qrazi

Probably because of that SLI bridgechip that the option isn't available to you. What Legolasindar describes doesn't work with GPU's already 'engaged' in SLI. btw: with AGP you meant PCIe of course... :)

To add to Pilotasso and Kuky; Anand made the following comment, belonging to the graph posted by Pilotasso So when actually playing a game, the power consumption of the used system would be (probably significant) higher then 450 Watt. Would be good if AMD/ATi would come with a similar technique as nVidia's HybridPower technique. That means that when there is no 3D load, all graphics are rendered by the IGP, and the videocard uses basically 0 watt. Apparently the new Catalyst 8.8 driver is enabling PowerPlay 2.0 for the HD 4800 series, which should lower the idle load some more.

Done.... Intel Core i7 is coming this year... :D (j/k) Nice to see that it indeed improved performance, although not that much. A colleague of mine, who plays mostly FPS, also made the switch from a 8800GTS 320MB (in SLI though) to a 9800GX2, and he saw quiet a big performance gain. And I guess that since DCS is graphically more complex then Lockon, the gain you have made is actually significant in DCS. But we'll have to see when DCS is released...

The Radeon HD 4870X2 is rumored to have that kind of communication between cores, however, we will have to wait for the first actual reviews before we know anything for sure. AFR (alternate frame rendering) isn't the only method however to process frames in multi-GPU solutions. Check Wikipedia for instance. Iirc, 3Dfx SLI would actually used to let each chip (not actually GPU yet) render alternate scan lines.

Are you sure about that? Because with both normal SLI/Crossfire and single board solutions, the communication between the two GPU's goes over a PCI Express connection. And although the single board should have a shorter connection physically, in practice it shouldn't differ so much as to have stutter in two seperate boards, but not on a single board. I have no experience with SLI besides my old 3Dfx Voodoo5 5500 (sigh... memories), but I like to think I'm well read into the subject... :)

I stand corrected, you are right. In fact, all the other review in my comparison database say the same as well...

Funny, most reviews I read put the performance of the HD 4870 at around 5% less then the GTX 260. Which at before the price cuts made the HD 4870 the better card. But right now prices are getting pretty close, and making the decision indeed a lot harder. Personally I would still go for the Radeon, but that is because ever since nVidia chewed up 3Dfx, I have a grudge against nVidia... Call me stupid... There are ofcourse also more reasonable considerations. AMD/Ati is now actively supporting open-source driver development, and the new AA mode actually works quiet good. On top of that the Radeon uses less energy under load then the GeForce GTX 260.

8500 GT will not let you fly with lot's of eyecandy.... Best advice, wait to release of DCS:BS and then get a new videocard that fits your budget. CPU should be okay, and RAM too... (disclaimer: all are educated guesses)

Imho it works well in arcade games like BF2 etc. but the basic idea should work very well in a realistic setting as well. Didn't F4 have something simular? and I am pretty sure ArmA has a mp mode like that.

Actually, Havok ran indeed on the CPU and PhysX used to work only on Aegia's PPU cards. However, Havok is being already starting to support GPU's, and PhysX has been made available for GPU's through CUDA as well. So both technologie are now blending towards eachother, and tapping into the power of current day GPU's.

DCS development time was sort of a good guess, since DirectX 11 is to be introduced late next year, and with the amount of planned modules, that will definitely be in the timeframe... The order of jets was just totally completely a joke... :) gotta have fun once in a while...

With DirectX 11, physics support will be added. That will make the choice for most developer irrelevant, as they just have support 1 way of doing their physics calculations. Looking at DCS developing time, we will probably get physics support sometime between the F-16 and the Hind... :)

nice find, thank you.

Very nice looking! I wish it was my 50th birthday already!... :)

Just youtube in general for 'crazy french pilot' (or french low level) and see how many results there are! lots of them in chad, but also other places... And they will use anything that flies, be it a tanker, chopper or jet... :)

Good question/suggestion indeed!

nVidia would like everybody to use PhysX, thats why they actively support development of a CUDA/PhysX driver for Radeon cards (http://www.ngohq.com/news/14219-physx-gpu-acceleration-radeon-hd-3850-a.html). AMD officially backs Havok (interestingly now owned by Intel). Havok is most known for use in games such as Halflife2, and indeed a software solution that runs on the CPU. However, Havok has been working on adding GPU support, which makes sense, since GPU's are much strong for that purpose then CPU's. I am indeed interested if and how PhysX/Havok will be supported....

For Lockon and DCS:Blackshark multi-core doesn't help yet, but FSX and to be released sims like FighterOPS do support multi-core. On top of that, videoencoding is way faster on quad-cores then on dual-cores. Radeon 4800 series are on average quieter then GeForce 9800GTX(+) and GTX 260/280 videocards. Prices of all these cards have come pretty close together (I mean, 4850/9800GTX and 4870/GTX260), so I guess both radeon 4870 and GTX260 are about the best option. In my opinion the GTX 280 offers better performance in absolute terms, but the extra cost isn't worth it. Which type ram, depends on which motherboard you would like to have. Again, DDR3 wins in absolute performance, but comes at a premium which most likely isn't worth it. 4GB would definitely be the way to go. Vista 64 shouldn't be a problem for any modern system driver-wise, and with WoW (windows on windows) you can basically run all native 32-bit software without performance penalty. And for the harddrive, get something speedy. The latest 1 TB harddrives are also fast, except for the 'green' versions (because those tend to run at 5400RPM). SSD or Velociraptor is again faster but comes at a big premium.

I bought a second hand Saitek X45 Hotas for € 45,- on the local e-Bay. Works well enough for me.

Purely for DCS a fast dual-core would be the best option, because of its higher clockspeeds, but for more general use I would lean to quadcore pretty quickly. It just offers a lot more performance in stuff like 3d-modeling, photo- and videoediting. Besides, more and more games are supporting multi-core, as opposed to just dual-core. FSX with SP1 is supposed to support multicore (that would include quadcore), and of course games like Crysis and SC run faster on it as well.

I found the following in the 8.6 beta release notes as published on Tweakers.net: As far as I can find online, the T200 Unified AVStream device is used for Video-In functions, most commonly found on All-in-Wonder series Radeons... However, you seem to have a Radeon HD 2900XT, and I think there is no AIW version of that card. Is it possible you used to have another Radeon card in this computer?

I am pretty sure I am right. However, both CrossFire and SLI don't require driver optimization to work, it's just that in order to get to most out of it, driver optimizations are required. Both companies often get more perfomance on specific games with each new driver release, and that is only part because of bug fixes. They both do a lot of optimalization for popular games. I guess flightsims are way more CPU bound because of the world that is being rendered, and the stuff that is going on in that world. What could be an option is to tap into the graphics card power by using CUDA for calculations such as AI, flightmodel maybe... Ah, I dont know about that, might be completely wrong there.

Then Falcon fans and Lockon fans can finally unite after bashing eachother for years!!! (or is that maybe a little to much dreaming?)

multi-GPU support as in CrossFire(X) or SLI happens on the driver level, not the application level. Therefor DCS:BS doesn't need to support multi-GPU, however AMD/ATi and nVidia should optimize their drivers for DCS:BS.

I don't really see how SimHQ would benefit from any extra traffic caused by downloads.... It will ony cause higher cost for them because of increased bandwidth usage.... I guess they assume people who want to see this movie, never visit their website, and hearing about it makes them visit SimHQ not only to download the movie, but also click on advertisements.... :)