sorry had to ask..

[Technical07]

sorry about this post guys.i see there has been many like this one and im guessing you may be sick of them.but im a bit stuck and hope you could maybe help

 

i have recently recieved my long awaited disk of black shark. i love my flight sims and after seeing the reviews thought best to upgrade my pc so i could try and get the best out of the game.after buying a new pc and monitor ect,loaded the game and...cant play it for such the slow frame rates.im not the most technical person when it comes to computers so if i give you the basics of my specs could you tell me if i should be ok running the game or if im going wrong somewhere...thanks guys

 

AMD phenom (tripple core)

geforce 8200

4 gig of ram

windows vista (64 bit)

HDD(1TB)

ACER X238 22 inch MONITOR(IF THAT MAKES A DIFF :)

 

also guys ive tried affinity for the tripple core thingy and dont see a diff(sorry about the description)

 

thanks

john

[Dusty Rhodes]

Get DCSMax first thing so that you can run all your cores. It should double to triple your framerates or some such increase that will make the sim completely FPS worry free.

[kaiserb_uk]

GeForce 8200 is an onboard graphics chip isn't it? Designed for watching tv/films on a media PC, not crunching graphic apps like BlackShark.

 

My advice would be to buy a decent graphics card.

[EtherealN]

Yeah, I was looking for some stats to illustrate it's weakness, and WOW...

 

GeForce 8200 mGPU:

Fillrate: 3000 megaTexel per second

Memory Bandwidth: 16 GB per second

Core at 500MHz

16 stream processors at 1200MHz

 

GeForce 8800, the one on the recommendation for DCS:

Fillrate: 24000 to 41600 megaTexel per second

Memory Bandwidth: 38,4 to 103,7 GB per second

Cores at 450 to 675 MHz

96 to 128 stream processors at 1188 to 1625 MHz.

 

(A note there - the lower numbers are the 8800 GTS based on the G80 architecture, which is real old, most better numbers is the G92-based later "GTS" which is common to many upper-end 9xxx-series chips.)

 

As you can see, the 8200 chip is so far behind it's not really funny.

 

---

 

In fact... Holy shit...

GeForce 3 Ti500 fillrate: 1920 megaTexel per second.

 

That thing barely has better fillrate and memory bandwidth than a GeForce 3 from 2001. O.o

I didn't even know nVidia were still selling that kind of crap - and the nVidia facts page on the 8200 actually includes pictures of playing Crysis on good settings. That is some pretty serious false advertising in my opinion when I ended up all the way back at the GeForce 3 and 4 to find cards that would be consistently beaten by this thing. "DirectX10" my ass.

Edited June 6, 2009 by EtherealN

[slug88]

What EtheralN said. You simply will not be able to play this game until you get a better graphics card. Utilities like DCSMax won't help you.

[Technical07]

guys thanks for your help.bit shocked with the specs on that graphics card,i will be going out to get a new card later today.

 

thanks again:)

[EtherealN]

Do ensure to doublecheck their physical size and power connectors with your case and power supply, though.

 

When I bought the case below I was originally intending to keep a previous PSU, but found that it had the 8pin PCIe's and the card wanted two 6pins... That is extremely annoying, so do doublecheck that.

 

As for choice of card, I really love what my XFX GeForce9800GTX+ has given me - especially compared to the price. Warning though - it is physically MASSIVE so if you have a mid-tower case you might want to take measurements to ensure that you have space. I believe it's being taken out of the market so if you find them they'll probably be cheap.

 

Though obviously a 200-series card (except the 250) will have better performance. The 250 has lower texel fillrate but better pixel throughput, so whether it's better or not I can't say since I haven't seen a comparison. But really, for DCS specifically you will not see much difference between an 8800 and a top-line 295. (In fact, somewhere in the hardware section there's mentions of people who mention they upgraded between those and gained no FPS. The sim just doesn't need any more than an 8800 unless you're requesting massive AA and AF - or do silly shit like supersampling. Obviously though, if you also play other games a newer model might be warranted.)

 

---

 

In general though, it is a bit poisonous the way they name the cards. This is an old phenomenon though, from where the GeForce 4 FX was actually a downsized GeForce 2 re-launched for the budget market. In the same vein the GeForce 250 is actually based on the very same architecture as the GeForce 9800 and later-version GeForce 8800. The 8800 series was especially poisonous, since there was even two releases both named "GeForce 8800GTS" with a MASSIVE performance difference: one used the G80 architecture and the other used the G92. The 9800 also uses G92, the 9800GTX+ and 250 use G92b, which is basically the G92 on a smaller die (meaning less power consumption and such stuff).

 

Wikipedia has some pretty good tables for comparing the cards, search for "Comparison of nVidia graphics". They have similar tables for AMD/ATI cards, if you want to check out their competition.

Edited June 7, 2009 by EtherealN
Mixed up some details

[Technical07]

the help ive been given by yourselfs has been great thanks again.will be more carefull next time when buying a new pc..:)

[AussieFX]

I would look at an ATI 4870 or 4890. Best performance/dollar.