Hardware Advice Please

[danny875]

Hi,

I'm contemplating a new graphics card but don't know much about them to be honest.

I will only use it for DCS and FSX really, so any advise will be appreciated.

 

What I Have:

ATI HD 4870 512Mb running at 500 GPU Clock speed.

900Mhz Memory clock.

Seems to run ok at 750 GPU and 1000Mhz Mem, but temps are up in the 80s©.

I do occasionally have hardware crashes at these speeds.

 

My CPU is E8600 running slightly OC'd at 3.66GHz. I used to run it at 3.9 but had a HDD fail so I wound it in slightly.

 

My motherboard is probably the weakest link (ASUS P5KPL-AM), RAM is pretty weak too (3.5Gb 800Mhz DDR2 I think).

Running XP Home 32bit.

 

Cheers,

 

Dan.

[zakobi]

The 1GB GTX 460 should be more than enough for DCS.

[Hekktor]

Think your hardware is just fine for the moment - nothing that forces you to upgrade right now.

Imho we will (ok - it is always but atm stronger) see the hardwareprices coming down next few week.

I just bought a new gtx470 to replace my 8800gts 320mb - but i saw prices drop even further last few days.

Both companies come out with their new bricks - but imho just more or less new steppings or the like - not really much better than the 5000 or 400 series... maybe not as hot.. ;)

 

I'd suggest updating to win7 64bit.

I'd check if I have 4GB 2x2gb matched RAM pieces - running in dual channel mode.

 

I'd wait for final release of a10. Then see if a better gfx card is a must have.

 

On the other hand - I myself I am happy with my new gfx470 - only drawback - it gets really hot (need to figure better cooling still) - and is burning almost full trottle with 2 screens even on 2d desktop -> I am switching off my second screen when on desktop coz i dont want to run my gfx chip 80° round the clock... but i am guessing this kinda hardwarestuff is beeing discussed in a hundred thousand forums all over the world...

 

Think ED will need to get stuff optimized to be smooth on a gear like u r's - since I believe it is one of the most common these days.

 

win7 64bit, 4gb ram dual channel matched, 1gb gfx card, 3+ gh dual core - that should run the thing pretty well I think.

 

S!,

Hek

[danny875]

Ok thanks guys,

 

Maybe I'd better wait a while then, I didn't realise the 460 is just to be released soon.

I have Win7 on my laptop so am familiar with it, but to honest I have too many addons for FSX to go through all that again! (Refering to when my last HDD went pop). Just the thought of all the serial numbers I'd have to find again fills me with dread. I was only going to upgrade my Gfx card as an intermediate step until I eventually upgrade my MB, CPU RAM etc....

 

I get a stable 30 fps on Smerch Hunt with medium settings, about 10-20 average.

Nearly all flights in nevada end with no terrain or sky so I thought it was my card, (beta 1 too). I also can not use high settings at all or else the sim crashes.

 

Thanks again,

 

Dan.

[leafer]

I would upgrade that XP with Win7 64 bit.

[Gearbox]

Can your mobo support crossfire mode? You could get another identical card for $99 and get a good boost in performance. Still if you're buying it for DCS I'd wait till it's out of Beta.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150436&cm_re=4870-_-14-150-436-_-Product

[Crazyowl]

I have windows vista 64 should I upgrade to win7 to get a better fps? I hear was a good idea but dont know.

 

Obiusly Iam using vista 32 for trackir.

[danny875]

Yeah, there is a cross fire adapter in the box so I think so. My card is a saphire HD 4870 512Mb, I'll do some "looking stuff up" and see what is what.

 

Probably wait though since this is a beta and BS plays pretty good, also its for FSX but thats a whole different kettle of fish!

 

Cheers.

 

Dan.

[Succellus]

Beware of Crossfire SLI, we dont know if the code will support it yet.

[popov54]

Dan, your rig is higher grade than mine and from my very recent experience, you will get a boost just by upgrading to Win7 Pro 64bit for this reason:

By running 64 bit your Video card will be able to use the system RAM. So instead of just seeing 512mb, you would have whatever else is left after OS start up. In my case (hd4850 512mb) after boot up, my card has 1.3 gb it can tap.

Also, I believe the latest driver (with APP) has some sort code that allows a program to task the gpu directly if needed, without burdening the cpu. Whether this is active or just some future option for devs, I'm not sure. In any case, the additional RAM allocation alone is good for some higher AA or Texture settings or other eye candy settings without any change to Hardware.

Good luck.

[EtherealN]

ATI HD 4870 512Mb running at 500 GPU Clock speed.

900Mhz Memory clock.

Seems to run ok at 750 GPU and 1000Mhz Mem, but temps are up in the 80s©.

I do occasionally have hardware crashes at these speeds.

 

A 5850 or 6850 (the two are nearly identical in performance and architecture) might help you there, though a 1GB vRAM version is preferable. An nVidia 460 offers an alternative and is the one I myself is currently looking at for cost/performance.

 

My CPU is E8600 running slightly OC'd at 3.66GHz. I used to run it at 3.9 but had a HDD fail so I wound it in slightly.

 

CPU clock has no relationship at all to HDD failures. If you managed to correlate your clock to memory issues it is more likely to be your RAM or northbridge that is at issue.

 

Running XP Home 32bit.

