7800gs or 6800 gs LOCK ON #1 concern w/ cpu maxing in mind!!!??

[emenance]

Maybe I can take some pressure off my cpu if I go 7800 gs ?????????

 

I just hate to later be drooling for a x2 chip out of pure need and have a 7800gs in my box.

 

Maybe I should go 6800 gs and look for another cpu upgrade maybe a 3800 x2 .

 

I have some other info to put here and will later in regards to these video cards and lock on.

[Andrew_McP]

At the moment dual core, like SLI, is mainly about having something just for the sake of having it, so don't get sucked into feeling you're missing out on something. Sure, it probably helps a *little* having background tasks handled by the spare processing power, and it may be more useful in the future if developers manage to make multiple cores work well (it's not easy to get significant improvements from multi-threading, especially in games). But the future's a big place where today's hardware is always cheaper, and nobody with any sense is running software that uses much CPU in the background while flying or playing games.

 

Ok, some of the guys you see on forums go on about burning DVDs in the background, but that's just stupid. Anything running at the same time still takes CPU power from your main application because there are still plenty of shared links in the hardware chain.

 

My recent upgrade was made because I wanted better performance when making movies. Fraps can use the second core (or at least it's supposed to... I'm not sure it's helping much to be honest!) and my movie editor is multithreaded. But in general use I'm finding it very hard to tell I have a dual core processor, so I'm glad I bought the cheapest CPU and overclocked it.

 

Maybe the desktop's a bit "snappier", but that's probably mostly down to the shift to 64-bit architecture. And even if dual core *does* help, spending the same money on a faster single core processor would probably give similar benefits *and* have the bonus of definitely making intensive tasks like LOMAC faster (as long as you have the sense to close down everything unnecessary running in the background).

 

As for your vid card, you don't say what you have at the moment. But in my experience there's one way of proving to yourself whether a vid card upgrade will help you. Run LOMAC at 800x600 and fly for a while. If LOMAC doesn't fly smoothly at that setting, then unless you have a slow vid card (slower than, say, a 9800Pro or similar) spending money on a faster vid card won't help. It will only let you fly at a higher resolution with more fsaa or aniso, but at roughly the same frame rates.

 

Ok, higher res and fsaa is wonderful to have, but LOMAC is more CPU-limited than vid card limited in my experience, and there isn't a PC on the planet which will run LOMAC smoothly all the time. So it comes down to how much you want to pay for your disappointment. ;-) Yes, you can move that disappointment level around a little, but it's possible to spend a lot of money for relatively small gains when chasing the best performance, particularly in in this sim.

 

Andrew McP

[emenance]

yes i hear ya bro but doesnt my sig show up? I have a 6600 gt !!!!!!!

 

 

good talk on the movie making, i aint surprissed i KNOW that. Im still leaning towards the obvious. What drives my box is LOCK ON. The fact that we are still talking dx 8 is prominent in my conservitive mind. I match my hardware in any build be it my Harleys, cars or whatever.

 

 

Here is an example http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/asus-7800gt_19.html

 

I disapoiinted these jackasses are going to replace their flight sim base with X3

 

A search for lock on will show this

 

http://www.xbitlabs.com/search/?query=lock+on

 

 

 

really I believe these findings

 

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/asus-en7800gtx_20.html

 

but still thought i would ask

[Andrew_McP]

Sorry I don't have sigs turned on. I come here for conversation, not the pretty pictures. :-)

 

I suspect the 6600GT is probably giving you all the frame rate you're going to get (give or take the odd FPS) at 1024x768 and maybe even 1280x1024. As I advised someone else, if you drop the LOMAC screen size to 800x600 you'll remove your vid card from the equation and be looking at fairly pure CPU limitation. Then move up to 1024x768 to see if frame rates drop noticeably. If they do, you know the vid card can't keep up. But if 1024x768 isn't any slower than 800x600 you can move up to 1280x1024 and look for differences in frame rate, and so on. Then you'll have an idea where you need to spend money first.

 

Andrew McP

[emenance]

thanks , yes did a test with a show track and yes at some points my FPS are 2 times as fast then at 768 res. Also got alot of cpu dips meaning that the cpu wasnt solid 100% all of the time. Looks like its a new 256 bit bus card for me and hopefully the cpu can hang in there till Christmas.

 

cheers

[emenance]

good artical on if we need a x2 cpu or a good video card

 

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTAwMiwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==