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Discussion about NBA Live 2004.
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Fri Nov 14, 2003 7:21 pm

lol im suprised that shiznit is legal

Fri Nov 14, 2003 7:25 pm

colin826 wrote:I got the game from the Future Shop in West Van (Park Royal to be exact.) I'm assuming it will be at other Future Shops.

bleh i hate that place so much.
I went to the futureshop in richmond the other day when it was first released but they didn't have it.
I'll just wait for my brother to get it :)
$20 direct from EA in burnaby :)

Fri Nov 14, 2003 7:28 pm

bishibashiboy wrote:bleh i hate that place so much.
Future Shop, Park Royal or West Van? I'm assuming Future Shop, I really only go there because my only other West Van option is the terminally understocked Electronics Boutique which is in a very small store in Park Royal. Plus they charge a bit more.

Your bro works for EA? That's nice, I got a tour there and it's a nice place with very good food at the cafeteria. :D

Fri Nov 14, 2003 7:30 pm

He used to work there in the summer, but he quit now. He was working on Live 2004 for the xbox.
Luckily he's still got friends there that could get him EA games for $20 due to employee discounts ;)

Fri Nov 14, 2003 7:34 pm

I was totally taken by suprise that NBA Live 2004 was released today. I would have thought that I would have thought about it more. I dont complain now though, its here and its sweet.

Fri Nov 14, 2003 7:52 pm

colin826 wrote:I'm running 1024*768, player detail medium, enviroment medium, all others low, except reflections which is off.

All that with an NVIDIA Riva TNT :D


16MB, ha ?

Like mine ,currently ..... :D

Fri Nov 14, 2003 8:30 pm

I'm very impressed by how smoothly 2004 runs on my older system.

1ghz Athlon (ASUS mobo)
512 pc133 RAM (generic)
128mb ATI Radeon 9000 (generic card)
40gb 7200 rpm HD (IBM)

at

1024x768x32
maximum settings
except
-reflections (medium)
-bench players (medium)

Gameplay has been totally smooth and not choppy at all. It does begin to stutter a bit at 1280, especially on the change of possession camera-swing (baseline high).

Live 2003 was quite choppy for me at 1024x768x32 at high settings. Kudos to EA for tightening the code this year.

Sat Nov 15, 2003 5:44 am

NBA Live 2004 runs extremely well on my relatively "old" PC (I bought it the spring of 2001) I have had to obviously tone down the graphic settings but it still runs very smoothly

1.3 GHZ Pentium 4
128 MB RAM
20 GB HD
32 MB Geforce 2

Sat Nov 15, 2003 5:59 am

HonoraryCitizen wrote:NBA Live 2004 runs extremely well on my relatively "old" PC (I bought it the spring of 2001) I have had to obviously tone down the graphic settings but it still runs very smoothly

1.3 GHZ Pentium 4
128 MB RAM
20 GB HD
32 MB Geforce 2


Ditto. I'm impressed with the performance vs. prettiness. I haven't tweaked much, but it's completely smooth at 800x600x32 with my dinky processor and somewhat old video card. Specs:

933MHz P!!! (that's Intel's goofy thing for the Pentium 3 hehe)
512 MB PC133 RAM
128MB Radeon 8500

I'm pretty certain my CPU will be the bottleneck when I fully tweak, so I figure any higher resolution won't be in my future (AA will help with the jaggies, I hope).

Sat Nov 15, 2003 6:03 am

believe me or dont believe me!
I've been playing on a IBM R40 (laptop)

P.Celeron 2.2
256 RAM
Ati Mobility Radoen 16mb
40 Gb Hard Drive

Considering my Graphics card i thought id have problems with all the games i have... but so far
im running NBA Live 2004 1024x768x32 and its running smoothly with all maximum shit.. butttttttttt if im running other stuff then you got problems.
im also running max payne 2, fifa 2004, vice city, simpsons hit and run all with good graphics.. soooo, its all good!!!! :wink:

Sat Nov 15, 2003 7:28 am

this contradicts what ive really got in my system however im thinking that EA could port it to the Atari 2600 to enhance the graphical corruption issues

Sat Nov 15, 2003 8:03 am

works fine on my replacement GeForce4 MX440 128mb 128bit

measured using FRAPS
duron 1.6 @ xp2600+ +L2 256kb
a7v333 11.5x180
twinmos ddr333 256mb

2003-11-14 18:52:04 - nba2004 640x480x32 noAA AF
Frames: 1544 - Time: 43032ms - Avg: 35.880 - Min: 32 - Max: 46

2003-11-14 18:57:06 - nba2004 640x480x32 2xAA 2xAF
Frames: 1122 - Time: 33891ms - Avg: 33.106 - Min: 30 - Max: 38

