I've got a feeling my GTX280 is on the way out (garbled display and lockup randomly happening when opening apps - almost certainly a video memory issue) so I have started scouting around for a new gfx card.

Currently I like the look of the Radeon 6950 (should hopefully flash to 6970) based on the price/performance it gives in modern games.
However, historically I know there have been issues running QW on ATI cards e.g. dynamic lighting so wanted to get some feedback from QW players as I won't be able to find out this sort of stuff elsewhere in all likelhood. I haven't owned an ATI card since my 9800SE AIW some 6+ years ago.

1) How easy is it to force refresh rates for various resolutions?
2) Does it give any issues in ezquake-gl (preferably under Win7 64bit)? Not too bothered about framerate as long at it isn't stuttery e.g. if I have to cap at say 847fps instead of 1001 it wouldn't be the end of the world.
3) How does it compare to Nvidia cards you have owned?

My gut feeling is that Nvidia is a 'safer' option however based on benchmarks it doesn't look like the GTX470 will be as good for modern games (which is still important to me alongside QW).

edit: just seen that the NDA on GTX560 lifts later on today so will keep an eye out for how competitive that is, if it matches GTX480 performance then I'll be interested.

A bit offtopic, but it might help so:Try to "bake the card in the owen". If you're lucky its just a bad soldering on the PCB. There is a lot of info on the netz.

I got a hd 4870 that I am/was very happy with, tho I only play qw nowadays so can't really benefit from having this solid card.

1) Not sure exactly, I read about win 7 perhaps holding back crt screens from using the refresh rates they are capable of and I downloaded some program via google to enable any hz I want on any resolution (ofcourse if the monitor can't handle that hz it won't be able to use it).
Personally from looking at my current drivers and control center I can't force any refresh rates but as I said above it's very easy to fix that without the help of ATI control center.

2) Yes it does, I don't know how any other ATI cards act but I only have powerup glow enabled in qw and when I got quad or person with quad in my vision with my current settings I am able to hold 300 fps without any drops. With r_dynamic 0 I am able to have 800 maxfps without any hinges.
So if you are using rocketlight, rockettrail etc from my experience with ATI you sir are fucked.

3) Well last nvidia card I had was like 9750 gt and it worked very well. Can't really compare the different interfaces with control panels etc since it was so long ago.
But in my experience unless you are some nitpick fag who has to have everything absolutely maxed in the newest games and you care about one card having 55fps vs the other 60fps in one game, there is really not that much difference in ati/nvidia cards at the same price range.
There seems to be however a really big difference between ati/nvidia cards and ezquake-gl.

I personally wouldn't risk it. Got to ask yourself honestly if you will really see any difference in the modern games you play and if it's worth losing alot of fps and playability in qw.

It won't. Maybe GTX470 performance or a bit more. GTX570 is almost identically performing with GTX480, GTX580 being the fastest of the NVIDIA cards.

Happy HD4870 owner here. ezQuake is very smooth with 2233RZ in Windows, but nowadays I use fodquake in Linux, which is also silky smooth (ezQuake on Linux is NOT). You can use r_dynamic 0 if you want really high stable FPS (but what's the point?), but personally I have it enabled with cl_maxfps 500. Sure quad+rocket lights will make my FPS drop down to 300 occasionally, but it's nothing I can actually feel when playing so meh...

The first leaked benchmarks prove GTX560 to be ~10-20% faster than GTX470, depending on application. These results are to be taken with a grain of salt though, obviously. I think/hope that the card will be a success, especially if they get the pricetag right.

ps. when is the NDA expiring? :<

Thanks for the oven trick headsup, I'll probably try that in the first instance if it starts getting really bad, as I'm fairly happy with the performance level of the GTX280 still.

GTX560 NDA expires at 14:00 GMT I believe.

I was wondering about this too, as I thought the previous generation AMD cards had the edge on heat and power consumption, which for me is preferable to raw performance. My 8800GT is beginning to age and I'm surprised it's lasted this long when it gets up to 90C. Also I have a hate relationship with win7 and current nvidia drivers.

Official benchmarks prove the difference being less.

Indeed. I was a little disappointed of the real performance of the GPU. It has great overclocking potential though.

Eh? Considering Renzos chart its a lot better than its predecessor and GTX570 is only 15% ahead. Can't see how you can be dissapointed?

I don't think GTX560 is disappointment. It is faster than GTX470, it is considerably less noisy, cooler and uses less electricity. It is a great mainstream product (the price should be a bit lower though). If you want performance, you'll go for GTX570 or even GTX580.


NVIDIA has a good range of products now:

GTX460 (~150e): Replaces GTX275/285 and adds DX11 support

GTX560 (~250e): Replaces GTX470 and offers slightly better performance with less noise and lower power consumption

GTX570 (~350e): Replaces GTX480 with same performance with less noise and similar power consumption

GTX580 (~450e): Is the fastest single card from NVIDIA.

I think I was trying to say that i expected it to be a little bit cheaper. I admit that I said what I said in the heat of the moment, and it was a bit silly to say.

ps. With all this being said, I think that it's a great card, and just as Renzo said it completes the great range of Geforce products.

pps. I love the overclocking potential with this GPU. Also there are already cards with custom cooling solutions (Gigabyte, Asus etc.).

