Will a video card make any difference?

I am running an i7 2.8 gig, Windows 7 64bit, with an Nvidia GeForce 650 ti boost video card. If I bought a newer card, such as one of the 970 or 980 Nvidea cards, would I see much difference in the video quality of P3D or FSXSE? I'm sure frame rates would improve, but mine are not bad at all now. With the price of those cards, I would hate to buy one and not see a difference in graphics quality.

I'd be surprised if you did any quality improvement with FSX. And frankly I don't think P3D looks as good as FSX anyway. I have both and much prefer FSX. I have a GeForce GTX 960 and it's great for a lot of things like multiple monitors but my sim view isn't any better that I can tell than when I was using older cards.

 

As to frame rate, as I understand it is 90% or more controller by CPU clock speed. And no I didn't notice a frame rate increase when I installed my 960. Of course I'm running a 4.6 gig chip with DDR4 2400 ram. I don't know if a better video card would unload your CPU a little faster. But I'd doubt it.

Thanks I appreciate that. I think I will wait on the card and go to a better card when I go to a new computer one day. I have to admit, I'm torn between the two, FSX and P3D. I see some good things in both , very very subtle but differences. I find I like GA better in P3D and Airliners in FSXSE. Oddly , FSXSE seems more stable than my old DVD FSX. Hard to say why. Could be as simple as the addons. Anyway, thanks for the advice.

Thanks I appreciate that. I think I will wait on the card and go to a better card when I go to a new computer one day. I have to admit, I'm torn between the two, FSX and P3D. I see some good things in both , very very subtle but differences. I find I like GA better in P3D and Airliners in FSXSE. Oddly , FSXSE seems more stable than my old DVD FSX. Hard to say why. Could be as simple as the addons. Anyway, thanks for the advice.

 

I don't know if you're old enough to remember Kodak film for cameras. Kodak had two popular film lines Kodacolor and Ectacolor (sic). The Kodacolor film took pictures which had a primarily pink or reddish tint. The Ectacolor was more of a bluish greenish tint.

 

The way I compare FSX and P3D is FSX looks to me like Kodacolor and P3D looks like ectacolor. Doing photography I usually preferred Kodacolor for its' rendering of people's faces. And Ectacolor for scenery. Except I think the pinkish FSX scenery rendering is much more pleasing to the eye than the blue of the P3D. That's my bellybutton. Everyone else has one too.

"Kodachroooommmeeee...it gives us the niiiice brrrriiiight colors...

It gives us the dreeeaaamms of othheeerrrrsss..."

 

Loved that song, sorry. Good thing you can't hear me trying to sing, I am flat as heck and very nasal when I sing for some reason. I only sing when wearing noise canceling headphones so I can't hear myself. Pretty bad, huh?

 

ANYway. FSX and, iirc, P3D are primarily very CPU dependant. Yes, a good video card does a little to help, but mostly, it all depends on the quality/speed of the CPU. Have the best CPU you can get, overclock it, have a GOOD cooling system for it, THAT all will give you your best performance, framerates, and so on.

On a side note, speaking of framrates, given the limitations of computer displays, and the human eye/brain combo, you can lock your frames at 30 or so, thus freeing the CPU to utilize all those clock pulses to do other things. Like render scenery, calculate flight paramters, and so on. It really does help. YOU won't be able to tell if the framerate is 90, 1500, or 32, but if the CPU isn't focused on rendering more frames per second than you can detect anyway, it has the time and power to do all that other stuff the SIM needs to have done.

Hope all that rambling helps a little bit.

Pat☺

The way I compare FSX and P3D is FSX looks to me like Kodacolor and P3D looks like ectacolor. Doing photography I usually preferred Kodacolor for its' rendering of people's faces.

 

Did you turn off HDR? With HDR off, I find FSX and P3D looking about the same, whether with default scenery or with ORBX stuff. With HDR on P3D has a bit darker appearance (I turn up the brightness on the monitor), but shows a broader range of brightness (the reason for HDR).

I recently replaced my GTX 570 with a GTX 970, and saw a slight (2-4) improvement in fps (CPU has more effect on that) in P3D, but I can now fly in somewhat more dense areas with decent performance, and in most areas I can run with sliders set quite a bit higher than before, getting me nice clouds with shadows, higher water quality, more dense scenery, etc.

 

So the improvement (worth it to me) was in higher slider settings (better overall scenery), rather than fps improvement. It's also smoother than before when in high density areas (slightly higher fps, but not as jerky, either).

I don't know if you're old enough to remember Kodak film for cameras. Kodak had two popular film lines Kodacolor and Ectacolor (sic).

