AoC, is it a good game yes or no?

[Bulor]

simple question...

[TrollFunk]

Yes.

And in my oppinion it is just getting better and better.

[Twystyd]

Great game but very unfinished. We joke all the time how were playing a pay beta of the game. 2 patches a week will hopefully iron out issues. They play style is unique and I could not imagine playing WoW after you spend time in AoC as the gameplay offers a lot more. There are combos to get off, strafing combat etc. The graphics are better then any game out there including Oblivion so bring some hardware, this isnt a cartoon. Guilds have cities to build and burn down, zones to take over and fight for, resources to gather so theres a greater purpose then farming the same instance every mon, wed, fri for gear.

[Nilbert500]

join up so i have someone to level with, im only 23.

[Bulor]

how much of a workhorse is it on the computers end... my current comp specs are.

-AMD Phenom 9500 Agena 2.2GHz Quad
- 4Gigs of Ram
- GF 7800 (maybe it's time to upgrade?)

how will i handle the released version of the game.

i know during the beta, i could barely move

[Twystyd]

RAM and proc are fine but youll need a new vid card. At least 8800 GT.

[barbos]

Phenom? bleh

[Nilbert500]

im running an e6400, 7900gt, and 2 gigs ram, xp and I play at medium settings relatively smoothly. Most problems I occur are bugs most likely.

[Elfdroper Gravelender]

Love the game but as Twyst said it is very demanding on my machine. Got a AMD 64 duo 2.8 and 4 gigs of RAM but my PCI-E slot shit the bed so I'm running the onboard Nvidia 6100...

Needless to say i've never gotten over 10fps hehe. Just got my new motherboard in today so as soon as my new OS comes in I should be good to go.

But yea the game is great if you have the patience to help iron out the bugs.

[Twystyd]

Hey Barbos what are your thoughts on the new 200 series Gcards 280/260?

[barbos]

Hey Barbos what are your thoughts on the new 200 series Gcards 280/260?

They are WAY overpriced. Nvidia hasn't really introduced anything new since the 8000 series, they've just made a few adjustments so they can clock it higher.

For a new mid-range card, I'd definately just released AMD/ATI 4850 or the upcoming (next week) AMD/ATI 4870.

If money is no object, you could pick up an nvidia 280 to get maybe 10-20% boost in performance in some areas... for almost double the price.

AMD/ATI will be releasing a dual gpu card, 4870X2 around July/August that should compete with the nvidia 280.

AMD/ATI kept their new cards on the low key, and released a nice card that was above everyone's expectations. Hopefully this will hurt nvidia's sales enough that they get back to doing some research and come up with some new material.

[Candide]

For a new mid-range card, I'd definately just released AMD/ATI 4850 or the upcoming (next week) AMD/ATI 4870.

If you are upgrading to play AoC, avoid ATI/AMD like the plague. Just look at the tech forums for a reason why. They've been working with ATI since before launch and claim it is ATI drivers not working to spec.

And sorry, this happens time and time again. You always see "made for Nvidia" in games, never "made for ATI". The devs you see post say that Nvidia works hard with game companies to ensure smooth use, and that ATI is difficult to communicate with. While obviously most games work great with both, it's rare that it runs poorly with Nvida and great with ATI, yet not all that uncommon the other way around.

ATI makes great hardware, but their drivers always suck.

[barbos]

Both companies have their faults. You see "made for nVidia" because they shell out tons and tons of money for that. It's called marketing.

Both vendors have their issues, and I don't think one is worse than another overall (maybe for a specific game).

I've certainly had driver hell with nVidia cards... one driver works fine in one game and crashes in another.

[Tingtong]

As a computer tech who has seen his fair share of video card issues I can tell you from personal experience ATI catalyst drivers are complete and utter trash. YES nvida pays big bucks for marketing they also pay big bucks for hardware optimization and driver compatibility JUST like Microsoft does. It's not just about the logo
I would never trust an ATI product in my machine ever. Just like I don't like buying cheap parts. Corners are cut and it's usually the customer who takes it in the rear.

They are WAY overpriced. Nvidia hasn't really introduced anything new since the 8000 series, they've just made a few adjustments so they can clock it higher.

It's time for a debate!! The 280 series is a completely different chip.. not "few adjustments" so they can clock it a higher speed. but a 300mm 65nm fabbed chip fitting 1.4B transistors as apposed to the 690M transistors in the 8800 series chip. Were talking about a whole different design and fabrication not a simple fucking volatge "tweak"

If money is no object, you could pick up an nvidia 280 to get maybe 10-20% boost in performance in some areas... for almost double the price.

while the initial performance has yet to be determined because the 200 series still has beta drivers (which is the bread and butter of performance gains.) you will see 10-20% OVER the dual GPU 9800gx2 and up to 2x faster then a 8800 series. For $150 more Is it worth it right now? probably not unless you want the best of the best and willing to pay $150 more for up to a 20% gain in some games.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334&p=8

AMD/ATI will be releasing a dual gpu card, 4870X2 around July/August that should compete with the nvidia 280.