Just seen a deal go up for an Asus GTX480 @ £194.99, very slightly cheaper than the GTX560 price here. Think I may partake of that, as it should be more of a worthwhile upgrade in performance terms. Main thing is I can get something fairly powerful while still staying with Nvidia.

Just remember that GTX480 is noisy as hell, gets really hot and uses a shitload of electricity so be sure to have proper PSU and chassis ventilation too.

You could always buy a custom aftermarket cooler for your GTX480. Extra ~50 euros though.

ps. it's weird that there isn't much GTX480 cards with factory installed custom cooling, such as Msi Twinfrozr, Gigabyte Windforce or Asus DirectCU (all superb). I've only spotted Galaxy and Palit.

Custom cooling solutions mostly suck, as they never seem to blow the hot air out from the chassis, pushing the thermal load to the ventilation to the chassis. This is especially bad if you have some el-cheapo chassis with only one 120mm exhaust fan (basically a normal mid-tower).

The vapor chamber cooler that is on GTX570 and GTX580 is great, it is acceptably silent (well, "silent" and keeps the temps quite ok.

Bit unsure what to do now, my GTX480 preorder (£195) won't get shipped until Friday so I am contemplating switching it to the GTX470 TwinFrozr (£144). My case cooling isn't the greatest (huge mess of wires, hd cage sat in the bottom of the case etc). But on the flipside a 480 is likely to last longer due to being faster and having more VRAM (although I suspect 1.25GB will be sufficient for a couple of years anyway).

You should stay away from both GTX470 and GTX480, really.

Like I already said GTX560 is faster and more silent than GTX470 and uses considerably less electricity. GTX480 on the other hand is the noisiest and hottest single card of them all, draining a lot more power than anything else, so you are forced to have good ventilation and a high quality PSU if you want to use such card.

GTX560/570 all the way, GTX580 if you are feeling rich.

Radeon 5770 (vaporx blablabla)
1. Easily overrides refresh rate in driver menu with standart values. to get 154 hz use something else (powerstrip?)
2. Dynamic lighting FPS loss is significant until you use -nomtex command line parameter. using it i've got 1036fps on timedemo dag_griffin_dm6 (r_dynamic 1). without it - much less
3. My friend's 460 geforce does better -1260fps (same demo), but it never runs such engine as tenebrae ))))/ catalyst 10.4 runs it well

"2. Dynamic lighting FPS loss is significant until you use -nomtex command line parameter. using it i've got 1036fps on timedemo dag_griffin_dm6 (r_dynamic 1). without it - much less"

What is this "-nomtex command line parameter"? =)

Supposedly disables OpenGL multitexturing. Not sure what it's used for in ezQuake.

Wise words. I second that with no hesitation, in case you absolutely wan't to go with Nvidia.

But if you would consider AMD/ATI, a HD6950 would be a great deal also (especially now that AMD lowered prices). You can choose between 1GB and 2GB, with the latter being a bit more expensive obviously. You can also flash the card with a HD6970 vbios, thus having a HD6970 with the price of a HD6950.

Now is a great window to buy either brand, since there's a bit of a pricing "war" between AMD and Nvidia -> 560/570 vs 6870/6950.

2rkd
if you add "-nomtex" string to command line while running quake, somewhere in the deeply realms of the engine He will do this
if (!COM_CheckParm("-nomtex" && CheckExtension("GL_ARB_multitexture") {
...qglMultiTexCoord2f = GL_GetProcAddress("glMultiTexCoord2fARB";
qglActiveTexture = GL_GetProcAddress("glActiveTextureARB";
...Com_Printf_State(PRINT_OK, "Multitexture extensions found\n"; gl_mtexable = true;}...
if (!gl_mtexable) gl_textureunits = 1;... and so on and so forth

it was usefull in the Early Ages of Q1 to show you mirrors instead of stained-glass windows on the map start. Now modern ati and intel drivers don't pay any attention to Quake1 )) so if there is any flying rocket, it somehow causes same texture to update many times while it needs only one update per frame. If you get a fps drop - try to run not "e:\games\<yourquakeopenglengine>.exe" but
"e:\games\<yourquakeopenglengine>.exe" -nomtex
it may help.

by the way ezquake 1.9.3 perfomance is nearly 35% better than ezquake 2.0.1 on my config/hands/drivers

No wonder considering texture compression initialization is broken on ezQuake 2.0 and 2.0.1 (fixed in alpha builds).

thx

Mirrors and stained-glass?!?

Yeah r_mirroralpha.
Good example is on ztndm3, you can see reflections.

Went with the GTX470 in the end as it is significantly cheaper than the GTX560 and I probably won't keep it long enough to make the power savings worthwhile.

2 Zalon
if you don't beilive us ) you can found somewere old version of glquake (quaketerminus site had it - i remember for sure), it comes with text documents and there was very good documentation about gl_ variables. you can see mirrors only instead of one texture - on start map, easy skill corridor. it was so cool.. transparent water (with r_novis 0 and 0 fps too), and mirror (r_mirriralpha .3)