 

We're both old enough to remember all that, I guess. But you're right; probably most of the posters here are amazed to learn there ever WAS anything before digital. ;)

With FSX, little or no improvement with a new video card. With P3D, being that it is significantly more GPU dependent than FSX and has many more processes offloaded from the CPU to the GPU - yes - you should see a difference. Whether ot not you see a significant change in FPS is dependent on how slammed your CPU is now. If it's maxed out with graphics processing, you should see a good increase. If you're getting a steady 30fps now probably not much.

 

Some people still look at P3D as an extension of FSX - couldn't be more incorrect. LM has made significant internal code changes that affect the CPU and the GPU.

 

Each system is different - with whatever hardware you have, set it up to get the smoothest operation and the LOWEST framerate. There is absolutely NO benefit of 60fps or 100fps other than bragging rights. All those high FPS are really wasted. For me, on MY system with MY settings - I can run at 20fps perfectly smooth with the same excfeption as others - heavy clouds. I can run at 30fps smooth also but no need to waste the processing power.

 

SO to end my long winded answer - :) - a new video card should help.

 

Vic

I don't know if you're old enough to remember Kodak film for cameras. Kodak had two popular film lines Kodacolor and Ectacolor (sic). The Kodacolor film took pictures which had a primarily pink or reddish tint. The Ectacolor was more of a bluish greenish tint.

 

The way I compare FSX and P3D is FSX looks to me like Kodacolor and P3D looks like ectacolor. Doing photography I usually preferred Kodacolor for its' rendering of people's faces. And Ectacolor for scenery. Except I think the pinkish FSX scenery rendering is much more pleasing to the eye than the blue of the P3D. That's my bellybutton. Everyone else has one too.

 

Excellent comparison that describes the difference correctly imho

Agreed. Main thing is that many people prefer Ektachrome to Kodachrome. The nice thing is that you can change the look by adjusting the various lighting settings. Also note that most modern monitors have an adjustment doing the same thing. Some call it "cool" versus "warm" but it's basically bluish or reddish.

 

As with many things in the sim world, it's purely subjective - what I like - you may not and vice versa.

 

Vic

Agreed. Main thing is that many people prefer Ektachrome to Kodachrome. The nice thing is that you can change the look by adjusting the various lighting settings. Also note that most modern monitors have an adjustment doing the same thing. Some call it "cool" versus "warm" but it's basically bluish or reddish.

 

As with many things in the sim world, it's purely subjective - what I like - you may not and vice versa.

 

Vic

 

+1! I haven't really spent the time to adapt my video settings to P3D. Graphics wise I don't see my payware looking better with my GeForce GTX 960 card. So I haven't bothered with the color.

 

Women love standard old fashioned light bulbs. The pinkish glow hides their wrinkles better. LEDS & other lights that produce "cool" light make them appear pale and their real age.

Women love standard old fashioned light bulbs. The pinkish glow hides their wrinkles better. LEDS & other lights that produce "cool" light make them appear pale and their real age.

 

I am not touching that with a 10 foot pole!!

 

:)

 

Vic

To get back to the OP's post by RodTod, yes a video card can improve things a lot. What many have been talking about is frame rates, and noticing that not much changes in this between FSX and P3D. This is just one minor requirement of a video card.

 

A quick rundown on FSX and P3D 3.1, as this is my latest and I have been with P3D since v2.5. Firstly FSX is 10 year old, stagnant unfinished and riddled with bugs code, locked with DX9 fully, with a DX10 preview, and remember it's a preview, nowhere near full DX10. That's why many modellers warn of their product not working with DX10 preview, and models turning white, scenery popping etc. YES many will respond and say this can be "patched", it's more kludged into the old code and is unstable overall, as the bulk of the code is not edited to support DX10 properly. Then there is the issue of the 32bit limited 4GB VAS (Virtual Address Space), of which FSX (and P3D up to version 2.5) suffers badly with it's OOM's (Out of Memory) or CTD's (Crash To Desktop). And this is more prevalent and a reality today with high end heavy polygon scenery and aircraft, than 10 years ago. My FSX OOM's or CTD's in less that three hours of flight depending on where I am flying, what I am flying and the scenery loaded over the flight path. I have run P3D over the same scenery, with the same aircraft for three solid days and no issues, I had to artificially up my fuel all the time but I did this as a test

 

P3D since v3.0 has resolved the 4GB VAS, is running on full DX11, and will soon be a 64bit system with DX12 which is supported by Windows 10. So a new video card supports all of these new technologies such as DX12, some newer cards are already beta testing DX12. And today there is no differentiation between using nVidia and ATi/AMD graphics cards to run P3D, as it was for FSX.

