Are the Cougar MFD's worth it?

[strykerpsg]

There is all you need to know in this thread :joystick::pilotfly:

I am logged on, any reason why it won't allow me to view that thread?

 

Matt

[WynnTTr]

There is all you need to know in this thread :joystick::pilotfly:

I am logged on, any reason why it won't allow me to view that thread?

 

Matt

Just to cover our bases - you have bought the A-10 beta haven't you? That should get you into the beta forums.

 

If you have and still can't get in, check out this sticky.

[DocSigma]

I just bought a pair. I haven't picked up a second monitor yet or get two small 8' lcds but I'm jazzed about having physical osb's to depress.

[Slammin]

You might want to give buying two 8" LCD's a second thought. I already had one 8" touchscreen and was considering getting another but found out my daughter wasn't using her 19" ws LCD monitor and so I jacked it from her, lol!

 

I'm doing what AirDog did and it turned out pretty nice! I just got it setup tonight but will post pics tomorrow after I tweek a few things.

 

Basically, I have the two MFD's velcro'd to the bezel of the 19" monitor and am using my 8" touchscreen for TouchBuddy. Pics to follow soon. Also using Helios to fill in the dead space between the MFD's. It's coming along nicely!

 

 

 

edit:

 

Just to add a bit of clarity to the above, if you are not running Sli or some other means of optimizing A-10 across two video cards, you will not be happy with the FPS hit. I'm driving the left and right MFD output off the second monitor port of my primary video card. When I tried exporting an MFD to my secondary video card, the fps hit was totally unacceptable. I mean, really bad, compared to running it off the primary card. This is why I scarfed the additional monitor and went with velcro'ing the Cougar MFD's to the bezel of it. I get great fps and as a bonus can use Helios to fill in the dead space, or not.

Edited December 19, 2010 by Slammin

[DocSigma]

Im not completely set on the two 8' mfds. Ir sounds like an additio al large format display may be the way to go and a little bit less costly. Looking forward to those pics though.

[sobe]

Ressolution limit question

 

I have the main monitor at 1600x900 and the secondary monitor at 1280x1020. When I combine them together, I get a horizontal span of 2560 which is 320 short of the two monitors max resolution. After pulling my hair out, it seems that my graphics card (gtx 250) only can display a max of 2560. So the result is that the right MFD with my TM MFD bezel ends up about 3 inches to the left of the right edge of my secondary monitor (I have my secondary monitor on the left of my primary monitor) when I span to 2560x1020.

 

By the way, when I run the game, the 3 inches on the right side of my secondary monitor displays the left 3 inches of the A10 cockpit.

 

Any suggestions other than lowering my resolution or buying a new computer ?

[Slammin]

Wouldn't you need to add 1600+1280 to get to your game x resolution (2880) and then use the smaller of the two monitor's y (900) for your game y?

 

You'll probably need to configure your cards scaling to line things up.

 

Just a guess.

[Snoopy]

I decided to export my MFD's to my touch screen monitor and use Helios as my interface instead of getting the cougar MFDs and couldn't be happier....

 

[DocSigma]

Just to add a bit of clarity to the above, if you are not running Sli or some other means of optimizing A-10 across two video cards, you will not be happy with the FPS hit. I'm driving the left and right MFD output off the second monitor port of my primary video card. When I tried exporting an MFD to my secondary video card, the fps hit was totally unacceptable. I mean, really bad, compared to running it off the primary card. This is why I scarfed the additional monitor and went with velcro'ing the Cougar MFD's to the bezel of it. I get great fps and as a bonus can use Helios to fill in the dead space, or not.

 

I read that elsewhere that outputting additional monitors results in a severe fps hit. Off my single 5850 driving my 26inch monitor at 1920x1200 i get very good framerates with beta3. Do you think my single 5850 would be enough to just run two additional monitors on either side, say 17' monitors, so basically it'd be three across ( 17', 26' 17') running a setup similar to Loz's 3x22' monitors across as in his above post?

[Slammin]

Well, from what I see, running across multiple displays is not the main issue as far as performance goes. It is running across multiple display adaptors that cause the severe fps hit. If you want to span your main view across multiple displays using more than one vid card, you probably MUST use Crossfire, SLi, SoftTH, or some other means to optimize the output.

 

Using none of the above, displaying output from A10-B3 main display to my main monitor attached to my primary video card while displaying an MFD (or both MFD's) to another monitor connected to my secondary video card = very bad performance. Once I connected my second monitor to my primary card's secondary port instead, fps shot way up, and I am exporting both MFD's to it.

 

Bottom line as I see it is that you have to be running CrossFire or SLI if you want to span across two video cards. Or SoftTH, maybe. Never messed with it.

 

Right now, I'm cool with what I got setup.

[DocSigma]

I understand now. Running video output asynchronously, i.e two seperate video outputs sounds to me like a bottleneck which causes the fps hit. Running a single synchronous video output via one card or two sli or crossfire cards is un bottlenecked.

 

Thanks for that clarification.

[Slammin]

I want to upload some pics but it keeps telling me that the image is invalid.

 

 

edit:

 

Posted here http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3160708.html#Post3160708

Edited December 19, 2010 by Slammin

[Loz]

I decided to export my MFD's to my touch screen monitor and use Helios as my interface instead of getting the cougar MFDs and couldn't be happier....

 

 

That's a great setup Paul and does away with any need for the TM MFCDs and also gets around the problem of something to run the UFC from.

Love it.

Only prob is that I've already gone to town on 3 x Dell U2410s and I know that 19" touchscreen will be loads of money.

