GeForce GT620 enough?

Hi guys,

Peety here, first post. Just wondering if my PC will run DCS A-10c smoothly or if I need to update graphics card. (Sorry haha)

I am not a computer minded person in the least but I think I understand enough to see that my computer meets most requirements to run it. I have a HP pavilion with windows 8-64, i5-3330, 8gb ram 1600MHz DDR3, 1TB HD and Nvidia GeForce GT620 1GB DDR3 dedicated. (Don't laugh at my computer knowledge or lack thereof)

My question is how well will a-10c run on this system? What frame rate could I normally expect? Is the graphics card likely to slow up performance and is it worth upgrading? I'm not home for a few more weeks (on holidays) otherwise I'd just download it and try it out but I'd like to buy a Hotas stick while I am in the city but don't want to waste my time and money if a-10c is gonna run horribly. Thanks for any ideas, I am hoping I can run it reasonably well as this sim really appeals to me, it's so in depth I just know I'll love it (avid FSX fan just wanting more systems and more interesting gameplay)

Also, is the saitek x52 pro worth the extra dough over non pro x52? I have saitek gear (pedals and yoke) and love it so will stick with saitek for Hotas.

Cheers for any replies

 

Peety

Peety,

 

Your CPU's performance is going to be the deciding factor for your experience with DCS A-10C. Unfortunately if I've picked out the correct result from PassMark, your i5 doesn't score hugely.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-3330+%40+3.00GHz

 

I will say this, though - It'll run it at or above 30fps. Don't expect to play massive missions smoothly, though. Multiplayer with a couple of friends and a simple objective or daisy-chained (not concurrent) objectives will be fine.

 

You'll find that when you look in the direction of a lot of action (eg, several fighters engaging/bombing or 10+ tank battle) your FPS will drop, due to simulation load on your CPU. This happens even on an Intel i7 990X @ 4.7Ghz with 24GB RAM, so DCS is an extremely CPU-intensive sim, not GPU (graphics).

 

I used to have a Saitek X-52 before upgrading to an X-65F, and I can say that the extra dollars spent isn't necessarily worth spending on the X-52 if you plan on upgrading to a better HOTAS later. Reserve the savings for a headtracking solution, if you don't already have one - or something else you need.

 

Cheers,

Tassel

 

990X at stock 3.47Ghz

990X OC'd to 4.65Ghz

Edited December 30, 2013 by Tasselhoff
Results for overclock submitted

Tassel,

Thanks for the quick reply. As I said I don't know much about computer so thanks for putting it simply for me. Could I expect a better frame rate by lowering the scenery graphics quality a bit, I'm far more interested in learning the aircraft systems and focusing on flying than having super looking scenery (although it would be nice). I tweaked FSX settings a bit and could run HD virtual cockpit aircraft at 60fps with a reduced visual quality of the scenery but was still quite reasonable.

Yes I thinking of getting the x52 and head tracking if the game ran alright rather than a very expensive HOTAS.

Cheers again

 

Peety

 

I will say this, though - It'll run it at or above 30fps. Don't expect to play massive missions smoothly, though. Multiplayer with a couple of friends and a simple objective or daisy-chained (not concurrent) objectives will be fine.

 

 

Actually, unless that is a typo, a GT620 is not going to do well with DCS.

No problems Peety,

 

You'll need to drop graphics to low to achieve 30+fps, yes - Cichlidfan is correct.

 

The purpose is for the learning experience, so by the time you're able to upgrade your system or migrate to a much more powerful system you'll at least have the basics of A-10C under your belt.

the nvidia cards are rated like so...we will use the 760 for example...the 7 or 700 is the series, which can basically be called the year model...so the 400 are older, the 500 and 600 are a little newer and the 700 are currently the newest one...

 

...now...the important numbers...once again the 760 for example...the 60 part is what can be called the quality, or size, or power of the card...so a 760 is a better card then a 720 and is not as good of a card as the 770, 780 and new titan cards...

 

 

...now to the card you are asking about...a 620...this is not a good card for gaming...you should try to get atleast a 60 size card....and as for buying an older 600 series model...I would not recommend it...the 700 series card are so much more powerful then even the 600 that it would most likely be a bad idea to get anything less then the 700s....for gaming on a budget I recommend the 760s...