 

The reason nVidia was popular was because their drivers supported FSX's shader model 2 longer than ATi/AMD, so in layman's terms, the latter ran slower trying to convert SM3 to SM2. But there was an unofficial kludge patch to up FSX to shader model 3, making the performance of both brands almost equal in FSX. And this now persists through to P3D. So you can now shop for the best performing card ignoring that you can only buy a nvidia replacement. I use AMD and I am far happier with it over the nVidia's I had, 4 and 5 screen support for AMD, only three screen support recently for nVidia, is one of the differences. I have tested 7 screens on my AMD and onboard Intel video (and Intel have just released a board/chipset supporting four screens onboard), with a reasonable 15FPS in P3D. And P3D has new features missing in FSX, that of tesselation and bathymetry to name two, which modern video cards take full advantage of.

 

My current three screen setup in P3D gives me 30FPS, locked (unlocked it goes as high as 45FPS) with Active Sky Next running, FTX Orbx Global Base and Vector installed, and using REX 4 HD Texture Direct with Soft clouds, and the above mentioned tesselation and bathymetry enabled. And using heavy polygon aircraft such as PMDG, or military types such as the Just Flight's Panavia Tornado or English Electric Canberra etc.

 

And finally P3D is far more frame friendly due to it being balanced now between a CPU and GPU, and leans more now to GPU than CPU support, not just CPU as in FSX. Many of the posters above have quoted non-factually and incorrectly about P3D, with long dead old technologies. These have all been brought right up to date in P3D, especially since version 3.0. And as Lockheed Martin acknowledge more and more home users (their EULA does not cater for home entertainment users, like FSX, only for training and student academic purposes) using their product both in the affordable Academic model or the more high end training school Professional version, they are softening to the support of these users. To see these changes look up the updates for the DodoSim Bell for P3D, being done by LM support for home users.

 

Sorry for the long technical explanation, but many old non-truths had to be corrected, and explained as to why a newer up to date video card is a good purchase, and becoming a must. Most old cards (your Geforce 650 only supports DX10, so you will not benefit using it in P3D with DX11, it will fall back to the lesser DX10) only support DX9 and maybe DX10, so one loses out to full DX11 and future DX12 support and features, and these technologies will show with the correct card used.

 

Cheers

Andrew Brown

P3D is still a 32 bit program, is still subject to 4GB VAS, is not going to be 64 bit anytime soon, and still can suffer OOM errors under the right conditions. Sorry, but many old-non truths had to be corrected.

Incorrect, bitness has nothing to do with Virtual Address Space limits, go and research it. 32bit can only address 3.2GB of physical RAM, yet the VAS is limited to 4GB of addressable ranges, so tell me where does the other 800MB of memory come from if we can only see 3.2GB. So old-non truths stick. P3D v3.0 can address as much as 1700MB of VAS in 32bit!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOL, how about all those OOMs then when you overload P3D the same way as with FSX and FSX-SE? We won't even talk about X-Plane 64 bit experiencing OOMs either. So keep drinking the 64 bit Kool-Aid!!

Incorrect, bitness has nothing to do with Virtual Address Space limits, go and research it. 32bit can only address 3.2GB of physical RAM, yet the VAS is limited to 4GB of addressable ranges, so tell me where does the other 800MB of memory come from if we can only see 3.2GB. So old-non truths stick. P3D v3.0 can address as much as 1700MB of VAS in 32bit!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Only 32 bit Windows systems have the limit on accessible physical RAM, as well as a default 2/2GB address space split between applications and the OS. On a 64 bit OS, all of the RAM will be usable and 32 bit applications with the large address flag set can access up to 4GB of address space. FSX SP2/Acceleration has the flag set, so it can use more than 1700MB of address space on a 64 bit OS.

Agreed, and typo from myself, 1700MB should read 4GB, too fast typing. I'll leave it though as you have replied. But I was referring to 32bit systems, not 64bit systems with 32bit apps. The VAS is still limited on a 64bit system with 32bit apps, that is their core programming limit in addressing the virtual address space, the main difference is one can run more apps in 64bit systems with their own 4Gb VAS. As far as I can gather from the P3D developers, since v3.0 they have worked around?? this, I don't understand how at the moment, to limiting and filling up the VAS. As I read they are getting the VAS to efficiently purge unused address space i.e. when you are flying at an altitude of no distinctive ground scenery, like in the real world, then why carry it in the VAS. So only using cloud and sky rendering in the VAS. As one approaches altitudes of where one can start recognizing scenery, it then passes into and then out of the VAS, possibly in beyond visual range, or set by settings, thus being far more efficient of only keeping what we see on the screen at various times and camera views.

s far as I can gather from the P3D developers, since v3.0 they have worked around??

