Aluminum Donkey

OK, mine is a P45 based mobo. I'm still digging around to figure this out, I'm thinking about the 1060 6GB. It's cheaper than the 1070 :) These things can be a bit trying, but I'd at least want to know if someone else tried it and got it to work... Fact is, for my gaming use (and everything else I do) my current old rig is just fine, I just want a vid card that's a nice bit faster and has a lot more vram. My current 2GB 760 just does not cut it anymore, and I don't want to belittle our fine developers by having it choke on DCS 2.5 :)

Yes it's lack of VRAM, DCSW uses a heck of a lot. That's why very fast but older cards such as the 780 Ti still run into stuttering issues, because of texture swapping between the card and system RAM. I'm pretty sure a 1060 6GB is what I need, although the 1070 (8GB) is even better. I just want to make sure it'll kick over when I turn the key before paying the dough :)

Not looking to get a whole new system. My current card is a GTX 760 2GB, problem isn't so much the card's speed which is surprisingly good, but lack of video RAM. When I look at CPU and GPU usage graphs in MSI Afterburner, it's always the card that's doing the bottlenecking, not the CPU. Just wondering if a newer card will boot and work well with my P5Q system, that's all.

Greetings everyone, I've been thinking about scraping together the dough for a new card, but my machine is an old P5Q-based LGA 775 system with a Q9650 CPU. The CPU itself runs happily up to about 4.0 GHz, maybe a little more, but I want a vid card with lots of VRAM since DCS (especially Nevada) is really hard on video memory, and I would prefer it if my system didn't choke on DCS 2.5 :) The GTX 1060 and 1070 seem like really nice cards, and have enough VRAM that I can just keep the 8GB of DDR2 system memory that I currently have. Thing is, they are supposed to be UEFI devices. Will they work well (or at all) with my current LGA-775 system? Will Windows 7 x64 recognize all 6 or 8GB of video memory on my older computer? I'm not asking about GPU performance bottlenecking, I want to know if a new card will function at it's best on an older platform, and all the memory on the card will be useful. I'd like to know before I plunk down the bread :) Thanks eh

Hehehe driving to work in the morning with the parking brake on eh :)

Glad to see this one popping up in DCS World, now we have two German fighters, and two Allied ones! All we need now is a Yak-3, and maybe also a Ki-84 after that... then we'll be ready to rock! Looks like some awesome work, I'm gonna LOVE that Yak-3 when it comes out soon!! :music_whistling: Peace and happy warfare :beer: Ian

The whole sudden-blackout thing is caused by applying high G excessively quickly... pulling back smoothly and easing it into the Gs will give the usual slow-onset blackout effect, whereas yanking it back in a mighty hurry will cause your field of vision to go black instantly. Same way it works in real life.

Those are great little gadgets. I bought the Cougar because it was used and cheap; while I've gotten it to work well now, I'd have been mighty disappointed if I'd paid the full asking price for it when it was new! People like to rave about the Cougar; but mechanically and electronically, it really leaves a lot to be desired. The programming options really are great, though. The Cougar's axis interface (analog to digital converter) is a low-resolution device, they use some filtering algorithm to smooth out the small jumps. Leo Bodnar's device has a true high-resolution converter, and provides excellent control even when moving the stick very small amounts, which the Cougar's built-in control circuit won't do. Leo's device is better for flying helicopters, which require very smooth control, and is also nicer for airplanes as well, although not absolutely necessary, but it gives you better aim when dogfighting with guns and attacking ground targets with unguided weapons. I'm still debating whether I should 'gut' the Cougar and replace the original programmable Cougar circuit board with Leo's high quality interface device. It was expensive enough for a tiny little circuit board and I really want to use it again :)

Gotcha! I haven't flown it in really cold-weather missions for long duration, so I've never seen it happen. Now I'll remember it if it does. Thanks :)

Never seen this... Usually when I go that fast in a dive it ends up with me drilling a hole in the dirt :) It's possible they could stick at excessive speeds or be damaged by over-pressure, but I've never seen it happen before. I could give it a try sometime, but right now I'm still waiting for DCSW 2.5 and possibly the Spitfire module, so I'm playing Il-2 :)

I've actually built a couple sets of really nice pedals w/ toe brakes before, and ball bearings are completely unnecessary. Lots of people like to use them but they just aren't needed. Hardened dowel pins (like the kind tool & die makers use) and plain bushings work great, have no perceptible drag, and last forever with a little grease or oil. Cheap and Excellent is my preferred way of doing this sorta thing :) Peace Ian

It probably already does--if you're willing to spend more money than it costs to learn to fly a real aircraft :) Consumer grade? It'll be a while. Enjoy your 1080p single screen :)

The Cougar's circuit board is a little on the flaky side, and I'm pretty sure it always has been. Have you tried re-flashing the firmware? Seems to fix everything for me. It might have something to do with the flash memory requiring more than 5 volts to work properly. The USB port can only supply 5V, the flash memory might require more to work really reliably (these are old sticks). It seemed to work well enough most of the time, so that's what they used. If in doubt, re-flash. If you really like the stick & throttle but have had enough of the glitchiness, you can 'gut' the electronics and re-wire the stick to work with an aftermarket stick controller, such as Leo Bodnar's BU0836A, which has extremely high axis resolution (much better than the Cougar's original cheap axis controller) and supports 32 buttons, including a Hat (POV) switch. It's dead-nuts reliable and requires no drivers. I've had mine for 5 years or so, they're great and are small enough to easily fit into the Cougar. I'm considering changing it over myself.

Very, and I mean *VERY* nice work!! Thinking about this myself; I appreciate the inspiration :) I'm too cheap/broke/sensible to spend more money on a decent set of rudder pedals than my entire computer is worth; the inexpensive commercial ones are dreadful, the good ones are outrageously expensive--Homebrewing seems just the ticket for this sort of deal. My build will probably use more plywood than metal, I like taking the easy way out when it comes to materials :) Peace

Wow, the firmware's that old eh? Well, my best guess it that the 'micro-jumps' are a limitation of the hardware itself... I have a spare BU0836A kicking around (USB controller interface doohickey) which is very nice, I could just use that for the axes and leave the rest of the Cougar hardware intact for the stick & throttle buttons & switches :)

Stick is properly calibrated. That's not the problem, it's the 'micro-jumps' that appear to have been dithered to smooth things out a bit. It may just be the design of the Cougar's circuit board; it did it with pots, and still does it with Hall effect sensors. That's why I wonder if it's either the firmware, or the choice of physical microcontroller for the board and it's own limitations. Did not reflash, already had 3.06 installed. That's why I'm looking for version 1.0 or similar so I can try out older firmware to see if it works better with my old stick (it's about 10 years old). It's not a big deal, but I'd like to try and 'iron it out' if possible. Thanks

Greetings everyone, I recently equipped my HOTAS Cougar stick with Hall effect sensors, which work very well, but I've noticed that when I test the stick with Foxy Windows Analyzer, the output of the two axes is still a series of small but uneven 'jumps', rather than passing smoothly through the range of output values--the same thing it did when it had potentiometers. The new sensors themselves are completely smooth and linear when tested with a voltmeter, but the Cougar's output is 'micro-jumpy'. I have the latest (I think) firmware, Version 3.06, as displayed in the Cougar Control Panel. I wonder if this is causing the problem. My Cougar is over 10 years old and may not work well with the latest firmware, causing problems with the internal circuitry (linearity of the A/D converter). Does anyone have the original firmware (Version 1.0), or close to it? I'd love to try it out to see if it helps. I'd much appreciate it if someone could post a link to it or email it to me. Thanks so much!

Greetings everyone, I just recently converted my ancient TM HOTAS Cougar over to hall sensors in the stick, it was very easy to do and works great, unfortunately I couldn't find any of the 3 or 4 cameras in the house so I couldn't take any pics, but I used Allegro A1302 Hall effect sensors and small Neodymium magnets. The response of these sensors very linear, with no drifting of the center position. They directly replace the potentiometers in the Cougar with homemade mounts (small plastic rectangular plates that bolt in place of the original pot mounts) and the magnets were super-glued to the gimbal yokes. The sensors run directly off USB power as supplied to the stick--I even re-used the existing wires & plugs from the existing pots. A pack of 5 sensors is just over three dollars (Canadian $) *including shipping from China*, and took about 2 weeks to get here to my home in Ontario. It's hard to find a better deal than that, and these are GREAT sensors for this application. :) Link: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/5Pcs-A1302-NEW-Ratiometric-Linear-Hall-Effect-Sensors-Chip-/151913409560?hash=item235ebeac18:g:HIcAAOSwNphWa8Og Peace and have fun

Waz happenin' man :) You have an excellent computer and should have no problems, only things I can see trying are: --try a bit older graphics card drivers, sometimes the newest ones are a little on the buggy side. Also, make sure you have the latest version of DirectX installed. --try using Medium or High shadow settings --Reduce the Tree Visibility distance with the slider to maybe 2/3 or half, instead of full (that's a major one!) --Try turning on Flat Shadows. I'm not sure why you're having framerate issues, but keep in mind that 30-40 FPS for a hefty sim like DCS World is actually pretty good, especially when near large airfields--and that goes double when there's a lot of other aircraft buzzing around, and especially with lots of civilian road traffic. Try turning those down, or even off. Nevada is *extremely* demanding. Peace and happy warfare :)

Thanks! It seems you're using a pretty nice system, I have an old Q9650 @ 3.6GHz (will go up to 4.0, but my card bottlenecks, so no point right now). I'm considering a 1060 6GB, but would prefer the 8GB 1070 since I only have 8GB of system RAM. The cash situation isn't so hot on my end :) Actually, my old computer runs DCS quite well, but I'd really love a lot more VRAM.

