Graphics settings?

[oldman]

Could someone please explain what the following graphics, in game settings are/should be set at for best performance?

1. Texture filter
a. Bilinear b. Trilinear c. Anistropic

2. Optimise for SLI (SLI ?) Yes / No

Texture settings best?
Thanks

[JETDOC]

SLI is when you have two video cards and they work together.

[Yourself]

Colin, I found these explanations on the net:

Bilinear Texture Filtering: Bilinear filtering is a computationally cheap but low quality texture filtering. It approximates the gaps between textures by sampling the color of the four closest (above, below, left and right) texels. All modern 3D accelerated video cards can do bilinear filtering in hardware with no performance hit.


Trilinear Texture Filtering: Trilinear filtering is a high quality bilinear filter which uses the four closest pixels in the second most suitable mip map to produce smoother transitions between mip map levels. Trilinear filtering samples eight pixels and interpolates these before rendering, twice as much as bi-linear does. Trilinear filtering always uses mip mapping. Trilinear filtering eliminates the banding effect that appears between adjacent MIP map levels. Most modern 3D accelerated video cards can do trilinear filtering in hardware with no performance hit. Anisotropic filtering is a different story.


Anisotropic Filtering: Anisotropic filtering is the best but most CPU intensive of the three common texture filtering methods. Trilinear filtering is capable of producing fine visuals, but it only samples from a square area which in some cases is not the ideal way. Anisotropic (meaning `from any direction') samples from more than 8 pixels. The number of sampled pixels and which sampled pixels it uses depends on the viewing angle of the surface relative to your screen. It shines when viewing alphanumeric characters at an angle

Mip Mapping: Mip mapping is a technique where several scaled copies of the same texture are stored in the video card memory to represent the texture at different distances. When the texture is far away a smaller version of the texture (mip map) is used. When the texture is near, a bigger one is used. Mip mapping can be used regardless of filtering method (see below). Mip mapping reduces memory bandwidth requirements since the images are in hardware, but it also offers better quality in the rendered image

Brilinear: Net Slang, This is a method where you use less than trilinear filtering, But more than bilinear filtering, Ideally this causes the GPU to do less work while still providing trilinear Quality


Keeping it Simple: Mipmaps join textures together. The Purpose of Bilinear/Trilinear filtering is to help join these mipmaps together. Trilinear filtering will generally hide these transitions better than Bilinear. When seeing these mip map transistions in motion. You will see rolling textures, also known as "Shimmering". To reduce the amount of texture shimmering trilinear filtering is reccomended. Take note of how the transistion will seem much softer with trilinear enabled. All Shots were taken with 4x Anti Aliasing enabled and 1024x768 resolution.

Source: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=31535

Those are great explanations. The banding referenced is what you see on objects (more pronounced as you move....looks similar to a focus-changing line in front of you as things come closer.....less detail to more detail).

But, which one is the best? Depends upon your hardware, and what YOU define as best for you.

Some people define the best as the better image quality...they want it to look as good as possible....the most "eye candy".

Others define it as the most responsive......usually more frames per second.

I personally prefer a mixture of the two....I prefer minimum frame rates above 40 per second for gaming.....but I will increase the image quality as I have more fps, meaning that I have frames to spare.

There is a point that you have "too many" frames per second...that depends upon the refresh rate that you're running at. Getting too high of a fps number can result in "tearing", or the buffered screen image being redrawn much faster than the screen is being refreshed, causing the image to change during refresh. Kinda like looking through the focus line on a SLR camera.....there is that prism in the middle that shows a broken picture until it is in focus......the tearing is that broken picture.

I usually play in DX7 rendering mode so I have more fps, then I bump the resolution (I usually play at 1280 x 960) for better visuals. After that, I crank the graphics settings until I can't sustain a minimum acceptable frame rate.

Moving to DX9 gives me MUCH better visuals, but also drops the minimum frame rate well under 40, resulting in sometimes jerky movement (can't snipe someone while they're running), especially depending upon the map.

