• 19Sep 08

  Clear Skies Performance: Upgraded (New Hardware)

  Hello all. A short while ago I posted about the performance of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky based on my 8800 GTX 768 MB video card. For anyone wishing a reference point to a good upgrade, I went out and purchased a Geforce GTX 280 1024MB video card to replace the 8800 (which sadly is several generations behind after a year).

  Image supplied by Guru3D. (Hopefully most of it fits in frame).

  

  Well Clear Sky has gone from playable on the stock "high" setting with most of the sliders near the midpoint and a resolution set at 1680x1050, to playable at custom high settings with all the sliders at the maximum and a resolution of 1920x1200. Nothing else has changed in my system except the video card, and the game is now playable with all the eye candy. I should mention that even with this behemoth of a video card, the game does slow down on rare occasion with these very high settings, but could be made perfectly smooth with very minor tweaking (I just prefer the visual quality).

  Considering my 8800 GTX cost me nearly $850 after taxes when I got it, and this GTX 280 cost barely more than $500, it's a good trend to see the top of the line coming down in price. Of course, it's still absurdly expensive and I am a crazy man for buying all this hardware, but what can I say, I'm a gamer

  S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has always been known for it's immersiveness and it's atmosphere, and with this new engine upgrade the lighting and effects are just gorgeous, and it does give Crysis a run for it's money. The palette is different obviously, this is not a tropical island but the russian plains. Nonetheless it looks great, and gone are most of the small graphical glitches like the visual artifacting during the rainy periods in the first game. KevinV pointed out that there is still no animation between the low-crouch, crouching, and standing positions, you simply snap from one to the other when you push the button. It is lacking some pollish, but I think like the last game it is greater than the sum of it's parts. I may write a full review for this game when I am finished with it, and I plan to upload some video (maybe even HD?) in the next day or two.

  • Posted Sep 19, 2008 7:15 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 18Sep 08

  Cooking with Tim and Jeff Gerstmann :)

  This is a video from a while back, with Tim Tracy and Jeff Gerstmann making Twinkie Tiramisu after raiding the Gamespot fridge lol. I had been trying to locate this video for ages to share, and finally found it.

  http://www.gamespot.com/users/GunnyHath/video_player?id=JCFhxTqs5b0FsjDb

  Hilarity ensues

  Thanks to dzjaansis for pointing out how easy it is to embed.

  • Posted Sep 18, 2008 10:35 am PT
  • Category: Humor
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• 16Sep 08

  Clear Skies & Performance (Updated)

  

  *UPDATE* The performance hit is almost entirely due to the "Enhanced" HDR lighting, with it on standard High Dynamic Range, the game is fully smooth even at 1920x1200.

  I took advantage of the 10% off S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky pre-order on Steam on the weekend, and was eager to download and try it lastnight. The download took approximately 1-2 hours, and the activation process was painless and quick. Kevin Vanord as well as others I'm sure, reported Steam service bogged down and were unable to download Clear Sky in a timely manner, so I am lucky in this regard.

  This will not be a full review or thoughts on blog (as I am only an hour or less into the game), but more a preview and some info about the performance.

  The engine in the game has been updated substantially since the first game, including DX10 features and enhanced lighting effects, similar to the ones seen in Crysis. As you may expect, this takes a heavy toll on the CPU and GPU.

  My current rig is an E6600 Core 2 DUO, 4096 MB OCZ Platinum XTC2 RAM, and a BFG 8800 GTX 768 MB, running XP Professional, for reference. My monitor is a 28" LCD that has a native resolution of 1920x1200, which the original Shadow of Chernobyl runs at with ease, with all the settings cranked to their highest.

  Clear Sky however does not run with ease, in fact with the settings cranked it was a veritable slide-show. Reducing resolution to a non native but proper aspect ratio of 16:10 (1680x1050) improved frame rate slightly but it was necessary to reduce my custom settings from mostly cranked to the stock "High" setting to see a noticably reasonable increase.

  At 1680x1050 and a stock "high" setting (most sliders mid way, many options off), the game is playable but still sluggish, somewhere in the 20fps range.

  New to Clear Sky's lighting options is "Enhanced" high dynamic lighting, which is above the standard HDR apparently. As most settings require you to restart the game to take effect, I haven't tweaked it much yet and just jumped into the game to play it, but if I find out the main culprit (I'm guessing it's mostly the enhanced lighting) I will either add to this blog or write a new one about performance.

  Performance aside, with all the settings cranked, Clear Sky is a very pretty game, for a nuclear disaster area. Light rays stream in through windows, water is clear and fluid, and there are a few effects I haven't been able to see as I'm not running Vista and thus not DX10. I shudder to think about the performance in Vista, with or without the extra features.

  Game-play so far, is much as it was in the first game, but with an enhanced inventory management system and other helpful UI tweaks. There are some new PDA features as well, but I will leave these details to a future blog.

  A moderate system will run this game fine on medium settings and reasonable resolutions, but these results are based on extreme high settings and resolutions, so don't let it discourage you from playing a great game. This blog is to inform people about how the game runs on very high quality settings.

  Note: This may change considerably with future patches to the game. Shadow of Chernobyl was considerably sluggish the first time I played it at 1024x768, and due to patches now runs perfectly smoothly at 1920x1200. I can't say this will happen or not for Clear Sky (I'd assume any engine tweaks would also apply to a newer game), but here's to hoping.

  • Posted Sep 16, 2008 11:08 am PT
  • Category: Games
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