which video cardshould I upgrade to?

[egorter]

:helpsmilie:what video card/cards should I upgrade to? to get better frame rates.

I currently have two nVidia 8600 GTS in Sli

[Merc]

Hmm, make sure that's the bottle neck. FPS is not all about graphics card. And it's very hard to tell without any computer information.

 

Be aware that you might get a bigger FPS increase if you upgrade the CPU, get more RAM or get yourself a solid state hard drive depending on where the bottle neck is. And that could be cheap compared to two brand new graphic cards.

[xWARGOx]

Build a new system =] Always much more fun and rewarding.

[Steel Jaw]

Im eyeballing this one...

 

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6075290&pagenumber=2&RSort=1&csid=ITD&recordsPerPage=5&body=#ReviewStart

[egorter]

thanks

 

cpu is dual core e something or other. 4Meg of Ram, win vista 32bit

[Teej]

To find your most severe bottleneck...I'd suggest the following.

 

Download/install/run MSI Afterburner (Yes, even if you don't have MSI video cards). It will graphically show you GPU utilization and video memory and a few other things. Leave that running.

 

Now fire up windows taskmanager (start / run / type 'taskmgr' or you can select it from ctl-alt-del ). Put it on the 'performance' tab.

 

Now start A-10 and load the 'takeoff' training mission. Don't throttle up, just unpause and sit there at the end of the runway basking in what may be a slideshow framerate. Let it sit there for a good 30 seconds.

 

Then alt-tab out and look at the utilization graphs (CPU, GPU, GPU memory). See which one is pegged. Though to be honest I'm not sure how some of that might look on SLIed cards - I've never run an SLI setup so maybe someone else can chime in and improve my suggestion here.

 

Once you've done that and taken some notes, alt-tab back into A-10 and actually take off and fly away from batumi a bit. Preferably over land. Note your framerates there and then when it seems it's hit the highest number it's going to hit (when actually looking at ground and not sky/water) alt-tab again and see where the above utilizations are.

 

That should give you a pretty good idea whether you are currently CPU or GPU limited. Of course, fixing one may suddenly reveal a weak spot in the other. Hard drive speed / SSD would tend to help with stutters more than FPS.

 

And keep in mind...this _IS_ unfinished code. Optimizations will be made. That alone may improve your performance or even reverse the current location of the bottleneck!

 

I myself am definitely GPU limited. My CPU will trot along at ~ 50% of one core while the GPU (even overclocked) is pegged on the end of runway portion of the test. GPU memory will appear maxed out initially, but alt tabbing out and back in tends to free up some that was allocated but not actually used.

[Steel Jaw]

Hey Teej, good app man.

 

What I get is 60 % CPU and 99% GPU, so that confirms my suspician that the 9800GTX is a severe bottleneck...will run that test again after I get my 470gtx.

 

On a side note, entertainingly, crappy old ugly Falcon AF usues 10 % CPU and 15% GPU. LMAO...what JUNK.

Edited December 22, 2010 by Mower

[Teej]

Not a problem.

 

As to AF...well...I'm pretty sure it benefits more from multi cores than the DCS engine does. As for the graphics...of course it's not gonna tax current cards. The graphics engine is really a mix of 8-12 year old code.

 

Despite its faults, there's still nothing that can touch AF for online campaigns.

 

You can get better looking single player setups. You can get more feature packed multiplayer TEs. But stable, flexible multiplayer campaigns? No competition.

 

Put another way...there's girls you date...and girls you marry. :D

Edited December 22, 2010 by Teej

[RSharpe]

Im eyeballing this one...

 

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6075290&pagenumber=2&RSort=1&csid=ITD&recordsPerPage=5&body=#ReviewStart

 

That's too much money for an obsolete card. For $50 you could get the much better 570 from a cheaper retailer.

