hel the bad textures, poor animations, database lag and otehr problems this game has. Bad performance is just the tip of the iceberg
The high end screenshots I've seen of the game actually look beautiful. But with the playable settings, the textures do look like crap. Just walk past a rock some time and consider how ridiculous it looks. I'm not sure who all these people are telling me that this is one of the most gorgeous games they've ever played. I mean.. what the hell?! The interface is directly from WoW. Down to the colors and wording in the dialog boxes. The graphics... well, they aren't better looking. But they have more things. The graphics are as good as WoW, perhaps. And then throw in lots and lots of trees and rocks. That seems to be the only significant difference.
What what is the 20gb installation all about then? Is there seriously just 18gb of ugly textures?!
I hold Vanguard as one of the better mmo´s Ive tried. I truley enjoyed the game and my ranger got to level 47.
The thing that did bother me is that the game is poorly optimized. Here is the settings Ive tried Vanguard with and I could never get the game running without hellish fps drops and shuttering. And do understand that every other game is running with no problem and that issue lies in the game (and not with a driver or something else)
Also, the best OS to run Vanguard is still Windows XP, as Windows 7 has worse performance and does not show weather effects. However, if you're a Linux user and use WINE 1.1.32 you'll have similar performance to Windows 7 and weather effects as well.
Comments
I admire the devs for being transparent about this, but I wish (like they do) that they could get running at a playable FPS for grouping on less than top-of-the-line PCs.
O'rly.
While my system is no longer top of the line, the only thing worth upgrading at this point is the video card. The performance difference between the CPU I have and the top of the line price-break-range CPU today is minimal (I'm not going to spend $1,000 for a quad core and an E6600 Core Duo is only about 20% faster than what I have).
My system is an AMD64x2 3800+ with an A8N-Sli board, 2gb RAM, 10,000 RPM Raptor (SATA) and a 7800 GTX. I have it connected to my 30" Apple Cinema Display and I play nearly all games in 2560x1600.
I can play Battlefield 2 with very high to highest settings at 2560x1600 and maintain consistent 35+ FPS. I have no problem in any game, though I do play Oblivion in 1600x1200, instead of 2560x1600.
In Vanguard, I run at the low resolution of 1280x800 with everything turned very low and my average framerate tends to stay between 15fps and 35fps. And it looks like complete crap. So I find it hard to believe that people with a lot of the systems they claim to be running (3200+ with GeForce 6600 and 1gb ram, for example) are really playing in a decent resolution with everything turned high and pulling down 50 FPS. That's just ridiculous.
I'm not averse to dropping cash on a new machine when it is warranted. I tend to build a new top of the line machine every 12 months. At this point, however, there isn't a lot other than the 8800 GTX that justifies the expense since the improvements one can expect are not even really of modest levels. However, if I knew that "with X, Y and Z systems, you can run this game in the highest resolution with the highest settings", I would be all over it. No sweat. But I haven't seen that. All I've seen is choppy, fuzzy looking videos and still images from people claiming to have one machine or another and getting one result or another.
Now, I won't say that nobody is getting great performance on any particular machine. But stop being dumbasses and sticking your heads in the ground and drawing the idiotic conclusion that because the game works fine for you that it has absolutely no problems and any flaws or lacking performance MUST be due to poor hardware or stupid end-users.
And I completely concur!
Bad news! You won't be playing any new games at that resolution on a 7800 GTX. Your machine isnt bad at all but it's just plain nuts to expect to run at that resolution with those specs. It's not just Vanguard, try and play R6:Vegas or Armed Assault at that resolution and you will experience the ultimate slideshow. I run Vanguard at 1920 x 1200 (Max everything) and its perfect, I can even see myself being able to extend the clipping plane (when the devs stop it from auto adjusting
). That's running on a QX6700 with an 8800 GTX. Conroe's are up to 100% faster than AMD X2, depending on how CPU based the task is, so it is a worthwhile investment. Your expectations are a little high tbh, I wouldnt plan on gaming at that resolution (with eye candy maxed) in 2007 unless you are running SLI 8800's.
**EDIT** Your FPS is a bit low for 1280 x 800 tbh, not sure why that is.
2 Gb RAM
2 x 7800GT SLI @ 500/1200
.......for a total of 23-28 FPS, pretty sad
FUNCOM - putting the FUN in disFUNctional !
