TrackIR - Image tearing at monitor edges

[BirdDogICT 3]

Also, again for what it's worth, I believe the appearance of these triangles (of any sort or shade) is caused by the mass media storage subsystem's (hard drive) inability to retrieve textures quickly enough for them to be smoothly displayed. There seems to be a lot to corroborate this, such as:

 

- Most who report this say they have no such issues in other games

- Even those with 'killer' video cards still experience this (hinting that niether GPU power or huge amounts of graphics memory is enough; therefore not a problem with storing or handling the textures local to the graphics card)

- (the clincher, for me at least) When I finally put Solid State Drives in my machine, all the stutters and triangles vanished, period.

 

It also seems I've seen at least one other person here with a similar experience, for what it's worth.

 

My $.02

Tamper,

Can't argue withe the mass storage problem...I'm sure it effects many. But here's another two cents worth:

 

I have an ATI 5780, an above average card running the latest Catalyst 10.4 drivers. I experienced lots of jaggied with TrackIR4 until I backed off terrain and scenery sliders to 3, and set Vertical Sync ON and OpenGL Triple Buffering ON in Catalyst (keep in mind that these settings don't always work without the addition of a third party utility like RivaTuner or my preference, the stand alone D3DOverrider found here http://www.mediafire.com/?2zzymudjfbh ). With default TrackIR4 speeds, 53353 sliders, and D3DOverrider, I get great framerates and no jaggies (well, maybe a tiny sliver of one once in a while if I check6 in .05 microseconds).

 

I enjoy pushing my game settings as much as the next guy, but fill rates never lie.

Edited May 26, 2010 by BirdDogICT

[Over50 0]

I think what is being noticed is a (relatively bright) color which contrasts with the ground - the 'sky blue' - stands out more. I believe the triangles are still there, just that you don't notice them. For what it's worth, all shades of color are just another number to a PC - so, I'd find it a stretch if only one color somehow magically causes this effect but no others do.

 

It seems I also recall this was mentioned before, that the light blue color stands out more against a dark background.

 

Also, again for what it's worth, I believe the appearance of these triangles (of any sort or shade) is caused by the mass media storage subsystem's (hard drive) inability to retrieve textures quickly enough for them to be smoothly displayed. There seems to be a lot to corroborate this, such as:

 

- Most who report this say they have no such issues in other games

- Even those with 'killer' video cards still experience this (hinting that niether GPU power or huge amounts of graphics memory is enough; therefore not a problem with storing or handling the textures local to the graphics card)

- (the clincher, for me at least) When I finally put Solid State Drives in my machine, all the stutters and triangles vanished, period.

 

It also seems I've seen at least one other person here with a similar experience, for what it's worth.

 

My $.02

 

I honestly don't see where a SS HD would make any difference. I have WD 10K Raptor HD paired with a I7-930 OC'd to 3.8 GHz in tandem with 6 GB of RAM running at 1600 MHz and a pair of Evga GTX 260-216 Super Clocked GPU's (896MB of video ram) and I would think these specs would be more than ample to handle whatever gets thrown at my display. The fact the tearing only occurs in OFF - as with most others here leads me to believe it is a rendering coding issue IMO with the OFF overlay of CFS3.

Edited May 26, 2010 by Over50

[Parky 8]

I honestly don't see where a SS HD would make any difference. I have WD 10K Raptor HD paired with a I7-930 OC'd to 3.8 GHz in tandem with 6 GB of RAM running at 1600 MHz and a pair of Evga GTX 260-216 Super Clocked GPU's (896MB of video ram) and I would think these specs would be more than ample to handle whatever gets thrown at my display. The fact the tearing only occurs in OFF - as with most others here leads me to believe it is a rendering coding issue IMO with the OFF overlay of CFS3.

 

I'm also inclined to agree that the "real" performance gains from running solid state drives are a bit over-hyped, particularly when you consider the potential for other relevant I/O bottlenecks that are inherent in even the most up to date hardware platforms. To semi-quote BirdDog, benchmarks don't lie. I doubt that if I was to replace my current WD's in RAID-10 with a couple of SSD's, that the occasional blue triangle I see would magically disappear.