You can see this more when you're playing a run and gun server......sometimes you get great response until you are in a firefight (smoke, explosions), or in a melee situation (hand to hand, or nearby) and fast moving.......when that happens, you slow down until you can see individual frames (looks like a fast slide show).

If you're getting a lot of tearing, you can force vsync on (that limits your frame rate to your monitor refresh rate) and possibly include triple buffering. The problem with the combination of those is they limit your fps to some fraction of your monitor refresh rate - I think it's in steps of 1/3. That means if your monitor refresh rate is set at 60 hz and the game drops below 60 fps, the combination of vsync and triple buffering will force your fps to 40.....and if you drop below 40 (say 38 or so), if forces your fps to 20. While being smoother at the high end, it makes it choppier at the low end.

From an SLI standpoint....my OPINION is only run SLI if you're trying to run a very high resolution. SLI is (almost) always slower than a single video card AS LONG AS you don't exceed the video cards' capabilities.

For example, if you can sustain 91 fps at 1280 x 960 on a single video card, running two of them will be slightly less (due to the inter-card communications and syncronizations going on). If in that situation, you replace your monitor with a wide-screen monitor, you may be forced to run at 1920 x 1440 (yes, we spent for the nice 24" Dell - I wish).....your single card may only sustain 20 fps...that's where an SLI (or CrossFire) setup may/will help - it may bring you up over 40 fps.

Briefly, running two video cards won't offer any more raw speed...it'll offer higher resolutions before the speed drops off.

MY OPINION is to not run dual cards (unless you have to go above 2048 resolution......one of the 30" monitors or so) because the fastest single card is usually faster than lower performing dual cards...and usually cheaper.

The new 8800 (single card) is quite a bit faster than dual 7950's in DX9 games, and is cheaper to boot.

Goodness, I've been rambling.

Optimizing for SLI can change the code path (or enable some multi-threading) to take advantage of dual video cards......IIRC, enabling the Optimize for SLI setting on Intel Hyperthreaded machines enabled a little better performance.

I hope this helps answer your questions (and provides a little more information).

And, anyone --- please correct anything I've said that is wrong.....I don't actually play in the higher-end hardware, so I'm stating what I've learned (and the brain fails as I get older).

Yourself (Dave)

[UncleFester]

Very nice post there Dave...alot of good information there!

[Yourself]

:)

Thanks, David!

Yourself (Dave)

[Ol'digger]

Guys,

I recently bought a new PC. Lately I have found on some maps I can actually see through the walls.
I get a shadow of a player moving........
I do not want to be accused of cheating so dropped out of the game when it happened.
I am running a dual core processor, with 2gb ram, 22in widescreen and a XFX Graphics card with 512 ram.
I have my in game settings set to optimal, with a 800x600, 60hz refresh and bilinear??????
Is there something I can change to stop this????
I tried using the brightness but higher makes it even worse....and low its still there????
Help please,

Brett

[oldman]

Thanks for the help friends, all i need now is a 10 year old who understands what the answers mean lol:icon_biggrin:

[Yourself]

Brett's a cheater! Brett's a cheater!

NOT!

(sorry, couldn't resist, Brett)

An XFX graphics card, huh?

That wouldn't perchance be the 8800, would it?

if so, OMG......I WANNA BE YOUR FRIEND!

('Course, I'm your friend regardless!)

What size monitor are you running?

I would think you could run MUCH higher graphics settings with that system.

Anyways......is it all players that you can see (their shadow) through walls, or just some?

There is a graphics engine problem in COD2 that will allow a person to show through a wall if they're right up against it - that's why you sometimes see a leg, arm, or gun barrel sticking out. I've seen almost a half a person sticking out......it will occasionally allow you to shoot them (if you can see them sticking out).

If it's all players, it may be a driver issue - did you install the graphics drivers?

If so, you may want to uninstall them, run driver cleaner (http://www.drivercleaner.net/) (that cleans out any trace of the existing drivers), and reinstall them.

if not and it is the 8800, check around first....I remeber seeing some type of issue with the 8800 and downloaded drivers, but I'm not sure if that's been fixed yet or not.

but, LET US KNOW WHAT MODEL CARD, please?

