New integrated vs. old discrete video cards

I've recently been playing WoW on my MacBook, which does fine (ob a huge step up over my iBook G4 from a few years back!), but not great. That MacBook also had a copy of Vista Ultimate on it that I'd been using with Boot Camp. I'd put away my dedicated Windows tower to save space during a move, and hadn't pulled it back out.

Enter Anandtech's System Buyers' Guide last month. I've built three systems now, and none of them involved me really canvasing every mobo out there. I usually rely on a combo of Anandtech, friends' input, and Newegg reviews. This time, though I have an older discrete video card (MSI's overclocked GeForce 8500 GT with 256MB of VRAM), I went ahead and got the budget board Anandtech recommended, which comes with ATI Radeon HD 4250 integrated video. I also bought the AMD Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0GHz they suggested and upgraded the Crucial RAM they had listed to something that looked like it was legitimately paired for dual channel use. The rest (case, power supply, hard drive, optical drive, and, of course, Vista) is all recycled from my last box.


Old as the hills card
I was suspicious that I'd wasted $10-15 on integrated video, but figured it was worth $10 of my time to go with Anand after I tried to find another board that was cheaper without. Nothing without integrated video in this price range absolutely jumped out at me from Asus or Gigabyte, which were the two brands that seemed to have the best reviews, or MSI, which I've used in a previous build and was suggested here by Anand. There was one with two PCI-E slots for SLI, but it had some northbridge compromises that seemed questionable, and the chances that I buy two video cards down the road is pretty slim. Chalk up the extra cash to not knowing enough about mobos, I figured, and got Anand's suggested budget MSI board.

But after playing with the new mobo and old card a while -- I finally finished up GTA:SA and messed around with GTA:IV some more -- I started wondering how today's integrated video matches up with three and a half year-old budget gaming discrete cards.

So here are the results. With Doom 3 with randomly selected video settings I felt were best, the 4250 integrated chip gave me 17.5 fps. With the 8500 GT, I got 139.4. I must have pooched some display setting, as I did edit the config file by hand to get widescreen on my monitor, but you get the idea (and I didn't feel like pulling the GT again). The 8500 killed the 4250. In GTA:IV's benchmark test, I got the following.

Integrated 4250

Discrete 8500 GT

Statistics Average FPS: 14.71 Duration: 37.52 sec CPU Usage: 40% System memory usage: 56% Video memory usage: 96% Graphics Settings Video Mode: 800 x 600 (56 Hz) Texture Quality: Low Shadow Quality: Low Reflection Resolution: Low Water Quality: Low Texture Filter Quality: Anisotropic x2 Night Shadows: Off View Distance: 10 Detail Distance: 10 Hardware Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate Service Pack 1 Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 4250 Video Driver version: 8.17.10.1059 Audio Adapter: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device) AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 Processor File ID: Benchmark.cli

Statistics Average FPS: 30.42 Duration: 37.02 sec CPU Usage: 77% System memory usage: 58% Video memory usage: 97% Graphics Settings Video Mode: 800 x 600 (56 Hz) Texture Quality: Low Shadow Quality: Low Reflection Resolution: Low Water Quality: Low Texture Filter Quality: Anisotropic x2 Night Shadows: Off View Distance: 10 Detail Distance: 10 Hardware Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate Service Pack 1 Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT Video Driver version: 260.99 Audio Adapter: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device) AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 Processor File ID: Benchmark.cli

That seems pretty telling. Though the GT seems to be plenty for Doom 3, it's pushing it in GTA:IV. To play with eye candy, I need a new video card. With the integrated video, though, I'm barely playing at all and the processor is downright bored -- 40% of the processor has anything to do. With the 8500, the processor's at least working a little at 77%. Once again, the GT is doing loads better than the new integrated chip.

I'll give WoW a shot tonight when I reactivate. Cat seems to be just enough of a push that it might give the 8500 a quick test. The GT looked great in Nagrand when I first bought it, but I didn't play much with it in WotLK, and basically stuck with the MacBook. I just hope I'm not dying for one of the $250 cards WoW Insider's giving away (a deal at $190 at Newegg right now though a reliable model will run you $210) once I do fire things back up.