 

In the past when Nvida came out with a new card is was a little better then the previous one of the same quality...so if you had a 470 when the 570 became available...unless you had money to throw at your system, it was only a minor upgrade to get a newer card.....and if you had a better quality but older card...like a 480 or 490...it was not a performance upgrade for you to move to a 570...although it is a newer card, it did not replace a older but better card.....

 

....now...lets talk about the 700 series...nvidia did some major upgrades to this thing....theses things are crushing the older but better cards...like to compare a 760 vs a 580 and the 760 is better...this is an amazing feat considering that the 580 was a $500 card at release and the 760 is half that........you cant compare the 660 vs the 580 like that...matter of fact, the 670 isnt better then the 580...the differences between the series wernt that great for the ability to step down in quality and get a stronger card......the 700 series changes all that...

 

 

long story short....try to get into the 700...and try to stay at or above the 60s....760 at a min....if you do get a 600 series, once again get at or above 60...so a 660 at min....but once again at the price you can get a 760, I dont know why anyone would be looking at 660s

 

 

EDIT...I re read your post and see you say you have a 620...not that your looking to buy one...my bad....the above statement still applies though....

Edited December 30, 2013 by Davis0079

Cheers guys.

So what would you recommend replacing or upgrading on the PC for starters to get it up to speed?

 

Peet

Is this a home build or store bought package? A lot of the cards you might choose may be too long to fit your case, and may also require more power than your current power supply provides.

DCS World runs fine on my 5 year old Intel Core2Duo E8500 3.16 GHz, 8 GB RAM and Nvidia GeForce GTX285. So you could even downgrade your hardware and DCS would just run fine.:thumbup:

Davis thanks for that great explanation. The abundance of models numbs my mind so that really clears it up well.

Cichlidfan it's a store bought one computer. Yeah I've read elsewhere that it sometimes isn't straight forward swapping graphics cards.

I will just have to wait and see when I download it and run it for the first time. If it doesn't work as well as I like I'll just have put up with it or upgrade from there. If it's any comparison it runs fsx pretty well on reduced scenery and arma2 a tiny bit jerkily with a reduced draw distance...

Thanks everyone

 

Peet

Peety if its a store brought PC you can always buy a new case and then your new video card will fit just fine. As far as the video card is it a GT or GTX,there is a huge difference between the 2.

DCS World runs fine on my 5 year old Intel Core2Duo E8500 3.16 GHz, 8 GB RAM and Nvidia GeForce GTX285. So you could even downgrade your hardware and DCS would just run fine.:thumbup:

 

I completely agree. I have a bog stock GTX560 and I am not gong out and upgrading a card when there is no games out there on the market that requires me to upgrade. My monitor has a refresh rate of 60HZ so I doubt a GTX780 is going to make much of a difference to what I am getting now.

 

BF3 & BF4 run fine as does Crysis 3 and other games that are heavy on the video performance. wow I am going to get lots more FPS with a better card but on a 60hz monitor I can't see the difference.

 

If I am using FRAPS "ALL" the time then yes I might consider an upgrade but DCS in it's current and future form won't require me to upgrade any time soon. If the render radius was 150000M and it had buildings like in BF3 and terrain like Arma 3 or BF3 then yes, maybe I might need to upgrade. Especially if the buildings blew to pieces like BF3 or had something like blastcore visuals. I get 60FPS now in DCS so with EDGE I expect a drop of 5FPS at an altitude of 15000-20000ft which is where I spend most of my time

This is a GT(noX)620.

 

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/nvidia_launches_fermi_based_geforce_gt_610_gt_620_gt_630

 

Which leads me to suspect a small case and PSU. A graphics card upgrade for that machine is likely to mean a new case, PSU and graphics card.

Youre best bet would be to check your case and measure to see what size card you could fit. Most likely the psu will also need replaced. The last dell I bought was able to barely fit a gtx 260 so a new card isn't out of the question. The psu it came with was only 350w.

 

Where are you located? I have an old gtx 260ti core 216 I would be willing to give you if you can pay shipping and it will fit in your case. Which is probably more powerful than your current card. It does require a 500w psu.

