Hardware limit ?

[sblzei]

I am very fond of the natural beauty of some (all?) the US western states. Over the years, I visited more than once the National Parks in Utah, Arizona, etc. even when some of them were not yet as famous as today.
I was therefore very excited when Gottfried Razek's started releasing his ChiliView Series (blueskyscenery.com). I patiently downloaded the hi-res version, hoping to be able to get the same amazing views seen on the Blue Sky Scenery site, but soon came disappointment, since I don't get even close to the level of detail represented on these screenshots. I have tried to change the FSX visual settings, taking the sliders from full right to near the left, but with no result.

Is my NVIDIA GE Force 8800 GTS (256 Mb) taken to the limit, or there is something in the scenery.cfg setting that needs to be changed?
Texture banwidth is currently set at 40, and LoD Radius is 5.5. What else needs to be looked at?
Can the GC memory be increased?

Thanks

 

[stansdds]

I don't know for certain, but I think a 256MB video card is weak for FSX. I have a 512MB factory overclocked 8800GT and it barely keeps up with FSX and I do not have all the sliders to the right. What does the rest of you computer look like?

 

[txnetcop]

One of the things discovered since the demise of the ACES team is that FSX does require a really good card to be able to enjoy all it has to offer. It is CPU driven of course but the bigger the bandwidth the better the experience, i.e., a 448 bit 896 MB Vram Nividia can really rock FSX, ATI makes up for it with shader processing in their new cards, but even there you have to have a least a 256 bit interface. While your 256 bit interface is good on the 8800GT you want at least 512 mb of fast DDR3 Vram, but the architecture of the 8800GT is very limited for FSX. I would look at either the newer ATI 4890 or an Nvidia GTX260 or better for FSX if you have the CPU to push it! By the way, Nick N at simviation.com forum has an outstanding article on FSX setup and the use of video cards.
Ted
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">

 

[Bone]

One of the things discovered since the demise of the ACES team is that FSX does require a really good card to be able to enjoy all it has to offer. It is CPU driven of course but the bigger the bandwidth the better the experience, i.e., a 448 bit 896 MB Vram Nividia can really rock FSX, ATI makes up for it with shader processing in their new cards, but even there you have to have a least a 256 bit interface. While your 256 bit interface is good on the 8800GT you want at least 512 mb of fast DDR3 Vram, but the architecture of the 8800GT is very limited for FSX. I would look at either the newer ATI 4890 or an Nvidia GTX260 or better for FSX if you have the CPU to push it! By the way, Nick N at simviation.com forum has an outstanding article on FSX setup and the use of video cards.
Ted
<INPUT id=gwProxy type=hidden><!--Session data--><INPUT id=jsProxy onclick=jsCall(); type=hidden>

Please forgive the hijack here, SBLZEI, but it seems like a good place to ask this question. TXNETCOP, do you see any advantage to upgrading from a QX9650 oc'd at 3.8 to one of the newer i7 cpu's?

 

[Major_Spittle]

Please forgive the hijack here, SBLZEI, but it seems like a good place to ask this question. TXNETCOP, do you see any advantage to upgrading from a QX9650 oc'd at 3.8 to one of the newer i7 cpu's?

I just went from a Q9450/4gb ddr2 1066 @ 3.6ghz, to an i7 920/6gb 1333 @ 3.5 and haven't seen much difference. I am still in the getting everything tweaked and set up right though. Also when I lose the stock Heat Sink I should be able to clock the new system to 4.0 and my memory is actually rated at 1600 but stick with lower timings.

Honestly, I don't think you'll see a huge performance increase clock for clock, but the new system at 3.5 is a little peppier with autogen but still craps out where my other system would around large airports with ground traffic and such enabled.

 

[Bone]

I just went from a Q9450/4gb ddr2 1066 @ 3.6ghz, to an i7 920/6gb 1333 @ 3.5 and haven't seen much difference. I am still in the getting everything tweaked and set up right though. Also when I lose the stock Heat Sink I should be able to clock the new system to 4.0 and my memory is actually rated at 1600 but stick with lower timings.

Honestly, I don't think you'll see a huge performance increase clock for clock, but the new system at 3.5 is a little peppier with autogen but still craps out where my other system would around large airports with ground traffic and such enabled.

Thanks. An upgraded vid card might do me better. Currently, I have oc'd 8800GTX's

 

[sblzei]

stansdds asked:

What does the rest of you computer look like?

2CPU Intel 6600 @ 2.4 Ghz in Raid configuration (but don't ask me which one: the guy that made it won't tell me . I don't know about o/c either).

 

[NoNewMessages]

Texture banwidth is currently set at 40, and LoD Radius is 5.5. What else needs to be looked at?

With the memory constraints of your card, I would suggest setting the LOD Radius back to 4.5. Also when in a photo based area I cut my autogen to the minimums. And I would suggest flying something slow. My just released VFR+ West Virginia (shameless plug!) carries an average file size of 50mb. The area coverage is not that large, so many tiles would be used to display near and close up, along with the less clear areas radiating away from the user's plane position.

Right now I use a nVidia 9800GTX+ with 512mb of Vram. It's the weak link in my system and will hopefully become a "spare" before the end of the year.

 

[sblzei]

stansdds asked:

What does the rest of you computer look like?

