DCS and new GTX 295???

[Napa]

Has anyone in here (including ED) tried the new NVidia BFG Geforce GTX 295 1792MB GDDR3 with DCS:BS???

 

thx for response:)

[Glowing_Amraam]

Not yet, but i will recieve it sometime this week. ;)

[Pilotasso]

If my LOMAC experience with the 9800Gx2 translates anything to the 295GTX and DCS you might find out that the 2nd GPU will serve little for these SIM's.

[Groove]

instead of bying a 500 Euro card buy a 500 Euro CPU :)

[Glowing_Amraam]

Or both? :P

[Napa]

Or both? :P

 

Did that already;)

 

I bought an Intel i7 at 2.66Ghz (I could get the Xtreme but it was toooooo expensive) and the GTX295 along with the ASUS P6T WS Pro Motherboard and will get them in my hands the day after tomorrow.

Edited January 14, 2009 by Innerloop

[Glowing_Amraam]

Did that already;)

 

I bought an Intel i7 at 2.66Ghz (I could get the Xtreme but it was toooooo expensive) and the GTX295 along with the ASUS P6T WS Pro Motherboard and will get them in my hands the day after tomorrow.

 

I bought the same CPU! :)

Also the Asus P6T Deluxe+OC Palm,X58 motherboard.

[Flyby]

Have an update on Hydra. At first I thought the chip would be included on Intel's next x58 mobo, the Smackover-II. here's the latest info: http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11450&Itemid=34

Flyby out

[Francous]

Well It all depend of what resolution you want your game to run , to have some good results with a sim you must run it at high enough resolution to take a lots of loads off the CPU and make the GPU work more.. but here the problem when running the Sim at higher rez.. It will be harder to see enemy planes ;)

 

For example IL2 is a perfect example higher you go on rez and you will be in a horrible disavantage against enemy , your sight will be beautiful but short range for dots and some lods distances.

[Flyby]

Well It all depend of what resolution you want your game to run , to have some good results with a sim you must run it at high enough resolution to take a lots of loads off the CPU and make the GPU work more.. but here the problem when running the Sim at higher rez.. It will be harder to see enemy planes ;)

 

For example IL2 is a perfect example higher you go on rez and you will be in a horrible disavantage against enemy , your sight will be beautiful but short range for dots and some lods distances.

 

that's a great observation. Some guys run IL2 at 1080 just to see those bogeys further out. I imagine running at a rez of 25xx those bogeys have a "stealth" advantage, especially if the bogey is running at 1080. Imagine that in a full-real room!!:D Hmmm...maybe the input lag of running 1080rez on a 22 inch lcd monitor might equalize the SA?

Flyby out

[viper3two]

Glowing Amraam and Innerloop: How is the i7 with BS? Considering about the same setup as you guys, just wondering if it is worth it. I have q6600 4gigs and 8800gts 640mb, frames are in the 20's to 30 range now, 1920x1200.

Thanks

[Napa]

Glowing Amraam and Innerloop: How is the i7 with BS? Considering about the same setup as you guys, just wondering if it is worth it. I have q6600 4gigs and 8800gts 640mb, frames are in the 20's to 30 range now, 1920x1200.

Thanks

 

I haven't tested BS yet.. hopefully next week

[viper3two]

Thanks appreciate it. I have seen a post at simhq with a setup very similar and they are running 60-100 fps at 19x12, full settings..... thats pretty awesome, just wondering what you guys run at as well. Thanks again.

[Flyby]

lowest FPS?

 

60-100fps really is awesome. But what is the lowest fps seen? I'd be more interested in that number per given rig. Of course I'm thinking BS will impose a performance penalty in situations that stress the cpu, like heavy AI activity, and rendering explosions, flares, etc. Along that line of thought, the more computations a cpu has to make (per cycle?) the greater the chance for stutters, and lower frame rates, imo.

I wonder if the PCI-e bridge has wide enough bandwidth to the transfer of data? Then again it's a vicious cycle to go chasing bottlenecks. :(

Flyby out

[tiggr]

Built a new computer Wednesday of last week .. trying Black Shark out tomorrow .. installing Windows 7 beta next week .... drooling .... drooling ..... drooling .....can't sleep at nights .....all installed in old case ..... can't tell a thing by looking at the case ... hehehehehehe .. other than the lights now dim when I turn it on.