Yourself (Dave)

[JETDOC]

im running around 18 fps with no problems 1024xsomething res runs just fine

[Yourself]

Sorry, Colin.

Don't mess with the Enable SLI setting......you probably don't need that. It's for utilizing two graphics cards at the same time (not the same as two displays), and you would already be familiar with it if you were using two cards.

I think SLI stands for Scalable Link Interface, which is NVIDIA's method of running dual graphics cards. Crossfire is ATI's method of running dual graphical cards. Some versions of Crossfire require a "master" and a "slave" card to run, and the "master" card can cost a little more. Crossfire can be implemented in either hardware or software. A physical link between the cards needs to be in place for the hardware implementation to work. SLI is (I believe) implemented in hardware only, and requires a little cable to connect the two cards together (the connector is usually located on the top of each card).

The Texture Filter setting determines how your graphics card interprets the edges of polygons in the game (not truly the "graphical detail", but close enough for a general discussion). It tries to blend the edges of polygons to make them smoother - really noticable in see-through obstacles such as chain-link fences. Keep in mind that each "object" you see (e.g. people) can be made up of many polygons.

Bilinear is the base-line (default, or minimum level); Trilinear can give you some better graphics but will also give you a bit of a performance hit (can slow you down some), and Anisotropic Filtering will give you the best graphics (image quality) of the three, but can give you a pretty big performance hit.......for some systems, the game can become unplayable at times.

Anisotropic Filtering is also known as AF, and can be 2x, 4x, 8x, or 16x (I don't think there's any cards that go higher, and some cards can do 6x and 12x). The number refers to how many times they are run through the Anisotropic Filtering algorithms to produce a better visual. The more times, the more graphics power is needed, and the slower the game will run.

Change it to Anisotropic and see how your game performs....if it's poor (or becomes poor), reduce it to Trilinear....then Bilinear if necessary.

I don't remember if changing it to Anisotropic will bring up any other sub-settings, and I'm not in game to check right now.

Are you looking to change the settings, or just to know a little bit about what they do?

Yourself (Dave)

[Yourself]

Wow, Brooks.

18 fps is almost unplayable for me....that's slow enough for the game to start appearing like a slideshow (albeit a fast one, but you can see individual frames). I hope that's a miminum, and not an average or maximum.

Do you know which render method you're running? Do you have a preference?

When you start slowing down that much, it's possible to get shot without having a chance to see your opponnent.

Yourself (Dave)

[Ol'digger]

Dave,

Mate,
I as most am aware am not the most computer literate person around....
The only details I can find are its a XFX - V8265B 512mb ram as for model ?????.
I know it came with a wireless controller to play games with, (I don't know how to even use that !)
The gurus matched it with a Creative - Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card. Which apparently has 10,000 mips processing X-Fi CMSS 3d headphone cap. and 139 db SNR processing none of which I understand.
As for the shadows......
I can see entire shapes....I know what you mean when you say about when people are close to a wall etc. but I am talking about watching someone crawl along the floor or run up a flight of stairs.......On Naverone I was watching people crawl along the internal tunnels!!
Teach me to go hi-tech.........

Help please.....

Brett

[oldman]

Thanks Dave, its a lot clearer now I will try some of your suggestions. No joking m8 when I was in my 20's colour tv wasnt heard of and a microwave was something Flash Gordon was using to shoot with lol :) and a computer was the size of a house and could only add a few numbers (a bit like me now :icon_confused: )

[Copydude]

Nice system even I am jealous... but your settings are not utilizing the card..as for the other issue.. hmm good one. Not everyone would be as honest...
good luck on the issues...
and Dave fantastic post.
Karl

[JETDOC]

i talked to a guy that told me that 22-24 fps is all that your eye can see anything faster is not really needed and yes i can make it faster ive maxed out all rendering methods and it still looks fine.

[Yourself]

Funny, Brooks...I was just reading about that over on forums.anandtech.com.

