new video cards

[budsurf]

I read Max's article on the EVGA GeForce4 Ti 4600 cards "Shoot-out". What about the new GeForceFX cards available now? Anyone have an idea how they stack up? There's lots of 256mb ones now and they're less expensive than the Ti 4600's. Very confusing when you have a look at all the cards at TigerDirect.com... Thx.

[cascadesss]

The fastest card out there is the Nvidia 5900 Ultra, and they are nearly $500.

Look on Pricewatch. There are some available now.


Rick - KPDX - Private Pilot (Vatsim AAL252)
P4 @ 3.4GHz 1GB-1066MHz RDRam
Water-Cooled & 3 Monitors

[The_Association]

Radeon 9800 Pro/FX5900 Ultra = Fastest

9700 non-Pro = Best Value

For ~$200, the 9700 non-Pro has a core/memory clockspeed a tad slower than the Pro version (I believe it's 275/275 instead of 320/315) and that's their only difference. Side by side, their performance is very similar and the difference will not be noticible in Flightsim or really, any game.

Tim Kotula
KDTW/KPTK/KPLN

**New System Specs Coming Soon**

Proud to be 100% modern music free since 1994

[MIKEYORCHIE]

I have a GeForce FX , and it runs fine for me, teamed up with a new mobo, cpu, ram, and new case and psu, my sys should be a belterby the end of the year

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3eeb793912ca723c.jpg

Mainboard: KT266B Jetway
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1700+
Memory: 256mb PC2100 DDR
GFX: MSI GeForce FX 5600 128mb @ 350mhz clock speed and rising . :-)
OS: Windows XP Pro
Internet Connection: 512k ADSL

[bigbear]

LAST EDITED ON Jun-28-03 AT 10:15AM (EDT)[p]Like i said before, but i like to help:

Flight Simulator is very much CPU-intensive and not graphics intensive. That's why if you upgrade from a GeForce 3 to a Radeon 9800 ULTRA, you will see only a max of about 1-2 FPS performance boost and a better picture quality. The only things that really put a strain on the graphics card in FS are AA and AF. So if you want a perfect looking picture with Anti-Aliasing 4x (no "staircase" lines) and anisotropic filtering 8X (no shimmering) WITHOUT LOSING FRAMERATE, get the 128 MB and DirektX 9 supporting ATI RADEON 9700 (standard version).

In FS2002 it's perfect you don't even need a 9700 PRO version (saves 100$ !) or an expensive 9800 ULTRA.
For FS2002 (and surely for 2004 that will support DirectX 9) the 9700 is better value than the NVIDIA GEFORCE 4 (directX 8) and even the FX series (directX 9): only the newest very expensive FX 5900 (not even the 5800!) is really faster than the Radeon 9700 with AA and AF on. Look at the tests in www.tomshardware.com or http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/

Of course the Radeon 9700 cost a bit more than a NVIDIA TI4200-8x buth is really worth it!

I run FS2002 at 1280 / 1024 /32 with anti-aliasing 4x and anisotrop filtering 8x. Beautifull picture, no "stairs"!
Target framerate locked on 24 : for me this is completely fluent and it gives the processor maximum resources for textures and other stuff. FS2002 flies like a dream even with my favorite but "framerate-eater" DREAMFLEET B737-400!
I have ALL options AND hardware things on, ALL DISPLAY-sliders on MAX, except for: VISIBILITY on 90 miles, CLOUDS on 75 recommended by the beautifull freeware FS SKYworld 2002 SE clouds addon.
ATC seems the be the biggest frame-eater: Normally i use 50 but with very heavy addon airports (like AIRPORT 2002 vol 1 by WILCO)with lots of AFCAD traffic, the best setting seems to be 25% for the best framerate. (which can drop to 10 fps or less in that case !!)

I have a friend with the same computer except for the video card: he has a Radeon 9700 PRO. Difference in framerate: NONE !
With this videocard it's the processor that is the "bottleneck" not the card.

Read also:

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6586
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/catalyst_3.4/page8.asp
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_fx_5900_ultra/page13.asp
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/gigabyte_gv-r9700_pro_review/page7a.asp

For AA 4x / AF 8x: (and remember: no difference in FS2002 between the 9700 PRO and the slightly slower 9700 normal)

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/gigabyte_gv-r9700_pro_review/page11.asp
http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030311/geforcefx-5600-5200-24.html

COMMANCHE 4 is comparable to FS2002 because it's also a DIRECTX 7/8 program and a simular "processor killer".