 

It looks like all they have done is optimize and clean up how P3D uses VAS. No real workaround is needed. The engine behind P3D and FSX has its roots going back many, many years to well before the idea of using photo scenery was feasible, as well as a world of far less complex add-ons. If MS hadn't cancelled further development, they likely would have sorted this out years ago. Default FSX and many less complex add-ons work very well. It's the far more detailed and complex ones that push the limits of the sim.

Not challenging what might have been with MS still at the wheel, we might already have had FSX Acceleration version 20 with 64bit support etc. who knows where. The reality is we are where we are today, production stopped in 2008, and it's taken up to the last year or more, to see the passing of the entertainment product FSX to Dovetail games, Microsoft ESP to Lockheed Martin, and then their coders/programmers getting to understand and start fixing long outstanding bugs and issues and releasing now viable products in two formats. The P3D developers have clearly indicated that P3D will lose all guise of being a FSX type clone or product over the next year. So with that I accept many changes are coming sooner than later.

Not challenging what might have been with MS still at the wheel, we might already have had FSX Acceleration version 20 with 64bit support etc. who knows where. The reality is we are where we are today, production stopped in 2008, and it's taken up to the last year or more, to see the passing of the entertainment product FSX to Dovetail games, Microsoft ESP to Lockheed Martin, and then their coders/programmers getting to understand and start fixing long outstanding bugs and issues and releasing now viable products in two formats. The P3D developers have clearly indicated that P3D will lose all guise of being a FSX type clone or product over the next year. So with that I accept many changes are coming sooner than later.

 

I hope you're correct! I have P3D and personally find no added value in it for now.

 

IF & WHEN THIS VAPORWARE IS OUT AND RUNNING, PLEASE LET EVERYONE KNOW ASAP! I THINK WE ALL CAN AGREE, REGARDLESS OF WHO MAKES THAT LONG-PROMISED UPGRADE, IT'S LONG OVERDUE.

I hope you're correct! I have P3D and personally find no added value in it for now.

 

IF & WHEN THIS VAPORWARE IS OUT AND RUNNING, PLEASE LET EVERYONE KNOW ASAP! I THINK WE ALL CAN AGREE, REGARDLESS OF WHO MAKES THAT LONG-PROMISED UPGRADE, IT'S LONG OVERDUE.

 

Rupert - I certainly respect that this is your opinion but for you to be SO FAR from correct is mind boggling.

 

As it stands right now, P3D far surpasses FSX. Perhaps in your way of flying or possibly ON YOUR SYSTEM you cannot see or reap the benefits of P3d.

 

But to call it vaporware really makes you look like an idiot. P3D is as far from vaporware as you can get. They have continually updated and improved ( to MOST users, obviously not you) the product. They have delivered on every promise, or conversely have not promised what they cannot deliver.

 

Your personal agenda appears to be showing.

 

If English is not your native language and you do not understand the meaning of vaporware, please accept my apology.

 

Vic

The P3D developers have clearly indicated that P3D will lose all guise of being a FSX type clone or product over the next year. So with that I accept many changes are coming sooner than later.

 

Vic,

 

I am fairly conversant in the English language. And yes concerning progress or the lack thereof in P3D improvements over FSX, like you I have a bellybutton & yours and mine are different.

 

Since you apparently missed a few of the sentences I was responding to, I limited the quote to those you seem to have missed. Please feel free to read it again below as slowly as needed.

 

"The P3D developers have clearly indicated that P3D will lose all guise of being a FSX type clone or product over the next year. So with that I accept many changes are coming sooner than later.

 

Last edited by Screwbottle; 01-27-2016 at 04:05 PM."

 

I believe Screwbottle just provided an excellent example of what many consider Vaporware. As I said, if a year from now or hopefully earlier P3D produces a more viable product, I'd be interested in knowing about it. Till then, those vague ideas seem like vaporware to me.

 

Vic, I am concerned that you calling me an idiot because we don't agree on the value of a specific product indicates a huge personal control issue on your part. Or perhaps you're paid commission by P3D to sell their product. If so, it'd be honest to make that fact plain. However, if you're truly as insecure as you sounded in your post, you might consider hiring a shrink.

Rupert -

 

OK - I missed the object of your response - my bad - then technically it IS vaporware - which simply means software or hardware that has been advertised but is not yet available to buy, either because it is only a concept or because it is still being written or designed.

 

I also suggest you read MY post slowly - I did NOT call you an idiot. I said your POST made you LOOK like an idiot - but considering I misunderstood the context - that statement does not apply. Apologies if you took it personally.

 

LOL - I wish I was paid commission by LM - however I am just an extremely satisfied user.

 

I overreacted to the term vaporware - it has a factual meaning and a derogatory one - I understood the latter and apparently you meant the former.

 

Grown men (and women) playing with computers? WE ALL need a shrink. :)

 

Vic