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[Data]

That does look good actually.  Any specs ? As in; not the specs that Rockstar make up to sell the game and then we find it runs like treacle...

It’s a good point Freddy, as with other Rockstar games I would tend to look at the recommended specs rather than the minimum, so with a bit of reading up on the specs and a bit of judgment I would say you would be looking at:

A Quad Core CPU

4 GIG RAM

Half descent graphics card ( I know that’s doesn’t mean much but if you are a gamer you will know if your GX card is any good or not  )   with at least 512 MB or 1 GIG to be sure or getting a good view distance.

When I get this game I will put a vid up on Youtube, hopefully in maximum quality, then we can see how much better it looks on the PC than the game boxes.     

[Data]

I have pre ordered L.A. Noire for the PC, 11 days and counting 

[Freddy]

I've noticed that on the OnLive (cloud gaming) service this costs pretty much the same as a regular PC version.  Still undecided about cloud gaming. You have to fork out £70 or so for the unit.  Then you pay for games.  I'm wondering how much bandwidth these games use, I wonder if it's going to be like streaming a standard definition film... I suppose that would be okay if you had a good allowance from your ISP.

One thing that is nice is that I could get games onto my big telly with ease.

[Data]

Lets imagine that cloud gaming takes off in a big way, isn’t that really going to choke up the web with huge amounts of data and that makes me think of lag, nothing much more annoying than a laggy game.

Personally I think it’s a bad idea, can’t mod the games, they don’t seem any cheaper, huge amounts of bandwidth.

I guess it will enable people with less powerful machines to game, but gamers wont even entertain such slow machines in the first place.

It’s games for numpties at the end of the day. IMHO 

[Freddy]

Well they stream video all the time, so if they can do that I can't see why it would be any worse really, especially as they continually upgrade the equipment and exchanges.  Usually lag is caused by the server I thnk.  ISPs will have to keep up with things if they want to survive.  You only need a 3 gig line to play these games they say...

I don't think it's necessarily for numpties.  Things change and get updated, it's just a new way of doing things.  That's how we got from Pong to World of Warcraft.

Have you seen something somewhere that says these machines are slow ?  Please share

But yes I too still have my reservations, I think I will wait and see how it pans out.

[Data]

The gamers community is massive though, millions and millions of players, now what if all those people now started playing online and were downloading at 3Mb, that on top of everything else that’s already going across the web, there is going to be lag problems, just like in second life.

How many times have you not been able to watch videos on Youtube or the Iplayer because the servers are lagged out? It happens doesn’t it? If it happened in game play it would be awful, gamers want good, constant FPS and no lag.    

I call them numpties, maybe a little hash I admit, I guess part time gamers would be a closer description. The game forums I frequent are full of Hardcore Gamers with top end PC’s made for gaming, you do get the odd people on them that don’t have a good enough PC’s to play the games, you know, the numpties, sorry part time gamers. 

Cloud gaming will suit them just fine but I really don’t think it will attract many hardcore gamers.

 

Have you seen something somewhere that says these machines are slow ?  Please share

I think you misunderstood what I was saying Freddy, I’m wasn’t saying the machines that the cloud games are running on are slow but the machines that are playing the games can be slower none gaming machines like cheap laptops, and I think that’s going to be the clouds market, not the true gamers.  

[Freddy]

I don't expect hard core gamers will go for it either. I think this will mostly appeal to people who buy consoles.

The net has to expand to cover demand and that's the only direction it can go in.  No arguments from me, I am sure there will be lag sometimes, just as with anything on the net.  I do occasionally get lag on YouTube, not very often.  For a while I was streaming SD to my telly and that worked always without lag. But yep I agree, the more there is on the net the more likely it is there will be some problems with speed in the end.

And yep the gamers community is probably one of the largest.  I don't use iPlayer much, some times it can lag though. I don't know if it is network congestion or simply demand on the server.  Maybe a bit of both, but I lean to the server not being able to cope.