[power5]

Obviously your GPU is your bottleneck Mower. Its 3 generations old and your CPU is a current Gen quad. ;)

 

Not sure about that theory on testing though. Pretty sure my GPU is always maxed in my games. Then again, I do not play on low settings, instead I set them as high as I can with acceptable FPS. However, if you can only manage 25FPS on high settings, if you change settings to low you may get 45FPS, but will still have a maxed out card. The only way to get a less than 100% GPU usage will be to set a FPS cap that is lower than your GPUs max ability. So, say my card can pump out 100FPS when uncapped. This will be at 100% load as well. So if I turn it down to a 60FPS cap, I may only have a 75% load. No one can play DCS at 100FPS so everyones GPU load will appear maxed out and the bottleneck without a FPS cap. My theory at least. GPU will always be the bottleneck in DCS until they utilize multi core much better.

[Teej]

@power: I never mentioned it in this thread, but I have in others -I set maxfps to 60. There's no point in trying to render faster than the refresh rate of my monitor (2408 WFP)

[Teej]

Also...it looks like other aircraft are the chief culprit at this point.

 

I created a mission for practicing some weapons employment based out of batumi and my FPS pegs at 60. Drop a few F-16 on the ramp and the FPS drops to around 50. Change those out for A-10 instead and bam, goodbye FPS (down into the 30s, like the t/o training mission)

[power5]

Did not know you could set a max FPS.

 

I have noticed the same FPS hit with AI planes. Even when just sitting on the tarmac I will see FPS drop from upper 30's to the low teens if I can see any other A/C in my view.

[Teej]

Well I was about to tell you where it was but apparently I didn't have to do that with A-10....or I did the equivalent and forgot about it.

 

If you look in (game)/config/graphics.cfg about 20-22 lines down you should see a line referencing 'sync'. 1 = locks max FPS to your refresh rate. 0 lets it float. At '0', I often see 100+ (obviously not looking over an airbase full of jets, but you know what I mean). With it '1' I never see over 60, except briefly as it compensates.

 

Thus, it keeps the GPU from running hot needlessly.

[Steel Jaw]

That's too much money for an obsolete card. For $50 you could get the much better 570 from a cheaper retailer.

 

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6594580&CatId=28

 

I am not sure this card is obsolete. Nor that the price is too high.

 

For this card it's cheaper by far at Tiger than Newegg.

Edited December 22, 2010 by Mower

[RSharpe]

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6594580&CatId=28

 

I am not sure this card is obsolete. Nor that the price is too high.

 

For this card it's cheaper by far at Tiger than Newegg.

 

Hey it's your money.

 

$310 for a 470 or $350 for a 570. The 570 performs like a 480, only cooler. Obviously the 480 is faster than the 470.

[Teej]

Dunno how they do with shipping up to the arctic, but newegg has that card, Mower (470 SC) for $250 after $20 MIR...like ~ $8 shipping here in the states. Again, dunno if they screw ya sending it up there.

[Weidlich]

I just replaced my 8800 Ultra by a GTX 570.

This was the best thing I've ever done!

The 8800 Ultra was maxed out 100% all the time with low average fps.

Now I do not hit a GPU wall at all. The highest load on my GPU is about 95% when looking on one of the two MFD's and zooming in so they fill my whole screen.

Eyecandy with 16x AF, 4x MSAA and 4x SSAA

 

On the ground and during low level flight I am definetly CPU bound. FPS drop to 10 - 15 with a GPU load of about 30%.

During normal flight I have 22 - 45 FPS.

My Q9550 is running at 3,6 GHz

Edited December 23, 2010 by Weidlich

[Succellus]

Hey Teej, good app man.

 

What I get is 60 % CPU and 99% GPU, so that confirms my suspician that the 9800GTX is a severe bottleneck...will run that test again after I get my 470gtx.

 

On a side note, entertainingly, crappy old ugly Falcon AF usues 10 % CPU and 15% GPU. LMAO...what JUNK.

 

Spitting on the plate that feeded you ain t that gracefull....

[Steel Jaw]

AF *never* "fed" me: Open Falcon all the way.