Just installed Fallout 3 and Crysis on my main W8.1 machine with an i7 and GTX660.

Had anyone got good experience with Alchemy for Creative cards and done comparisons with the Headphone surround technology? I really would like to know if Alchemy is a 100% substitute for Windows XP and EAX.

Will let Fallout 3 for a while. At first it didn't run, I found a Google tip that it needs Windows Live Gaming installed. It works now.

Ok I didn't get a red screen, but Fallout 3 did freeze / lockup. Had to shut down the computer.

Now that PC is very stable, not overclocked and I've played BF4 and other games many many times.

I'd like to try another game and see if the same thing happens. For some reason I don't have Grid, could have sworn I bought it on Steam...

Might try Crysis in DX9 mode.

EDIT: Game works fine so far. I will do the same as with Fallout 3, just let it sit this afternoon and check in the evening. Graphics are superb, even in DX9. I'm getting around 70-120 fps depending on what you look at.

But being a DX10 game really a faster card than a GTX660 would make sense. Can't wait for Nvidia to release the next cards after the die shrink. The performance jump should be HUGE.

Also I checked the Fallout 3 page and it states:

Notice: Fallout 3 is not optimized for Windows 7

Try this workaround:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthr … d.php?t=1328904

I haven't tested it yet though. But will if Crysis still runs in the evening. I don't see why not, haven't had issues playing older DX9 games in the past.

kithylin wrote:

it could be the new drivers... but there is the problem, if you go back to older drivers, the newer cards then aren't supported […]
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Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

And what about newer cards like the 480/580/680/780? Are there game-breaking DX9 bugs in the driver?

I checked and my GTX660 still has drivers for Windows XP. It's quite a powerful card, on the level of a 580 and just needs a single PCIe power plug. Together with a basic S1154 or 1155 Pentium CPU and you could be set.

it could be the new drivers... but there is the problem, if you go back to older drivers, the newer cards then aren't supported by the driver a little further back, and you end up having to use older video cards then anyway.

Besides the crashes, even if games do run right, newer video cards are in general slower at DX9 than older cards were. There's a "BAR" where the video cards being released started being "optimized" to be faster for DX-10 & 11, yet slower at DX8 stuff. I've seen this and tested it myself, I had a pair of HD 7770's at one point, and in games like crysis, oblivion, borderlands 2, and Race Driver GRID, my HD4890's were roughly +40% faster in all games and situations, so I ended up selling em and going back to my old cards, even though the newer ones were much faster at DirectX-10 stuff.

So, I wouldn't want any of the newer cards for a DX9 build for any reason what so ever, older cards will be much faster at what I'm wanting this build for. And use older drivers, which is even better.

I've decided what I want to use for this project, I just have to wait and save up and get em later when the time comes.

@kithylin, i too found more performance in old games by going back to older driver versions of my graphics card(from 2013 to 2011). the new cards also get restricted utmost to XP. i noticed only a few fps increase in sp2 compared to sp3. proably the game specific optimizations in the driver may do harm to older games' performance.
BTW i'm unable to reply to your pm and contacted the moderators for help.

Ok so older drivers are faster, but are they fast enough to compensate for a newer card that could be 2x to 4x as fast?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Ok so older drivers are faster, but are they fast enough to compensate for a newer card that cold be 2x to 4x as fast?

there is no reason, why anyone would not want to settle for a new card. but i guess it's about the games which you want to play w.r.t different era, as said by OP. it's really difficult to derive a pattern why a game plays poorly on a particular system due to the sheer amount of variables involved. to my knowledge (which is limited), the factors like(not necessarily in order, but mostly)
a) hardware (cpu & its instruction set, chipset, memory, gpu, graphics bus)
b) os
c) graphics driver
d) game engine
e) game scenario
also the temperature, component ageing, bloats of other programs etc.
it would be nice if the experts in our forum make a project to document game engine specific tweaks(later can move on to individual games) w.r.t different platforms like your wonderful project for vga games. maybe it it impractical and already available, i don't know. if not, we can atleast document the best setup (divided into extreme and medium playable categories) for a game engine (or game) it will hugely help the newbies like us and others too.

gandhig wrote:

there is no reason, why anyone would not want to settle for a new card.

Price, boost clocks are -BAD- (long story there but they're not good) compatibility, the list goes on, but newer is -NOT- always better. Also being restricted to certain driver versions is bad too.