 

According to this website the old 285 that was mentioned a few posts ago is more powerful than a gtx 650.

http://www.hwcompare.com/13551/geforce-gtx-285-2gb-vs-geforce-gtx-650/

Edited December 30, 2013 by pacotito

So I looked at the specs for my PC on HP website. 300w power supply so I'm guessing that I'd need to upgrade that, what wattage would be ideal? What would you all recommend for a graphics card then to kick the gt630 out but still use all the other components? Would it be hard to swap all the gear from one case to another? I'm an aircraft engineer (mechanical though not electrical) so know how to handle tools but can't solder or anything like that...

 

Pacotito thanks for the very generous offer but I'm in oz! Biksolo it is a GT not a GTX.

Cheers for the replies everyone,

Sorting it out slowly.

 

Peety

According to this website the old 285 that was mentioned a few posts ago is more powerful than a gtx 650.

http://www.hwcompare.com/13551/geforce-gtx-285-2gb-vs-geforce-gtx-650/

 

and it is comparable to the 660 as well....but the new 760 absolutely destroys the 285 in all categories....this is good since the 285 was once again a $400 to $500 card at release....

 

 

 

something ppl with 200 series cards need to consider is that the are not dx11...not a huge deal...just a thought...

 

 

 

 

heres the article that got me to upgrade my gpu http://www.legitreviews.com/evga-geforce-gtx-760-superclocked-w-acx-cooling-video-card-review_2240 and why I would not get anything less the a 700 series

 

and a quote from the testers

 

"This is the second EVGA video card that we have tested with Active Cooling Xtreme technology and it certainly did not disappoint. The first card we looked at was the EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Superclocked w/ ACX and it was an amazing card, but at $659.99 it is not that affordable. The EVGA GeForce GTX 760 2GB Superclocked w/ ACX Cooling that we looked at today has all the good looks and some very solid performance numbers for a lucrative price tag of $259.93 shipped.

 

When it comes to performance the EVGA GeForce GTX 760 2GB Superclocked w/ ACX proved to be one heck of a contender! If you game on a single monitor, this card should have plenty of power and be able to run all the game titles with the image quality settings you want. At 1920×1080 this card performed excellent and was nearly equal to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680. Seeing a ~$250 card running with a card that used to be $500 when it first came out is impressive.

 

Overclocking of the EVGA GeForce GTX 760 2GB video card showed that with a little time and effort, you can make this card faster than a GeForce GTX 680 in most all game titles. We were able to overclock the GPU by 130MHz and the memory by 775MHz, which is insane considering this card was already factory overclocked. When NVIDIA GPU boost kicked in with out overclocked settings we had the 1152 CUDA cores ripping through frames at 1320MHz with the 2GB of GDDR5 memory running at 7560MHz. This is the best overclock that we have ever done on a GeForce GTX 760 and keep in mind the reference card comes clocked at 980MHz core (1033MHz boost) and 6008MHz memory. Obviously, we had no complaints when it came to performance or overclocking."

Edited December 30, 2013 by Davis0079

Hi, as for graphic card speaking, Santa just gave me a new GTX770. I had an ATI HD 5870 before and I'm seeing a MASSIVE improvement in FPS.

I haven't changed CPU as it's more than enough for now.

But truth is it will not guaranty me problem free over saturated battlefield...

 

So, is a GTX620 would be enough? If you let all the gfx options on low, maybe. But it's an entry graphic card. I would recommend a higher class, like NVidia GTX 660 (or even faster GTX760) at least or AMD 7970Ghz Edition (or R9-280x)

 

For the CPU, your has a frequency of 3.00Ghz (up to 3.2 with turbo).

You could see a difference by changing the CPU. If you have a good cooler, and have the sufficient knowledge, you could invest in a 'k' intel processor, that can be easily overclocked (like I5-3570k (3.4 -3.8Ghz, using the same LGA1155 Motherboard). It can be OC'ed easily to 4.0 GHz.

 

The whole remaining question depends on the budget you want/could invest in your rig. Good luck.

Edited December 30, 2013 by Cedaway

Case upgrade is fairly easy as is a psu upgrade. The case upgrade is just screws and moving parts. Psu upgrade is just matching plugs. With the instructions that come with them if you can read and comprehend it should be fairly easy. The downside of the case upgrade is the question of if they used a custom board with custom mounting points. My last dell was like that. Motherboard mounts didnt matchup to the new case.

