Mafia II on PC or 360?

[m4rre]

Hi ya'll.

I simply registered here because that it seems that this place holds a great deal of knowledge I don't.

I just tried out the Mafia II demo from Steam and it worked great (for me thats about 40+ fps) at 1600x900 75hz, shadows & geometry details at high, v-sync on, anti-aliasing on, anistropic filtering at x16. All this using a computer such as this:

AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ 2.5Ghz
Nvidia Geforce GTS250
3GB DDR2-RAM
Windows Vista 32

Only problem comes to when I turn Physx on medium, the fps lowers drastically to about 15-ish and the game gets so slow its a pain to watch. I'm not very familiar to this Physx-stuff, I've looked up threads but I'm not that into the techstuff that I'll be able to understand properly.

Also, I dont really understand why the graphics gets really blurry in the distance, the draw-distance is high as hell but well... The game gets blurry while watching over long distances, like when youre driving across a bridge watching the city, the lamp-posts, cars, ppl, and everything in the distance gets really blurry and I find that quite annoying, it actually looks not far from Mafia 1 in some cases. Although in every other aspect the game seems great. Has this something to do with DirectX or something, and will it be fixed in the final game you think?

Now for the real Q, as I also own a Xbox360, will it play and and look better at my 360 using a 42" widescreen-TV with HD and all that? I don't mind playing the console, actually I bought it 3 years ago just for this reason, and even though I bought this computer just 6 months ago, the Xbox still beats it for many new games. Whenever RDR gets out for PC I bet it still will play better on my 360, sadly.

Regards.

 

[Rakewell]

Well, seeing as you posted in the PC Gaming forum, I'm thinking that you will get mainly "PC" votes.

If you installed a physx card, (or older physx capable card), that would help there.

I don't know the size & type of your PC monitor, but gauging by your refresh rate, is it a CRT?

 

[brybir]

Hi ya'll.

I simply registered here because that it seems that this place holds a great deal of knowledge I don't.

I just tried out the Mafia II demo from Steam and it worked great (for me thats about 40+ fps) at 1600x900 75hz, shadows & geometry details at high, v-sync on, anti-aliasing on, anistropic filtering at x16. All this using a computer such as this:

AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ 2.5Ghz
Nvidia Geforce GTS250
3GB DDR2-RAM
Windows Vista 32

Only problem comes to when I turn Physx on medium, the fps lowers drastically to about 15-ish and the game gets so slow its a pain to watch. I'm not very familiar to this Physx-stuff, I've looked up threads but I'm not that into the techstuff that I'll be able to understand properly.

Also, I dont really understand why the graphics gets really blurry in the distance, the draw-distance is high as hell but well... The game gets blurry while watching over long distances, like when youre driving across a bridge watching the city, the lamp-posts, cars, ppl, and everything in the distance gets really blurry and I find that quite annoying, it actually looks not far from Mafia 1 in some cases. Although in every other aspect the game seems great. Has this something to do with DirectX or something, and will it be fixed in the final game you think?

Now for the real Q, as I also own a Xbox360, will it play and and look better at my 360 using a 42" widescreen-TV with HD and all that? I don't mind playing the console, actually I bought it 3 years ago just for this reason, and even though I bought this computer just 6 months ago, the Xbox still beats it for many new games. Whenever RDR gets out for PC I bet it still will play better on my 360, sadly.

Regards.

1. MafiaII is really pushing the use of PhysX and as such, requires a significant amount of power to run it well. Your GTS250, while not necessarily out of date, is significantly slower than the leading edge of video cards today. That is why you are going to see some major slowdown with Physx enabled. It does not help that your CPU is really showing its age as well, and between the two, added PhysX is going to bring your game to a crawl. In the end you have to decide whether the PhysX is worth it, I think you will find a lot of people that wont notice it on or off most of the time.

2. Your draw distance can be as high as you want but often games have some type of dynamic range adjustment so that things further away get lower priority, so the game will render the closest things well so your frame rate stays high. It may also be a game design to mimic real life sight, as you cannot see infinitely far in the distance.

3. I would think that the game will look better on PC than xbox 360. Xbox360 is limited to a certain resolution and in newer games often lacks much if any Anti-ailising which leads to jaggies. I also prefer using a keyboard and a mouse so I may be biased.

 

[Piotrsama]

Now for the real Q, as I also own a Xbox360, will it play and and look better at my 360 using a 42" widescreen-TV with HD and all that? I don't mind playing the console, actually I bought it 3 years ago just for this reason, and even though I bought this computer just 6 months ago, the Xbox still beats it for many new games. Whenever RDR gets out for PC I bet it still will play better on my 360, sadly.

Wait for reviews making a comparison between platforms.
The game should look better on a top end PC.

 

[vrait]

The console versions suck, just get the PC version. And don't turn on physx. Physx is nice but is not needed.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

If you're worried about physx/graphics then the consoles probably aren't going to be any better. Also, just because you bought a computer 6 months ago doesn't mean it's a good computer.

 

[Cheesetogo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzkIhgp27r8

 

[m4rre]

Also, just because you bought a computer 6 months ago doesn't mean it's a good computer.

I'm well aware of that mate, I did however think that the computer would last at least a little bit longer but nowadays they apparently don't. I spent about 1300 euro on it so I figured it be good for a while but it seems to need frequent updates. I remember my first computer being suficient for new games for like 4 years... Those were the days.

To the rest of you, thing is, I really want to pre-order this game since my bet is that it will be sold out almost immideatly. And I don't want to waste money on buying both the PC & 360 version... Well as far as I've understood Physx isnt anything very important and the game played well without having it enabled so I guess I'm gonna go for the PC-version this time... for the first time in a very long time.

And oh, youtube vid's doesnt really help alot. The quality just won't give the game justice when comparing different consoles & pc's etc.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[HomerX]

AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ 2.5Ghz
Nvidia Geforce GTS250
3GB DDR2-RAM
Windows Vista 32

I spent about 1300 euro on it

a half year ago?

someone really ripped you off there...

a half year ago i would say that the price point of that pc would be ~500€

i build a pc myself in november last year an spend around 1300€ with a costly case and a 24" monitor + expensive gaming mouse/keyboard + win7. the pc is a core i5 750, 4gig ram, a 4890 vapor-x and 1tb diskspace.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

pc pwns. doesn't look all that hawt on my x2 4200 and 3850 tho.