I must say that under W7 and W8 a LOT of old games work just fine. In fact I don't recall many older (DX 9) games that have serious issues and can't be made going with a few tweaks.

But the devil is in the detail. For example I could boot from another HDD on my i7 and run XP, but the Sound Blaster Z doesn't support XP. I could use two Sound Cards and disable the other one, but I don't have enough PCIe slots.

I really need to play around with this Alchemy. Last time I gave up as it had to many options and no clear instructions how to configure it all.

There is something awesome about seeing that EAX option come up under XP 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

SLI, wow 😀

What DX9 game needs so much power? Would have thought a single 285 would do the trick for most games.

Imagine the power required if you were running a game on 3 30" LCD's. A single 285 can't do that, even in DX9. Too many pixels to move. Probably not enough monitor ports on a single card, either. SLi is better for that.

kithylin wrote:

it could be the new drivers... but there is the problem, if you go back to older drivers, the newer cards then aren't supported […]
Show full quote

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

And what about newer cards like the 480/580/680/780? Are there game-breaking DX9 bugs in the driver?

I checked and my GTX660 still has drivers for Windows XP. It's quite a powerful card, on the level of a 580 and just needs a single PCIe power plug. Together with a basic S1154 or 1155 Pentium CPU and you could be set.

it could be the new drivers... but there is the problem, if you go back to older drivers, the newer cards then aren't supported by the driver a little further back, and you end up having to use older video cards then anyway.

Besides the crashes, even if games do run right, newer video cards are in general slower at DX9 than older cards were. There's a "BAR" where the video cards being released started being "optimized" to be faster for DX-10 & 11, yet slower at DX8 stuff. I've seen this and tested it myself, I had a pair of HD 7770's at one point, and in games like crysis, oblivion, borderlands 2, and Race Driver GRID, my HD4890's were roughly +40% faster in all games and situations, so I ended up selling em and going back to my old cards, even though the newer ones were much faster at DirectX-10 stuff.

So, I wouldn't want any of the newer cards for a DX9 build for any reason what so ever, older cards will be much faster at what I'm wanting this build for. And use older drivers, which is even better.

I've decided what I want to use for this project, I just have to wait and save up and get em later when the time comes.

Even though the fill rates on the 7770's are a little higher, the 4890's have a massive memory bandwith advantage that may be playing a role in this. It may not be missing/broken features in the hardware or drivers that are slowing your DX9 games with the 7770's. They may be starving the 7770's for video memory access. The 4890's have about a 60% advantage in that area.

I do remember the 7770 being a very basic value card. It wasn't very fast when it came out.

Didn't even think about higher resolutions and triple screens.

For me I will likely go with 17" or 19" 1280 x 1024 LCDs. Such monitors are easy to source and all the games support that resolution natively.

Wouldn't mind having either a 20" 1600 x 1200 screen or a 1920 x 1200 screen that has 4:3 aspect ratio function. But then it becomes expensive again. 17" and 19" are easy to find and very cheap.

I tried some more DX9 games today on my W8.1 i7 with GTX660 and didn't have any issues. The video driver can letterbox/pillarbox 1280 x 1024 without too many issues. Many games however have full widescreen support. There is a website that has great information on this (WSGF).

Some games stretch the HUD, like Farcry. This is a game I will always prefer to play on a non-widescreen monitor because of it.

So I think a 1920 x 1200 monitor would be ideal as you can cover both scenarios without too much trouble.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I do remember the 7770 being a very basic value card. It wasn't very fast when it came out. […]
Show full quote

I do remember the 7770 being a very basic value card. It wasn't very fast when it came out.

Didn't even think about higher resolutions and triple screens.

For me I will likely go with 17" or 19" 1280 x 1024 LCDs. Such monitors are easy to source and all the games support that resolution natively.

Wouldn't mind having either a 20" 1600 x 1200 screen or a 1920 x 1200 screen that has 4:3 aspect ratio function. But then it becomes expensive again. 17" and 19" are easy to find and very cheap.

I tried some more DX9 games today on my W8.1 i7 with GTX660 and didn't have any issues. The video driver can letterbox/pillarbox 1280 x 1024 without too many issues. Many games however have full widescreen support. There is a website that has great information on this (WSGF).

Some games stretch the HUD, like Farcry. This is a game I will always prefer to play on a non-widescreen monitor because of it.