Regardless, the real lesson is that hardware can make the game. For GTA:IV, the improvement is a clear one. GTA:SA looked great, but IV requires a multi-core processor, and these four cores plus the 8500 have proven a big step up over the MacBook (though I was too stupid to run a benchmark before blasting the Boot Camp partition). Here's to hoping I'm pleasantly surprised tonight.

And the secondary lesson is that integrated video still sux0rz. Almost anything discrete is a step up. If you're stuck on a box with integrated video, go to Newegg or, heck, eBay and grab whatever you want, and enjoy Azeroth anew.

And though I enjoy the relatively inexpensive nature of building, upgrading, and recycling towers, I did briefly consider Alienware's m11x during its Black Friday sale for $599. I think that version, however, had an even less powerful processor than the Core 2 Duo offered at $799 now, and I didn't bite in part because I already have a decently powered MacBook.

Regardless, the m11x has the NVIDIA 335M with a Gig of VRAM across the line. The size looks good and battery life for normal work, when you switch the 335M off, is pretty good. If I was considering a laptop purchase and played WoW, I would wait for the next hardware bump and then grab this laptop ASAP.

WoW Insider was bored to tears in March; one temp fix

Okay, I know, I'm kinda beating the horse to death, but looking for guides on Naxxramas before hitting the dungeon, I found a bunch of choice burn-out quotes on WoW Insider's Ready Check from this past March:

We go through the motions of complaining about the looks of the new armor, watching live streams of new bosses and chattering endlessly when any tidbit introduces novelty into the dull sameness of WoW endgame. Yet a few weeks into the PTR schedule, with Ulduar right around the corner, some players are sizing the content up and thinking "is this it?".

Those players are going to leave, sooner or later. There's something keeping them playing, from social ties to the responsibilities of leadership to deep-seated psychological problems driving them away from their real lives. Yet there's a tipping point, and chances are if you're at the stage where nothing in the game seems exciting any more - not even the shiny new stuff - then that point will be reached sooner rather than later. Do you really want to spend the rest of your weekends from noon til night fishing ingame, just so you have enough food banked for Ulduar?

That's a long quote, and I don't feel bad at using it, as there's quite a bit more. I think the quote about fishing is particularly timely. Yes, Jennie, apparently Blizzard does want you to spend the rest of your weekends fishing. Might as well make fishing an iPhone game, huh? The comments over on Restokin where people are suddenly very happy to have something to do while spamming the Trade channel makes me wonder just how much time folks are spending on this game when they're not coming close to "playing" in the traditional, twitch video gaming sense. The answer is, um, lots.

Ms. Lees seems to hit the nail on the head (or at least confirm my increasing suspicions) when she says...

Yet there's this increasing sense that Blizzard's losing us. New content isn't up to expectations, people aren't frothing-at-the-mouth excited about every drop of PTR news, players are leaving right, left and centre and the mood is turning a little sour.

So far, there hasn't been much answer from Blizzard. There are certainly good answers, however. I'd like to see some sort of random item generation that also forces players to find matching pieces held by someone else. It could be very simply -- if you have piece A1, you get a green triangle over your head. Folks with A2 have green squares. A3 green circles. Whatever. But replace A1,2,3 with some interesting names. Put some lore behind the pieces, even mention character names in other characters' quest screens. Perhaps pyramid the pieces somehow, making each level a bit more exclusive. And while you're at it, pyramid scheme the pieces. Make it so that everyone who runs a lowbie quest meets somebody who has finished the end game so that they get their pieces upgraded or whatever, and make it worth the more hardcore player's time. Drive player interaction. Make certain players part of the lore. This will, not surprisingly, make people give a rat's arse about the backstory. Right now, even a Choose Your Own Adventure book does a better job of making its readers/players feel central to the plot.

I'd also make some NPC's puppets, played by Blizzard employees. A little role playing would go a long way to make Jaina Proudmoore seem like more than a Chuck E. Cheese automaton. Seems like it's pretty obvious that these sorts of human controlled, necessarily unrepeatable cameo appearances of the sorts of characters we often see only on rails in the Caverns of Time or the extended "cut scene" in Stormforge when Katrana Prestor became a dragon, when changed into direct interactions with players make for the most memorable pieces of game lore (even better version of Lord British's death here -- and a good list of the top 5 most memorable events in MMORPG history, with each one arguably being something that players created, most obviously so. Read it. You'll get the point; good gaming means engaging with the developers (the gods?), and one of the most obvious ways to do that is through exploits).