Enough frame rates (fluent=24) means 512 MB (DDR)ram and a faster PROCESSOR which will NEVER be fast enough !


Bigbear

Pentium 4 2.66 GHZ
MOTHERBOARD: ASUS P4PE
512 MB DDR 333 Ram (PC 2700)
HERCULES 3D PROPHET 9700 (=standard RADEON 9700 )
WESTERN DIGITAL WD 800 JB (7200 RPM - 80 GB)
Soundblaster Audigy Player
WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL

3DMark 2001 SE: 13340
3DMark 03 : 4108

[MIKEYORCHIE]

yes, but upgrading from a TNT2 to a radeon 9800 Pro 256mb, you would defineatly get like 10-15fps more

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3eeb793912ca723c.jpg

Mainboard: KT266B Jetway
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1700+
Memory: 256mb PC2100 DDR
GFX: MSI GeForce FX 5600 128mb @ 350mhz clock speed and rising . :-)
OS: Windows XP Pro
Internet Connection: 512k ADSL

[panzerschiffe]

LAST EDITED ON Jun-28-03 AT 12:04PM (EDT)[p]FS2004 is more depending on graphics cards than FS2002 was due to the new graphics features it includes. Your video card will make a difference. Any video card comparison based on FS2002 for FS2004 is better served on your recycle bin.

Albaro Villegas SPC [link:www.army.mil|US Army] | FDX1243 [link:www.vfedex.com|Virtual Fedex]
http://thescorned.homestead.com/big.jpg
www.md11.net www.vfedex.com | [link:www.ifdg.net|iFDG] - MD-11 Designer
No more Disco Chicken because he's 24 pixels too tall.
The mods are watching me!

[dandivine]

I just bought a ati radion 9600 pro 128, it supports direct x 9, for $178.
Is this a pretty good card?
Thanks, Dan

[cascadesss]

Yes, but if you are running with a fast CPU/system, the video card DOES make a difference. I have a 3.06GHz processor with a Gig of memory. The Processor is over-clocked to 3.4GHz and there is a BIG difference between the GF4-4600 and the ATI 9700 Pro I have. I have tested the two cards, and the 9700 does a much better job.

I'll be getting my FX-5900 Ultra next week, and I'll lay you odds that it will perform much better than the 9700.

I agree that you need to be running the fastest processors out there to see a significant difference between the top-level cards.

Rick - KPDX - Private Pilot (Vatsim AAL252)
P4 @ 3.4GHz 1GB-1066MHz RDRam
Water-Cooled & 3 Monitors

[happyoldone]

...and a question to the owners of those marvellous PC's !,

What about the ""added""? performance, if replacing those "old" 7200 rpm Hd', with the new Western Digital Raptor 10000 rpm?
(lightning fast access time compared to the usual stuff)

Your opinion would be very much appreciated !

Thank You......;regards.....

Andy.

[cascadesss]

LAST EDITED ON Jun-28-03 AT 06:20PM (EDT)[p]I have two systems side by side. One is using a 7200RPM WD IDE drive (45MB/Sec sustained transfer speed), and the other has four 15,000RPM cheetah SCSI drives in a RAID 0 configuration (140MB/Sec sustained transfer speed). Is there a difference when running FS2002? Yes. The scenery loads much quicker, and there is never any kind of pause. The SCSI RAID system has more than 3 times the transfer speed of the single IDE drive.

The 10,000RPM Raptor is indeed a faster drive and I would think you may see a slight difference if you are running with the fastest processors, etc. Would the difference be significant? I doubt it because the Raptor isn't THAT much faster than the 7200RPM drive. It’s all relative.



Rick - KPDX - Private Pilot (Vatsim AAL252)
P4 @ 3.4GHz 1GB-1066MHz RDRam
Water-Cooled & 3 Monitors
My system: http://www.993tt.com/computer/computer.htm

[sonic33]

When you say there is never any kind of pause, I presume that you mean on one configuration, but there is on the other.

mmmm, I really doubt that.

With 1GB of RAM I would not expect to get any pause during the Game. Regardless as to how fast my hdd is, or indeed my raid configuration.
Loading the game initially may well improve with a faster hd or a striped config, however, if you are expecting to get pauses with a 5200 hd and IGB ram, during the game (IE loading scenery as you fly etc.) Then there is a problem with the configuration of your Operating system or FS it's self.
FS2002 rarely uses more than 350MB ram at any one time.
You are aware of the LRU algorithm I presume.