Dual GPU cards use tons of power, and it's unlikely AMD/ATI's card will even come close. I would certainly hope AMD/ATI could make a dual GPU card that can compete with a single GPU of Nvidia but it's unlikely. Just imagine when they make a dual GPU of the 280 to actually COMPETE.. well it won't really be a competition if you get my drift.

I will leave you with this quote fromm the review at aandtech

"Interestingly, though, AMD has decided to make public its decision to go in the opposite direction. No more will ATI be pushing as many transistors as possible into giant packages in order to do battle with NVIDIA for the coveted "halo" product that inspires the masses to think an entire company is better because they made the fastest possible thing regardless of value. The new direction ATI will go in will be one that it kind of stumbled inadvertently into: providing midrange cards that offer as high a performance per dollar as possible.

With AMD dropping out of the high end single-GPU space (they will still compete with multiGPU solutions), NVIDIA will be left all alone with top performance for the forseable future."

AMD/ATI kept their new cards on the low key, and released a nice card that was above everyone's expectations. Hopefully this will hurt nvidia's sales enough that they get back to doing some research and come up with some new material.

AMD/ATI has yet to build something that could beat a Nvida card. They are cheaper for a reason.

[barbos]

I was asked for my opinion, and that's it. I've done my fair share of computer work and don't feel the need to qualify it. I'm certainly not the one posting about blowing up their CPU or motherboard several times per year.

Anyway, I will admit (and retract), that I'm not very informed on the GT200 series. I had confused the 9800 as being part of the GT200, which was wrong. However, hopefully you can agree that the 9800 was really nothing new.

I do want to point out your comment about the drivers for the 200 series. You even admit that initial performance has yet to be determined because of bad drivers. Even though the product was just released, the drivers still aren't there to support it correctly. I think this helps illustrate (even if only somewhat) my point that both companies have struggled with drivers on various aspects.

Anyway,

I still stand by my comments about the new ATI 4800 series cards. I do not argue that they are the best and fastest cards available. My argument was for midrange cards, they are the best price/performance value available today. This was for the other people reading, as most of them (as far as I know) do not have bleeding edge hardware, or the budget for it.

Even your dear anandtech agrees with that.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3341&p=23

AMD has managed to make the $200 price point very exciting and competitive, and the less powerful version of RV770 that is the 4850 is a great buy for the performance. As for the new business, the Radeon HD 4870 is not only based on an efficient architecture (both in terms of performance per area and per watt), it is an excellent buy as well. Of course we have to put out the usual disclaimer of "it depends on the benchmark you care about," but in our testing we definitely saw this $300 part perform at the level of NVIDIA's $400 GT200 variant, the GTX 260. This fact clearly sets the 4870 in a performance class beyond its price.

For now, the Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 are both solid values and cards we would absolutely recommend to readers looking for hardware at the $200 and $300 price points. The fact of the matter is that by NVIDIA's standards, the 4870 should be priced at $400 and the 4850 should be around $250. You can either look at it as AMD giving you a bargain or NVIDIA charging too much, either way it's healthy competition in the graphics industry once again (after far too long of a hiatus).

Other sites also support this opinion:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... -4850-4870

The 4850 lines up with the Nvidia 9800GTX+, something that is totally unavailable for another 3 or so weeks, and costs $30 more MSRP, likely $60 more at retail. The 4870 has no competition, the closest Nvidia can get is the $400 GTX (down $100 from what they told reviewers), and that is not worth the very slim performance premium, not to mention the power cost. A heavily overclocked 260 is just a hair faster than a $100+ cheaper 4870, and two 4870s in Crossfire crush a more expensive GTX280. Once prices come down, and they will shortly, it is going to be quite unpleasant for Nvidia.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd ... iew--asus/

See, I don't want to spoil the fun just yet, but this card is tagged at a price of 299,- USD and quite frankly just as fast as a GeForce 260 GTX at 399 USD. So while I say 299 USD, isn't a mid-range product, this surely is a high-end product at a fantastic price. Not bad for an actual mid-range targeted product eh ? See AMD, that indeed is good strategy. Customers really like value.

http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/ATI ... d/?page=13

The Radeon HD 4850 is generally faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX and right on-par with or somewhat faster than the upcoming GeForce 9800 GTX+ in most applications. The Radeon HD 4870, however, is definitely a step up from the GeForce 9800 GTX+ and actually compares favorably to the $100 more expensive GeForce GTX 260. In fact, the Radeon HD 4870 was able to slightly outperform the GeForce GTX 260 in a couple of tests, including ET:QW and UT3.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=58 ... ert&pid=13