Actually, it's more like the other way around, any game will use your VRAM first and then use system RAM when you've used all of your VRAM. When you fly around the map in DCSW, textures are loaded into your VRAM, and if you run out it will swap textures back and forth between system RAM and VRAM as you fly around. That's what causes the micro-stutters. If you run out of both VRAM and system RAM, it will swap textures to the hard disk (or SSD) which causes mega stutters :) That's why DCSW is best with video cards that have huge amounts of video RAM. Yours is about right :)

DavidRed, could you give me the rest of your system specs, such as CPU and clock speed, amount of system RAM etc? I've been thinking about getting hold of a GTX 1060 and you seem to really like yours, but I only have an older machine with a maximum of 8GB RAM, can't install any more. It's good and fast, but I wonder if a 1070 with 8GB VRAM would be better (I only run a single monitor at 1080p). Money is tight in my neck of the woods and I'd rather avoid the 1070 is the 1060 is fine :)

It just looks to me that your system should be fine for DCS... What, if any, problems are you having? There have been benchmarks done for DCS and any CPU with a high enough core clock should do the job just fine. Framerates don't seem to be affected by CPU type, just the clock speed. Go into your BIOS settings, your max multiplier should be 8.5, and if you have 1066 MHz memory you should be able to run it a good chunk faster than 3.4 GHz (which, actually, is just about fast enough, but a bit more never hurt). I have a Q9650 with a max multiplier of 9 (also not an 'unlocked' CPU), but I only have 800 MHz memory, and I can get it up to just over 4.0 GHz without too much trouble (and mine is a 'bad' chip with a very high VID). Try setting your FSB Strap to Auto, set the RAM speed to 800 MHz when the CPU is running at default speed instead of 1066... then overclock until your CPU is running at 3.6 to 4.0 or thereabouts. You don't need a higher multiplier because your RAM is quite a bit faster than mine, you just need to set it's speed in BIOS appropriately before overclocking. I'm pretty sure your computer can run at 3.6 to 4.0 GHz without trying too hard. With the excellent video card you have, 8GB of system RAM should be enough, because you actually have 16GB of total RAM and DCS World's memory requirements are nearly all for graphics textures anyway. Any framerate issues you might have are being caused by your current 3.0 GHz CPU clock, not the speed (or amount) of memory your machine has.

The downside is that more memory costs more, and huge amounts of it are money wasted because it isn't used. When they specify minimum RAM, do they include VRAM? Remember, the O.P. has a GTX 1070, which has 8GB of VRAM... so, 8GB of system RAM is probably fine (16 GB total). I find my 8GB system RAM to be enough for DCS 1.5, even with my wimpy old 2GB video card... but 2.0/Nevada stutters constantly and is unflyable. With an 8GB video card, that probably wouldn't happen. In any form of gaming, including DCS World, most of the RAM used is for graphics textures, and modern flight sims, because they have enormous, detailed ground maps, use huge amounts of VRAM. The system RAM is mostly there for texture swapping from the video card when you run out of VRAM (which is what causes micro-stuttering). With enough video RAM, you don't need as much system RAM. Some people with GTX 1070 or 1080 cards (8GB) can run DCS 2.0 on 8gb system RAM no problem.

Barao, it doesn't look to me like you need a new computer at all. Since you have an 8GB video card, your 8GB system RAM is plenty. Fast RAM affects load times, but not framerates. Your bottleneck is probably your CPU clock speed; the Q9550 should easily overclock to 3.6 GHz, possibly to 4.0. I have a 'bad' Q9650 (very high VID) but at Intel's max recommended voltage (1.3625V) it runs at 3.6 GHz no problem. It will go over 4.0 if I push the voltage up to 1.45, but I don't have to, the CPU never bottlenecks DCS World on my machine, even at high framerates with high graphics settings (I have an old vid card, I'd love a 1070!!). Since you have a great video card with tons of video RAM, simply try bumping up your CPU clock to the highest it will go, it'll give you a lot better framerates because there's no way the system RAM is what's limiting you. You can buy an expensive new rig if you like, but DCS runs very well on old machines with great cards like the 1070... you just have to overclock the CPU enough. Core 2 Quads will do 3.6 GHz or more easily, and DCS World only uses two threads, so expensive i7 based machines while nice are not really necessary.