Out of interest how much does Helios cost?

[Slammin]

Right now Helios beta is free but I think I saw a price of $69.00 when released.

[Flim]

21.5" incher is around $250 and 23" is close to $330.

 

Helios is in a free Beta now, but the finished product will be $69.

[Loz]

21.5" incher is around $250 and 23" is close to $330.

 

Helios is in a free Beta now, but the finished product will be $69.

 

Thanks.

Gosh wish I lived in US. Dell SX2210T costs £299 here in UK!!

 

On a related thread, does anyone know whether I can run a second PCIe Card (Nvidia 9800GTX) when I've already got an ATI HD 5970 running my

Eyefinity??

[CyBerkut]

I don't know if those cards can be made to live together in peace, or not. I'd be leary of trying to get drivers for those different brands to co-exist on the same machine.

 

If you have a second machine that the nVidia 9600GTX can live in, Helios can do at least some stuff over a network connection...

 

Otherwise, maybe buy a lower-end, yet ATI compatible card for the machine that has the 5970.

 

The following was in a thread about doing Crossfire with different revision cards, but you may find the information useful in other ways...

 

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3134280/Re_Can_you_Crossfire_two_diffe.html#Post3134280

 

While you are not looking to do crossfire, it could be a good indication of which other ATI cards could co-exist in the same machine with your 5970.

[DocSigma]

There was an article at tomshardware.com reviewing current softeare that was claiming to be able to run different cards from different brands In crossfire and/or SLI. The results were far from acceptable. Every benchmark seemed to bottleneck at the lesser cards ability with no gain in performance.

[power5]

If you run Win7 you can run 2 different graphics drivers. Dont think its possible in XP or Vista. I have run a 4890 with a 7600gt in my win7 64 system.

[power5]

Well, from what I see, running across multiple displays is not the main issue as far as performance goes. It is running across multiple display adaptors that cause the severe fps hit. If you want to span your main view across multiple displays using more than one vid card, you probably MUST use Crossfire, SLi, SoftTH, or some other means to optimize the output.

 

Using none of the above, displaying output from A10-B3 main display to my main monitor attached to my primary video card while displaying an MFD (or both MFD's) to another monitor connected to my secondary video card = very bad performance. Once I connected my second monitor to my primary card's secondary port instead, fps shot way up, and I am exporting both MFD's to it.

 

Bottom line as I see it is that you have to be running CrossFire or SLI if you want to span across two video cards. Or SoftTH, maybe. Never messed with it.

 

Right now, I'm cool with what I got setup.

 

I hope the final code for A10 allows more cards to be used. I have never used SLI or CF but I am pretty sure that when using either, only the ports on one card will work, you can not use the ports on both cards when in CF or SLI. The 5970 dual GPU card will allow eyefinity with more than 3 monitors with the right card and enough adapters. Nvidia uses surround view but I think you can only use 2 monitors at once. Not sure though.

 

I have 2 monitors and was going to hook up my old 7600GT to power 2 screens for MFDs. I really hope A10 works with multiple cards better when released. Does BS work with multiple cards?

[CyBerkut]

Lucid has developed special chip sets (Hydra) for getting nVidia and AMD based graphics cards to work together. Versions of Lucid Hydra have been incorporated into several motherboards (some may be available, some probably are not at this time...)

 

http://www.lucidlogix.com/whereto_buy.html

 

That could be pretty cool for some people, but I don't know that it would be helpful for some folks that are trying to save money... it could depend quite a bit on what you already have that you can transfer over...

[DayGlow]

Win7 does allow multiple graphics cards from different venders. I have a 5850 in Eyefinity as well as my old 8800gts I'm using as a Physx processor.

[sobe]

Question for Paulrkiii

 

Are you using 2 video cards? What is your max horizontal span?

[sopela123]

Loz, what do you use to stick the cougar mfd's to the screen? i am looking for something that i can remove easily with no residue, of course, left on the screen, for other games or to work in windows.

any suggestions?

[Loz]

Loz, what do you use to stick the cougar mfd's to the screen? i am looking for something that i can remove easily with no residue, of course, left on the screen, for other games or to work in windows.

any suggestions?

I simply use two thin strips of heavy duty type Velcro on the Bezels and have stuck a suitably thick square rubber pad to the opposite corner of the MFCDs, where it rests on the screen.

 

As an update on my progress with the visual side of A10-C, I have tried running an extra card, an HD 5450 with my HD5970. The intended purpose is to have an eyefinity (3 screen) layout above the fourth screen on to which I can run Helios. (a beta prog at the moment but thoroughly recommended)

 

 

It looks good but there are problems.

As you can see ideally I would want the MFCDs to be in the fourth screen (they are pretty useless in ALT F1 view where they are now) and you can't do that at the moment, as you cannot export the video of the displays to the fourth screen when running the other 3 in eyefinity. (If anyone knows a way around this I'd love to know)

There is also a frame rate issue, in that with such a large display you need to use Crossfire. But that will only run on Fullscreen not in a window.

It's all a bit "catch 22" at the moment.

The potential is there but we are not quite there yet. If I can get it to run smoothly with this layout and get the MFCDs in the correct monitor, then I will change the lower monitor, which is only a 20" Samsung TV/Monitor to a 23" Touchscreen, probably the HP 2310ti.

One other config that I have tried and works well with the exported MFCDs is using just the two centre screens, and with Helios that works pretty well as a "desktop pit"

 

Excuse the crapy monitor stands. Have you seen the price of those specially constructed Vesa Stands Sheeesh!!!

Edited December 27, 2010 by Loz