Thats fair for that box TBH (1600 x 1200) I'm guessing so correct me if I'm wrong. The real shame for a lot of you guys who want to lay this performance deal on Vanguard is that there are plenty of other games coming this year that are not going to run well for you either. This is just one of the first. 7800s are almost 2 years old now. I know a lot of people have trouble with this concept but gaming on a PC requires an upgrade every 1 to 1.5 years in order to play the latest and greatest.
You can fight it and tell me Im wrong etc but it won't change the reality. Are Sigil excluding some gamers with lower end PCs? Yes, they are! But unfortunately that's the way PC gaming has always worked. Are there new games that work on dated hardware (exceptions to the rule)? Yes there are! But games that use the latest effects, high poly counts, bloom, HDR, AA, AF etc demand horsepower.
Thats fair for that box TBH (1600 x 1200) I'm guessing so correct me if I'm wrong. The real shame for a lot of you guys who want to lay this performance deal on Vanguard is that there are plenty of other games coming this year that are not going to run well for you either. This is just one of the first. 7800s are almost 2 years old now. I know a lot of people have trouble with this concept but gaming on a PC requires an upgrade every 1 to 1.5 years in order to play the latest and greatest.
You can fight it and tell me Im wrong etc but it won't change the reality. Are Sigil excluding some gamers with lower end PCs? Yes, they are! But unfortunately that's the way PC gaming has always worked. Are there new games that work on dated hardware (exceptions to the rule)? Yes there are! But games that use the latest effects, high poly counts, bloom, HDR, AA, AF etc demand horsepower.
i hate to agree with ya, but yeah ur right sharky. its the nature of the beast. you either roll with the punches or you move on. I myself got to admit I need a new system, im not gonna quite get a new system now, gonna get a X1950 pro 512 agp. one more upgrade. hehe
gonna wait til the quad cores are out. and the new dx 10 cards are more established and have more competition (i like to have choices :P) but yeah its a uphill battle with pc's.
you can probably get away with 2 years or so with some games. but when u talk about games like rainbow six las vegas(although single player and multplayer game not a MMO just statingout the type of graphics requirments needed) Huxley using unreal 3.0 engine, cell factor which is gonna be a beast of a game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., taba ralusa, Star Gate WOrlds (using Unreal 3.0) Crysis is gonna be a defnite stress test on whether or not your system is up to snuff. but what can you do? you make a conscious choice on whether to upograde. I for one admit its expensive, but no console can beat the experience I get with a PC. it may get close, but its neverf the same. sorta like ONCE U GO PC, U NEVER GO BACK! lol
comparing consoles to PC is like comparing analog to digital, Record player to cd there is no real comparison.
either way well put sharky, short and sweet.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
Thats fair for that box TBH (1600 x 1200) I'm guessing so correct me if I'm wrong. The real shame for a lot of you guys who want to lay this performance deal on Vanguard is that there are plenty of other games coming this year that are not going to run well for you either. This is just one of the first. 7800s are almost 2 years old now. I know a lot of people have trouble with this concept but gaming on a PC requires an upgrade every 1 to 1.5 years in order to play the latest and greatest.
You can fight it and tell me Im wrong etc but it won't change the reality. Are Sigil excluding some gamers with lower end PCs? Yes, they are! But unfortunately that's the way PC gaming has always worked. Are there new games that work on dated hardware (exceptions to the rule)? Yes there are! But games that use the latest effects, high poly counts, bloom, HDR, AA, AF etc demand horsepower.
i hate to agree with ya, but yeah ur right sharky. its the nature of the beast. you either roll with the punches or you move on. I myself got to admit I need a new system, im not gonna quite get a new system now, gonna get a X1950 pro 512 agp. one more upgrade. hehe
gonna wait til the quad cores are out. and the new dx 10 cards are more established and have more competition (i like to have choices :P) but yeah its a uphill battle with pc's.
you can probably get away with 2 years or so with some games. but when u talk about games like rainbow six las vegas(although single player and multplayer game not a MMO just statingout the type of graphics requirments needed) Huxley using unreal 3.0 engine, cell factor which is gonna be a beast of a game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., taba ralusa, Star Gate WOrlds (using Unreal 3.0) Crysis is gonna be a defnite stress test on whether or not your system is up to snuff. but what can you do? you make a conscious choice on whether to upograde. I for one admit its expensive, but no console can beat the experience I get with a PC. it may get close, but its neverf the same. sorta like ONCE U GO PC, U NEVER GO BACK! lol
comparing consoles to PC is like comparing analog to digital, Record player to cd there is no real comparison.
either way well put sharky, short and sweet.