There's an infinite amount of life left in WoW, I think, but it's going to take a new approach to game development, and a real out of the box thinking for the next expansion. I think we all realize WotLK is essentially just TBC all over again -- it's just more. More. WoW needs to give players that sense of overwhelming wonder that it did when we started years ago, and that's coming much less often.

LK is the same WoW

Gosh, I'm glad we've stopped calling LK "WotLK".

So the WoW, Casually blog (a blog stunningly started by a moonkin shortly after I pitched "Confessions" to wowinsider.com. Hrm) answers a reader mail titled, "Returning to WoW as a casual". The letter writer asks for some direction when s/he comes back. The answer he gets is horrible. Horrible. Essentially all of the advice is nonspecific. I want to know, eg, the best quest line for my level 70.99999 druid, not that I should be in a guild, or that I should randomly change servers (TWF?), make a death knight (not too exciting aside from meeting the LK), or to create alts. Give me a freaking break. Seriously, I know the guy asks, "how to start over in WoW for a returning casual player. Or starting WoW for the first time for that matter," but this was supposed to be a LK specific answer, right? I should buy the expansion to make alts? If they're not a Death Knight, there's nothing about the expansion that changes my toon experience. Great advice. $40 for nothing. And for now, I'll excuse the self-serving suggestion to "read in your spare time". Look, I barely have time to play as it is. The last thing I want to do is spend more time reading Thott, WoWHead, wowinsider, and WoWWiki.

Probably the worst part of "Casually's" answer reveals more about the issue with LK than the blog, however. Here's another "helpful" point for those returning.

Northrend is awesome

If you do have a level 68, even if you don't end up staying on that realm or with that character, you are going to want to experience the Northrend content as soon as possible. There are new and varied quest types, the lore is rich and compelling and the scenery is breathtaking. And don't avoid instances as you level up. They now take less than an hour, making it feasible even for casuals to find a group and complete.

Issues with "WoW, Casually" again are not providing specifics -- What in particular is breaktaking about the scenery? Which instances should I take in? For BC, I could say that Nagraad was particularly good looking, or that Shadow Labs was one instance I found especially enjoyable. The points in "Casually's" answer aren't invalid -- Howling Fjords looks pretty good (the burning boat in the sky is a neat touch, and Utgarde updates the traditional WoW architecture in an enjoyable way) and the instances are enjoyable so far. Utagrde's blast furnance and the Nexus' Matrix stylings are pretty kewl. This is why I prefer the style of this blog. When I'm playing, it's what one casual gamer is doing to make his game interesting. Maybe it'll work for you.

So on to the LK issues revealed in the answer. What specifically about about the LK lore is rich and compelling? This is where LK lets us down. I want there to be an obvious reason to play the game, and this lack isn't "Casually's" fault. I want to feel like my questing is part of something larger. I want to stumble into an artifact that gets me sucked into the storyline, like the Illidari-Bane Mageblade quests, but on a much larger scale.

(I'll talk more about a potential answer later, but as a hint, Braben and Bell do a very good job of fleshing out a world with a random number generator.)

Both expansions to WoW start in exactly the same way. You're in some fortress that's under attack. In LK, there are not one, but TWO fortresses where you can relive this awesome experience! One is attacked by demon-like mobs, the other by wacky lumberjacking giants with dogs who spawn quicker than you can skin them. No, literally; about half the time, the worg corpse has vanished before I could skin them. And my goal is to kill 'em. Kill the giants. Kill the fools in the mine below the land near the fortress (BC and LK). Sprinkle bombs on hotspots on your map. Fuuuuuuhn stuff.

This unimaginative, bare bones storyline style questing doesn't engage me. Kill x of y does not engage me, and hardly makes for "varied quest types". Convert x of y scarecrows back to happy threshers does not engage me. Taking the Clefthoof model, changing the horn a bit, and putting them back into herds where only the alpha male aggros so that you can slap the same content with slight variation back into the game does not engage me.