2003-11-14 18:59:41 - nba2004 640x480x32 4xAA 2xAF
Frames: 1552 - Time: 55390ms - Avg: 28.019 - Min: 26 - Max: 36

2003-11-14 19:08:22 - nba2004 800x600x32 noAA AF
Frames: 1156 - Time: 30765ms - Avg: 37.575 - Min: 32 - Max: 54

2003-11-14 19:12:18 - nba2004 800x600x32 2xAA 2xAF
Frames: 919 - Time: 28531ms - Avg: 32.210 - Min: 29 - Max: 42

2003-11-14 19:01:53 - nba2004 800x600x32 4xAA 2xAF
Frames: 816 - Time: 36297ms - Avg: 22.481 - Min: 20 - Max: 26

default NBA Live 2k4 settings
Bilinear
V-sync ON
????? ON

Sat Nov 15, 2003 8:36 am

:cry: I'm not a happy camper because I found out after I bought the game that it won't run with my POS graphics card, which by the way, worked fine with Madden 2004.

Sat Nov 15, 2003 8:42 am

how are some of you guys getting 60 fps? What resolution are you guys using.

Sat Nov 15, 2003 9:21 am

some updates

I swapped out another Radeon 9800 pro to check and the results were identical... so i dunno how you guys are getting 60fps constant w/ all the details max. Unless you are running dual channel memory with super high bandwidth.

fraps at 1024x768, 4xAA/16xAF shadows off, reflections off, background detail low (basically everything off or lowest settings except for players)

2003-11-14 14:54:51 - nba2004
Frames: 22307 - Time: 345562ms - Avg: 64.552 - Min: 41 - Max: 427

same resolution, shadows low, reflections low

2003-11-14 15:07:40 - nba2004
Frames: 19533 - Time: 389781ms - Avg: 50.112 - Min: 30 - Max: 383

As you can see, the data gets warped by the high FPSes that you get from the replays. I'd say that for pure gameplay, knock off 10 fps off both of those scores.

Setting shadows/resolution to MAX will kill your FPS much moreso than any AA or AF settings. With everything max and no AA/AF i got this.

2003-11-14 11:52:36 - nba2004
Frames: 10071 - Time: 378875ms - Avg: 26.581 - Min: 20 - Max: 220

Sat Nov 15, 2003 10:37 am

I run 1280x960x32 bit with 4x AA and 8x ani. Framerates are smooth as silk. How are you guys getting FPS counter? Anyway, I have not seen any slow downs. My specs are as follows:

P4 3.0 HYPERTHREADING
1 GIG DDR 3200 Kingston Hyper X
ATI Radeon 9800 PRO AIW
ABIT C7-G
80 GIG IBM ATA 100
30 GIG MAXTOR ATA 100
Sony DVD 16X
Sony CD-RW 52X
550 WATT ASPIRE power supply
Alien X Aluminum tower.
Creative Audigy 2
LOGITECH Z680 5.1 speakers
Last edited by Bordeaux on Sun Nov 16, 2003 3:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

Sat Nov 15, 2003 10:48 am

What a nice computer Bordeaux :P

Anyways you can use Fraps to see the FPS in your games.
http://www.fraps.com/

Just download the free version if you don't want to pay.

Sat Nov 15, 2003 11:34 am

yes please use fraps and report your scores....

there is a big difference between silky smooth 30 fps and 60 fps :)

Sat Nov 15, 2003 12:42 pm

moop wrote:yes please use fraps and report your scores....

there is a big difference between silky smooth 30 fps and 60 fps :)


I couldn't agree with you more. So far, I'm inclined to think the results you posted (and CLUEmanatiare) are the most accurate since you guys have solid evidence via fraps logs. Also not only do you have a log yours is recording for a pretty long time, so that's good (Y)
CLUEmanatiare's logs are a lil short though. His results are also NOT very smooth at all considering he's running at a max resolution of 800x600 and he's only hitting 37fps which is unacceptable for a sports game.
I honestly don't know what most of you ppl are getting, because so few are posting fraps logs and there is no standardized test we could all run (like a timedemo) to compare.
Even though most of you are saying it's "smooth" on your system, it doesn't really say much since each person's intepretation of smooth and not smooth are different.
From what I can tell, the good thing is that most of you guys are agreeing that it is smoother than 2003, which is a very good thing :)

I think what we should all do is conform to a certain camera angle, set it to the furthest distance, pick the same teams and pick an arbitrary point in which to get a general indication of framerate.
My suggestion is this:
Run the game at 1024x768 no AA and no AF
Everything within the game set to max detail, no vsync, triple buffer on.
Agree on a camera angle.
Pick the same teams for comparison.
Have all 10 active players displayed on the screen at the same time.
Have the point guard hold the ball behind the 3-point arc.
Look at the avg framerate.

