Callsign.Vega

There's one major flaw in your argument though; the USA doesn't produce any components anymore. :D I'd agree, the WH is built fairly decently. Although, a lot of people like myself have issues with stuff being built in China. Usually because it's the only place to purchase tons of items anymore because they produce so cheap that it drives out the rest of the industrial worlds manufacturing out of the marketplace. How do they do this? Just watch a documentary on the work and living conditions of Chinese industrial laborers.

People are willing to take a lower quality in exchange for a lower cost. That sentence right there explains the entire rise of the Chinese economic power.

I've read in medical journals that masturbating to USB devices can be detrimental to ones health.

Yes, the much wider field of view of the landscape, combined with the GTX 580 literally hitting the VRAM limit, caused such low FPS. I prefer surround gaming in portrait and it has the added benefit of being faster to boot. You can prevent the 580's from hitting the VRAM limit but you have to turn down in game settings quite a bit.

Original post benchmarks updated.

Side stick all the way.

I even have my 6970's over clocked now in CF and I still don't go beyond 70 deg C at 100% GPU load. Really great airflow case. I have all fans installed with upgraded high performance fans. http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=MjM=

Whatever your looking at the item must have a USB dongle to power the active converter. The cheapest active mini-DP to DVI-D is: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&safe=off&biw=1590&bih=1026&q=B087B-003J&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=14011973704789432073&sa=X&ei=AdMfTfGWMsOblgewrOiWDA&ved=0CE0QgggwAA#scoring=p

My 6970's in crossfire only run at 65-70 deg C max load. That's not too hot. Then again I do have like 8 fans in my super air flowing case and keep my house at a somewhat cool 66 deg F. No need to water cool CPU. I am using a Prolimatech Mega Shadow air cooler which is awesome. Keeps my 920 d0 under 70 deg C at 4.55GHz at full load.