Believe me, I would like my $$$'s to go further as much as the next guy. I just understand that you need to spend money if you plan on maintaining PC gaming as a hobby (for me, it's more of a lifestyle
). You are so right about consoles, generally they last 4 or 5 years. People have to start understanding that this is simply not the case with PCs.
Cheers
PS : R6 : Vegas is a very good example of the need to upgrade. It can slow even the best systems down.
I only read the first paragraph b4 I shook my head and laughed.. First off all,u should have 2 gigs of memory and a better graphics card,at least a 7800,and make sure the game is on "balanced" settings.. And my friend,your PC is def NOT considered a "good gaming pc" not with Vanguard mentioned in the same sentence,,,sorry..The performance has been increasing with every newer patch..
REMEMBER PEOPLE,YOU ARE NOT PLAYING THE RETAIL VERSION OF VANGUARD..ONLY THE BETA WHICH MEANS THE GAME HAS NOT BEEN FULLY OPTOMIZED YET,SHEEEESH!!
How many times am I going to have to keep saying this???
BTW,i only have a AMD 3200,,,7900 GT 2 gig of ram and I've pretty much done it all even back in october when the game was really "unplayable" Basically u lag more when in highly populated areas such as Khal..FPS for me is an average of 14-20ish right now..The wilderness areas is a good 40+ fps and hunting in dungeons in groups is around 20+ there are times I hit 5-10 second lag spikes but thats also cuz the game is still in beta and not fully optimized yet..Of course you will lag...YOU ARE NOT PLAYING WOW!!!!!!Their graphics belong in 1999,enough said!
Rallithon Oakthornn
(Retired Heirophant of the 60th season)
And I completely concur!i agree as well.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
Something has changed recently as I was able to get into Vanguard lastnight and play at 1280x800 with 20-30fps average and everything turned up to "highest quality" or very near. The only downside was that it dropped to 5-15fps at best whenever a few other people came into view. Even if they were NPCs. Cities are intolerable.
But even with all the settings cranked up and 1fps and not moving around, the environment is not quite as stunning and amazing as I have been preparing to encounter. I am sincerely hoping that is merely due to having a card with 256mb of ram and the 8800 having additional features and improvements in the way shading and other things are handled (man, I remember when I bought a HUGE 2mb Trident S3 video card -- ooooh!).
And just to clarify, I do have this system tweaked. I'm a Solaris/Linux/OSX guy and only use Windows for gaming, but I'm comfortable enough with it to tune it. I'm running Tweaks R Us drivers which have shown improvements in my system on the 7800 GTX. I'm running with a defrag'd drive and a 4gb pagefile on a separate drive and most or all of the vgclient.ini modifications configured (including the shader caching).
As for 1280x800 showing low FPS on my system compared to what it probably should be -- I would possibly chalk that up to the fact that I don't believe it is a native resolution on the 30" ACD. So it has to scale it at a cost. Of course, that cost allows you to add certain improvements that would otherwise be more costly, since it already has to do the math on every frame to begin with.
I am probably going to buy the 8800 GTX, regardless. My big decision now is whether to stick with my AMD64x2 3800+ or upgrade the rest of the system along with the 8800. Short of spending $1,000 just on the quad core CPU alone, I don't see anything out there today that offers more than a 20% to 30% (at best) improvement over the chip I have right now. And the idea of spending $1,500-$2,000 on a new system (not counting the video card) just for 20-25% improvement seems so awkward.