So I think a 1920 x 1200 monitor would be ideal as you can cover both scenarios without too much trouble.

Actually the 'industry standard' is 1920x1080, that would be 1080p and most games I want to run on this system support it. I'll probably end up getting a screen like that for this system here I want to build some day.

It's interesting on the problem, I've had other people with GTX 680's report problems though, so.. not sure where it all lies.

Thanks for testing though.. I guess.. I'm still going through with building this thing some day >.< Also another factor, is your GTX-660 a bone-stock one or did it come factory overclocked?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

So I think a 1920 x 1200 monitor would be ideal as you can cover both scenarios without too much trouble.

Precisely!
6 years ago (oh god, time passes so fast!) I got an HP w2448hc 24" 1920x1200 glossy monitor for 281 euros that has pivot and height adjustment, auto brightness (light sensor), usb hub, webcam, VGA & DVI & HDMI inputs, but the main good thing is the 1:1 pixel mapping option in the menu.
So I can input a 1600x1200 screen resolution and have properly placed black borders in the side of the screen or I can input a 640x480 resolution and have it displayed in the center of the screen. 😉

This panel is TN, but you can the the obvious display difference with other competitive monitors of that time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi0BrDjNiKw

(This is its 26" bigger brother, but they are the same. If you don't have light on your back it's still a very solid performer!) 😊

Same here: about 7 years ago [I forget now!] I jumped on a Dell 24" WS 1920x1200. It has 1:1 pixel mapping - though I didn't know that's what it is called. It can display smaller res screens with no stretching - basically act like a small monitor inside a larger one. Nice for retro gaming.

tincup wrote:

Same here: about 7 years ago [I forget now!] I jumped on a Dell 24" WS 1920x1200. It has 1:1 pixel mapping - though I didn't know that's what it is called. It can display smaller res screens with no stretching - basically act like a small monitor inside a larger one. Nice for retro gaming.

That is why I like those older Dell laptops/ 😎

1920 x 1200 screens are still around, but at a premium. But heaps of them should be available used.

Interesting, a premium? I realized 16:9 won out in the WS war, but didn't know it had triumphed that big.

tincup wrote:

Interesting, a premium? I realized 16:9 won out in the WS war, but didn't know it had triumphed that big.

In AU Dell still has 2 models. Most other computer shops only have Full HD screens or higher, but not 1920 x 1600 anymore.

Problem is it's a bit of a gamble with the 4:3 aspect ratio function. The documentation is usually very vague and reviewers don't test this. Also it might work with DVI, but VGA could be different. All depends on the firmware.

I'd rather get a screen someone here has used and knows it works well. Or just stick with a 1280 x 1024. Not ideal but every game supports it.

I still can not / do not understand why anyone buys a 1920x1200 screen. I.. just the idea elludes me. The actual standard is 1920x1080 for 1080p, so why buy something unusual that may not be supported in all games and applications? The only "HD Screen" I've ever owned so far is an actual 1920x1080 Samsung LCD I bought in 2005 (that's still going strong and awesomely). If I ever get another screen it'll likely be a 30-inch (or more) LCD HDTV next instead. The LED screens have a visual "lag" or "delay" in responding to mouse movements for computers (so I'm told) but the LCD's over hdmi do not. I'm still waiting for the prices to come down and be super cheap on those (And by cheap, I mean < $200 for a name brand (Samsung or LG) 32" 1080p LCD HDTV screen, we're close.. but not there quite yet). Though I do wish I had a second screen of matching resolution for my big 6-core i7, having a 1400x900 second screen is kind of weird at times.

I do think sometime after getting this DX9 machine built I may go buy myself a LCD HDTV for my main gaming machine and use my samsung 1080p monitor for this dx9 thing instead.

Also: Machine building is on hold for a couple weeks to a month. My typical funds / income are being held up until we get in to the house we just bought. And everything I have (almost) is packed up to move right now.

kithylin wrote:

I still can not / do not understand why anyone buys a 1920x1200 screen

You do know we talk about playing really old games? Many don't support Full HD or only with glitches. 1600 x 1200 is THE high resolution 4:3 resolution for old games.

As an inspiration of this thread I bought myself an used XFX GTX295 for 80 dollars. I'll let my brother use it as his main gaming card until I upgrade my LGA775 system for something newer 😀