Test setup: 580's SLI lightly OC'd 800/1600 running driver 263.09. 6970's CF lightly OC'd 950/1420 running driver 10.12a. All Benchmarks are bezel corrected (besides 5760x1200) and have 2x AA. ZR30w's have their plastic bezels removed and monitors clamped together to get the smallest vertical gap between screens. i7 920 D0 @ 4.55 GHz 6GB DDR3 Intel SSD Asus Xonar Essence STX Sound 3x 30" HP ZR30w's in Portrait I don't have any fancy graphics for the benchmark numbers, so a spreadsheet view will have to do. Going from left to right, the numbers would mean average / min / max. ^ = nVidia DX9 AFR portrait FPS limit bug of 39/40. More on that later. All in game settings are maxed unless otherwise stated. AF16x is forced in both drivers as well as disabling "optimization" driver settings which only gain you 1-2% performance anyways. Sorry 5760x1200 users, the 580 benchmarks went flawlessly as you can natively select that resolution in Surround but AMD wouldn't let me set that no matter what I did. Only Heaven 2.1 custom resolution worked. Manually editing the other games files didn't work and gave D3D errors etc. I tried registry edits to get 1920x1200, but that wouldn't work in Eyefinity. The last resort was going to edit EDID files but that's a bit involved and not worth it for a resolution I will never use. Blame AMD's wonderful driver team for not allowing a basic 1920x1200 16:10 resolution on a 16:10 30", wtf? * = 580 memory limit reached as viewed per MSI Afterburner. The breakdown: Heaven 2.1 DX 11 - 6970 CF comes out above the 580's here. The 580's run into memory problems. But even at the lower resolution where memory isn't as big of an issue, the 6970's still win out. Crossfire scaling is around 85%. Resident Evil 5 - 6970's win by a fair margin. Eve Online - Even though SLI does work in Windowed mode, I pulled in a lower number with the 580's than I did with the 6970's in which Windowed mode only works single card. Win 6970. DCS:A10C Beta / Medium in game settings - Mixed results here, the 580's ran into serious memory issues. Aliens vs. Predators DX11 benchmark - Clear winner for the 580's. Hawx 2 benchmark - In landscape you can see the 580's trump the 6970's. The 6970's win in portrait mode because of the DX9 AFR portrait bug on the 580's. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - One of my favorite games. The 580's win here but just slightly. You can see 95+% crossfire scaling. World of Warcraft DX 11 mode - Clear winner in the 6970's. Rise of Flight - Favor to the 6970's. Left 4 Dead 2 - 6970's win. Batman - Guess what 580's? DX9 AFR bug, yet again. The 6970's do well with virtually 100% crossfire scaling, yet if the 580's portrait bug wasn't there I believe it would have won out in portrait mode just like it did in landscape. Metro 2033 - The 580's just edge out the 6970's here in portrait mode. MS: FSX DX10 - Crossfire didn't seem to be kicking in here much for some reason, giving the nod to the 580's. Lost Planet 2 - Favor: 580's. There's no way around the nVidia Surround DX9 AFR portrait mode FPS limit bug that I could find. You also cannot enable triple buffering via D3DOverider in AFR, only SFR mode. That poses a problem because in order to eliminate screen tearing, you need VSync. In order to get VSync without tremendous input lag you need triple buffering. You see where that is going. Without Vsync on, both the nVidia and AMD camps both get horrible screen tearing. This occurs no matter the FPS. Above 60, below 60, it doesn't matter. Some games automatically enforce triple buffering to limit the input lag, but for the ones that don't you need D3DOverider/ATI Tray Tools etc. Ease of setup - The 580's were much less painful to setup and get running in SLI. Run 3x DVI-D cables. The displays just "work" like they are suppose to with DVI-D, even with the 3x 25 foot cables I use to get the signals from one room, through the wall into the computer area. Not having to deal with the sound and heat of a computer in your immediate area is so sweet. ;) Install the drivers, setup the Surround resolution, bam your done. The 580's also over clock real easy in SLI and didn't produce many problems. AMD has a bad driver stigma because their drivers, well suck! Recap: 580's would be much more competitive in DX9 portrait games if nVidia would sort their drivers and fix the FPS limit bug. Too bad most games are still DX9 as the bug doesn't exist when using DX10/11 as you can see in BF:BC2 numbers. If nVidia doesn't fix their drivers, as more games leave DX9 behind this will become less important. 580's 1.5GB memory limits its performance at such a high resolution. At 5760x1200 and below it isn't as much of a factor. SLI works in windowed mode, CF does not. SLI works in virtually every game, CF does not in a select few. 2GB VRAM means 6970's can run the 3x 30" resolutions at 4x AA +. Crossfire scaling is quite good. 90-100% gains normal by adding a second card. Display port sucks. :) Noise levels and heat output are similar for both setups. At 100% GPU load in my super air cooled case the GPU temps average 65-70 deg C max for both setups. The 6970's are noticeably louder and I confirmed this with using a dB meter. In order to save a nickel, AMD decided to make one of the DVI ports single link only! Vsync on 580's Surround is perfect using 3x DVI-D cables. Vsync on with 6970's present a large problem in Eyefinity as you are mixing Display port/DVI-D signals and a single permanent obvious screen tear will always be present. The only way around this is to wait for "Eyefinity 6" edition 6970's or get the 3-DP 6990 when they are released. Major pitfalls with 580's 3x 30" Surround: 1.5GB VRAM, DX9 Portrait AFR FPS limit. Major pitfalls with 6970's 3x 30" Eyefinity: Display port, mixed display connectivity screen tear, AMD drivers. I have been thinking of whether or not trying out the 6990 cards in CF for four GPU's if they launch with 4 GB (2GB frame buffers). This does pose some problems. Quad CF is notorious for having issues and increasing input lag because of all of the buffer flipping. Single GPU games like Rise of Flight and Eve windowed performance would actually decrease as you would only be using one of the four GPU's which would be at a lower clock. Some games like DCS-A10C I'd run into CPU limiting way before 4 GPU's are pushed to max. Besides Batman, with the 6970 CF setup I can run minimum 60 FPS already with some room to breathe and lock the FPS there. I don't even think a GTX 595 would compete unless they came out with 6GB cards. Yes, 6GB would be needed (3GB frame buffer) per card or it would just crash like the 580's when it runs out of VRAM. If anyone has any good ideas on how to get the "custom" 5760x1200 resolution to work with the 6970's, I am all ears and would finish the benchmarks for that resolution. I will try and update these benchmarks when new drivers are released by both sides. Please let me know if you have any questions.

The only reason us real pilots wear flight gloves is for fire protection. So unless your computer monitor has a habit of spontaneously combusting, I'd forgo the flight gloves.

