Framerates: the untold story

[Traak]

I want a fast gaming computer. Sure, having a triple-crossfire setup that can generate a peak framerate of 400 would be nice. But it doesn't impact my gaming as much as a computer that does something FAR more critical:

A computer that never, under any circumstances, lets my FPS drop below 30. When I'm in a combatant-clogged CY or lobby, orbs, bullets, explosions, epithets, and soldiers all over the place, I don't CARE that my computer can sail along at 400 fps in an empty tower on Indar.

What I CARE about is movie-like smoothness of every single combatant, projectile, explosion, sound, and soldier movement when in worst-case scenarios.

This is not so much video-dependent, it is networking bandwidth and associated positional data processing- dependent. When my computer chokes so it does not accurately relay to me the position of Jabbering Jimmy Jackhammer as he dances around my MAX, lacing me with deadly fire, I am at a severe disadvantage, at the ONE time I REALLY need that accurate and smooth video display of his position.

What I am wondering is what can a person do, even given a relatively large budget, to maximize his crunch-time display smoothness?

I am thinking a separate network interface card that removes all networking load from the CPU would be a great start.

Also, a sound card to remove all sound load from the CPU.

Plus, a RAID card to place all the HDD I/O functions on something other than the CPU.

Plus SCSI drives to further offload computational resource needs.

In addition to the usual fast CPU/RAM/motherboard stuff.

Anyone have any experiences around this area?

[Goku]

Traak I think you are overstating a few things here. First off sound isn't a major process on CPUs like it was 10 years ago with the birth of multi core CPUs. Sound cards are nice, but really only help with improving sound quality.

Raid isn't really worthwhile in this day and age when you can get a SSD. Raid has advantages, but I would rather take a SSD due to its random access time advantage that HDDs can not touch.

Even if you went all out with what you want to do I doubt you would notice much if any kind of difference say a highend 2600K w/ GTX 580 SLI would be able to do with even a regular HDD and onboard sound. All that for the most part is minuscule when it comes to CPU processing.

[Traak]

Here is the first comparo I have ever seen that includes that important measurement: minimum framerates

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1062/pg4/nvidia-gtx-580-oc-vs-radeon-6870-oc-crossfire-vs-radeon-5970-aliens-vs-predator.html

[Mutant]

Your right in that minimum FPS is the important factor once your average is going over 100. And any review site that only gives max or average FPS really are second rate. An FPS over time graph is realy needed to show the whole picture.

Personaly i like HardOCP, see BF3 beta review: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/10/03/battlefield_3_open_beta_performance_image_quality/2

The Max playable settings is a nice way of giving real life feedback.

[Traak]

Wow. Motion blur in real time as an option on games?

In case anyone wonders why modern VPU's are being used in mathematical numbers-crunching cluster computing. Our CPU's use 130 watts or so, and our GPU's are using around what, 200? 400? Whole lotta crunching going on there. Wow. Motion blur. What's next being able to play in a gigantic hall of mirrors and have it look photorealistic in 3D?