Gaming Supersonic Sled

[Turbinator]

This game has rocket engines, SRBs, and speed, so I tough I would share it with you, here.
First off lets let me post the official description as it describes the game perfectly.


Supersonic Sled straps you on a high powered test rocket and hurtles you down a six mile long track in the Nevada desert at speeds in excess of 800 miles an hour. You’ll have to avoid falling rocks, destroy buildings and bridges, and avoid flying off the side of a massive cliff.

Every moving object in the demo is physically simulated using PhysX and CUDA. From the falling rock debris you have to traverse, to the dynamic smoke that swirls around the launch pad when you take off, to the thousands of individual pieces the house and bridge you’ll fly by break into – every interaction between moving objects in Supersonic Sled is simulated on the GeForce GTX 400 Series GPU – helping create one of the most physically realistic and accurately portrayed real-time technology demos ever built.


There is an awesome intro video when the game starts, in that 50s black and white science education video style. It demonstrates the objective of the game clearly.

This is a very high end game, if you have a capable computer, get it here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cool_stuff.html#/demos/2117

For those that can't run the game, here is a video:

 

[jangofett287]

Just a note, unless you have an Nvidia GPU you have a 0% chance of being able to run this. Being stuck with an ATI card, this makes me sad.

 

[communist]

Just a note, unless you have an Nvidia GPU you have a 0% chance of being able to run this. Being stuck with an ATI card, this makes me sad.

CURSE YOU INTEL *yells randomly*

 

[jangofett287]

why is that?

Because it requires CUDA and PhysX, which you can only get on Nvidia chips. (note I said chips not graphics cards, some 3rd parties put Nvidia Chips and GPUs on their own boards)

 

[Keatah]

why is that?

Because this is a DEMO written by nvidia to showcase graphics capabilities of their chips and cuda and physx. It is written to make use of features and things specific to nvidia. nvidia has no motivation to write software for other graphics chips.

---------- Post added at 10:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:55 PM ----------

CURSE YOU INTEL *yells randomly*

What does this have to do with intel?

 

[communist]

i have an intel,i HATE it

 

[Keatah]

i have an intel,i HATE it

without getting off-topic too much, why you hate it?

 

[Quick_Nick]

I wish I had a system like that...
And is it just me or does the second video end with 10 minutes of black screen?

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Just a quick note, if you're on XP it won't work, it uses DirectX 11, I'm so glad I've moved on to 7.

Edit: I wonder how well this'll run on my GT 220... Probably not too well, but that's never stopped me from trying before. :lol:

 

[Quick_Nick]

I looked up AMD demos.... Very disappointing. They're unimpressive, dated, AND my laptop can't run one of them at a decent frame rate.

 

[jangofett287]

One thing AMD cards have over Nvidia is the Catalyst Control Center (CCC)(a control panel for the GPU's settings), which I have found to be far more easy to use than the Nvidia equivalent. It also has built in support for overclocking.

 

[Keatah]

One thing AMD cards have over Nvidia is the Catalyst Control Center (CCC)(a control panel for the GPU's settings), which I have found to be far more easy to use than the Nvidia equivalent. It also has built in support for overclocking.

Agreed on that! The Nvidia one is too tedious to use. A lot of moving and clicking to change one setting.

 

[jangofett287]

However, I have found the biult in auto-overclocker, which switches up the clock speed 'on the fly', up to a maximum, as needed, to be unstable and rather stupid. example: I start up a game, no clock change, load a level, small clock increase, look round a corner into a massive load of geometry, stutters for a sec while the clock switches up to its limit, I stop looking round the corner, so thus am only rendering a small amount of geometry (source engines visleafs, only render ones visible from your visleaf.), and the clock instantly jumps back down. like I said, Unstable and stupid.

 

[Keatah]

You will forgive me. But anything to do with overclocking these days is just dumb. Hardware is built to precise tolerances and electrical specifications. And operating it out of those specs usually has some hidden pitfall around the corner. Like your messed-up geometry!:shifty:

Back in the day of Celerons, taking a 300MHz model and running it at 550MHz it was worth it. And going further back - taking a 1.79MHz 6502 and getting it to 3MHz was an even bigger stink!

Today, taking a graphics chip that runs at 700MHz for the memory bus and pushing it to 725MHz is pretty lame. Or taking a 2.6GHz cpu and getting 3GHz out of it, also lame.

Sorry, but I dislike overclocking to high heaven!

 

[Cras]

Today, taking a graphics chip that runs at 700MHz for the memory bus and pushing it to 725MHz is pretty lame. Or taking a 2.6GHz cpu and getting 3GHz out of it, also lame.

Sorry, but I dislike overclocking to high heaven!

Well, the Sandy Bridge is almost built to be over clocked, as are the GPUS that I have gotten. You are more of a fool if you buy a GTX 580 and not over clock the thing.

Hardware is built to precise specs, but they are clocked well below that. When I got my i7, I don't even know what its original clock is, 3.2Ghz maybe, and the ram is then clocked down. It took like three steps to clock it up to 4GHz, and the difference is HUGE.

That is alright that you don't like overclocking. Ones does need to know what they are doing, if not you run the risk of destroying your brand new CPU or GPU, it does shorten the life span of the systems involved (but if you are someone who upgrades or rebuilds their machine every three years, this does not matter a bit as the quality components will be able to run well past that, even agressively OC'd), and you need to get more aggressive with cooling. The Sandy Bridge can be overclocked well over 4Ghz on air cooling, but my i7 975 extreme requires me to have liquid cooling. But that cooling allows me to also put more fans on the bridge of the board, and helps keep the GPUs cool since I dont have this giant fan and heat sink sitting in the middle of my machine. I just have a few hoses that goes to an external radiator.

But to say OC'ing is dumb, that is a bit misguided. I would argue very much the opposite. If you have a new Sandy Bridge, or the Fermis (500s only, the 400s run way to hot at stock clocks to try and push the envelope) you are wasting potential.

The amount of changes needed are minimal to get a good clock nowadays. If you buy good RAM, it is designed to be clocked, and if you get the right processors, the unlocked ones, all it takes is abit of extra voltate and then crank up the multiplier until the system BSODs, then scale it back until it is stable. It only took me a few notches of voltage to get my CPU up to 4GHz, and a few notches of voltage to get my GTX580 from 797 MHz to 990MHz. I even had it up over 1000MHz with no problems, just have to make sure the fans are working and not blocked and the temps are fine.


But back to the topic, I just downloaded this game, and it is a blast. So much fun.