 

My old mother board gave out ... was running it on ASUS AN8-SLI Deluxe 32 Gaming Edition with Dual core AMD FX 60 at 2.6 mhz and a Nvidia 8800gtx oc2 from BFG, had two gig of DDR 400 CAS 2 Corsair ram ..... saved the rest for the new machine .. stock cooling on old rig. It was about 5 years old.

Edited February 7, 2009 by tiggr

[hitman]

60-100fps really is awesome. But what is the lowest fps seen? I'd be more interested in that number per given rig. Of course I'm thinking BS will impose a performance penalty in situations that stress the cpu, like heavy AI activity, and rendering explosions, flares, etc. Along that line of thought, the more computations a cpu has to make (per cycle?) the greater the chance for stutters, and lower frame rates, imo.

I wonder if the PCI-e bridge has wide enough bandwidth to the transfer of data? Then again it's a vicious cycle to go chasing bottlenecks. :(

Flyby out

I get better frame rates in Black Shark than I do in Flaming Cliffs. Seems that BS likes the affinity trick, where FC doesnt like to run on more than one core.

[tiggr]

GTX 295 and BLack Shark initial results

 

Running a single 295 no non standard settings. In convoy hunt mission. In cockpit with resolution set to 1900x1260 getting 34 to 40 with no stutters regardless of action. Tried affinity trick with Black Shark on one cpu and Track IR and rest on another .. made very little difference. Maybe 2 frames.

 

Details are wow ... everything to highest settings except water to medium (think that is right).

 

Will play with it more still picking up the pieces of my rebuild. Reinstalling a couple of games that went south on the new machine.

 

Black Shark made the migration very nicely with the deactivate reactivate thing working well.

 

As always with Windows spent time on phone with Mircosoft explaining that it was a rebuild of my existing computer and yes, would they please met me reactivate my operating system. Had Windows 7 on an old IDE drive but I am transferring (reinstalling it) on a new drive due Thursday so I can try out all the multicore and SLI goodies to their fullest ... may do a second install of Black Shark at that point .. I will share more as it unfolds.

 

Not an overclocker but I will describe as best I can how it is handling everything.

 

tiggr

[hitman]

What kind of power supply you have running in that thing?

[morsmortis]

I have a 295 as well and I get about the same FPS w/ a Q9550 @ 4.0 ghz in vista 64. This is the only game I go below 60fps in and that includes Crysis/warhead with max settings. Vantage score of 23k my old vantage score of 15k with a 8800gtx was getting better fps with the same cpu. This leads me to believe that the 295 is not being used to any of it's potential.

[tiggr]

Installed (after a little case modification cause it was long) an Ultra 3 (1000 watt) with modular cabling. Machine also has DVD, CD and three 10,000 rpm hard drives .. seems to be working fine. My old power supply was a 650 watt prettu sure that wouldn't work so I upgraded.

[tiggr]

Well, I am back after a weekend of trying my new rig and card(s) with BS. See new specs below.

 

Also running it on Vista 7 cause I needed/wanted to try it on a 64 bit system so I could take advantage of all the goodies. Short version, I am playing at 1920x1200 resolution on a single GTX 295. All settings maxed out including water. No overclock of the quad core i7 chip so it is at 3.2 gig.

 

No affinity tried yet ... having problems getting that trick to work but getting interesting frame rates. On the beta Windows 7 .. I am seeing steady 45-50 fps in cockpit with it set to 1024 all frames. Outside views F2 for example gets 75 fps. In F3 flyby vies a little faster than F2 but not really noticeable so around 75-80.

 

As far as I can tell this is running on a single core with everything else on another core. Can't seem to get more than a singel core to run BS.

 

For fun I also loaded Crysis and Armed Assault on the Windows 7 .... mmmmmm. Had no trouble loading Track IR 4 and joystick but loaded my Cyborg 3D USB Gold (twist stick and throtle in base) with no difficulty either. I did not load up the Thrustmaster Cougar because it requires flashing the firmware and I am loath to do that for a beta.

 

Overall, Windows 7 feels stable and it is fast to load and unload applications and shut down. Only took about 20 minutes to install the OS (remember the 39 minute wait for XP0.

 

The whole thing is a clean install on a new velociraptor 300 gig 10,000 rpm drive. Dual boot with anothor disk holding a copy of DCS on XP.. and yes it cost me an acivation to move it to the beta drive .. worth it though.