2CPU Intel 6600 @ 2.4 Ghz in Raid configuration (but don't ask me which one: the guy that made it won't tell me . I don't know about o/c either).

Considering the rest of the system, do you believe it is worth a new VC?

 

[Major_Spittle]

Thanks. An upgraded vid card might do me better. Currently, I have oc'd 8800GTX's

Yeah, honestly I would maybe wait and see what people can do with the Gulftown (6 core 12 thread 32nm) processors. They should overclock much higher than the 45nm i7 processors and the two extra cores might help some. I agree with you that you would be better off with a newer video card and not upgrading that whole system until there would be a bigger increase in performance for the money you would have to spend.

Not sure how much memory or what OS you run, but 4+ gigs on a 64 bit OS should help, also the new Samsung 500gb F3 drives are only about $50 if you want to put FSX on its own drive. Other than the DDR2 (i assume that is what your MB uses) everything could be used in a new computer build later but would help FSX now if you already don't have it set up.

 

[Bjoern]

Thanks. An upgraded vid card might do me better. Currently, I have oc'd 8800GTX's

Well, the 8800 series still rocks if you take Ted's remark about the memory bandwidth into consideration.

If you're running more than just FSX on your PC a new video card might be worth the investment for sure. Try a GTX285 or similar.

I just went from a Q9450/4gb ddr2 1066 @ 3.6ghz, to an i7 920/6gb 1333 @ 3.5 and haven't seen much difference. I am still in the getting everything tweaked and set up right though. Also when I lose the stock Heat Sink I should be able to clock the new system to 4.0 and my memory is actually rated at 1600 but stick with lower timings.

Honestly, I don't think you'll see a huge performance increase clock for clock, but the new system at 3.5 is a little peppier with autogen but still craps out where my other system would around large airports with ground traffic and such enabled.

CPU clocks are good for FPS. You might get a slight boost with those 4Ghz.

And yes, big airports with tons of traffic will take any system to its knees. My AI setup gives me 9 FPS at O'Hare (flying over the terminals) on my Q9450 at 3.2Ghz.
FSX native AI models would improve things for sure but Intel/AMD will have to deliver a lot more computing power for those constant 30 FPS.

 

[txnetcop]

Shoot with all the experts growing up in here (sorry guys maybe that was the wrong term to use LOL) I need to go find a site that needs a tired old man to help 'em! HEHEHE. Seriously our young engineers are getting pretty good at this stuff. We have several people in here that can hold their own in what parts combine best. A great forum for new builders-right here!

The i7960 provides the best results over cities when combined with DDR3 2000mhz memory and believe or not a Western Digital Black Edition 640GB 64mb caching. However we just finished testing the i9Cores I would wait and just make sure you have a great video card for the new stuff coming out mid to late summer.

I'm gonna go sit in my rocking chair and dream of better days now that I'm on the back burner.
Ted
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">

 

[Bone]

Shoot with all the experts growing up in here (sorry guys maybe that was the wrong term to use LOL) I need to go find a site that needs a tired old man to help 'em! HEHEHE. Seriously our young engineers are getting pretty good at this stuff. We have several people in here that can hold their own in what parts combine best. A great forum for new builders-right here!

The i7960 provides the best results over cities when combined with DDR3 2000mhz memory and believe or not a Western Digital Black Edition 640GB 64mb caching. However we just finished testing the i9Cores I would wait and just make sure you have a great video card for the new stuff coming out mid to late summer.

I'm gonna go sit in my rocking chair and dream of better days now that I'm on the back burner.
Ted
<INPUT id=gwProxy type=hidden><!--Session data--><INPUT id=jsProxy onclick=jsCall(); type=hidden>

There's no substitute for experience.

 

[warchild]

::;i9's already and i just upgraded to an i780 motherboard :;

 

[NoNewMessages]

I'm gonna go sit in my rocking chair and dream of better days now that I'm on the back burner.
Ted
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">

No Grandpa, NO!

Please tell us one more story before bedtime!


I'll offer free software if you'll help tweak my i930, once EVGA can explain to me why the 6gb of ram is showing up as 4gb in Windows. Seems a "few" of their X58 users have that problem...

 

[txnetcop]

No Grandpa, NO!

Please tell us one more story before bedtime!


I'll offer free software if you'll help tweak my i930, once EVGA can explain to me why the 6gb of ram is showing up as 4gb in Windows. Seems a "few" of their X58 users have that problem...

Honestly it is EVGA that is having the problem there is a fix I will dig it up for ya. The neat thing about EVGA is the way they allow full 16x PCI Express usage across their X58 with either ATI or Nvidia video cards. That is part of the problem because they made the northbridge so intelligent it conflicts the graphics and memory handling resident on the i7Core processors. I will get back with ya. I was not the test engineer for EVGA X58 but Sergio at TechCorp was and told me of a fix!
Ted
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">

 

[NoNewMessages]

Thanks, Ted!

The offer of free software is real, so if you see something you like...

Part of the problem setting the system up was getting the ram recognized or even to boot when all three were inside. Reflashed the BIOS twice and got a stable system, showing 4gb. It would be nice to get the 6gb to show, so if I decide to go to 12gb??

FSX is nice as, but there's never enough FPS when adding stuff in!

 

[txnetcop]

I have not been able to reach Sergio yet at TechCorp LCSIMS so hang loose another day. I know there is a fix for the EVGA X58 memory issue.
Ted
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">