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Booksley wrote:

1. Crysis
2. Crysis

PC-only of course. If you're looking for the most advanced Mac game... Battlefield 2142 maybe?

Now that CoD 4 is out that ranks up there too.

Yeah Cry is pretty much the high water mark.

You have maybe time to read War & Peace?

Make sure to check out Crysis: Warhead while you're at it; it's better optimized than the original. Unfortunately at this point I pretty much have to rely on reviews and other outside sources until I get my newer stuff up & running, but I can keep you apprised. Most hereabouts acknowledge my game grfx knowledge... [/modesty]...tho Books, Levi et al also know their stuff, & akb25 is a games dev.

For overall taxing, you'll be needing the most physics-heavy, multithreaded games. Fortunately Crysis is both. Demo's about 1.4 GB, but it has a lot of extraneous stuff inside... like about half the game.

CoD4 for Mac just came out; even the IMG reviewer only gave it..

Graphics are going to get a nine. Overall I was very pleased with them, but the game engine used to develop COD4 was primarily aimed at console versions, which were engineered to run at 60 frames per second. This means that they weren't as perfect as the likes of Crysis or Far Cry 2. They still impressed me though, especially in the filtering techniques used.

http://www.insidemacgames.com/reviews/v … amp;Page=3

Yes, do check out Far Cry 2. In fact, just do some reading here in Gaming and you can get a pretty fair feel for the subject. I'll point out some threads for special attention later.

Mr. T wrote:

Grid looks pretty good; not as good as Crysis -- it's a console port, but it still looks a lot better on the PC.  It runs well, too (silky-smooth maxed-out on an 8800GT with a last-gen CPU).  It's easily the best looking racing game I've ever seen, with the most realistic damage.

Second GRID. Review at AT.

Performance with ATI Radeon HD 3870 was generally similar, with lower performance once anti-aliasing was enabled. We also looked at performance with GRID using multiple graphics chips in our Radeon HD 4870X2 preview. Everything performs about where you would expect for cutting-edge hardware, except that we experienced drastic performance drops at 2560x1600 on most of the GPUs (the 4870X2 being one exception). Updated drivers have addressed most of our performance concerns, and you will definitely want to run the latest drivers if you are using any dual-GPU setup.

As usual, users with lower end hardware (i.e. GeForce 8600/9500 GT or Radeon HD 2600/3650 or lower) will definitely need to step down the resolution and/or detail settings in order to achieve acceptable frame rates. Ultra quality settings are viable for higher end hardware, but you will need to drop to medium detail or even low detail for lesser graphics chips. Needless to say, the game doesn't impress nearly as much at medium or low detail, so you might be better off putting some money towards an upgraded GPU first if you fall into this category of users. Lucky for us, you can now get some serious graphics hardware like the Radeon HD 4850 for only $175, or you can pick up an 8800 GT like Eddie did for a measley $110 after mail in rebate.

<Enter Eddie>

Thank you, Jared!  I'm still waiting on that rebate, by the way.

That's the HD 2600 the discrete graphics in so many Macs including the iMac and even baseline on the MP- in fact there's a 2600 XT that's better than the Pro in Macs. And someone, hereabouts has an 8800 GT, like the top Mac consumer card, in his Hackytosh...

PURE is also worth a look in racing games.

Graphically, PURE is simply a gorgeous game. The environments you'll race though are vividly detailed with blooms of light and eye-catching structures throughout. On the PC front, PURE is hardly a game that will put today's upper-midrange graphics cards to the test. Equipped with a single 8800GT, an overclocked Core 2 Duo, and plenty of memory, my machine achieved an unwavering 60 FPS throughout most of the game. Whenever my GPU did take a hit, the effect was minimal with frame rates only falling to (at worst) 56 FPS. Even on its highest settings, similar results were achieved with a 6800 GT, suggesting great performance even on midrange machines. (Granted, 6800 GT doesn't support DX10 effects, but it still looked good and ran very well, which was rather surprising.)

While the PC version may have the upper hand in performance and graphical quality, the gap between it and the Xbox 360 version of PURE is not enormous by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, aside from the 360's signature blur effects, there isn't a whole lot separating the two save for the obvious difference in frame rates. Even though an interview with one of Black Rock's finest stated that the target frame rate for the console versions was 30, I am inclined to believe that the goal was exceeded. In the end, you've got an excellent performing game that looks and performs great on both consoles and PC. While I was not able to try out the PlayStation 3 version of PURE, I figured the deal breaker would be its online performance over the PlayStation Network, which is known for having its issues. However, the buzz seems to be pretty positive among the gamers who participate in the forums at PlayStation.com.