 

Think I have v-sync off and antialiasing at 8x on the GTX 295.

 

Will report more when I have a chance to play the game more since I have a number of scenarios I an intimately familiar with ...enjoying the heck out of new rig.

 

tiggr

[TorwaK]

70-80FPS around in game... it's a beautiful experiment.

[Slayer]

I'm really bummed about this. I wanted to replace my 2 8800 GTXs...but I already get the same framerates as you guys with the spanking new I7's and 295's . Seems hardly worth it.

 

For me I get 45-50 FPS with the affinity trick at 1920x1200 all setting maxed except water. Made a profile in the Nvidia control panel to override enable AA and AF (using 8xQ and 4x AF with supersampling) since its not supported in the game and turned up the texture filtering to High Quality(no filtering)

 

Seeing how this game is so heavily CPU dependant I figured you would see the claimed 30% increase for the I7. Guess not on DCS :/

 

I'm sure you guys get way better performace in other games but mostly what I care about is sims for the moment.

 

I just can't fathom how hardware 3 years newer doesn't offer any improvement in this game at all...CPU or GPU doesn't seem to make a bit of difference. I wish they would work with NVIDIA and ATI this thing optomized or generate good profiles. I would just like to hit the target rate of 60 FPS consistiently in the cockpit, but I'm not dumping another couple grand on hardware for a couple of FPS increase.

Edited February 24, 2009 by Slayer

[tiggr]

Slayer,

 

Look at my old system specs above. I should also note that I have not yet installed the second GTX295 soooooo I am actually only running in single card SLI. I don't expect it to make much difference.

 

But I did an interesting experiment. I ran a track file from BS in a windowed mode as it seems to be as demanding on the computer as the game itself for some reason. Then I ran a graphics intensive test program on another window.

 

Was getting 30 FPS in Black Shark SLI ... did not set affinity. Started second graphics program ... it got 15 FPS and Black Shark dropped to 15 FPS. Opened the graphics performance in a second window (so two versions running .. frame rates on all three windows dropped to about 11 FPS.)

 

Went back and set BS affinity to another processor on the i7 ... a single graphics window and BS in windowed mode again .. with the graphics program on one core and BS on another. Both getting 30 FPS.

 

This was on Windows 7 beta but I think it is interesting that BS take one whole processor and runs at about 98% CPU utilization ... while another program uses the other core at 80% and both work independently .. I am getting ready to try runnning Crysis CPU and GPU test in window with BS on another window at same time ... I will report back what happens.

 

I need to find a better tool for measuring my graphics card performance .. I can't tell if one card .. both cards .. or half and half are running and what percentage of the cards capacities are actually being used.

 

I actually am getting 45-50 FPS stable in the cockpit with all setting high except water at 1920x1280 which is my monitors native resolution.

 

Guess I was just lucky my old machine's motherboard gave out .. perfect excuse to build a new one. Used the old case .... you cannot tell from the outside anything has been replaced ... whole installation took place while my spouse was having breakfast with a friend and doing weekly grocery shopping.

 

Not that a real gamer has to hide anything from his loved ones ....... i am an adult ... not sure sometimes she understands that ....

 

tiggr

Edited February 24, 2009 by tiggr

[Flyby]

hey tiggr, you list your processor as an Intel i7 695 Extreme. a type-O?

 

As for the dual-GPU cards out today, I think they are better suited for showing good fps at very high screen resolutions like 25xx or higher where their power can really be tested. Also, since DCS is operating on an old graphics engine, I wouldn't think that it could take advantage of newer GPU technology. The new engine just may, and even that would probably be well suited on a modern single-GPU card. (I hope). I am hopeful that SoW will tax new single-GPU cards, and maybe even test duals too, but I think for the time being most sims rely more on cpu power, and are not up to testing GPU power just yet. I've read where Crysis tests GPU power at the highest resolutions (and a strong processor along with it). HardOCP tests GPUs with quad processors clocked at 3.6ghz, and they state they run at that clock to eliminate the cpu as a bottleneck when testing GPUs.

I wonder what sort of fps one can get on Black Shark using a good old CRT? Or on a new 120hz lcd monitor?

Flyby out

ps some links of interest per my POV:

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTYyNSwyLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

 

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTYyMywxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Edited February 24, 2009 by Flyby
explosive diarrhea! gotta go!!!!