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Discussion on Article:
Contemporary Mainstream Graphics Cards in Popular MMORPG

Started by: rdawise | Date 07/08/09 07:46:36 PM

Comments: 10 | Last Comment: 07/11/09 07:56:46 PM

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I have been searching for this article for quite sometime. Kudos to you. I have yet to find a site that has done benchmarks on MMorpgs (even though the fps may be hampered by connection). Thank you.

0 [Posted by: rdawise Rating 1

| Date: 07/08/09 07:46:36 PM]

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All I can say is I'm extremely impressed by Xbit Labs' recent articles. Very enjoyable read, 10/10

0 [Posted by: BloodBlender Rating 9

| Date: 07/08/09 07:54:14 PM]

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Thanks for a very useful article... I'm trying to determine which VidCard I should buy to play WoW on a brand new 1920x1200 LCD.

Questions:
- Where and how did you test the framerates ? I find those vary a lot between populated areas (Dalaran), the country side, and raids with 25 people creating lots of wisual effects. Raids are by far the hardest on the vidcard and the CPU - I find that WoW is quite CPU-bound too, but assume that was not an issue with your config.
- Also, how did you determine FPS ? On my old PC, the stated framerate was patently false, ie it would say 10 fps when I know I was getting less than one and the game was unplayable. That might have been because the bottleneck was my very old CPU (single-core Athlon XP 2800+), and not the vidcard.
- Were all in-game setting set to max ? I assume yes ?

Again, thanks and congrats.

0 [Posted by: obarthelemy Rating 20

| Date: 07/08/09 08:21:32 PM]

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The Warhammer Online tests must have not been done in active RVR, In Forts or heavily populated keep battles i will drop to 15 FPS with a slightly stronger system than used.

Core i7 @ 3.8
OCZ ddr3-1600 (7-7-7-20)
9800GTX SLI

Same for when i used to play WoW.

Testing MMO\\\'s out of heavy combat can be misleading, so avoiding those areas as u stated to maintain conformity isnt a true test how the game will really perform in a populated area. who plays where there no action?? for sure not me.
Good article, i would have liked to see some if just subjective testing in RVR so give a true idea of GPU load.

-Toast

0 [Posted by: toast70 Rating 2

| Date: 07/08/09 10:06:34 PM]

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Indeed, if the tests were not done in a raid setting, they are worthless. I don't care if the scenery is displayed @60 or 20 FPS, I do care whether I'm getting more than 20 FPS during an all-out fight. 20 FPS seems to be the cutoff point for a guaranteed perfectly smooth gameplay, with room for a few hungry addons.

I don't think "scenery" performance is a good indicator of "combat" performance: the intensity and visual effects seem very different.

0 [Posted by: obarthelemy Rating 20

| Date: 07/09/09 03:45:06 AM]

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- collapse thread

I don't think "scenery" performance is a good indicator of "combat" performance: the intensity and visual effects seem very different.

Yeah, right. And EVE should be tested when there is a 1000-ship battle going on in system... Too bad that video has nothing to do with lag in that case.

0 [Posted by: Shattershark Rating 2

| Date: 07/09/09 10:13:57 AM]

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Maybe in EVE, but in WoW PVE raids, it's 25 players vs 1 boss plus sometimes adds, network lag is not much of an issue.

Blizzard have significantly updated their graphics engine with WOTLK, and players that could raid before are having difficulties now. Not that WoW requires a particularly powerful config, but there are lots of casual and not so casual players with old PCs, and on top of that WoW performance is not well understood. "it's the network" is the standard cop out, but not generally true in raids. WoW used to be very modest graphically, that has changed, but I nobody really knows how much (I'd be interested not in max FPS for each card, but in knowing for each card @1900x1200 how much eye candy I can activate, and still get 20/40/60 FPS. Also, WoW is more CPU bound than most games.

0 [Posted by: obarthelemy Rating 20

| Date: 07/09/09 03:02:35 PM]

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Very good article, I am also glad that you did this article of comparing MMO's on midrange cards.

I also understand that it is almost impossible to do a raid instance unless you have a good Kingship or guild that will assist you with such a feet, which will increase the length of time to compile such an article.

0 [Posted by: Nictron Rating 8

| Date: 07/09/09 05:01:03 AM]

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One nit to pick: if you're going to include a high-end Nvidia solution, it's only fair to include a high-end ATI solution. This review should have included a 4890 or at least a 4870 from ATI.

0 [Posted by: philosofool Rating 34

| Date: 07/10/09 12:24:45 PM]

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very usefull review, im glad you guys also tested Eve with it.

0 [Posted by: 3Dkiller Rating 120.08

| Date: 07/11/09 07:56:46 PM]

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