 

Grab Win7 or Vista. XP is old technology and not really well placed to handle multicore systems, and you will see significant performance benefits even on the same hardware.

[zakobi]

A 5850 or 6850 (the two are nearly identical in performance and architecture) might help you there, though a 1GB vRAM version is preferable. An nVidia 460 offers an alternative and is the one I myself is currently looking at for cost/performance.

 

I thought the 68x0 was the succesor to the 57x0?

[EtherealN]

Successor, yes, but the actual changes to the architecture are not dramatic in any way. The raw power, so to say, is practically unchanged, but there are some improvements in some Dx11 features (such as tesselation performance) and anisotropic filtering and AA quality. Interestingly enough though, in many "real-world" tests of current shooter games they are pretty much exactly equivalent to the older generation radeons. I'd say that an upgrade from 5850 to 6850 would give no performance boosts, and in some cases slightly negative improvements, for current games though they might offer improvements for future games due to improved handling of Dx11 features.

[Georgio]

Is anyone else running A10 on an iMac using bootcamp?

I'm curious as I'm getting pretty 'good' performance from my 3.06MHz dual core/4GB DDR2/Nvidia 8800GS Mac but was wondering if anyone was using a newer iMac preferably with the i5/i7 core and ATI Radeon HD 5750 vid card and what kind of performance they're getting especially in Nevada?

 

TIA :D

[Gearbox]

I have windows vista 64 should I upgrade to win7 to get a better fps? I hear was a good idea but dont know.

 

Obiusly Iam using vista 32 for trackir.

 

You should get rid of vista for plenty of reasons.

 

I don't think OS bits matters for TrackIR. I have Win7 64bit and it runs just fine, but for TrackIR to work I have to run the 32bit DCS exe. Hopefully TrackIR will get their 64bit version together soon so I can use the 64bit exe (main advantage is it can access more RAM)

[EtherealN]

Crazyowl,

You do not need to use a 32-bit vista for TrackIR. I run Vista 64 and it has no issues whatsoever with running a 32-bit TrackIR runtime.

 

Performance gains in moving from Vista to 7 should be very minor if any at all. The big improvement always was in the XP-to-anything-newer department, due to XP being... well... ancient. :P

 

But if you do switch, definitely get the 64-bit version of the operating system. No reason at all for using the 32-bit unless you only have 2GB of RAM or similar.

[Lulac]

Hello !

 

I have never understood this "devil's machine", so if someone could assess my machine:

 

Mainboard : Asus P5Q SE2,

Chipset : Intel P45/P43,

Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 @ 2933 MHz,

Physical Memory : 4096 MB (2 x 2048 DDR2-SDRAM ),

Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT,

Monitor Type : ProView Technology - 22 inches,

Monitor Type : Samsung SyncMaster - 19 inches,

Operating System : Windows 7 Ultimate Professional 6.01.7600 (x64)

 

Is this solid machine for A-10C ?! :unsure:

[Silent Warrior]

Lulac: Since this is a CPU-intensive game, it's difficult to say for sure whether it's the CPU or GPU that'll be the weak link in your setup, but you should reach playable FPS if you set graphics options moderate. And... be careful with traffic, mkay?

[Lulac]

mkey! So that means that I should start saving some money . . . :(

 

thx Silent Warrior

[Rusty_M]

I've a couple of questions, but didn't really want to waste the space of starting an extra thread.

 

The first is whether UK retailers tend to discount the price of PC components after Christmas. I plan to build a PC and I don't know if I should get my hopes up for some big price drops.

 

I'm also having trouble choosing a MB. Options at the moment appear to be the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, the Asus P6X58D-E and the Asus Sabertooth x58. I'm slightly worried about RAM compatibility with the Asus boards.

 

Thirdly, I don't know what to look for in a PSU. I know about power supply calculators and that I should look for 80+ certification, but I know nothing about "rails" or anything of that ilk. Any help in any of these matters would be greatly appreciated.

[*Rage*]

If youre going to wait till after xmas you should wait for socket 1155 (Sandy Bridge)

[Rusty_M]

So I hear, but isn't there always something just around the corner. I'm also conscious of the VAT rise from 1 Jan.

[Rusty_M]

Now that they're talking about launching Sandy Bridge at the CES, I became very tempted to do as you suggested. It certainly makes sense, and I'd probably advise others to do the same if they were thinking about building. However I'm impatient. And the time off I have around then makes getting stuff and having time to build that much easier.

[Succellus]

I have windows vista 64 should I upgrade to win7 to get a better fps? I hear was a good idea but dont know.

 

Obiusly Iam using vista 32 for trackir.

 

Well i use Vista 64 and trackir never had a problem.

[EtherealN]

One additional point to waiting for the release of Sandy Bridge is this: you might see the older components lose a couple price points as a result. When I purchased my current system the i7-920 had been released for a month or so and the C2D's had definitely gotten a bit cheaper compared with where they were when I first started designing the system a few months before that.

 

But that said, I am fairly disappointed in Intel - when Sandy bridge releases they'll have four actively selling socket types in the consumer desktop market alone. That's just waaaay too much and actually got me to start looking at AM3 for a new purchase, but for my intended price points and applications the added hazzle of traversing the djungle of different sockets and chipsets is sort of worth it. But only barely.