Saturday, December 21, 2013
GTA V vs GTA IV ICEnhancer vs the NSA
OK, so I finally got my gaming PC setup, and while its not a state-of-the-art system (Im using DDR2 for christsake), the final upgrades got me to the point where I was brave enough to try out the infamous ICEnhancer mod for GTA IV. This mod has been around for quite sometime, and the reason its not more popular is that you need a supercomputer from the future to play it at any reasonable FPS. The ICEnhancer mod is poorly optimized, buggy, and will sometimes crash or freeze for no reason, in addition to being an absolute system hog. I have a Q9550 clocked @ 3.6ghz, 8GB DDR2, and an ATI 7970 with a healthy overclock, and even with what is a fairly powerful system, Im still only managing 20-30 FPS in most outdoor areas - and thats with some config tweaks to the mod and optimizations to GTA IV like reducing the traffic and draw distance.
Why you might ask, would anyone go thru such trouble? Take a look at the video above if you havent already. This mod, and Metro Last Light, which Im currently playing through, are what the real next generation of gaming are like. You all can have your PSONE and XBOX5 callofdutycallofdutycallofduty motion control consoles. Im sure that they are great products to sell and watching The Today Show *Now With Achievements is a truly scintillating experience. Yeah, while Im pretty sure that eventually the NSA will be scanning the contents of my apartment via Kinect sometime in the future, right now, if those people "watching the watchers" want to watch my cat lick the area where they cut off his balls (those spooks are creeps man), if they want to case the place to see if Im harboring "terrorists" (lol) to attempt a possible drone strike (yes we kill people now without due process, The Constitution is like soooooo 18th century man), they are going to have to do so in person (I have a futon).
Or... via my cellphone. Or laptop. Telescope. Periscope. Nanodrones. Whatever. Cause my gaming rig doesnt have camera, only a mic for me to scream obscenities laced tirades into about my opponents playing wrong and winning, and a new mechanical keyboard for insta-ragequitting Starcraft 2. Listen, just because Im paranoid, doesnt mean they arent watching, right?
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4 comments:
Sorry I flaked for a month guys. I was hoping maybe one of you would post something, but I see we are all cut from the same cloth of "blah, whatever."
So GTA V. Holy shit. Even after playing GTA IV with all the mods, in many ways GTA V looks better sometimes, and amazingly, it actually runs better. And lets be clear here, GTA IV was (and is) a great game. But it was no San Andreas. And in every single way possible, GTA V has eclipsed San Andreas (they just released a port for mobile which is quite good).
GTA V isnt just the best GTA game ever, its now one of my favorite games of all time and I can easily see spending thousands of hours in the world Rockstar has created, if I can somehow clone myself and have the clone get an extra 1000 hours of free time.
Next month we will get bank heists, so goes the rumor, but the content creator isnt even out of beta yet and Ive already found some great maps, and the possibilities are quite mind bending. I didnt even consider what an editor can do to this game. If Rockstar really does make a full run at GTA Online over the next few years, with a complete content creator, DLC for other cities and expansion maps and modes, its going to be hard for me to give up on the 360.
However, if they eventually release GTA V + all content for the PS7/XBOXZERO, which, given that a PC port is confirmed and the PC version would share the same X86 architecture as the new consoles, seems likely, I might have to cancel those dinner reservations with Edward Snowden's replacement (I didnt know White Castle took reservations either!)
Wow, the walking around parts like the diner made me wonder just how good Fallout 4 is going to look, considering how far graphics have come since Fallout 3/Vegas.
Making the game must be so much work though :)
Once my tax return comes around i'd like your advice on a prebuilt gaming rig.
Sure Blank Id be happy to assist you. I am a system builder and Id be happy to build one for you or sell you one of the half dozen systems I have lying around.
I would advocate the Steambox which is Linux based but unfortunately its still a bit too early in the game to really throw my support behind it - the number of titles is limited and the few 3rd party AAA games like Metro last Light havent been as well optimized for the platform. Without going into too much detail, Valves approach with driver support means its not simple to port games over, and ATI/AMD graphics cards arent supported - at all.
All of the systems I build are based around AMD - not to say theres anything wrong with market leaders Nvidia or Intel, but the value that AMD CPUs and GPUs currently offer is unbeatable. There's a reason Sony and Microsoft decided to go with AMD this generation. But also 2014 will be the year when AMD's APU architecture floods the desktop market, so Im in a bit of wait and see mode. APU offers a CPU and GPU on a single die without compromised performance. Its a huge leap forward, and its the tech that the new consoles are based on, so its worth waiting to see how their 3rd gen Kaveri APU is rolled out for consumers if you can wait until Q2-Q3 of 2014.
However, I am now also a strong advocate of spending extra on a high end monitor, mechanical keyboard and high DPI mouse for a gaming PC. Also, you should set aside money for a nice chair and desk, speakers/headphones - the total experience of a great gaming PC setup is much more than just the machine itself.
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