Sure, FSX can look great with all those add ons. On a top of the line computer with a decent resolution, I doubt that guy who took that screen shot was getting over 10 FPS. BTW: Hawx 2 has plenty of terrain features. You see, Hawx 2 is multi-threaded so it uses your multiple CPU cores more efficiently. Why do you think PS3 ports run so well on the PC? If you want to talk about wasted cpu cycles, what about those 3+ cpu cores DCS doesn't even use at all? I can see just as far in Hawx 2 as in DCS. In the real world unless your in antartica or something because of the haze you generally can't see beyond 20KM, let alone 50. My point of this thread was to have you guys check out the really cool terrain graphics in the free Hawx 2 benchmark, not to turn this into a DCS can never do anything wrong thread. Once you see photo realistic terrain using multiple cpu cores running at high resolution at 100+ FPS, you see the future. I love playing the DCS series. But that doesn't mean they don't have any catching up to do in the multi-cpu core / world graphics department. I just give props to the designers of Hawx 2. It looks ridiculously good and runs incredibly fast. How often do you see that in the gaming market?

Late beta's are virtually the release product. If you think that DCS:A-10C's performance is going to skyrocket from Beta 4 to release you are kidding yourself. I am well aware of all the points you made about graphics and GPU/CPU usage. My point was GPU's don't do any processing for flight model / aircraft systems / AI etc. Those are all done by the CPU. Why are my 2x GTX 580's maxed 100% usage to squeeze out 30 FPS in A-10C that has rudimentary world graphics at best. DCS cockpits are stellar but you honestly cannot say anything outside the cockpit looks great. Exactly my point, DCS world looks like its computer generated. Everything is green / low polygon count. That would be acceptable if the performance was good. But the performance isn't good. You can't compare PS3 720P graphics versus high end computer graphics. Not even in the same ball-park. :D

Terrain complexity is different than flight model / aircraft systems / cockpit complexity. A perfect example is DCS-A10C maxing my SLI 580's and getting a measly 30 FPS and looking like this: My GPU's aren't doing any flight model / aircraft systems / cockpit calculations. DCS's single CPU thread is doing all that. So why does my DCS game look so poorly compared to Hawx 2 when both games are using my GPU's 100%? Then I can play at 90 FPS (3x faster than DCS and look like this): DCS flight sims are amazing, but that doesn't preclude them from criticism to make them better. In regards to graphics and cpu multi-core support, ED is way behind the power curve. I could see low level of graphic quality but a fast speed as exceptable for a high fidelity flight sim. Although, DCS sims have a low level of graphical quality and a low level of performance.

I had a throttle scare today. I had inadvertently switched the joystick and throttle ports and in Win 7's it showed two josticks and no throttle! The throttle wasn't lit and wasn't responding to unplugging and plugging it back in. I thought; ohh crap here we go. Then I shut down completely and started the machine back up and it was recognized as normal. Man these throttles are finicky beasts I tell you.

Have you guys seen the terrain graphics in the "game" (not simulation) Hawx 2? I just downloaded the benchmark (free, link below) to see how my computer runs it on my 3x 30" screens. I am absolutely blown away. The terrain looks like a photograph. It makes simulators like FSX, Rise of Flight and DCS series look like they are from the stone age. The best part is the frames per second performance was astonishing! I was getting 90 FPS with 2x GTX 580's on 3x 30" screens with all in game settings maxed. With the same setup I get like 30 FPS in DCS:A-10C Beta 4 and terrain graphics are like 10x better in HawX 2. Granted, A-10C has a sweet cockpit but the terrain graphics leave much to be desired, especially once you take into account how low the performance is. Now all we need is a flight sim to use Hawx 2 type terrain with a DCS cockpit with multi-thread support and we'd be golden. :D I just had to make a post about Hawx 2 to say their programmers are simply stellar. To get such incredibly high terrain graphics at such a great performance level is nothing short of astonishing. You just have to download the demo benchmark and take a look: http://download.guru3d.com/Tom-Clancy%E2%80%99s-H.A.W.X.-2-Benchmark-download-2633.html

Lol to the person who said you cant see more than 30 FPS. 30 FPS looks like utter crap. I can easily tell the difference between a 120FPS screen and a 60 FPS screen. Let alone a measly 30 FPS. I try and get a minimum of 60 FPS. If I need to turn down graphics settings to achieve that, so be it. FPS > eye candy.

