Bioshock Infinite

Ninen_sl said:

Heh, at this point, even $70 is too much to spend on a Radeon graphics card.* Gamers don't let friends buy Radeons.

*assuming you want to actually play games with it. If you're doing business things, 3d modeling, etc, it's a good buy.

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As someone who doesn't keep up with the latest video card technology, why is this?

-Last I checked. reviews are generally lackluster and behind equally priced Nvidia products.
-On message boards that are fairly agnostic about brands, I've seen quite a bit more chatter about various games having performance and/or optimization related issues with Radeon than with Nvidia.
-Physx still isn't happy with Radeon, though I've heard rumblings about them moving towards a solution.

These things tend to go in cycles, so I'm sure EVENTUALLY AMD will come even and/or drive ahead, but they're not there now.

It always flips back and forth right now Nvidia is where it is at, about 2 years ago it was Radeon.

With current drivers, I would say the price/performance ratio of AMD and Nvidia products are essentially equal. Physx is obviously not available for AMD, which hasn't effected many games (although I did kind of miss having it in Borderlands 2). I have gone back and forth between both companies for years, and I think the compatibility issues are grossly exaggerated. Call me biased, but as long as the hardware is comparable, I will go with AMD. I like to support the underdog, and I've had a few Nvidia chips die on me (9800GT and 7800GT if I recall).

a few years ago most games were optimized for nvidia so ati's popularity declined a bit. right now i'd say amd is the superior gpu brand because you get more bang for your buck.

From past experiences I feel it is safe to say compatibility issues are not grossly exaggerated and that "bang for your buck" doesn't adequately account for the "firmware" dildo ATI/AMD 'bangs' in your ass every few months. Or maybe it does after all... I should not spend more time syncing my card to my system (to best accommodate each new game) than I do playing the game itself (only happened once -- fuck ATI driver support).

Needless to say after 2 ATI builds and 3 Nvidia builds. From here on out (barring gross quality/pricing changes) I'm sticking with Nvidia.

PS. I had an Nvidia card burn out from poor ventilation (my fault) and 30 minutes later I had a brand new card coming my way (only had to pay shipping).

/rant over

Dandai_sl said:

At 96% for a free copy of XCOM with your preorder of Bioshock on Steam. Thanks for the free game, fellas.

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Thats awesome! Been wanting Xcom but kept missing all the sales on it.

IGN already has their review copy and it will be posted Thursday. Getting review copys this early "usually" means the game will be good.

Yeah, same thing applies to movies/music. You're not going to release anything if your game is shit. If it's good you want reviews to hit on release if not before.

Barring the $500+ bracket, ATI haters are clueless - especially quoting driver issues that 10:1 since 2009 severe driver issues have been Nvidia over and over again.(not shocking since ATI almost entirely follows industry standards and Nvidia shortcuts their drivers ala 3dfx)

Just like Tuco quoting no Crossfire support in new releases - EVERY ATI reference board has Crossfire, a handful of companies offer nonCrossfire variants at $20 or so of a discount vs the same card with Crossfire.

I'm generally building a machine a week between friends, family, and some income supplementing and bench them extensively - unless you're going for the topend they're basically neck in neck unless you are only going to play 2-3 games that have a preference otherwise within a $$ bracket you'll win some and lose some game dependent. (Even sometimes with the topend my own 7970 runs Skyrim better than my GTX 680 rig otherwise identical machines - and with better color saturation IMO on my 60" plasma (and if anything the ATI rig should be running worse since its the wife's primary so I don't monitor TSRs etc as heavily)

On Infinite - hopefully my trophy obsession doesn't start me too far behind will be getting PC next month but getting PS3 for trophying first, not seeing any sign of midnight release announcements yet.

Have we learned nothing from pre-ordering other games before we see reviews?

joeboo_sl said:

Have we learned nothing from pre-ordering other games before we see reviews?

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Clearly not. haha

Then they charge back, when its shit. and cant understand how they got tricked.

Utnayan_sl said:

FYI: If you are not buying this on Amazon as of today, you are doing it wrong

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xcom is unlocked on steam now too.

Bioshock 1, TF2 items, and Xcom on steam.


xcom, kindle novella, and $30 credit on amazon.
For reference 2k games of recent, for that $30 credit.

borderlands 2, civ5, spec ops, the darkness 2, mafia 2.
A good list indeed.

joeboo_sl said:

Have we learned nothing from pre-ordering other games before we see reviews?

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This is bioshock, even on their worse day they couldnt fuck this up. That said prior drm shit that came with original and how fucking retarded devs are with DLC I will be waiting for game of the year edition unless multiplayer is the tits.

joeboo_sl said:

Have we learned nothing from pre-ordering other games before we see reviews?

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Confidence in a project to preorder is no different really than supporting a Kickstarter for a project that is currently in vogue - you put bones down on a title, so the company in question assumes your confidence represents 2-3 more sales beyond your own which leads to more units being ordered from the company, which can in turn give them more wiggle room on adjusting release schedules and promotions (i.e. the Xcom bonus).

Preordering EVERYTHING willy-nilly is a problem, preordering a handful of games that you have faith in is not foolish in the slightest (even when they don't give great promotions like Infinite is doing).

Not to mention how valueless reviews have been recently - between many reviewers artificially inflating games and a handful artificially deflating them to garner attention. I'd rather play a game and be part of the reviewing process than be a month and a half late to the party when metacritic will have hashed out a realistic review number.