GeForce 2 Vs. GeForce 3

[alastairmonk]

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Oct-16-01 AT 08:44AM (EDT)[/font][p]Roy Chaffin, of R4D fame, has just announced the results of some tests he's been running, comparing these two cards. Makes for interesting reading !!

http://www.roychaffin.com/rcs-panels.html

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/Use...d85138992a.jpg

[petermcleland]

Very interesting results...I have a GeForce3 card and I regard it as design defective...it makes a whole lot of light reflections in the sky at night, which the GeForce2 does not.

I would strongly suggest that people do NOT buy the GeForce3 card. I've been suggesting that for a while in these forums and now Roy Chaffin's testing adds more damning evidence.

If people stop buying it and buy the very much cheaper GeForce2 instead, then they can wait and see what the new generation of cards is like.

I say again, DO NOT buy a GeForce3 card...Just wait a little while. Something much better is just around the corner.

Regards,
http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/Use...e238a74fb8.jpg

[PeteStepanoff]

I don't know if I agree with some of the results that Roy has come up with.
When I upgraded my system to this A7M266 with Athlon1.4 cpu I purposely ran my FS2000 on it with my Herc. Prophet GeForce2 GTS Ultra 32mb card an made some FPS and stutter observations. I then replaced the Video card with the New Visiontek GF3 card, that I purchased when upgrading, and compared the two.
Well, comparing the 2 results I must say that GeForce3 was superior to GeForce2 in the FPS, Stuttering and overall performance. The only thing I dislike are the "floating Lights" at "some" airports! But I hear that FS2002 doesn't have this anomaly.

I don't know what system Roy used and what some of the other equipment/parameters were. I know first hand that my Geforce3 outperformed the GeForce2 GTS Ultra (which is a superior card to the GF2MX that Roy used) at least on my system!
I take all these "tests" with a grain of salt, since results can vary, and what is true for Roy doesn't necessarily apply to Pete!:-lol

Anyway being the Hardware addict,. that I am, I am eagerly awaiting the next generation of Video cards both ATI and nVidia and I'm sure before long I'll have one of them in my system!

But Peter M, makes a good observation. Since new video cards are arround the corner, either hold off on purchase, or if you just can't wait get the GF2 MX they are alot cheaper and will carry you untill the dust settles.

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/Use...cb6d3682a2.jpg

[Thunderchief]

Hi Pete

I'm new to this fourum, This is my first post.

I have also read Roy’s report on his website, and as I have a GF3 I would like to ask a few questions if I may?

Our systems are superficially similar, (AMD Athlon, GF3) I would like to know what sort of FPS you are getting at the default start-up situation? (Cessna, Megis) and what settings you are running, Screen resolution, sliders, Anti-Aliasing that sort of thing.

Whilst my GF3 has been very impressive in other games and benchmarks, I have been slightly under whelmed when it came to FS2000. Coming from a V3-3000 it is obviously faster, but not all that much. It would be nice to compare similar systems, to see if I am in the right ball-park!

If it was just FS2000 I would not be all that bothered, but according to Roy it also under-performs in FS2002!

Thanks

Simon.

[PeteStepanoff]

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Oct-18-01 AT 03:50PM (EDT)[/font][p]Simon, I will be glad to give you some ball park figures, but I don't know how they can be compared from system to system, since a lot depends not only on the hardware, but the software that is running.
I am running all my sliders at max, Building shadows "off" and dynamic scenery off( I have FSTraffic2 running). I am not using the default meigs, but a customized version with lots of extra objects and FSClouds.. I am getting 17-20 fps at Meigs with my default DF Cessna 172 start up situation. After take off to the North I bank toward the downtown skyline and my FPS dips to anywhere from 10-16. once the downtown is out of view the fps jumps up 30-50+. I don't always turn off all the programs that run in the background, but when I do I gain only a couple of FPS, but the programs runs smother. I still have some stutters present with FS2000.
Sorry if this is of little help but, like I said, unless we are running identical situations with identical settings and identical systems, the comparison is quite useless.

I forgot:
My resolution is 1280X1024,32bit in Windowed mode. I hardly ever run it at full screen, which I have set at 1152X864 32bit.
The Anti-Alias is whatever is default with the card, I don't find the AA usefull with my screen resolution, so I never adjusted it.
The Driver I am using is the latest "2185", but the previous drivers worked about same.


http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/Use...cb6d3682a2.jpg

[michal]

>little while. Something much better
>is just around the corner.

There is always something better coming in the next say 6 months. Care to provide more details like when, what, where to read ??

Michael J.

[Thunderchief]

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Oct-19-01 AT 08:21AM (EDT)[/font][p]Hi Pete

Thank you for your reply, it was very useful. Last night I finally did some of my own benchmarks, these test showed me that I was CPU limited right up to 1280x960x32xQuincunxAA!

I get approximately the same as yourself around Meigs, although as you say it is impossible to be accurate without doing exactly the same benchmark. But I am not much faster or slower, which is the main thing!

My benchmark which involved a pre-recorded flight around NYC, using a frame rate utility to average the frames per second. FS2000 display settings were set to maximum apart from Dynamic Scenery which was turned off. The aircraft was the default Mooney Bravo, and the only FS add-on running was PIC’s adventure bar, each test was performed twice and the resulting FPS averaged, here are the results:

No FSAA
640x480x16bit 37fps
1280x960x16bit 38fps
1280x960x32bit 39fps
1600x1200x32bit 38fps

Quinicunx FSAA
640x480x16bit 38fps
1280x960x16bit 37fps
1280x960x32bit 34fps
1600x1200x32bit 27fps

As you can see the roll off is only really noticeable at 1600x1200x32xQAA. Although the average drop off is quite small, there was a marked increase in stutter at 1600x1200x32xQAA!

And for completeness here are my basic system specs:

ABit KT7
AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz 200MHz fsb
512MB PC-133 CAS3 RAM
ASUS Geforce3
Detonator XP
Windows 2000

I would love to see the details of Roy's test so I could check them for myself. (I find it hard to belive that a card with less than half the memory bandwidth and half the fill rate could give the results suggested by Roy Chaffin) There has to be an explanation for Roy's poor performing GF3, it would be interesting to see if it's just a one off or if there is a pattern to it.

Simon.

[CXG101]

I don't think there will be floating lights in FS2k2 with the GeForce3. There wasn't in CFS2.

[Bill Alicea KSAN]

Man, I hope not......I just got one yesturday, and there they were in FS2000... ;O(

Thanks,

Bill

[petermcleland]

I need to update on my previous post.

I have just installed SimFlyers KPHL into FS2002.

This was one of the worst airports for making reflected lights in the night sky in FS2000 with the GeForce3.

The good news is...there are no lights in the sky...Hooray!

The scenery needs a patch for some flashing concrete textures but I'm sure they will fix that soon.

German Airports Frankfurt does not work so I took it out again.

Will try German Airports One tomorrow.

Ron Ackerley's Akutat works beautifully and is very spectacular with waves washing up on the shore near the pontoons :-)



Regards,
http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/Use...e238a74fb8.jpg