That's not quite accurate, though.

Some people can see at much higher "frame rates" - just as some people can see different focal length; not everyone has 20/20 vision.

Technically, the eye doesn't see (or can be measured in) "frame rates" - the eyes are analog rather than digital.

That's why people can see (and recognize) images that are flashed on a screen for 1/200 second (and sometimes faster).

I for one can see the flicker on my screen at 60hz (and I'm not running flourescent lights).

I can also see a HUGE difference in my gaming if frames drop to the upper 20's. I generally game above 60, but 40 is about my minimum (that's for a minimum frame rate number).

There are many people who can't see a difference, and professional gamers (Fati1ity, for example) can even tell the difference between 60fps and 70fps in game.

For general sniping, the frame rates don't matter as much (it's a personal preference - everyone has a target that they are comfortable playing at, but everyone's target is different).

In high-movement situations (hand to hand combat in COD and the Quake series for example), frame rates dropping into the upper 20's (and lower) is a huge disadvantage.

Keep in mind that your network packets play a huge roll in the equation (that can be generally measured as your ping speed). Ping is good enough for generalities, but not quite accurate (or consistant). Ping just measures "snapshots" of total packet transfer time (one packet at a time). Your packets can slow down or speed up all of the time (because they are dependent upon the "nodes", or hops between you and the server you're conneted to).

A good test is to set up a small COD2 server on a home network (no internet access) - then, everyone's ping is 0 (or usually < 10ms), which can make for a different feeling game.

Going a step further, you mouse can also play a big roll.....more specifically, your mouse sensitivity.

If I find that post that I was referencing, I will post it.

Yourself (Dave)

[JETDOC]

you are correct o-wiseone, and my ping is the lowest on the server in the upper 20's low 30's. and i got a brand new mouse, a G-5 logitech gaming "sweet". and i have nothing else running, a fresh harddrive with nothing else on it except cod2. now i do have some tearing on buildings but that doesnt bother me too much.but thats just because i have the res up alittle too much.

[Yourself]

Sorry, Brett....I thought I typed a reply (a few days ago) for your post, but I don't see it - I must have never submitted it :( :( :(

I'm so sorry!

Brett, what resolution are you running at?

What rendering method (preference) are you running at? The options are Auto, DX9, and DX7.

What size screen are you running?

what is your frame rate (average and minimum)?

You can easily check this by going into a COD2 online sniper map, hit the tilde key (~) to bring up the control panel, and type in:

/cg_drawfps 1 (0 = off, 1= on; actually 1 and 2 turn on the frame rate, but I'm not exactly sure what 2 does - I usually use 1).

As I said before, I prefer for my frame rate to be above 40........

I did some searching for the model number of your video card, but I couldn't find anything. Your machine appears to be pretty high-end, and I expect your video card is also (possible the NVIDIA 8xxx series).

If so, you are WAAAAYYYY under-utilizing it.

Once you determine what your frame rate is, go fiddle with some graphics settings (be careful - I think your in-game character stands at attention when you are changing graphics settings and the game requires a restart).

I would keep jacking up settings if you're getting high rates (above 40).

If you're way over 40, I would bump up the resolution if possible. If you are running on a flat panel, you may not be able to - you may be forced to run it at native resolution for the image quality).

Afer that, I would start setting high detail, and higher filtering (Trilinear, or the next one - was that ansiotropic?)

Also, bump up your anti-aliasing - that will make the picture seem better (less obvious jaggies).

If you frame rate gets too high, you may see some tearing happening.

I run an X800XL at 1280 x 960 (for a better aspect ratio) and DX7, usually giving me 91 fps - I will float anywhere from 40-90 (depending upon the map), but I usually stay at 90. That is on a Pentium IV machine - 3.0 ghz with 1 gig generic DDR2 ram with full hard drives (320 gig and 160 gig).

I get decent framerates running it in DX9 (and auto mode - that usually selects DX9) and I get a nicer picture. HOWEVER, my frames sometimes drop into the low 30's and upper 20's, which starts to bother me while I'm playing.

I'm not sure why, but I also seem to get some mouse lag in there (character doesn't respond as fast as I do when I'm playing).

That may be related to triple buffering (now that I think about it - I'll have to check and see if it was on).

Once my frames are consistantly over 60 (and minimums well over 40), I start pushing for a better picture.

John Carmak (maker of the Doom franchise and a founder of ID softawre) defined it beautifully - he mentioned (regarding Doom 3) that starting by increasing the resolution will do more for a better picture (at a "less-expensive" grahics processing premium) than playing at a lower resolution and having to turn up AA and AF.

Horizontal resolution * vertical resolution * color bit depth (usually 32) = quantity of data to be processed for each screen refresh

320 x 240 * 32 = 2,457,600
640 x 480 * 32 = 9,830,400
800 x 600 * 32 = 15,360,000
1024 x 768 * 32 = 25,165,824
1280 x 960 * 32 = 39,321,600
1280 x 1024 * 32 = 41,943,040
1600 x 1200 * 32 = 61,440,000

Add onto that all the operations the graphics processing unit (GPU) is performing, and you are processing quite a bit of data.

As you can see, the load on the graphics card greatly increases as you move to a higher resolution.

320 x 240 is a standard (older) TV resolution (here in the states) - used for older consoles and video games.

TV's here in the states refresh 28 times a second (think 28fps), however since they are interlaced (scan/build every other pixel line), they only fully update an image 14 times a second.

I'll have to check those, but if inaccurate, they are close enough for our discussion.

Yourself (Dave)

[Yourself]

Thanks, Brooks!

Yourself (Dave)

[Ol'digger]

I have printed your reply so I can work through it.

I appreciate the time and effort.

I asked the tech guys for a high end gaming machine I guess they went overboard lol.

I am running 3ghz dual core with twin 250gb hard drives and 2 gig DDR2ram

The monitor I am using is a 22inch widescreen (LCD) I have been using the trilinear setting and lowered the brightness which has at least done away with the seeing through walls.

I will play around as you have suggested and see what I can do.

Thanks again,

and a very merry and safe christmas to you and your family.

Brett

[Ol'digger]

Dave,

I have set the screen to 1280x960, I am using the highest filtering setting, ans...whatever and have the anti-aliasing set at 4x.

I am getting 60+ frame rates.

I rang the gurus and the vid card is a XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB DDR3 PCI-E...........whatever that means.

I know it gives a great picture ........anyway I will see how these settings go.

Cheers

Brett

[Yourself]

Sweet machine, Brett.

That is a great graphics card......

The 7800 GTX is a sweet card, and should run the resolutions you want at great frame rates.

A 22-inch widescreen LCD, huh? Again....SWEET!

A few suggestions and comments:

1) What is the native resolution of that LCD? 1280 x 1024 (or 1280 x 960, as I play) is not a widescreen resolution....that is (usually) the standard resolution for 19" LCDs. Many widescreen 22" LCDs are either 1680 x 1050 or 1920 x 1200. You will get an absolutely stunning picture if you can run the game at the native resolution. You may be playing with an image that is being stretched by either the video card or the monitor, and may not be as sharp as it can be.

2) LCDs don't really have a "refresh" rate, therefore they don't refresh at 60 hz, 72 hz, 75 hz, or 80 hz as a CRT will. LCDs are (generally) capped at a refresh rate (for video compatibility) of 60 hz...that's why you might see frame rates around 60 fps. The Doom 3 engine (native mode) is capped at 60 hz for this reason.

3) The 512 meg on the video card generally refers to texture memory (for all you geeks: I know it really doesn't, but thinking of it that way helps the discussion). You need a base amount of memory to handle the drawing functions (overhead), enough to handle the resolution you are running at, and the rest is/can be devoted to higher-resolution textures.

