Shades Of Twilight

To recap, eversince I got my new ATI HD 4650, I have been re-playing old games just to get a “feel” of how much things might have improved.

One of these is Call Of Duty 4. Previously on my old rig, the P4 3.0Ghz Hyperthreading (single core), I get respectable framerates (about 20+ FPS) with “medium” settings. Resolution was at 1024×768, and certain graphic details were turned off (notably Anti-aliasing). When I got my new (current) rig, with the integrated ATI HD3200, performance was better. A few more graphic details were turned on, some were set to medium. Framerates were about the same, ie 20 odd.

With the new card, it auto-detected everything at High and whatever that was off, was turned on. Anti-aliasing was set to 4x. However, resolution was still at 1024×768. I manually turned the resolution up to 1280×1024, the maximum that my monitor can run on.

With FRAPS running to measure framerates, I started COD4. To my jaw-dropping amazement, COD4 clocked an average of 45 FPS! Even with FRAPS capturing video, it never went under 30 FPS, but hovering around mid to high 30’s.

Ok, yes I know I am pretty bad at COD4 after all these time. In fact I think I should re-play it again, because this Nikolai mission made me realise I forgot alot of the story (and hence, enemy placements and locations) to justify another run-through.

The next entry, I’ll probably bring you a video of the new Stalker game. I had a pretty rough time running it on the integrated HD3200 chip - many parts of the game were stuttering and jerky, and I estimate framerates to be about 5 to 10 in some places.

Yup I have been spending the past week just playing with my older games with my new toy - the ATI Radeon HD 4650 card.

I’m just constantly amazed by how much I can push the graphic details up to, and still maintain great framerates. One game in particular, Assassin’s Creed, never cease to amaze me in this part. In my previous entry, I put everything to max except the resolution. Now, I pushed the resolution up to the max my monitor could handle - 1280×1024.

As you can see in the video below, there is virtually no impact on the framerates to the naked eye. However, FRAPS did measure an average of 3 frames less than at 1024×768.

As you can see from the video clip, it’s still smooth on the whole. During recording of this video, there is naturally a drop of framerates. Without recording on, it’s smoother. Compare this clip to my previous ones:

1. Old PC - P4 3.0Ghz Hyperthreading
2. Old PC - same rig as above, with some tweaking

For an investment of just about S$100, I think my current rig can last me a couple of years more!

Since the IT Show 2009 is on right now (for people in Singapore), you might want to run out and grab an even better card than what I have - the ATI Radeon 4870. I hope they are selling it at a great discount over there. In any case, I won’t be going to the IT Show. I have nothing to buy, and I don’t want to tempt myself on non-essential stuff I might see there, and buy them on impulse

Image via Wikipedia

About 6 months or so, circumstances forced me to upgrade my PC. Budegtary constraints meant I had to get a “value” or “budget” system. I got one with an integrated graphics chip, the ATI HD3200, which is probably one of the better boards at the time.

6 months later, ie now, I have saved up enough to finally upgrade the graphics card. I still had budgetary constraints, and I looked around for the best I could buy for about S$100 (US$66). After poring through pricelists online via The Hardwarezone, I finally narrowed my choice down to the ATI Radeon 3850 and the ATI Radeon 4650 line. I wanted to consider a nvidia 9600GT, being a nvidia user for a long time. However, prices for a nvidia 9600 was not within my budget.

After a little more deliberation, and of course looking at reviews, I finally decided on the ATI Radeon 4650, being the best card I could afford at this time. Reviews looked good on this card - supposedly able to do 30FPS or more on games I play, even at 1280×1024.

Once I got home with the card, and a quick installation later, I ran up various games to give it a test. I ran Armed Assault, and increased resolution to 1280×1024, pumping graphic details up to “high” settings. While I didn’t run FRAPS to measure the framerates, I could “feel” that it’s a whole lot smoother. Even the character animations of the soldiers felt smoother.

Next I ran Assassin’s Creed, the Framerate Killer on my previous PC. On average I could only do about 7 to 12 FPS on my previous PC, and slightly better about 10 to 15 on my current one with the embedded ATI HD3200. I’ll let the video clip below speak for itself.

Framerates now average about 30 FPS, spiking to 42 and bottoming out around 19 or so. Pretty dang good for a card that costs S$109 eh? This time around, I put Assassin’s Creed into max graphic settings, keeping only the resolution at 1024×768. Everything else was maxed out.

Yes I am pretty pleased, and amazed, at how a cheap card can change the gaming experience. Yes I would like the highest end card if I can afford it of course. However, since I couldn’t, the ATI Radeon 4650 is the next best thing I can get.