C'mon, Eddie, it's a smooth 30. It's one or the other to get 1- or 2-frame vsync.

Last edited by Bat (2008-10-31 8:54 pm)

CoD: Fishing- er, World at War is coming, a return to WWII on the CoD 4 engine. But really, Books, you should spare us some time and tell us what you thought of CoD4.

Last edited by Bat (2008-11-01 5:52 am)

Crysis is kind of an outlier.  Does anything else use this engine?

The most intensive games I can actually play on my computer are the UnrealEngine 3 games, i.e. Unreal Tournament 3 (which is a hog), Gears of War (which is a slug), and Bioshock (which runs beautifully at full detail for some reason).

There are also UE3 games that aren't very taxing, like the fun American McGee free downloads.

Assassin's Creed must be pretty intensive based on what I saw in the PS3 version.

ScifiterX wrote:

Isn't it interesting when those who license an engine can make it run slicker than those who developed the engine?

To be fair, Epic spent most of their time building, while licensees get to spend a lot on art and optimization.

Metacell wrote:

Crysis is kind of an outlier.  Does anything else use this engine?

Crysis: Warhead and Far Cry 2 use CryEngine 2 so far.

There are also UE3 games that aren't very taxing, like the fun American McGee free downloads.

And the very first UE3 game, which had both a demo on XBL and a PC demo IIRC. Name escapes me, I'll have to check. Kind of a kid's game, but fun enough.

Assassin's Creed must be pretty intensive based on what I saw in the PS3 version.

Yeah, esp. in DX10/10.1 mode.

ScifiterX wrote:

Which might explain UT3 but not Gears.

Gears was the first major UE3.0 game. They said it wasn't crossplatform as the PC version used an updated codebase, and IIRC a heavier asset load (textures etc). Not positive there; anyway it also had extra content i.e. a chapter the 360 version lacked.

These things take study. You'll be less sour-grapesy 'bout l33t grfx when you kan haz them too.

You'll be hearing about GoW 2 in a week. I'm betting it runs as slick as the original while looking better.

Booksley wrote:

ScifiterX wrote:

Which might explain UT3 but not Gears.

The Gears PC port was a horrible shame.

Aside from the too-consoley aspects, what IYO would be its faults? Bugs, low framerates, glitches graphic and otherwise etc.? It's liable to be a coupla-few weeks before I can play my own copy, gathering dust these last 10 month, and form my own impressions.

Booksley wrote:

Metacell wrote:

Crysis is kind of an outlier.  Does anything else use this engine?

It's an outlier because it's designed to run on a computer several years newer than the game.

Fixed.

And let's not forget X³ and its recent sequel, and that Starcraft 2, a frickin' RTS, will use DX10.1. Blizz is partnering with ATi on that.

You needs another new videocard. Haz Vista 64 & 8TB o' RAM?

Crysis Warhead 64-Bit Client & Linux Server Next Week [November 01, 2008, 3:52 pm ET] - Share

The Crysis Monthly Update #6 offers the October edition of this online Crysis newsletter. Various topics are covered, and the update also includes details on plans for a version 1.1 patch for Crysis Warhead. The change list of the patch indicates the new version of the shooter follow-up will include Linux dedicated server support as well as a 64-bit version of the game. Release of the patch is expected next week sometime.

About a year ago Sweeney was suggesting RAM for Xmas ... on Far Cry 2, AT has a blog article about its benchmarking tool:

The Far Cry 2 benchmark tool owns all other built in benchmark tools around. So far there are only two issues we have with it. We want it to be able to take screenshots at a specific frame or at specific intervals, and we want it to be just a little more stable. The former issue is of less importance than the latter, as there are other ways to take screenshots. But stability is the only thing that really stands in the way of some incredible analysis. If running more than 5 to 10 different test cases, we've found the tool to be likely not to complete. If individual runs fail, we'd still like to see the benchmark continue, but unfortunately it just stops.

This is a big issue when performing 60 runs. That's right, 2 DX versions, 2 AA settings (off and 4x), 3 quality settings, and 5 resolutions. It's a data collectors dream come true. Not only do they keep CSV files with frame data for all frames from each of the 3 loops we are running per test, but they build a nice html file with all the data for easy access and even display a graph of instantaneous framerate per frame. Even though I haven't had the chance to re-run our AMD numbers, here's a sample of what we're looking at:

[graph]

Comparing this to the DX9 and to the Radeon HD 4870 in both DX9 and DX10 will be quite informative. As we can see, even at the maximum possible settings, we still get playable framerates. This is really a testament to the engine, as Ubisoft were able to do some great things with the visuals while still providing excellent playability across the board.

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=514

STALKER (w/ OL2.2) is what seems to have done in my x1650 Pro.