I think Second Life lag is due to them not having good enough servers to cope with demand.  My angle is this - say you go to one site and it is slow....then you go to another site and it is fast.  That shows that it is a server overload and not network congestion.  I think that's a good rule of thumb.  For them to make OnLive work they need decent servers - like we said before, something like supercomputers, if they want to avoid lag.

I'm not sure about the numpties lol, but I see titles that may normally only attract hard-core gamers being offered by OnLive.  So maybe that will turn the numpties into hardcore players

For some people the maths will certainly add up.  Do I spend £600 on a top of the range gaming PC or is it more these days ?  Or do I fork out a £70 one off payment and then just pay for games...

[Freddy]

P.S. I think my rule of thumb is fatally flawed.... a slow site could be network congestion... routes etc, so ignore me 

[Data]

No I can't ignore you Freddy    tell you what, lets just take it that somewhere along the line one of the servers will lag      

[Freddy]

Haha okay that's scientific enough for me 

How much does a top of the range gaming PC cost these days though ?

[Data]

You could build a gaming PC for about £500 to £600, without screen or something like that, wouldn’t be the best out there but it would play all the games better than a console.



I’ve found a couple of vids about Onlive, one shows the image quality, you can see its below PC quality, but to be fair some people would be happy with it.

The other is a lag test, the guy in the video says that there is hardly any lag, but that there is lag  , he also admits to not being a gamer and thinks that the Hardcore gamer probably wouldn’t like it much.  

OnLive Test : Image Quality 1080P

OnLive Test : Input lag 1080P

[Freddy]

Neat, thanks for digging those up.  I had read some comments that the OnLive graphics are not quite as good as a PC.  It is noticeable - the PC has better definition.  The OnLive is pretty good though.  SO this thing is 720p only ?  That would mean it would look blocky on my telly then.  And  I play my games at 1920 x 1200, so I may not be satisfied.

About the lag...well that's barely testing it really is it ?  You need to be in the middle of some mayhem to truly test that - I think if it is noticeable when there is no action, then it will be noticeable in testing conditions.

You could build a gaming PC for about £500 to £600,

Oh cool, I am not too out of touch then.  

[Freddy]

I'm a bit confused actually.  I saw on their site (OnLive) that you buy a sort of console thing - I guess that's for people without a computer/laptop ?  So it seems you don't need to buy that to play games on a bog standard PC then - you just have to pay a sub for the games or something.

Hmmm.  I think I will pass for now, but will keep an eye on it.

[Snowcrash]

A top notch gaming rig is, as it's always been, about £1000 plus. Box only. And I could easily spec it up to £2000.

But it's horses for courses. £600 would build a fair machine.

My mate just did an upgrade of over £1000 but he's mad and as always with life, you get diminishing returns. (upgrade was 2 X £350 GeForce graphics cards and water cooling mod 'cos it gets too hot otherwise).

[Data]

Been playing this game for a couple of days now, but is it any good?

You bet it is, 

Absolutely the best character faces I’ve ever seen in a game, so close to real that at times it’s quite scary.

Driving round L. A. in old cars that can’t accelerate or brake is fun, no really it is fun, the area is pretty huge too, I wouldn’t say its massive but its going to take a long time to learn it. 

But for me the best of all is the gameplay, its like nothing I’ve played before, a hybrid of GTA, Sherlock Holmes and Fallout 3. Rockstar games have made a game that you actually need to think about, yes you need a bit of driving and shooting skill but the main challenge is solving the cases and getting promoted.

The graphics engine is typical of GTA (look and feel), it looks like it’s a little bit better than GTA4 graphics outside and there is a noticeable improvement in quality indoors, I guess that is because you spend much of your time in buildings looking for clues, and interviewing people.

There is a strong adult theme to this game, I’m not going to go into to detail but you can really see why it’s an 18. 

One other thing is that you can’t just jump into any car and drive crazily round the town knocking over pedestrians and causing chaos, like you can in GTA, oh no, everything has consequences in L.A. Noire.

And lastly, this game needs a pretty good gaming PC to play it in max quality, it pushes my quad core CPU to 100% at times, eats up all 4 GIG of RAM and also asks a lot of the graphics card.   

Rockstar are already working on a patch, which will more than likely have some type of optimisation added.

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