09.05.06
Soa Pro IV: Games
I was working so hard to get Boot Camp working just so I could see how game performance would be. Trying to read reviews on the internet about this is a complete waste of time. If you don’t have a Core 2 Duo Extreme, quad SLI video, 8 gigs of RAM (even though Windows XP only detects 3 or 4gb) and killer nics then your PC is garbage and can’t handle any games period. My “old” PC is far from these requirements, yet I can play all my games with max graphics. Even new demos like Prey. Not perfectly, I’ll admit, but definitely well enough for me. So the Mac Pro needed to do at least that much.
My first tests were City of Heroes and Titan Quest since those are the two games I actually plan on playing. City of Heroes is on maximum graphics (%200 textures and such) and it runs like a dream. Incredibly smooth, even when running through crowded cities with Super Speed. Which on my old system would hiccup now and then. City of Heroes isn’t the most graphics heavy and gorgeous game, but it is fairly processor heavy because of the large world. Titan Quest also ran great with full graphics and that one is a pretty new and intensive game. I haven’t spent more then 10 minutes in the game so far though, so jury is still out. Next was the Prey demo and the new Flight Simulator X. Prey ran great at max graphics even on the multiplayer maps that had you jumping through all sorts of portals and switching you upside down like crazy. Never a single hiccup. When Intendant cranked Flight Simulator X to max it really put the hurt on his PC. He loves his flight sims, so this was a real good test for him. With everything on Ultra High our flight was smooth as silk. Water effects were amazing too.
And this is with the base video card and RAM. I eventually plan on either doing SLI or upgrading to a beefier video card. And I am definitely getting more RAM. I’ll wait until this thing starts to have problems with games before I stress about the video card, but the RAM will be in the near future.
While I was having fun in City of Heroes I decided to do a little recording of me and 8th (Sosacms) doing our usual encounters. Hopefully this will get a few of the resistant savages hooked. VirtualDub actually detected all 4 processors just fine, so it was encoding to Divx at 100 fps. That was pretty damn neat.