Episode 48 - Red Rings on Xbox 360. Free PS3 Tools. Crysis Benchmarking [Discussion]

[travislopes]

1UP's Garnett Lee, Lightning vs. Xbox 360, Benchmarking our Badass Gaming PC with 3DMark Vantage and Crysis, Free Video Conversion for the PS3

Watch and download this episode of Tekzilla here. (http://revision3.com/tekzilla/superhot/)

[IanPR]

1UP's Garnett Lee, Lightning vs. Xbox 360, Benchmarking our Badass Gaming PC with 3DMark Vantage and Crysis, Free Video Conversion for the PS3

I miss Veronica :(

[hamburgerz]

Did anyone also notice that the viewer email from Maurice @ 30min 30sec, was exactly the same email that DL.TV had in episode 246 @ 28min 54sec.

[gd1107]

Did anyone also notice that the viewer email from Maurice @ 30min 30sec, was exactly the same email that DL.TV had in episode 246 @ 28min 54sec.

YES! What a tool that guy is.

[reffle]

They got the Hosts part of the credits wrong again :S
Good episode otherwise

[stan680]

There is a really nice free program called SUPER (c) from http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html it converts nearly every video and audio format. And has a preset for devices such as the PS3. Installer at http://www.erightsoft.biz/GetFile.php?SUPERsetup.exe/

Hope someone finds this usefull.
Stan

[bigron18]

I was happy to see that Mediatomb was listed, as it runs on operating systems other than Microsoft OSs. I run Mediatomb on an Ubuntu 8.04 system to stream all my favorite shows from Revision3 and other places to my PS3. I have set up an XML file that sets up transcoding if the media file is not already compatible with the PS3. I had issues with Revision3 episodes prior to them changing to MP4 from MOV format... PS3 will not play MOV. Mediatomb would arrange for transcoding to take place, albeit with a delay and loss of pause, rewind or fast-forward controls.

[ryudo]

Audio was terrible.
Had to turn my speakers way up and it still sounded muddled
Video also terrible so many artifacts and this was 700MBs why?:(

[cybersuchus]

My brother and I have had a lot of luck with Media Coder (http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/). It's free and open source (like all the good programs out there). He uses it to take his giant raw Blender AVIs and compress them into small, skypable mp4s.

Did anyone also notice that the viewer email from Maurice @ 30min 30sec, was exactly the same email that DL.TV had in episode 246 @ 28min 54sec.

THAT'S WHERE I SAW IT! God, it was bugging the crap out of me. At first I thought it was deja vu. Then I started thinking that the Tekzilla crew slipped up with their e-mail filtering. I'm happy to know that it was just a side effect of watching too many tech shows.

Audio was terrible.
Had to turn my speakers way up and it still sounded muddled
Video also terrible so many artifacts and this was 700MBs why?:(

Which version did you download? I did the Hi-Def quicktime and didn't see those problems (though I did see some occasional artifacting towards the end).

[cybersuchus]

In hindsight, 700MB probably was the hi-def quicktime version. As I said though, I didn't hear any audio issues. Just some artifacting towards the end.

[computoman]

Was ikeahacker formerly known as goodwillhacker?

[river-below]

I gotta say, what is up with that machine?

To be honest I didn't understand all the benchmark things because I couldn't get 3DMark 06 to work for me and I didn't try that one try you get with 3dMark Vantage.

BUT

I don't have two GTX 260s in SLI. I have ONE ATi Radeon 4870, a Q6600 OC'd to 2.8 GHz, 4 GB of 800 MHz DDR2 RAM. I can play Crysis on 1680x1050 (the full resolution of my 22'' monitor) all on Very High - as a matter of fact, when I click optimal settings, thats what happens. I did turn Shaders, Physics and maybe another two things down to just 'high' in order to have a stable framerate above 35, and it ended up dropping no lower, with an average of 45-50. When I had everything on Very High it stuck around 30 but dropped to 19 during intense firefights and thats when I gave in to lower things a bit. I can get around 100 frames if every is on medium.