For instance, Doom 3 (yes, I keep referencing Doom 3, but there is a lot of information available about it from the GOD of graphics/game engine people, John Carmak) runs high settings in a 256 meg card, but the ultra settings actually require more than 512 meg (depending upon the resolution - a higher resolution requires more memory). There are people that can run Doom 3 with ultra settings and less memory, but they occasionally have game slowdowns as the card swaps chunks of video memory in an out of system memory. The compromise with video memory is (generally) the level of compression used with textures.

For pictures, a .jpg (JPEG) image is compressed using a "lossy" compression algorithm. That means that the act of compressing the image looses some detail, and by decompressing it you don't end up with the original. For images, that isn't necessarily a bad thing (depending upon the use of the image) as enough detail is kept so that the image still looks good to our eyes - all you graphic designers and artists are excepted from that statement – no flames, please.

If you take a graphic image, save it as a .jpg, open that saved .jpg, save it again as a .bmp (no compression, no image loss), open that and save it again as a .jpg (repeat that process three or four times) and compare the final with the original, you will see a tremendous difference.

The same thing goes for sound (the .mp3 file format).

ZIP (.zip) is a "lossless" compression algorithm....it won't lose any detail (or data) - decompressing a .zip image results in an exact copy of the original. That's why you can zip a word document, decompress it, and work with it as normal.

(Back on topic) This is relevant as to the type of textures the game engine can use......with enough memory, the engine can work with uncompressed textures (both reading them in and storing/buffering them for use) which results in the best quality. Less memory generally means compressed textures have to be used, sometimes to the point of working with compressed textures as part of the video card (graphics) processing. That really slows down the processing of the card, but can enable a lower-end card to actually play a game.

4) There are some other settings you may want to try once you have things maxed in COD2.....in the video card drivers (or control panel), you can override some of the game settings to enable higher image quality. I don't currently have an NVIDIA card, so I can't check or test any settings. From there, though, you can bring the AA and AF higher than the game allows, among other settings.

Sorry for rambling.......post back after you try some things and let us know the results.

Although, I'm already EXTREMELY jealous of your machine!

Yourself (Dave)

[AladdinSane]

Dave,
Can we keep having weekly columns from you on all this stuff? I find it fascinating :)

[Ol'digger]

Thanks once again Dave.
Like Aladdin, I find this info amazing.....and extremely helpful.

Sorry but for a non-computer literate type, how do I find what the 'native' settings of my screen are?

I have found that I am actually getting 91fps in game with the new settings so I might try and boost them even higher as you suggested.

The only other thing I have a problem with is 'ping' speed but I can't improve that given my connection I don't suppose. Being rural I have upgraded to what is called 'fast broadband' here in Australia, basically permanent phone connection. It advertises rates of 8000kbps which I dont really understand other than I can download music etc a lot faster than I used to on normal broadband.

I must be careful though or people will begin to think I actually know what I'm doing playing with settings etc. (Might even turn me into a computer geek lol)

Thanks again for the help David.

Cheers

Brett

[Yourself]

Thanks, Chad!

I don't even have the time to play :(

I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to this stuff though.

There are many people out there that can theorize on pixellation rates.

btw...did you know that pixel is short for PICture (abbreviated pix) ELement?

That's the smallest part of a graphic image.....the "dot" in dots per inch (dpi) which is how many printers are measured. Also, for serious graphics folks, what any display device is measured at.

Traditionally, printers (black and white) are/were 300 dpi...

240 dpi for color (I belive most color modes now also)...

Professional high resolution photographs (getting your pictures developed) are only printed at about 120 dpi....they look so good because the capture device (your camera) has such a good resolution....

CRT's at 72 dpi....(some high res at 96 dpi)...

and on and on....

That is relevant to graphics people in their work. Software takes care of many of the computations now, but serious artists would calibrate their output devices exactly to help them in their work. That way, if they drew a 4" square on their screen, it would print as a 4" square on the proofing printers (those about 150 dpi) and their final printers (electronic typsetters well over 1200 dpi).