Edited December 30, 2013 by pacotito

Peety I dont know how old you are but replacing PC parts,even swapping out your entire pc to a new case is cake nowadays compared to 10-15 years ago. If you built just 1 pc yourself you would never buy a pre-built one again,if you can put a lego set together you can build your own pc and it will cost half as much lol.

I get 60FPS now in DCS so with EDGE I expect a drop of 5FPS

Off topic: Ehmm.. isn't EDGE supposed to increase performance instead of decrease as its demand is divided over multiple cores whereas currently all processes minus the audio run on 1 core and because it is a more efficient engine in general?

Hey,

 

considering this is a HP / Dell PC from what I read, be cautious for a few reasons:

 

A: You loose all your warranty ( not so bad )

B: Very likely that the mounting posts/holes on your HP/Dell mobo are NOT standard and may not fit a normal case. This is not uncommon for HP/DELL etc.. fabricated Complete-PCs.

 

 

As for CPU and RAM, heck,, THE CODE !!!

 

Why throw that much money at a code that doesn't respect your CPU ?

 

As long as DCS doesn't redo it`s core and make it SMP capable, this game is lost from the start up.

 

Brute Force will only get you THAT far and the rest will be blocked by a code from single-core Pentium 4 times. I really hate looking at 8-12 cores ( 4-6 w/o HT ) and only 2 of them are actually working, the rest is humming along at around idle..... LoL. That doesn't make a good picture for the code !!!

 

As for 3D cards, I stepped back from buying 500 €+ cards as none of them ever lasted more than 3 month over the warranty, regardless if ATI or Nvidia. Since I also sell these cards I have a whole box of fried ATIs and NVs in my shop. I think the best cards go for around 250 +/- €/$.

If you have money to burn this won't play a role..... but who has that ?

BTW...the more you OC them the faster they die. I can proof this with like a dozen cards in my box from our BF clan and comrades I built the PCs for. The only thing I would OC is maybe a CPU... but I haven't OCed anymore since Flanker 2.0 and my PIII 550MHz as of 2001. If those 4.4GHz CPUs can do prime95 for 24-48h without cooking I would do so, usually they fail after a few hours when heavily over clocked.

 

Also considering that OCing really needs some good parts, starting with the cooling paste, good high-end mobo, stable and strong PSU, extra large cooler.... this sums up to a point where you could have gotten the bigger CPU and go with the stock parts.. and almost achieve the same while keeping on the safe side.

 

Maybe I got too old to follow each and every Nvidia advertisement and hop on any train that sounds fun.... heck... I could buy a more than small car for what I put into gaming rigs the past 20 years. I am no at the point where I say, get me a laptop that can game and free me from this hardware battle. I have an Asus G73 and MacBookPro Retina for gaming, all I need.

 

Sure, for the same I could get a clumpsy i7extreme machine, but I know the electricity bill for such monsters and I really hate the noise.... with 130w max consumption on the G73 460GTX laptop I am on the safe side when the electricity bill comes. My server eats 700-800 €/year electricity with 24/7/365 at around 400watts. Running a Gamerig at 800watts for half the time would double my bill, no thank you !

 

My point of view after over 20 years gaming and building PCs...( and sending faulty VGA cards back to the wholesale/vendor !! I always hated that ).

 

Bit

Off topic: Ehmm.. isn't EDGE supposed to increase performance instead of decrease as its demand is divided over multiple cores whereas currently all processes minus the audio run on 1 core and because it is a more efficient engine in general?

 

Do you have a quote to back that up?

If it is true that EDGE will make use of SMP for rendering alone, much of the single core running the FM and general calculations would be available again.

 

Let`s hope this is true !

 

Bit

GeForce GT620 enough?

 

Do you have a quote to back that up?

is that an actual question or a sarcastic way to tell me my assumption is false? :)

 

Btw, if the latter is the case that would definitely be a bummer anno 2014. I know all the talk about how you cannot compare a hifi flightsim to FPS' etc. but common... We're reaching a point where OS designers are no longer supporting single core CPUs and x86 architecture (tabs and phones left aside).

Edited December 30, 2013 by JayPee