Blizzard needs to stop sitting on their laurels and remake the WoW experience. There should be direction and obvious arguments for an old player to come back, and answers obvious enough for someone who specializes in getting casual gamers to play to name specifics for why those players should come back and stick around. With LK, I don't see those, and neither does Robin. I appreciated the free 10-day hit of heroin, and it might be plenty to make my jonesing strong enough me to play a few more months, but LK is the same WoW.

I'm going to remain disappointed until WoW brings back story (I'd probably be more accurate to say brings it and stop at that). Nothing's stopping them but themselves.

Can we get some gear balance this time?

From IGN's WotLK "preview":

So how soon will you be replacing all your gear from Burning Crusade? We'll have to wait and see.

Heck of a preview there. Thanks guys.

Still, this does raise the part of BC that bugged me the most. After my first major WoW hiatus, I came back determined not to buy BC until I'd finished a few things on my old TODO list, like up my rep with the Thorium Brotherhood, grab my Pattern: Lava Belt and Pattern: Molten Helm, and make PHAT LOOT!

Luckily I came back just before BC's release, and I managed to cash in, but just barely. Aside from a little naive buying, prices for Old World craftables dove like there'd been a housing bubble after BC arrived. And after buying BC, I could tell why. The quest loot was so phat, there was no reason to keep my hard earned craftables and purples around any more.

Burning Crusade forced players to upgrade. I should argue that in more detail, but for now I won't. The bottom line is that BC provided unique shortcuts to power that did not, imo, greatly improve gameplay. Instead, it created another system of virtual ghettos back in WoW's Old World. Endgames shifted. Years of development time for instances, etc, rendered worthless. Those new to WoW or who hadn't seen the OW end game had no real incentive to go back.

There were options. Create mobs that have a new attack type or one for which there was little resistance gear in the OW, kinda like fire resist was used in the original. Keep the progression of items natural, and ensure items (other than just epics) continue to have some important value in the future. Here, I'm thinking about something like the Illdari-Bane items -- perhaps there's a mob in the WotLK that can only be damaged by items that specifically harm demons by 150 or more points. Bam, you're dropping Wrath folk back into BC storylines. And, honestly, there's no reason not to put some check in the game that can tell when level 75s are dropping in to grab the Lexicon Demonica from Grandmaster Vorpil and up the difficulty a bit.

I realize the achievement system is supposed to help fix the obsolescence issue, but so were heroic dungeons. I'm not optimistic that WotLK will be much different, in practice, than BC (though honestly it's no big loss to me this time. Aside from the blood elf zones, I didn't find much in BC that I couldn't do without).

In a strange twist, complete obsolescence isn't a boon to the publisher, like it is when Microsoft kills Word 97. Here, there are rendered instances, ready for just a little tweaking before they're efficiently eating up monthly fees from addicted ur, happy players. I hope Blizzard gets it right this time.

Cheaping the WoW experience to entice new players?

I was reading WoW Insider today and was intrigued to hear that lowbies can get mounts at level 30 instead of 40 now.

This prompted a response from Zarhym [a Blizzard forum mod, iirc] 'Allowing players to purchase and ride mounts at level 30 does not at all diminish your prior accomplishments in my eye sockets, Ithnin' This was followed by a post explaining that new players may get their mounts ten levels sooner, but they have ten and soon twenty more levels to go through before they reach the endgame. The majority of responses in this thread are supportive of the change.

I'll disagree, as you might have guessed already from my Take the Nether off the AH post. It's easier to level with a mount. That's why we all buy them. The world contracts when you've got a way of getting places 60% or 100% more quickly, and that means it takes less time to to whatever it is your character needs to do.

To level a new character, you still, generally speaking, have to pass through the same content to get your experience as you did when WoW was first released. Now Duskwood, one of the more memorable zones in my leveling below 40, will have all sorts of folk riding through at breakneck speed. That makes Duskwood easier, and cheapens the time I spent there, and I was there a while.

(And if memory serves (it might not), haven't the experience requirements for leveling already been cut considerably? Certainly attunement's been shut down, which stinks.)