What I'm not willing to do, however, is keep my fingers crossed and have some fantasy that Sigil is just giving us a "watered down" game at the moment and that somehow by removing the debug binaries after beta will slingshot us from something that looks pre-WoWish to something that looks jaw-dropping. Yes, the game we are currently playing is a BETA. It is a beta that is ten days away from full release. People - please quit acting like this is a BETA of a game that is still two years away from going retail. It's not. It is very nearly the finished product. Do you really expect that in another week, we're going to have great new textures, a brand new gaming engine and some sort of magical optimizations that shoot all the 10fps guys up to 40fps? It's not going to happen. If it does, I'll eat my pubic hair.
Oh - I'm also really considering doing 8800 GTX SLI, but I can't imagine that I would see the performance out of it since we'd surely be CPU-locked for the time being. Gaaah!
All of these people saying "you gotta upgrade your crappy machine!" don't seem to be thinking this through. Upgrade to WHAT?! Yes, the 8800 GTX is great. But aside from that, what are you going to upgrade to?! Are you seriously going to spend $1500-$2000 on a new system just to achieve a 20% improvement over your current year old rig? That's absolutely ridiculous. And with a game like Vanguard, do you really expect that the graphics and performance will go from crap to blazingly beautiful on a mere 20% improvement? I am sincerely doubting that.
Like I've said before, I usually drop about $1500-$3000 on a new machine every twelve months. This isn't an issue of money for me. It's an issue of performance. I was willing to spend that in 2004 to double my performance over my 2003 system. Then in 2005 to double my 2004 system. But I'm not willing to spend that same amount today to increase it by about a fifth to a third!
I suppose my overall point in posting here is that things seem to have become stagnant over the last eighteen months. We have a lot of new technologies and platforms, but we frankly aren't seeing the leaps and bounds in consumer performance in the same period of time that we have previously had as long as most of us have been alive.
I've been a PC gamer since my first PC in 1984 (VIC-20!) And have built my own machines every 12 to 24 months since 1990 (when I was 13). I bought my first gaming *console* this past year, when I finally broke down and bought an XBOX 360. Of course, I only bought the 360 because it played games in HD and it was a great excuse to then proceed to buy a $4,000 65" Sony SXRD LCoS/LCD (1080p -- whoo!) and the $18,000 Bowers & Wilkins 800 range home theater audio system with a killer receiver.
Regards.
Good god man are you insane? I was playing EQII from release till last fall on a machine I built 6 months before it's release, and could get 30 + FPS one notch above balanced. I also played single player games like Half Life II, Fear, and Farcry and coulf get better performance with prettier graphics than I can with this game.
I figure I will upgrade my video card this fall when Vista stabalizes and the DX 10 cards drop to about 300 bucks.
anyway more horsepower will not hel the bad textures, poor animations, database lag and otehr problems this game has. Bad performance is just the tip of the iceberg
I miss DAoC
What what is the 20gb installation all about then? Is there seriously just 18gb of ugly textures?!
and that hasnt changed until 2010.........
I hold Vanguard as one of the better mmo´s Ive tried. I truley enjoyed the game and my ranger got to level 47.
The thing that did bother me is that the game is poorly optimized. Here is the settings Ive tried Vanguard with and I could never get the game running without hellish fps drops and shuttering. And do understand that every other game is running with no problem and that issue lies in the game (and not with a driver or something else)
@1920x1200
Phenom x4 3 ghz, 8 gb ddr2@800, gt 9800, windows xp
Phenom x4 3 ghz, 8 gb ddr2@800, 4870, windows xp
Intel i7 920 4 ghz, 6 gb ddr3@1600 mhz, 4870, windows xp
Intel i7 920 2.66 ghz, 6 gb ddr3@1066 mhz, 4870x2 +4870 windows xp, windows vista
Intel i7 920 4 ghz, 6 gb ddr3@1600 mhz, 4870x2 +4870 windows vista, windows xp
Intel i7 920 4 ghz, 6 gb ddr3@1600 mhz, 5970, intel ssd 80 gb, windows xp, windows vista
I7@4ghz, 5970@ 1 ghz/5ghz, water cooled||Former setups Byggblogg||Byggblogg 2|| Msi Wind u100
Check the performance section of Off the Isle: http://www.offtheisle.com/guides/performance
Also, the best OS to run Vanguard is still Windows XP, as Windows 7 has worse performance and does not show weather effects. However, if you're a Linux user and use WINE 1.1.32 you'll have similar performance to Windows 7 and weather effects as well.