Originally posted by: bryanW1995
Originally posted by: taltamir
anyone else notice the inq review:
1. Looks like they stole it from someone else.
2. Looks like they were comparing two different driver versions.
not only that, but did you check out the oc on that 9800gtx that they used for comparison?
I did not, it seems to be an eVGA SSC... 770 core clock instead of 675.
Originally posted by: Foxery
Originally posted by: manko
I thought I saw a report that the 55nm GT200b had already taped out and is due for a September release.
It wasn't a "report" so much as rumor-mill from The Inqurier.
re: The tangent about system RAM
Originally posted by: taltamir
too many games simply do not utilize the ram.. neverwinter nights 2 for example has ATROCIOUS load times, and every few minutes... it uses about 600MB at max everything, and every few minutes (when you move to a different "map", and the "maps" are TINY) dumps 400MB of it and then starts reloading using a SINGLE THREADED unoptimized decompression algorithm from one of their huge data files...
Developers have to write code to work within certain restraints of the Minimum specs. Rather than write a second path the check for better hardware, they just consider newer/faster systems to be brute force improvements. If the code works reasonably well with the official Min specs and Recommended specs, then rather than spending time and money to add routines for the 3 people who bought more, they call it a day.
NWN2 was released in 2006. (Which means the code was written in 2005!) There weren't any multi-core machines or people with large amounts of RAM to worry about.
Some programs/companies may not even
care about scaling. Being flashy and bleeding-edge tech isn't always a directive for every product.
It was released October 31, 2006. Thats 2 months before 2007. And the upcoming cards will be the FIRST cards ever released to be able to max out it's graphics.
It doesn't work well, it works terribly.
By then nobody was even selling single core machines anymore, and they could have used 7z or something else that is free for decompression, at least it is dual threaded.
The entire game was a graphical refresh of neverwinter nights 1, it was actually offering LESS as far as features go, but had vastly superior graphics.
it takes 600MB of ram under max everything, it takes 300-400MB on min settings, which is what I played because I couldn't stomach the load times.
2GB/4GB of ram was not unheard of back then, I was using it myself... and this is a game that can NOT be maxed out with an 8800GTX... My 8800GTS 512 still can't max out this game, it takes either SLI/CF, or maybe a GTX 280 to max it out. I don't see why supporting machines with more then 1.5GB of ram (700MB winXP and programs + 600MB NWN2 = 1.2GB total) would have been terribly hard, considering I have been using 4GB of ram long before that game came out.
Once I upgraded from an X2 3800+ to an E8400 my load times went significantly down..
X2: almost a minute at max settings, 10 seconds at min settings
E8400: 10-15 seconds at max settings, 2-3 seconds at min...
I have a strong feeling it was strongly intel optimized too, because the X2 is not THAT much slower then an E8400.
Oh I almost forgot... save files can reach 100MB per SINGLE SAVE!