But here's my main gripe: Blizzard had already found a way to make leveling easier for your alt characters. It's called starting your Death Knight at level 55. My highest level alt is level seven. I don't care much for the lower levels. I'll certainly be giving a Death Knight a shot, though, even though they sound like a moonkin-like hybrid (non-squishing magic using tankable) in many respects. A Death Knight is already going to be powerful enough to run the content I remember enjoying. Heck, if you just start me off strong enough to adventure in Duskwood, I'd probably play alts more.

Does the Death Knight cheapen the game? Arguably yes, but in a much different way than making mounts cheaper and more available or reducing XP needed to level. Now experienced players can create a special class of alt char that doesn't have to lowbie grind. We've solved the problem that Blizzard must have seen when BC came out. Sure, Blood Elves and Draenei are k3wl, but I didn't have much fun blasting mana eels or whatever they were for 7 hp a pop. The Blood Elf starting levels looked spectacular, but I couldn't leave them and quickly got tired of snarking around -- and heck, my main saw the same architecture in Outland. Many other veterans must have been similarly unimpressed with the new alt experience. Okay, Death Knight in and problem (hopefully) solved.

So the main reason to make lowbie leveling easier, imo, must be to get new players involved more quickly. This suggests that the endgame (and near endgame) content must be much more enjoyable than the lower level questing to new players. Is the motivation that if you can get players new to WoW to endgame quicker, they're more likely to stay and keep paying?

Instead of cheapening lower levels by playing god with leveling economics, why not do like you did with the Death Knight -- put in the development time and change the game. Put in instances for level 5 characters, perhaps. Have lowbie PvP battlegrounds. Allow people to level in PvP until level 30 or some such. Now traditional leveling is still an option, but you've got the flash that's needed to keep some of your new revenue stre... ur, players.

If you don't simply introduce new routes in the same vein for leveling lowbies but instead starkly change the lowbie game experience, you might find more veterans starting over too.

WotLK interview: Yes, we know you're bored

Haven't had any time to play for two days, but here's an interesting quote from Behind the Blue Curtain: Discussing Wrath of the Lich King with Jeffrey "Tigole" Kaplan:

The MMO Gamer: Probably the number one complaint I hear when speaking to the "average" WoW player, someone who logs in an hour or two a night, maybe raids with their guild on the weekend, is that once they hit 70, their day to day existence in the game consists of either farming for primals, grinding reputation, or doing daily quests. They seem to feel that's slightly monotonous.

Do you personally believe that's a problem in the game, and, if you do, do you have any plans to address it in Northrend?

Jeffrey Kaplan: I do think that's a problem, and I think it's a very true statement, what you said. What I really hope is that hitting level 80 is not the end, but just a milestone, a very momentous milestone.
...
The daily quests that I've really enjoyed lately are things like the fishing daily, the cooking, the battleground, the dungeon dailies, because they have randomization in it. So you don't feel like you're in a set pattern of activity every time you log in. I would rather players do daily quests for money than farm primals, which is a very repetitive sort of behavior.

So, I think we can do things to smooth out what feels like a grind, and make it not the same every day that you log in. I think that's when it becomes an issue, when you log in and do the same activity every time, because certainly when you're leveling up that’s not your experience.

And we all like "very true" statements, not just those that are "fairly true." ;^)

Look, the dailies are nice, and though we all know dailies are just about making it rain cash to make raiding more accessible, they really aren't a good answer to the end game boredom. I mean, look, what Kaplan's saying, whether he knows it or not, is that they're going to turn on the gold faucet and pour cash all over those who don't like farming so that only those insane enough to farm by default have to wax a million Enraged Air Spirits for Primal Air. Prices on everything will go up as the faucet opens wider, and soon everyone will be part of the never ending virtual economic bubble. Reminds me of Mobutu printing Zaires, where daily inflation approached the single digits.

The problem is that the daily quests really aren't all that exciting. They don't particularly engage a larger storyline. Though they change in character slightly, they really are still, "Kill X of Y and get Z gold," mechanizations. The bottom line is that dailies are bribes in virtual currency for you to keep playing. Maybe it's time to make some alternative to grinding, farming or questing, that allows soloers to access instances in a more satisfying way.