Ya I bought it too. These Steam sales are awesome. Even though I most likely will just try out Wings of Prey and a ton of these other games, but how can you beat $5-10 for a lot of these games that aren't even that old. Thats like the price of a meal at McDonald's!

All the pipes came threaded from the hardware store. I find a movable office chair much better versus fixed "cockpit" seats. I like to get up and move around a lot. I work with a pilot from Holland who also flies Puma's and Sea King's. Good aircraft. I don't have locking wheels to stop the seat moving. I just place a furniture foot floor protector pad type thinga-majig under the front caster to stop it moving aft. You can usually find those pretty easy. I use a rubber anti-skid "sheets". They work pretty good unless you completely stomp on the pedals. I was actually thinking about buying a laptop to handle this. Not sure of how many video outputs / USB monitors you can use with Helios but I'd like to get three touch screens set up ideally.

Ah, I teach US Army flight school students the UH-60 at Fort Rucker Alabama. The job is pretty good but the location leaves a bit to be desired! :pilotfly:

Thanks Flim, I am still interested in seeing if I can get side touch screens to work (Helios) even though my main display is SLI surround. Might be a bit technically tricky there.

That is strange. What needs to happen in Beta 4 in order for TrackIR 64-bit to work? I thought we where waiting on Naturalpoint and not ED.

No kit for this stuff! I had to create the mounting solution from scratch. The way you mount your Hotas is very dependant on the chair you are going to mount it to. Luckily, the Embody chair that I have made it fairly straight forward. If you are looking for a really comfortable chair to mount your Hotas, the Embody has a ton of neat features and can be found here: http://store.hermanmiller.com/store/servlet/dynamicKit__10151_-1_10051_1445 The chair has a nice wide "lip" under the forward adjustable thigh support. I used U-clamps like these to secure a 24" wide piece of 1-1/4" OD steel water pipe to the chair frame with threaded ends on either side. Then I used some 90 degree threaded elbows to raise the platform: The platform base is 1" thick oak (hardwood for stability) cut to the exact dimensions of the throttle and stick spaced exactly where I needed them for ergonomic placement. The oak "platform" is supported off of the pipe system by a floor flange as seen in the bottom of this picture: In order for the whole setup to be stable and not "rotate" under the bottom because its a round pipe, between the U-clamps and the pipe I used heavy thick rubber isolation mounts. When you tighten down the bolts it clamps super tight. The rubber mounts also give just a very small amount of vibration absorption and help with some of the larger vibrations coming from the Buttkicker gamer mounted under the seat. The whole mounting system then got sanded and painted flat black. Since all of the components are heavy duty steel (besides the oak platforms), everything is weighty and stable for a nice solid feel. There is no "flex" in the system. All in all, the cost was about $40 total and all parts bought from Lowe's hardware store. I've gotten creative many times in the plumbing section! Let me know if you have any other questions!

Ya, I leave the back light on to alleviate eye strain. 3x 30" monitors can be pretty bright, it's good to have some soft lighting behind them. It just appears super bright as I also have the overhead lights on which I normally have off.

I wouldn't call it a "cockpit", but the results turned out pretty good for a HOTAS mounting. I decided a center mounting of the Warthog Hotas would be too much of a pain as I like to move my chair around and get up frequently. I side mounted the stick, which makes for easy ingress/egress of the chair. The arm support also help for those long flights and my arm weighs down the arm rest, not the stick. Less downward pressure on the stick works out quite well in addition to the Molykote EM-30L lithium soap grease I put in the stick. Even though the real aircraft I fly is center stick, going to a side stick really isn't as strange as one would think. It works out quite natural, and you don't have to worry about "twisting" the angle of the stick as you would a center mount. I am contemplating adding touch screens to either side of the chair for Helios integration. Also, one center mounted touch screen under the main view screens. That would be a total of six screens, but the question of Helios being able to work somehow with the main display being a nVidia SLI Surround setup is still in the air. And a few images for those that like other types of games too: BF2:BC Vietnam So easy to snipe! What? WoW? Three different EvE clients up and running. Top one is main character, bottom left and right are alt characters. Center bottom is web browser to view while playing all three clients.