Pauses in FS, during the flight and on a high RAM / Cpu spec machine, can only be due to paging due to memory misconfiguration, and certainly the default configuration in XP would manage it very well, Unless you have been messing with your Virtual memory settings and got it all messed up then you aint getting any pauses at all.



Regards
Geoff
http://ffacc.com/images/geoffban.jpg
www.fsfreeforall.net
*********************************
http://www.btinternet.com/~g_seal <<<< My attempt at FS Scenery Design.
*********************************

[cascadesss]

You really doubt that there aren’t minor pauses while flying over dense scenery with all of the sliders turned all of the way up?

I beg to differ. You still have to get the scenery off of the hard drive. The faster the drive system, the faster it loads into memory... period. If you are running a medium-speed system with an average HD, you will usually see very minor pauses (or minor stutters) at times as the new scenery is loaded/updated.

When you start a flight, you have to load additional scenery as you go along.

And yes, I was comparing the difference between the two systems. They are configured properly.

As far as the LRU algorithm goes, what does that have to do with loading new scenery data? That algorithum has to do with moving the most accessed data to the begining of a list and keeping the old data to the bottom of the list.

Oh, and one last thing, Many of us are running several programs at the same time while running FS2002, pushing the memory utilization over 500MB. These include:

FSNavigator
Roger Wilco
Servinfo
Several web pages
and 3 monitors


Rick - KPDX - Private Pilot (Vatsim AAL252)
P4 @ 3.4GHz 1GB-1066MHz RDRam
Water-Cooled & 3 Monitors

[sonic33]

Give me a screenshot that shows a sytem running FS and all the add-ins using 500MB ram and I'll be convinced. However hard I tried, I couldn't do it.

As far as LRU is concerned. Background work and, as long as you have enough ram, should have absolutely no effect on what your memory is doing current. With 1GB Ram you would never get to a point where harddrive activity would become an issue during flight. As I said, Loading up FS initialy would be an issue. Even loading a flight, you can hear the harddrive cracking away, but at that point in time wouldn't a 'minor pause' be invisible, being as you aint moving. After all, the minor pauses are the issue here and not how long it takes to load up FS or a flight.
Hate to do this because it's like I'm 'letting people with lesser systems know that mine is better that theirs' (That's how I see it when others do it anyway) but, I have a P4 2.53 and 512mb 333, Gainward Geforce whatever (Latest) No stutters in FS whatsoever whilst flying, even in dense situations, Only exception is that some add on sceneries cause fps to drop cos I aint got the beast that you have in your sig.

There ya go, bit of idle banter to play with. ;-)

Regards
Geoff
http://ffacc.com/images/geoffban.jpg
www.fsfreeforall.net
*********************************
http://www.btinternet.com/~g_seal <<<< My attempt at FS Scenery Design.
*********************************

[cascadesss]

I'll put up a screen shot of the utilization when I get home off of vacation. Right now I am 1100 miles away.

It's going to be intresting when the new Prescott and the Athlon 64-bit processors come out in the new future. That should notch-up the performance benchmarks a bit :)

Cheers!


Rick - KPDX - Private Pilot (Vatsim AAL252)
P4 @ 3.4GHz 1GB-1066MHz RDRam
Water-Cooled & 3 Monitors

[budsurf]

Wow, thanks to all for the input. Now, where can I find a Radeon 9700 (standard)?. Tried looking for the Hercules 3D Prophet 9700 (non-pro) too - no luck on the net. Thanks again, the article on the 9700 at Guru of 3D was most enlightening. Sounds like a great value card, hope it's not totally unavailable now.

[The_Association]

LAST EDITED ON Jun-30-03 AT 00:05AM (EDT)[p]Go to:

http://www.pricewatch.com

Click on the 'Video Cards' link. Click on the "Radeon 9700 128 MB" link in the frame below after it loads. You should then have a list of prices, in order, lowest to highest. Be sure to check the seller's reputation though. I can recommend Newegg.com, Nutrend.com, Googlegear.com, Directron.com and OCSystems.com as honest vendors whom I have all used at one time or another without any problems.

Tim Kotula
KDTW/KPTK/KPLN

**New System Specs Coming Soon**

Proud to be 100% modern music free since 1994

[budsurf]

Thanks a million for the link Tim. It's amazing how much I've been able to learn from these forums. Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to post info and opinions too. Aloha from Hawaii, Bud - (flight & subsimmer, real-life merchant ship third mate, cruising sailor and hanglider pilot)

[xcd12344]

What is the LRU algorithm?