The performances we saw from the Radeon HD 4870 and HD 4850 were not ground breaking - neither was able to take on the newly released GeForce GTX 280 for supremacy of the enthusiast GPU market. But that is not what AMD was after - instead what AMD created were probably the most impressive $200 and $300 graphics cards we have seen in several years. The HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 card was able to outperform AMD's dual-GPU HD 3870 X2 1GB card in nearly all of our tests - that is an impressive result as it indicates a doubling of gaming performance from one GPU generation to the next. When comparing it to the NVIDIA product stack, the HD 4870 is easily beating out the new 55nm 9800 GTX+ product and is in fact nearly rivaling the new GTX 260 in many instances.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... mitstart=1

One thing is certain, we are sure that Radeon HD 4870's current performance leadership in the sub-$300 market means a certain price war and you, our bellowed readers, will benefit, as the prices will have to go down. Geforce GTX 280 is clearly faster, but not as much to justify twice as much money. For the price of a single Geforce GTX 280 you can buy two Radeon 4870s and get a decent lunch while you're at it. In this category, we can highly recommend this ATI masterpiece, and Radeon HD 4870 is probably the best card money can buy in sub-$300 / €229 euro price range, but we are sure that this price will go down, sooner rather than later.

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14990/16

The RV770 GPU looks to be an unequivocal success on almost every front. In its most affordable form, the Radeon HD 4850 delivers higher performance overall than the GeForce 9800 GTX and redefines GPU value at the ever-popular $199 price point. Meanwhile, the RV770's most potent form is even more impressive, in my view. Onboard the Radeon HD 4870, this GPU sets a new standard for architectural efficiency—in terms of performance per die area—due to two things: a broad-reaching rearchitecting and optimization the of R600 graphics core and the astounding amount of bandwidth GDDR5 memory can transfer over a 256-bit interface. Both of these things seem to work every bit as well as advertised. In practical terms, what all of this means is that the Radeon HD 4870, a $299 product, competes closely with the GeForce GTX 260, a $399 card based on a chip twice the size.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1481/1 ... index.html

If you’re looking for a new single card graphics card solution, which way do you go? - Well, the HD 4870 manages to come in lower than the GTX 260 while on the most part being able to compete with it, though the latter card is heavily overclocked. That’s good news for ATI since the HD 4870 here hasn’t got its clockspeeds increased at all.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/734/18/

The ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics card looks to be a great card for gamers and performed better than many of the cards that we tested it against. At $299 the Radeon HD 4870 is priced $70 above the just released GeForce 9800 GTX+ and performs better in the bulk of games we tested it on. Both the Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 are solid performing cards and that was shown even more when we ran CrossFire for the very first time. In CrossFire the Radeon HD 4000 series performed very well and the scores in Call of Duty 4 were very impressive.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... 642,00.asp

Most impressive is the way it matches the more expensive, more power-hungry (under load), and larger GeForce GTX 260 card, in the right games and with the right settings. We recently hailed that card for its dominating performance in the $400 price bracket.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?i ... 72&page=22

Bottom line: we'd be happy to recommend the Radeon HD 4850 at the £125 mark; it's a fundamentally better design than the 18-month-old technology of the GeForce 9800 GTX and, even with the new pricing factored in, makes for a better all-round performer. The Radeon HD 4870 extracts the most out of the architecture through, in the main, super-fast memory, and we'd give it a tentative recommendation, waiting to see just how partners employ the GeForce 9800 GTX+ ATI's back in a big, big way in the sub-$300 space. NVIDIA, apart from price-chopping, what's new, huh?

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware ... review.ars

In a word, the 4800 series is excellent. The HD 4850 doesn't quite beat the HD 3870X2 overall, but it comes darn close. The HD 4870, meanwhile, does make a clean sweep of the 3870X2, and it does so for less money. The NVIDIA 9800 GTX ends up soundly thrashed by both cards. At the higher end, NVIDIA's 9800 GX2 and GTX 280 maintain performance superiority over the ATI HD 4800 series, but their respective price points of $499 and $649 put them far above even the 4870's comparatively modest $299 list price.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.h ... VzaWFzdA==

Going into this evaluation, and looking at the pricing, AMD stated that the Radeon HD 4850 was to compete with the GeForce 8800 GT and the Radeon HD 4870 was to compete with the GeForce 9800 GTX. Well, it seems this needs some revision because we experienced even better performance than expected. The Radeon HD 4870 is perfectly poised to compete with the new GeForce GTX 260.

Doesn't seem too bad for a steaming pile of garbage eh?

Anyway, my point wasn't to bash nVidia, or say that they make awful products. However, in my opinion, I think they have been slow to innovate their technology and their products are overpriced (for the moment) because they haven't had much competition lately.

My hopes is with AMD/ATI's latest offerings will wake nVidia up to make some more breakthroughs in the industry, and price them more competitively.