This is probably the most demanding the game will get, since everyone and everything will be displayed on the court at this time.

Any suggestions?

Sat Nov 15, 2003 1:13 pm

mashimaro_boy wrote:What a nice computer Bordeaux :P

Anyways you can use Fraps to see the FPS in your games.
http://www.fraps.com/

Just download the free version if you don't want to pay.


Thanks, Ill try that.

Sat Nov 15, 2003 1:53 pm

the FPS will spike rapidly during possession changes, timeout, etc.

that's why i say lower the average by about 5-10 fps....

with all settings MAX and really LOW (640x380) resolution it still hovers around 30 fps for me. Kinda annoying. But I notice that this is pretty consistent with EA games. The madden and fifa demo's run about the same FPS (fifa a bit faster).

i think hardware sites should start benching sports games, since they seem to be much more tasking than the standard FPSes!

Sat Nov 15, 2003 2:49 pm

Actually with your system moop, if you turn the resolution down to 640x480 there would be almost no performance gain. With the Radeon 9800pro, you're basically getting resolutions up to around 1024x768 for free since at 640x480 and 800x600, the game would be cpu-bound rather than graphics card bound. Therefore, it's not unexpected to see equal framerates from 640x480 to 1024x768.
30fps is pathetic for this game. We need around 60fps.

I'm thinking reflections may be the culprit once again this year. In Live 2003, turning on AA and AF didn't produce the kinda performance hit that turning reflections to medium or high produced.

Sat Nov 15, 2003 4:00 pm

Ok you guys these are my results with 1600x1200x32, 4x aa, 8x
I have some high res screens but I need somewhere to upload them.

2003-11-15 00:15:55 - nba2004
Frames: 371 - Time: 9422ms - Avg: 39.375 - Min: 31 - Max: 47

2003-11-15 00:16:13 - nba2004
Frames: 150 - Time: 3985ms - Avg: 37.641 - Min: 19 - Max: 46

2003-11-15 00:17:06 - nba2004
Frames: 2659 - Time: 49812ms - Avg: 53.380 - Min: 1 - Max: 78

2003-11-15 00:19:03 - nba2004
Frames: 53 - Time: 984ms - Avg: 53.861 - Min: 53 - Max: 53

2003-11-15 00:19:05 - nba2004
Frames: 82 - Time: 1328ms - Avg: 61.746 - Min: 62 - Max: 63

2003-11-15 00:19:11 - nba2004
Frames: 1046 - Time: 20579ms - Avg: 50.828 - Min: 21 - Max: 63

2003-11-15 00:29:07 - nba2004
Frames: 528 - Time: 13547ms - Avg: 38.975 - Min: 18 - Max: 52

Running 1024 I get around 50 to 70 and sometimes it spikes in the 100s.
I'll get some more results with lower res later, I have to goto bed.

BTW settings in game are MAX everything, VSYNC ON.
See ya.

Sat Nov 15, 2003 4:09 pm

Hmm...pretty good Bordeaux.
Too bad most of us don't have a system like yours though :(

If possible, could some ppl give some fraps scores @ 1024x768 no AA no AF, at max details as this is probably what the majority of us will be playing at? Thanks!

Sat Nov 15, 2003 6:47 pm

Bordeaux, are you running a DCDDR system? Thinking of adding another stick of RAM :)

anyways, here's some good news, I reinstalled my chipset drivers (due to an unrelated issue). Then after seeing the numbers Bordeaux posted, i set my resolution to 1280x1024 4xAA/8xAF and my performance for one quarter with everything max

VSYNC ON
2003-11-15 00:49:54 - nba2004
Frames: 16991 - Time: 344125ms - Avg: 49.374 - Min: 36 - Max: 61

VSYNC OFF
2003-11-15 01:24:47 - nba2004
Frames: 17947 - Time: 341109ms - Avg: 52.613 - Min: 37 - Max: 257

so i guess it was my chipset xdrivers slowing me down... the reason i installed new drivers was because my AGP texture acceleration was disabled. Installing the new drivers allowed me to enable AGP texture acceleration (run command "dxdiag" to check if you have this option enabled), and to enable 8x AGP. if anyone has the same prob just update your drivers.

EDIT: here are some 1024x768 numbers 4xAA/8xAF everything max VSYNC ON

2003-11-15 00:58:09 - nba2004
Frames: 18440 - Time: 334500ms - Avg: 55.127 - Min: 37 - Max: 63

VSYNC OFF

2003-11-15 01:07:23 - nba2004
Frames: 21663 - Time: 353547ms - Avg: 61.273 - Min: 41 - Max: 273

much BETTER! :)
Last edited by moop on Sat Nov 15, 2003 7:33 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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