That's where optimal output devices come into play.....if you scan a photograph with the intention of only displaying it on a screen, scan it around 72-75-96 dpi. If the goal is to print it on a standard color printer, a scan around 120-240 dpi is sufficient. For professional editing (and printing, of course) generally the higher the resolution the better. if you scan a 1 inch block on a scanner set to 600 dpi and print it full resolution on a 300 dpi printer, you will end up with a 2" block (a little over 8" on the screen). That's using a basic file format, like .bmp (windows bitmap - that's a raw format, only has pixel information). More advanced formats (tif, png, etc.) "know" the display resolution, and can tell the application interpreting the file this information. That way, you get a 1" block (in our example) no matter what device you print/view it on.

Scanning a photograph at 600 dpi won't get you a "better" picture....just a much larger file that takes longer to work with and is harder to display. You won't get any more information from the original than scanning it at 240 dpi (the professionally printed resolution).

Oh yes......faxes usually use 75 dpi (normal), and I think 120 or 150 dpi (fine)...

Similar to the way they (the serious graphics artists) would calibrate the colors on their scanners, digital cameras, screens, and printers...that way, a certain color of red (let's say a certain Pantone number) will display the same shade/color/brightness on all devices (original, screen, printer, etc.)

Comments CopyDude (Karl)?

OMG....did I get off topic or what there?

Yes...I'm tired again (and rambling....)

Yourself (Dave)

[Yourself]

And Brett...in all of that...I forgot to answer you.....

You should be able to find the native display resolution in the product literature.....if you received any, it should be in the manual.

If not, you can probably look it up on the internet...do a Google search on the manufacturer and the model number.

About the ISP connection speed.....

Let's see...the 8000kbps is a maximum speed.

kbps = kilobits per second
kBps (or KBps) = kiloBytes per second

So therefore, your THEORITICAL maximum download speed is:

8000 kilobits per second / 8 bits per byte = 1000 kilobytes per second, which is (approximately) a megabyte per second.

You said music....the .mp3 file format is a really good "lossy" compression (see my prior post ;)), and works out to about 1 megabyte per minute of music (close enough for our discussion). So a 4 minute song will be around 4 meg in size.

You should be able to THEORITICALLY download that in 4 seconds.

If it is 8000kBps....you should THEORITICALLY be able to download that in less than a second...your theoritical speed would be 8 megabytes per second. :)

Now, for the bad news.....

In prior testing (many, many years ago...call it the mid-80's), I found that you lose around 20% of your data bandwidth to overhead (packet information, etc.).

Couple that with your ping speed (roughly how long a packet will take to travel between connections), and how busy all the "hops" are between you and your data source....and how busy your data source is....and you will see a serious slowdown from the THEORITICAL speed.

It is still MUCH FASTER than dial-up, though. ;-)

And, I'm also on a rural ISP....I have the same issues.

Did you know that the lower-speed wireless connections (B, or 11 megabit) are still faster than most broad-band connections? Many people think that G (54 megabit, or the boosted 108 megabit) will speed up their connection to the internet, but it won't.

What does happen with wireless is that all connected devices share the maximum bandwidth....in theory, two computers constantly using the same 11 megabit wireless will only acheive a throughput of 5.5 megabits/second. In this scenario, a large file transfer between a wireless computer and another wired comupter in the same network will seriously slow down the other computer's wireless connection. If that same transfer is coming over the internet, the second computer may not even notice it due to the overhead I talked about above.

To your comment about a "permanent" phone connection:

That is generally DSL.....high-speed (actually, higher-speed), or ADSL. Offhand, I can't remember the differences between DSL and ADSL....I used to know. :5geezer:

Or some form of DSL....some form of a direct connection.

Those operate a little differently than a cable connection.

Let's see....

For a DSL line, you have a (limited) direct connection from your house to the telephone switching station. That first "hop", or segment usually determines your maximum speed (8000kbs, in your case). From the switching station (usually a little remote building in remote areas) there is a high-speed backbone to either other (larger) switching stations, or directly into the telephone company. From there, there is a huge backbone "pipe" into the internet.

Since you have a direct connection to the switching station, all of that speed (8000kbps) is devoted to you.

