My new GPU....{pics and info}

So yeah, I got my new EVGA GTX 580 yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately didn't have a whole lot of time to play with it before heading into work, but what little I did...holy crap! Compared to what I remember with the 570 I briefly owned, this thing destroys it and is giving me more than double the fps I was expecting ~ based on the reviews and benchmarks I read.

My Gaming adventures thus far:



Crysis II

I started playing Crysis II the other day and with the 275, I had to set it on low, well there are 3 settings: Gamer, Advanced and Hardcore. Thats it...no individual settings like Crysis had, but its a rather dumbed down new game made for consoles and ported to PCs so it doesn't take much to run it anyway. I was playing on Gamer and it ran fairly well, but there was a little slowdown here and there, but I could tell me 275 was struggling to keep a decent fps...whatever that was, never ran fraps to find out, I just know it was pretty low. I then loaded up Crysis II after installing the 580, set it to Hardcore mode and Holy Crap...it was running so incredibly smooth it took me like 30min just to get used to how quickly the screen was moving..I couldn't keep a straight aim at first...so damn sensitive.



FFXIV:

I then loaded up FFXIV, argh stupid patch, but an hr later I was in and playing. I loaded the config and changed every option to the highest possible, found out very quickly that the 16xQ CSAA was too much even for the 580 to handle, about 2-3fps I gather. Changed it too 8x CSAA, and that was just perfect. Again, holy crap does FFXIV look good with max settings, and again it ran smooth a butter, even in the camps with dozens of players running around. It was awesome. I tele-ported to Limsa Lominsa and while it was still running quite well, there were some very noticeable chops here and then when turning corners or moving the screen quickly. I think that the cities are just so large and detailed that it was taking a bit to load all the data. After awhile it wasn't so bad, but it was still there if I swung the camera around too fast. Still though, I must have been easily getting 60-70+fps. With the 570 only about 43-47fps, and I wasn't able to go higher than 2x or was it 4x MSAA, nor turn on Depth of Field.



LOTRO

Was on the verge of leaving for work, well I had about 45min yet, and then it came to me, oh yeah LOTRO has DX11 now, and I have been unable to play it on max settings with a decent fps. In DX10 mode, very high settings, with everything on, not only was it quite choppy, but my fps was like 14-18. If I turned off Post Processing, AA, Triple buffering, then I could get between 41-44fps. I don't think I tried LOTRO when I had the 570. Anyway, so there I was, in the config with my 580 humming along, I turned on DX11, plus all the other things I just mentioned having to keep off for a decent fps...lets see how it runs!

Right after I loaded it up, I hit CTRL+F for the on-screen FPS meter to appear, and bam, I am seriously getting 110-130fps. When running around and spinning the camera alot it does fluctuate frequently between 70-120fps. Looking at the sky nets me as high as 152+...this is insanely awesome...far better performance that I ever expected!



Well, thats all I've tested thus far, just got home from work not long ago, and I'm tired so I dunno if I'll be playing much tonight or install anything else just yet. Though I am working on getting Crysis, Call of Duty's, and other FPS' then of course Fallout 3 & Fallout: New Vegas, and plan to heavily mod them soon enough. I wanna see how they play now cause the 275 struggled with all the HD mods I used before, and I never played through FO3 yet.


Last thing to say though, DAAAAAMN!!! While this 580 was considerably pricey, I'm absofrickenloutely astounded by the performance of it, and I'm so glad I chose it, instead of getting the 570 again, which was on my mind being $130 cheaper. I'll admit, being able to play at such high settings with gameplay as smooth as melted butter...my interest in playing games is blossoming again. I am definitely having fun trying out all these games my 275 struggled profusely with.


Oh and say buh~by to my 275....posted it on eBay and its already gonna sell in the morning, so I'll be able to recoup some of the funds spent on this 580....wheeeee! ROFL



Ah yeah...here are some pics of my 580...so purdy:

oooohhh shiny....

dozens of ppl in camps in ffxiv??? i definitely gotta move to selbina server...

i just knew you played lotro btw...

I'm not really playing LOTRO. I loaded to see if it would interest me again due to Isengard releasing this fall. Thus far its not holding my attention much so I doubt I'll play it.

I still have Rift on my mind, and may get into that again if I can get the 60-day gametime card for $22 like Amazon had it at last month. And of course it back to $30 now that I'm interested in it...heh