I haven't done any specific tweaking or anything in Vista, so I have no idea how 2 GTX 260s which should technically have the edge against TWO AMD 4870s, yet I have one and seem to be getting better performance. I should definitely take some benchmarks and see how my friend who went with 1 GTX 260 is doing with Crysis. Also, Crytek optimized Crysis for Nvidia, as you can see that plastered everywhere, and the fact that an ATi card for $250 is out doing not only a $300+ card, but three of them doesn't add up.

And Patrick acts as though Crysis is an ass-kicking machine, I'd disagree to an extent - its hard to run but it looks better than anything even at medium settings which you could easily run on an 8800 GTX or something. The only time it really kills you are at resolutions like 2560x1900 or whatever that one is.

Now you guys had a 24 inch monitor (I believe) so the resolution should have been 1900x1200 as Patrick mentioned. I can see the game needing to be played on lower settings at that high of a resolution, but scaling down to 1024x768? That's crazy.

[ryudo]

Which version did you download? I did the Hi-Def quicktime and didn't see those problems (though I did see some occasional artifacting towards the end).

Hi def.
Nothing wrong on my end as everything else is fine.

[flatloop]

My brother and I have had a lot of luck with Media Coder (http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/). It's free and open source (like all the good programs out there). He uses it to take his giant raw Blender AVIs and compress them into small, skypable mp4s.


I like media Coder as well, but you still need to know a lot about codecs and transcoding. What I used to watch this episode SHOULD have been advertised in the PS3 video segment. It's called TVersity (http://www.tversity.com/) This media server will transcode on the fly appropriate to the attached device. I watch TEKzilla on my 360 via the tversity server in my basement. There are settings for a vast array of set-top boxes, consoles and handheld devices. With TVersity you need to know NOTHING of transcoding and you can be watching your favorite videos on your device of choice without copying/converting anything that you have in your digital library.

Did I mention that it will serve music and photos as well?

Shame on you Patrick for not presenting this Open Source gem.

[dert]

They got the Hosts part of the credits wrong again :S
Good episode otherwise

Yah, realized that Garnett wasn't in the credits after the episode was aired. Sorry for the mishap, these problems are never intended.

[burkhartmj]

I gotta say, what is up with that machine?

I don't have two GTX 260s in SLI. I have ONE ATi Radeon 4870, a Q6600 OC'd to 2.8 GHz, 4 GB of 800 MHz DDR2 RAM. I can play Crysis on 1680x1050 (the full resolution of my 22'' monitor) all on Very High - as a matter of fact, when I click optimal settings, thats what happens. I did turn Shaders, Physics and maybe another two things down to just 'high' in order to have a stable framerate above 35, and it ended up dropping no lower, with an average of 45-50. When I had everything on Very High it stuck around 30 but dropped to 19 during intense firefights and thats when I gave in to lower things a bit. I can get around 100 frames if every is on medium.

I haven't done any specific tweaking or anything in Vista, so I have no idea how 2 GTX 260s which should technically have the edge against TWO AMD 4870s, yet I have one and seem to be getting better performance. I should definitely take some benchmarks and see how my friend who went with 1 GTX 260 is doing with Crysis. Also, Crytek optimized Crysis for Nvidia, as you can see that plastered everywhere, and the fact that an ATi card for $250 is out doing not only a $300+ card, but three of them doesn't add up.

The GTX 260 is more comparable to a 4850, and with SLi [and CrossfireX] there is overhead, so it operates closer to the speed of 1 and a half GTX 260's. That makes it a little more powerful than a single GTX 280, with a better price point. If you compare the SLI'd 260's to a single 4850, the SLi would win hardily, though would lose against 2 4850's in crossfire.

So yea, the nVidia cards are weaker in certain games [some nVidia optimized games do better] but not quite as much as you were thinking. Also, it was an nVidia sponsored computer, so SOMETHING had to be nVidia aside from the customized case.