Keep in mind that you may be using standard (or almost standard) copper wire, sometimes known as "twisted pair".

For a cable connection, the coaxial cable itself has a much higher bandwidth than the copper pair used in DSL and phone lines. A cable segment generally connects many houses in a neighborhood together. There can be any number of houses between you and the switching station. You will share the total bandwidth with everyone (that has a cable modem). If there are no other cable modems on your segment, you will have great response and speed. If a thousand of your neighbors run file-sharing servers (doing unnamed illegal activities, ensuring they are always extremely busy), your effective throughput will suck.

A cable connection is similar to the above issues with a wireless connection.

So, a DSL connection can be slower than cable, but has a consistant throughput, and a cable connection is (usually) much faster, but can be inconsistant.

It will depend on your usage as to which is better, but generally the cheaper is the better (I'm not made of money either).

There are many people that have fibre-optic connections to their house....they blow all my above comments out of the water. The new housing developments around me are getting fibre-optic connections now, but my area is not slated to be upgraded until after 2010. :( :( :(


Okay everyone...start laughing at me....I was rambling again....

:icon_wink: :icon_wink: :icon_wink: :icon_wink:

Can't you-all keep me on topic and keep me from rambling?

:icon_biggrin: :icon_biggrin: :icon_biggrin:

Yourself (Dave)

[Yourself]

LOL

For all of that, I probably could have played a couple of rounds!

Yourself (Dave)

[Ol'digger]

Once again you have excelled ........

My user manual suggests 1680x1050 @60hz .

So would this be a better setting than the one you suggested or do you think 1680x1050 will make everything too small for my old eyes to read?

By the way mate,

Did I mention that my questions were actually a scheme formulated by a few of us to keep you out of the game and therefore our heads intact! (LOL)

In any event thanks to you, I now know a hell of a lot more about my system and computers in general than ever before.

For that I am very grateful.

My graphics are now outstanding and are even helping my score (not a great deal but I certainly enjoy it more)

Thanks again

and by the way I owe you a few drinks,

Cheers
Brett

[Yourself]

Brett...I'll take you up on those drinks.....

Diet Coke (or Pepsi) for me....

Yes, go ahead and try to run it at 1680 x 1050....you may find that rather than decreasing the size (or drastically decreasing the size), you just have better detail...

That helps when you're trying to pick out the edge of a helmet hiding behind a wall under some bushes

:icon_wink:

Your scheme will actually backfire in the long run.......I play so little that all I end up being is a target....helping other's scores!!!!!!

Give the graphics settings a try......

If the picture/gameplay is acceptable to you, run it that way.

If it is acceptable except your frame rate suffers, back off a little on the graphics settings.

I run DX7 myself, so I do suffer a little graphically - I prefer it so I can run a little higher resolution. I've tried 1600 x 1200, but that just didn't work out too well (for me) on my 19" monitor - 1280 x 960 works out to be the "sweet spot" for me.

(also, under DX7, you sometimes don't have to put up with some of the graphic "artificats", like snow and rain - shhhhh. don't tell anyone)

There was a common sniper map (I use that term loosely) when COD2 came out that had a small courtyard with statues in the middle, buildings facing each other, and burned-out tanks and rubble to the sides of the buildings. I can't remember the name, but if you played it under DX9 (or auto), it had snow. Under DX7, there was no snow.......it didn't help with the draw distance because there was still "fog", but it did eliminate the distraction of the white snowflakes themselves.

That's usually why "fog" is used on these maps - to limit the draw distances, therefore relieving some of the graphics load and help in-game performance. The more fog, the less total detail (especially at distance) you are able to see.

While I don't work with maps, I think you can determine the draw distance by a setting within the map - I think that automatically sets the density of the fog.

Keep us posted as to the in-game graphics experience!

Yourself (Dave)

[oldman]

I only asked 1 question, never thought I would start a stampede lol.
Anyway a big THANKS to all the TALENTED/GIFTED people who answered all our questions (in great detail Dave lol). Keep up the good work friends.
Colin AKA Oldman:5geezer: