hardware message from ED

I contacted ED about some PC specs on a potential build to run A10C. Here is my original message followed by the response:

I'm a little confused. First let me say that I think you guys are fantastic. I can remember flying the sims from the mid 90's and wishing for all of the things that you have created in A10C.

I'll try not to be long winded. I have not had a sim for about 10 years, wife and kids- you get the picture. About 6 weeks ago I decided to see what was out there and WOW! I came across DCS A10C. Watched all of the videos, got on the forum, and tried to read as much as possible before asking a lot of uneducated questions.

I am going to build a PC to run this simulation. Never done that before, but what I've seen certainly justifies it. Recently bought TM WH and just ordered Saitek combat rudder pedals. Would like to run triple monitors with eyefinity.

Here are the system specs I would like to use:

MSI P67A-GD65 S1155

Intel Ci5 2500K 3.3 Ghz

8gigs 1600 Mhz dual g2

MSI R6970 2GB DDR5

Corsair 600T case

Question 1:

Is this a good system to run your simulator? Please suggest any changes if neccessary.

Question 2:

Stutters,micro-stutters? Is this being addressed in an upcoming patch? I've read that Beta 4 did not have these issues. Many users reported that B4 ran fine. It wasn't until the final release that this started happening. Should I be concerned with this using the above hardware.

I am hesitant to spend $2K+ on a new system until I know for sure what is going on. On the other hand I want to support what you guys are doing and I understand it takes a little time to get things running perfectly.

Thanks for any help and keep up the great work.

response:

Motherboard and CPU chosen are very good.

Corsair 600T case has no power supply unit. I suggest to avoid cheap solutions, look for 600W and higher, they are assembled noticeably better.

And it's rather expensive for a medium level product. There is nothing special with cases, so you can save some money here. Just make sure its edges are smooth to the touch and it has big fans with grating on the back and in the front.

Regarding MSI R6970 2GB DDR5.

AMD/ATI put cheats into their graphics drivers which require deep changes in the graphics engine of the application. Otherwise there are severe glitches and other artifacts. In the version of drivers 11.1 they have hidden very important settings in the GUI thus forcing users to edit xml files directly. These settings allow to run old games on new drivers. While it's still possible to have correct picture in DCS Warthog with drivers 11.1, I don't know what will be in the future, since tendencies are to serve big auditory ignoring the others.

AMD/ATI graphics solutions fit best casual game market where graphics engines emerge very quickly. The size of casual game market allows big companies to rebuild noticeable parts of their graphics engines very often. But in the study-grade simulators is another situation.

In sum, I don't recommend AMD/ATI graphics solutions for titles build on old graphics engines like ours. Although we have tweaked and improved our graphics engine greatly to meet most of modern standards, as I told in the beginning, the changes necessary for correct work with the latest graphics drivers fr om AMD/ATI are too big.

There is no Nvidia solution in replacement for eyefinity. But there is a good third party solution: Matrox TrippleHead2Go. We did test it and confirm, it works fine with our modern titles.

Don't forget to install 64bit version of Windows.

You can reallocate you money just keeping in mind, the bottle neck of all our titles is CPU and 4GB of RAM and 1GB of VRAM is enough for Warthog now (it's very easy to increase the RAM amount). I cannot tell anything definite about the next our project. For sure I can tell only that CPU requirements will increase as usually.

We do work on stutters. Upcoming patch 1.1.0.7 will address several causes of them. But I'm still not sure whether stutters above huge cities and airports will gone away completely. Wh ere people mean performance (FPS) loss by micro-stutters, be sure the CPU you have chosen will smooth it out for you.

Good luck with your new computer!

___________________________________________

I am still not sure which graphics card to use. Is the Sandybridge 2500K with no hyperthreading OK to use, or should I get the 2600K? Not a significant amount of money overall. I almost bought the R6970, it appears that its not the card to use with DCS A10.

I'm still on board with ED, but it is confusing.

damn, but that's a stellar response. try hitting up ubi similar info.

No surprises there except how frank the response was regarding stutters:

We do work on stutters. Upcoming patch 1.1.0.7 will address several causes of them. But I'm still not sure whether stutters above huge cities and airports will gone away completely.[/Quote] Nothing approaching that level of honesty found its way onto my performance of high end computers thread by any of the ED team. Pretty disappointing considering what I've gone through trying to get this sim to run even somewhat smoothly since the final release came out.

Off-topic, but...

Agreed. Never will have imagined TechSupport to answer that question with anything other then "Please look at our website for the minimum requirements".

Agreed. Never will have imagined TechSupport to answer that question with anything other then "Please look at our website for the minimum requirements".

I thought it was worth a try. I know ED is working on these issues. I just wish they would communicate more on graphics card reqirements.

To be fair, I'm not well versed in PC hardware. I'm learning, though. I know they will get things right. We just have to be patient.

I'm thinking the ASUS GTX 560 TI might be a contender. Just need to get the PC built before the wife catches on. I'm sure she suspects something due to the laptop making all these jet engine sounds(youtube) and that damn landing gear warning alarm!

Cheers

I know several people using the GTX 560ti and they have no complaints. It's a very solid card for its price. I am curious if anyone has used the new 550 yet. I would look into 2gb of video RAM not because of A10c, but for whatever ED plans to make next. If the cost is too great then 1gb will do just fine.

I am in the middle of a pc build myself. My specs are practically the same. Only I'm using SSD hard drives and raid setup. I have been using 800 watt power supplies for a long time now. They tend to last a little longer. Meaning is your pulling 500 watts off a 600 watt. The power supply it will lose capacity over time. The 800 watt does the same thing, it just takes a lot longer for it to reach the point were the computer won't start.

I would recommend staying with the 2500k. Dcs a10 doesn't support hyperthreading. The performance difference would minimal.

Pretty disappointing considering what I've gone through trying to get this sim to run even somewhat smoothly since the final release came out.

I feel for you, but the sim runs surprisingly smooth on my 3 year old system, in fact as good if not better than BS. I personally don't see stutters over large cities or airports, which cause more of a drop in fps rather than pauses or spikes. Hopefully your issues will get sorted with the upcoming patch.

I feel for you, but the sim runs surprisingly smooth on my 3 year old system, in fact as good if not better than BS. I personally don't see stutters over large cities or airports, which cause more of a drop in fps rather than pauses or spikes. Hopefully your issues will get sorted with the upcoming patch.

Thanks, Hassata. I hope so too.

In the reply above:

Is he saying that files in DCS A10 will have to be modified in order for the R6970 card to work??????? i welcome any comments by ED testers.

In the reply above:

Is he saying that files in DCS A10 will have to be modified in order for the R6970 card to work??????? i welcome any comments by ED testers.

my 6950 works very fine, so there should be no problem with the 6970. I think he meant that NVIDIA was more ''optimized'' compare to AMD ;)

Regarding AMD/ATI graphics drivers, what he is saying is that there are low-level driver tweaks needing to be done to achieve the same level of reliability as you get with nVidia. It may still work just fine, but there are some issues there that might plague you. It isn't, however, a "destined to fail" setup.

On the stutters and microstutters, it depends a lot. There are several causes to them happening, some simple and some outright arcane. They are being adressed as individual causes are being identified and isolated, so some users should see improvements in the upcoming patch, but there is no guarantee that all users will get a stutter-free experience with the next patch. Basically, it is an error to think that the stutters people observe are "a" problem - there's a lot of different problems involved and some are easier to adress than others. The mutability of PC hardware and driver configurations unfortunately make it harder to isolate the cause in each instance compared to more homogenous platforms such as consoles or Macs.

On CPU choice, I believe you should be fine with the 2500K. You should not expect performance loss due to not having hyperthreading. Indeed, for this product and even almost all other game products on the market I would expect the 2500K to give equal or at least near-equal (to the point of a human not being able to notice the difference while playing) performance to the 2600K. The latter has been reported to have a slightly higher top reach for overclocking, which can translate into a noticeable difference, but that's about it. So on the CPU choice you are probably completely golden.

On GPU, the 560Ti is as has been mentioned a very solid card. On personal experience I cannot adequately express how impressed I am with mine when the cost of the part is taken into consideration: I max out literall all games I play (in some times excepting it for slightly lower AA and AF ratings), which includes DCS:BS, FC2, DCS:A-10C, Rise of Flight, Shogun2, Dragon Age 2, Starcraft 2. Selecting a unit like the ASUS DirectCUII or the TwinFROZR or similar dual-fan versions might be advantageous - it allows each fan to run slower for a given level of cooling to the card, leading to overall lower sound levels from your system. (In my own case I was more after the increased overclocking envelope though.)

Thanks very much for the info.

HT was shown to decrease performance in A10 I thought. Could have sworn I read that people had to disable it for better performance.

6970 is a big step ahead of a 560 in most games. You can also get a 6950 and bios flash it to a 6970 for equal performance and save some money.

Yes, I think the 2500K will be fine for now. Going with ASUS GTX 560Ti. Hopefully I'll have the rig put together in about three weeks. Will report back on how everything is working.

Thanks everyone.

Is he saying that ATI purposely makes older shader effects not display correctly? Anyone have problems playing old games on an ATI card?

Does Nvidia have something similar to Catalyst A.I.? It would be interesting if the ED programmers were willing to work around Nvidia's version of CAI

Does Nvidia have something similar to Catalyst A.I.? It would be interesting if the ED programmers were willing to work around Nvidia's version of CAI

Yes Nvidia Inspector:-

http://downloads.guru3d.com/NVIDIA-Inspector-1.94-download-2612.html

To the OP, if you are still in the building phase and want an alterative to TH2Go, then the new Nvidia GTX 590 will support 3 monitors with Nvidia "surround". You will require 3 monitors that are the same make (ideally) to prevent any incompatibility. Just ensure you have a suitable PSU. Most reviews state a minimum of 750 Watts, but the card itself will use 340 Watts.:-

http://guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-590-review/7

I have come across this ATI V Nvidia question before. ATI announced that it was not supporting further driver development for FSX. I know FSX is no longer in production. However, its a hugely popular flight sim and uses dx9, like DCS uses dx9.

From the above information and based upon what I have read elsewhere, my decision to buy a ATI 6970 has been shelved!

The options for "surround gaming" on 3 monitors are TH2Go or the GTX 590.

Otherwise, remain on a single monitor and Track IR!

Regards.

I guess it is time to put my dead GTX 280 in the oven. But if that does not work, I will still get a 6950, as these are driver compatability issues that are likely to be fixed in the very near future; and until then I will play with HDR off, like I do now.

I have a 6970 and run 5760x1080 eyefinity with DCS A-10 no problem. The card will run the game fine.

My 4750 drives 4 monitors and works great.

I am curious who answered you. I've never seen such reply from Tech support. Big Bravo!

I am used to hear "Please refer to hardware producer's manuals for additional information" or "Tech support can't help you in these questions. Thank you for using Tech Support".

As regarding hyperthreading when i switch this off in gigabyte bios

The game gets to the load mission bar then frezzes, unplayable for me.

Rextar have you reinstalled after disabling HT, from my own experiences HT disabling should be followed by new windows instal then all your other software.

Others may know better :music_whistling: