well that was an anti climax

[Tunnah]

So I decided to replace my gtx 460s with a single 670, figured it'd be more than enough grunt for 1200p.

It was NFS Most Wanted that tripped up the previous residents, so installed it, maxed alll settings etc. yeah babeh...wtf 45fps and stuttering?!?!

OK that might be for story's sake it only happens on crashes and lots of stuff on screen but i really thought a 670 would have been enough to go back to the life of max all settings and not a blip.

I'm not *too* bothered about buying a second one but I was really looking forward to having a single card take a tinkle over everything that was thrown at it...

Did I miss a benchmark or something ? It seemed like gfx cards now have progressed so seductively (that's the verb I choose and I'm sticking by it) so that us single screen gamers can plonk in a high end card and be able to just ramp the settings up and not have to worry about stuttering.

I will admit I did turn on Ambient Occlusion to Quality in the control panel, and then put it to max in the game, maybe it's this..but I thought gfx cards nowadays were so beastly that chewing through a resolution only a bunny's fart away from 1080p would be counted as a morning workout, rather than a an Oxford entrance exam (you'll have to excuse my analogies, I'm drunk on bourbon and tears of disappointment).

Colour commentary aside, while this was surprising, it wasn't heart-wrenching - i was planning on putting a second one in if need be in a couple of weeks..but I really didn't think I'd need to..these cards are supposed to be the dons for the "living room resolution" (I'm not, but soon to be moving it to a 55" LCD...you guys can keep your 1600p 30" screens, it's beautiful and all, but god damn i just LOVE big screen gaming, it's SO much more immersive! Plus with the filters etc. that new TVs offer I have to go big rather than dense).

This was just a whinge but with it being a forum a suppose I should start a conversation (hmmf) am I doing something wrong ? Should I disable AO in control panel and let games do it?
PS: No point bringing the 1600p argument, i've played on 3x1600p (3xgtx680s! I would have killed and robbed him but you know familys, they hold a grudge) and it just didn't wow me as much as 1 big 55/65" screen

[kalniel]

Yeah, always unwise to have a similar technology on both in game and in a card override setting - unless you know they are designed to work together to disable the least efficient one. With AO there's no guarantee that the game engine is using the same method as the nVidia inspector override, so you could be massively adding to the workload with no visual benefit.

Also sometimes these cards/games need some driver optimisation. If the game engine is limiting (waiting on something like physics calculations or network stuff for etc.) then throwing more GPU power at it might not help.

[Jasp]

If i recall correctly, NFS Most wanted the new one is a awful PC port and really doesn't play nice anyway.

[chuckskull]

It ran like a bag of spanners for me too. Wasn't that impressed with the gameplay either. Your cards solid mate, it'll monster through most things, NFS not so solid.

[Dottorrent]

Shouldn't there be drivers to improve the stability of Most Wanted already?