[river-below]

The GTX 260 is more comparable to a 4850, and with SLi [and CrossfireX] there is overhead, so it operates closer to the speed of 1 and a half GTX 260's. That makes it a little more powerful than a single GTX 280, with a better price point. If you compare the SLI'd 260's to a single 4850, the SLi would win hardily, though would lose against 2 4850's in crossfire.

So yea, the nVidia cards are weaker in certain games [some nVidia optimized games do better] but not quite as much as you were thinking. Also, it was an nVidia sponsored computer, so SOMETHING had to be nVidia aside from the customized case.

"Overall the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 performed well for its price, matching the more expensive GeForce GTX 260. The performance of the new HD 4800 series is leaps and bounds better than the previous HD 3000 series; we can’t emphasize enough how much better it is compared to AMD’s last generation."

HardOCP.

Also from Hard OCP:
"Going into this evaluation, and looking at the pricing, AMD stated that the Radeon HD 4850 was to compete with the GeForce 8800 GT and the Radeon HD 4870 was to compete with the GeForce 9800 GTX. Well, it seems this needs some revision because we experienced even better performance than expected. The Radeon HD 4870 is perfectly poised to compete with the new GeForce GTX 260."


Extreme Tech:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2321636,00.asp
Pay attention to the 3D Mark benches. Yeah, the single GTX 260 competes - and outperforms the 4870.

Another Extreme Tech page: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2321637,00.asp

As you can see in most cases the GTX 260 has a slight edge on the 4870. I am well aware that SLI doesn't not add a 100% performance increase, however even if its only 20-30% that should add some significant performance increases over a single 4870. Which is, overall on a lower end system, save for the fact that I have a quad core at 2.66 GHz and a faster dual core in Patrick's baby.

EDIT: I'm also adding here a disclaimer that I'm not some ATi fanboy or something. I have no default preference when buying PC hardware. I do have an Apple slant in a lot of things but when it comes to buying PC parts whether it was ATi or Nvidia, ASUS or Gigabyte, Intel or AMD I don't really care. I go with whats the better value, which my decisions led me to a 4870, a Q6600 and a Maximus II Formula (you can argue value on that last one, I'm sure.) I would actually prefer that they did go with an Nvidia card since I do see that Nvidia has an edge over ATi, well except for this new 4800 series which, though being slightly below the 260 is often cheaper (I got my Visiontek 4870 for $250, the GTX 260 beside it at Tiger Direct was $329). I was just disappointed to see TWO 260s "failing" in Crysis which my single 4870 can handle on high without any issues. I also thought I heard Patrick say that was with no anti aliasing, which I thought SLI/Crossfire is specifically good for, though I understand virtually no cards can run good AA on Crysis, even a 280 or 4870X2.

I thought it was interesting how you guys also spent so much money on DDR3 RAM when you could've probably saved that money to get a 4870X2 or something that actually makes a big difference. My 4 GB of RAM was a miniscule $100 and its very decent performance for DDR2. Its not worth paying all that money for faster DDR3 RAM when there's options like overclocking if you're really noticing 'slow ram'.

[ddave_73]

my first post :) yay lol

I have been streaming media from my pc to consoles for years, since the first xbox infact.

I am no expert however, but I just wanted to post to say that I would vote for the use of tversity to stream content to a ps3 or an xbox 360, I have used tversity on both my xbox and ps3 and it works very very well.

I watch all my tekzilla shows and many many other podcasts/video feeds via this program and it does a superb job with avi and other popular movie or music formats, the 1up guy who was hosting this weeks show said he thinks its easier to copy the content to the ps3 over the network, thats does not make sence, why duplicate and send something to a machine when you can access it perfectly well through tversity.

of course if you have a weak wifi signal or dont have a wired network then copying or using a thumb drive to get media to the ps3 is a godo idea but for people with wired networks I dont see any point at all in putting the media on a thumb drive or sending over to the ps3/360 hard drive when it can be easily played via tversity or any other good media server.

good show tho on the whole, so yeah, another vote for tversity.