 

Having said that, please bear in mind that when you're running OFF, you'll not be able to realize the benefit of running more than one GTX260. Particularly where OFF is concerned, I'd be better off running a single 5870 as opposed to my 5970 dual GPU card. The single, stock 5870 is clocked @ 850mhz core and 1200mhz memory. My overclocked version of the 5970 has stock clocks of 735mhz core and 1010mhz memory, so just based on clock speeds alone the 5870 will outperform it in this specific 3D environment. I also hate to tell you this, but a single 5870 will quite simply annihilate a single GTX260 and would even give your two GTX260's in SLI a damned serious run for their money.....and yes, even your superclocked versions.

 

I can also tell you this phenomenon has much less (if anything) to do with the OFF overlay of CFS3 than it does with the use of TrackIR (specifically with this game). If I shut down TrackIR, I can sit in the VC view and pan the view 360 degrees like a madman and never see a single blue square/triangle (regardless of blue skies, grey skies, green skies, aurora borealis or a freaking meteor shower).

 

I think the simplest (and certainly cheapest) solution is to attempt to tweak your way around it by reducing detail levels in the game, and also attempting to tweak your TrackIR settings. A single 5870 or much higer-end Nvidia product would also improve things considerably for you, but that would involve throwing down some pretty serious coin simply in order to improve the appearance of one single game.

 

Take solace in the fact that your are not alone. Let anyone among us stand up and declare that they use TrackIR in this game, have their detail settings reasonably high, and never, ever see a blue square or triangle at the edge of their screen.....then watch me call that someone a liar.

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

Edited May 26, 2010 by Parky

[+Winder 32]

I'm also inclined to agree that the "real" performance gains from running solid state drives are a bit over-hyped, particularly when you consider the potential for other relevant I/O bottlenecks that are inherent in even the most up to date hardware platforms. To semi-quote BirdDog, benchmarks don't lie. I doubt that if I was to replace my current WD's in RAID-10 with a couple of SSD's, that the occasional blue triangle I see would magically disappear.

 

Having said that, please bear in mind that when you're running OFF, you'll not be able to realize the benefit of running more than one GTX260. Particularly where OFF is concerned, I'd be better off running a single 5870 as opposed to my 5970 dual GPU card. The single, stock 5870 is clocked @ 850mhz core and 1200mhz memory. My overclocked version of the 5970 has stock clocks of 735mhz core and 1010mhz memory, so just based on clock speeds alone the 5870 will outperform it in this specific 3D environment. I also hate to tell you this, but a single 5870 will quite simply annihilate a single GTX260 and would even give your two GTX260's in SLI a damned serious run for their money.....and yes, even your superclocked versions.

 

I can also tell you this phenomenon has much less (if anything) to do with the OFF overlay of CFS3 than it does with the use of TrackIR (specifically with this game). If I shut down TrackIR, I can sit in the VC view and pan the view 360 degrees like a madman and never see a single blue square/triangle (regardless of blue skies, grey skies, green skies, aurora borealis or a freaking meteor shower).

 

I think the simplest (and certainly cheapest) solution is to attempt to tweak your way around it by reducing detail levels in the game, and also attempting to tweak your TrackIR settings. A single 5870 or much higer-end Nvidia product would also improve things considerably for you, but that would involve throwing down some pretty serious coin simply in order to improve the appearance of one single game.

 

Take solace in the fact that your are not alone. Let anyone among us stand up and declare that they use TrackIR in this game, have their detail settings reasonably high, and never, ever see a blue square or triangle at the edge of their screen.....then watch me call that someone a liar.

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

 

Yep as Parky says Triangles are a fact with Trackir and are worse with lower FPS.....

 

I have spent days trying to sort it - its an interaction between Trackir and CFS3....so not an easy one to sort.

 

One can get it to be very liveable with good hardware and good settings - I run P4 max sliders and on a good new rig and they are not intrusive at all but they are there.

 

 

WM

[Morris 2]

WINDER,

 

DID YOU SAY P4?

 

Lets download please.

 

Cheers

 

Morris

 

Please send us ur specs of ur Rig you are running P4 (BETA). This could give us an idea about good hardware requirements for P4.

[Tamper 9]

Okay, guys, believe what you will (as you obviously will). Same old story; if (forum "guru" X) doesn't own the technology, obviously it's not worth the investment. Thank God I learned to take their advice with a grain of salt a long time ago.

 

To (re)-quote from above "benchmarks don't lie". (Mind you, I think it's hilarious when some who would decry benchmarks as 'synthetic' will turn around and stand on benchmarks when they fall in someone's favor)...

 

But, anyway, here's your benchmark empirical data: The SSDs deliver (as in actual measureable delivery, not "overhyped") a .1 ms random seek. That's right, zero-point-one.

 

And guys, I'm sorry, but your WD Raptors can't touch that - in fact, not even a tenth of that. Nor can any other platter based drives, period. I also have two fast HDDs, in a separate RAID array, and they still can't touch the SSDs for random access.

 

Fact: You cannot physically spin up a platter and move a head fast enough to compete with totally hardware-based, truly random access. I don't care if it spins at 30k, it's still going to be slow, compared to not having to move at all.

 

And as far as the "other" bottlenecks, I know where they are, and how to find them, and measure to make sure they're doing as well as can be expected. The RAID arrays are both very close to the max theoretical bandwidth of the SATA controller they're connected to. So, unless you want to buy a SATA-600 controller, it's about as good as you can get.

 

But, I guess those of you who aren't using them don't know...because you aren't using them. A lot like saying that you cannot claim OFF P3 isn't 'all that' if you don't own it.

 

You read it here first, folks: The entire mass storage industry has it all wrong: SSDs don't offer the "real" performance gains that benchmarks all over the Internet are showing...it's all hyped. *ahem*

 

I'll also not post the screenies of the benchmarks (both ATTO and HDTach) that show the clear performance enhancements of SSDs in a RAID array, lest I be accused of somehow 'doctoring' the pictures, because they obviously cannot be real...

[Morris 2]

Parky,

 

There is surely a big difference between running OFF from a SSD RAID (stripped) than a WD's in RAID-10.

 

I had a pair of WD 10k Raptors (RAID) but spend the bucks and got 2 intel SSD (RAID). You cant compare the performance between a TOP SET of HD vs TOP SET of SSD. Sorry.

 

If anybody els (maybe the DEV) is running windows & OFF from a set of SSD they can tell you.

 

Cheers

 

Morris

 

Im running 2 x Asus 5970 card in my rig.

[Over50 0]

OK! So much for my theory. I surrender! My inbox runneth over. Raptors are crap, forget about coding, GPU's, CPU's, mobo sub-systems and hail SSD's!

[Morris 2]

These are the results of 2 x Intel SSD (RAID 0) on my system.

 

[Tamper 9]

By the way, Morris was the "one other person" I mentioned above as having experience with SSDs - I didn't want to name anyone without them being about, but here he is (and how timely). Morris, thank you very much for the corroborating support.

 

Morris and I have 'touched' on other threads concerning system bottlenecks and OFF performance. Like me, he's an actual owner of SSDs. He's done measurement on his SSD's and how the run OFF - and he came to the same conclusion, I believe.

 

Here's another bit o' info, from http://www.computerw...getting_cheaper_

 

"For mainstream consumers, SSDs also vastly outpace hard disk drives when it comes to performance. In many cases, they have more than twice the I/Os per second, dramatically reducing computer boot-up times and application load times. And, because there are no moving parts -- no actuator arms or motors -- SSDs are more durable and therefore may be better choices for mobile devices."

 

And...

 

"The performance advantage for SSDs in the data center is tremendous. A single SSD, for example, can produce up to 16,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS). In comparison, a high-end 15,000-rpm Fibre Channel drive maxes out at 200 IOPS."

 

It would seem that at least some of the industry thinks SSDs are not, in fact, over-hyped.

 

Note this is not at all to say that Raptors are crap or that some of the other discussed system components in this thread don't have their impact.

 

All I'm saying is that, in my experience, the SSD's made more difference-per-dollar in my OFF experience - with regard to stutters and triangles - than anything else.

[Morris 2]

Tamper,

 

I roger that.

 

Morris.

[Over50 0]

By the way, Morris was the "one other person" I mentioned above as having experience with SSDs - I didn't want to name anyone without them being about, but here he is (and how timely). Morris, thank you very much for the corroborating support.

 

Morris and I have 'touched' on other threads concerning system bottlenecks and OFF performance. Like me, he's an actual owner of SSDs. He's done measurement on his SSD's and how the run OFF - and he came to the same conclusion, I believe.

 

Here's another bit o' info, from http://www.computerw...getting_cheaper_

 

"For mainstream consumers, SSDs also vastly outpace hard disk drives when it comes to performance. In many cases, they have more than twice the I/Os per second, dramatically reducing computer boot-up times and application load times. And, because there are no moving parts -- no actuator arms or motors -- SSDs are more durable and therefore may be better choices for mobile devices."

 

And...

 

"The performance advantage for SSDs in the data center is tremendous. A single SSD, for example, can produce up to 16,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS). In comparison, a high-end 15,000-rpm Fibre Channel drive maxes out at 200 IOPS."

 

It would seem that at least some of the industry thinks SSDs are not, in fact, over-hyped.

 

Note this is not at all to say that Raptors are crap or that some of the other discussed system components in this thread don't have their impact.

 

All I'm saying is that, in my experience, the SSD's made more difference-per-dollar in my OFF experience - with regard to stutters and triangles - than anything else.

 

You win! You win! Hail the almighty SSD.

Edited May 26, 2010 by Over50

[Hellshade 110]

I don't personally have any doubts about the SSD's ability to generate faster throughput. I'd buy one in a heartbeat if I could afford one. (lesson here - only get married if you are tired of having money and sex). I have a pretty high end system for running OFF. A GTX280 video card certainly has what it takes to pump out the framerates and fillrates. My i7 920 is OC'd to 3.8Ghz (I just bumped it up from 3.6 and it seems to handle it just fine). 6GB Corsair XMS is OC'd to 1443Mhz. I can't imagine any of that being the bottleneck to good fill rates in CFS3. In fact, as someone else mentioned above, I can play any newer games and have no issues with white/blue triangles at all on the edges of my screen. I think CFS3 is old enough that it's TrackIR support isn't really well implemented since it's only with the TrackIR that I get the jaggies. The SSD drives probably are able to make up for that difference by pulling in data that CFS3 wasn't really programmed to get at quickly.

 

The short answer to all of this is....I'm screwed...and not in a good way. I've been playing with settings for 2 days now and nothing seems to really make any difference in terms of the TrackIR jaggies. I'll just have to live with until, maybe, Christmas.

Thanks to everyone for their informative posts!

 

Hellshade

Edited May 26, 2010 by Hellshade

[Parky 8]

Okay, guys, believe what you will (as you obviously will). Same old story; if (forum "guru" X) doesn't own the technology, obviously it's not worth the investment. Thank God I learned to take their advice with a grain of salt a long time ago.

 

To (re)-quote from above "benchmarks don't lie". (Mind you, I think it's hilarious when some who would decry benchmarks as 'synthetic' will turn around and stand on benchmarks when they fall in someone's favor)...

 

But, anyway, here's your benchmark empirical data: The SSDs deliver (as in actual measureable delivery, not "overhyped") a .1 ms random seek. That's right, zero-point-one.

 

And guys, I'm sorry, but your WD Raptors can't touch that - in fact, not even a tenth of that. Nor can any other platter based drives, period. I also have two fast HDDs, in a separate RAID array, and they still can't touch the SSDs for random access.

 

Fact: You cannot physically spin up a platter and move a head fast enough to compete with totally hardware-based, truly random access. I don't care if it spins at 30k, it's still going to be slow, compared to not having to move at all.

 

And as far as the "other" bottlenecks, I know where they are, and how to find them, and measure to make sure they're doing as well as can be expected. The RAID arrays are both very close to the max theoretical bandwidth of the SATA controller they're connected to. So, unless you want to buy a SATA-600 controller, it's about as good as you can get.

 

But, I guess those of you who aren't using them don't know...because you aren't using them. A lot like saying that you cannot claim OFF P3 isn't 'all that' if you don't own it.

 

You read it here first, folks: The entire mass storage industry has it all wrong: SSDs don't offer the "real" performance gains that benchmarks all over the Internet are showing...it's all hyped. *ahem*

 

I'll also not post the screenies of the benchmarks (both ATTO and HDTach) that show the clear performance enhancements of SSDs in a RAID array, lest I be accused of somehow 'doctoring' the pictures, because they obviously cannot be real...

 

 

Gentlemen,

 

My bad. Let me rephrase what I said in terms of benchmarks. What I s'pose I should have said in this particular instance was "Gaming benchmarks don't lie".

 

Also.....I'm not about to get drawn into a war of words about the value of solid state drives vs traditional drives when it comes to gaming and/or gaming performance. I will however, state what I believe to be an honest appraisal of their usefullness in general, and also of their usefullness in a gaming environment...but most importantly, specifically where OFF is concerned.

 

I'm abundantly aware of the "benefits" of SSD technology over that of traditional HDD's and have been for some time. I've seen some very impressive benchmark results both in terms of their seek times as well as read and write results. One has to ask this very obvious question though when it comes to "real world gaming performance", particularly where a specific application (in this instance, OFF) is concerned, and with pointed reference to actual frame rates. Just how frequently is this application seeking info from the HD, and/or reading and writing info to or from the storage device when the app is in full swing? I don't know if anyone here has ever bothered to monitor I/O activity on their own drives when OFF (or most other games for that matter) are in full swing. Well I have, and guess what??? Hard drive activity is pretty minimal and sometimes virtually nonexistent. It's a simple test......you don't have to be a guru to figure out that your hard drives are lying there pretty much dormant during most of the action you're seeing on your screen. Once you realize that, you also have to ask yourself this next question. How can my blazing fast SSD's possibly be influencing my FPS or gaming experience so drastically if they're not DOING much of anything while I'm in the middle of a game??

 

I was always under the obviously misguided impression that my CPU, GPU, system and VGA memory were handling most of the workload once any required data had been loaded into memory. That would typically be after the process of a map or textures loading, and during actual gameplay. That's precisely why I invested fairly heavily in those other components as opposed to solid state drives. There are occasions when the hard drives get utilized while you're actively gaming, but from my experience it doesn't occur all that often. Even when it does, it's usually for very brief periods, during which time an SSD would of course have the edge over older technology.

 

There are games that have a tendency to "stream" a lot of data on the fly and really can benefit from faster storage devices. OFF, from what I've seen, is not one of those games, and the last time I checked we were in the OFF section of this forum. We are....aren't we?? Soooooo.....when I speak about "real world performance", I'm assuming the reader will interpret that as meaning how it relates mostly to OFF, but not necessarily exclusively.

 

Their is no denying that SSD's are vastly superior when it comes to a number of everyday computing scenarios. If you've got your OS loaded on one, you're guaranteed to boot to the desktop at blazing speeds. Web pages should load in the blink of an eye. If you've got Battlefield Bad Company 2 or Modern Warfare loaded on your SSD, you'll likely be the first one to load a multi-player map and spawn before those who are using regular HD's, but that's where your speed advantage will come to an abrupt halt and the other components in your system will come into play. Your SSD isn't likely to get you much in the way of a framerate advantage (if any advantage at all) over someone running a Seagate 7200.12 when the firefight is on and that I'm afraid, is what it's all about when it comes to gaming performance.....frame rates....period.

 

Perhaps once I have to start rendering down huge AVCHD videos on any kind of regular basis, I'll take the plunge and buy one or two of these beasts, because obviously when it comes to a task like that, the SSD is worth it's weight in gold. I am not however, going to swallow what I believe to be a misguided notion that solid state drives will somehow magically increase my framerates in OFF by any significant margin and completely eliminate the dreaded blue Bermuda Triangles. I happen to suspect otherwise, and I don't have to own one of these drives to have arrived at that conclusion. They're still a bit too rich for my blood regardless.

 

I don't suppose when you purchased your SSD's that they were part of an upgrade that involved more than just storage devices? New graphics card, processor, RAM or something else of note at the same time? If that were the case, it would explain a lot about what I truly believe to be your very honest and sincere perceptions.

 

Either way, if the SSD's work for you and have enhanced your experience with Over Flanders Fields, I'm thrilled to bits for you and can look forward to being able to experience the same dramatic frame rate increases......once prices come down drastically and I can justify the price vs performance aspect of things.

 

Btw.....Morris, my dear old chap......2x the Asus 5970??? Holy Jumpin' Jesus! That's just plain OVERKILL!!!!

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

Edited May 26, 2010 by Parky

[BirdDogICT 3]

Parky,

 

Thanks for your thoughtful addition to the discussion. Having worked as a marketing director in the electronics industry, I'm always extremely skeptical of the hype surrounding new technologies. Given the high expense of these products in their introduction phase, I'm usually a late adopter.

 

I remember the hype from PC Magazine when they were reviewing PCs with the "new" 286 processor and "blazing fast" hardrives with 80ms access times that were promised to "leave scorch marks on your desk!!"

 

Best Regards

Edited May 27, 2010 by BirdDogICT

[Hellshade 110]

Yep as Parky says Triangles are a fact with Trackir and are worse with lower FPS.....

 

I have spent days trying to sort it - its an interaction between Trackir and CFS3....so not an easy one to sort.

 

One can get it to be very liveable with good hardware and good settings - I run P4 max sliders and on a good new rig and they are not intrusive at all but they are there.

 

 

WM

 

Are you sure they are there? Because...I could be a P4 Beta Tester. I wouldn't mind at all. No need to even thank me. That's just the kind of guy I am.

 

Hellshade

[rabu 9]

Parky, or some one.. please comment about power supply capibilities related to all this. I brought it up earlier and no one made a comment. When I tried to upgrade to a Nvidia GTX-260 with my present system that has a Antec Trio-650w PS I had problems of video flashing and cutting, much like in the videos Hellshade is having trouble with, and then, as the PS heated up under load I got the dredded blue screen of death. After talking to techs at Antec they convinced me that not having enough currant abilities can cause all sorts of weird graphics problems and even crashes, they said it's something ignored by many when they add on graphics cards that depend on a lot of currant draw. And the problem is that PS companies can be very misleading about their products stressing watts over currant, much like the audio amplifiers manufactures like to miss lead consumers stressing power out, but not talking about at what load, whether the dual out puts are in parallel are regulated seperately, etc.

 

Any comments?

[Morris 2]

Dear Parky,

 

I have OFF installed on my PC. I play OFF and the occasional ROF.

These were the steps I followed during the upgrade of my PC for play OFF since Nov 2009.

 

New motherboard

CPU

RAM

1 x Ati 5970

2 x extra samsung monitors for eyefinity

 

But for me OFF still needed some tweaking so,

 

2 x WD Raptors (sorry but that was not the answer - returned it)

 

Then I received 2 kingston SSD (these SSD did not support TRIM in Win7 meaning Stutter problems) and returned them.

 

Got 2 x intel SSD (wow) no loading stutters while playing OFF. Now this is better.

 

Got a thermaltake 1200 power supply to run 2 x 5970 cards

Got an extra Asus 5970 (now I have crossfireX) even better FPS still without stutters

 

This is the logic reason I'm saying that SSD made the biggest difference in my setup playing OFF - like you said this is a OFF Forum.

 

Hope the info helps.

 

M

[Over50 0]

Parky, or some one.. please comment about power supply capibilities related to all this. I brought it up earlier and no one made a comment. When I tried to upgrade to a Nvidia GTX-260 with my present system that has a Antec Trio-650w PS I had problems of video flashing and cutting, much like in the videos Hellshade is having trouble with, and then, as the PS heated up under load I got the dredded blue screen of death. After talking to techs at Antec they convinced me that not having enough currant abilities can cause all sorts of weird graphics problems and even crashes, they said it's something ignored by many when they add on graphics cards that depend on a lot of currant draw. And the problem is that PS companies can be very misleading about their products stressing watts over currant, much like the audio amplifiers manufactures like to miss lead consumers stressing power out, but not talking about at what load, whether the dual out puts are in parallel are regulated seperately, etc.

 

Any comments?

 

FWIW When I built my first SLI rig in May '08 my first priority was a top quality single +12v rail power supply with a +60 RMS amperage rating based on the recommendation of an Evga rep who specifically advised that a single +12v rail eliminates power balancing considerations with multiple +12v rail power supplies. As such I opted for a PC Power & Cooling 860 watt flavor with the following spec's:

 

860W Continuous (930W Peak) @ 50°C

Heavy-Duty Caps, Inductors, Heat Sinks, Etc.

External Fine-Tune Voltage Adjust (+3.3, +5, +12)

Premium Sag and Surge Protection (.985 PFC)

Ultra-High Efficiency (84% Typical)

+12VDC @ 64A/70A Peak (Powerful Single Rail)

Ultra-Tight Voltage Regulation

24Pin, 8Pin, and 4Pin M/B Connectors

4 PCI-E and 15 Drive Connectors

NVIDIA SLI Certified (Dual 8800 Ultra)

Ultra-High Reliability (200,000 Hr. MTBF)

 

Since then I've upgraded to a Tri SLI Evga mobo paired with a I7-930 which I have overclocked to 3.8 GHz in tandem with (2) Evga GTX 260-216 SC (factory over clocked) GPU's, opted for a 300 GB 10K Raptor HD, and beefed up my case fans to a total of 7. I have yet to see even a hint of graphics display issues with any game, from Crysis to BFBC2 in addition to every worthwhile flight sim. Yes, the PS cost over $200, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

 

As for TIR use with OFF and the fast scan tearing, like most folks here I have no need for a couple of SSD's aside from the humungous cost premium - which I debated even opting for the 10K Raptor vs a standard 7200 HD of the same capacity.

Edited May 27, 2010 by Over50

[Tamper 9]

*sigh* Another "misguided" opinion about frame rates being everything...OK, to be blunt: They're not. At least not average frame rates, which is what everyone rants about.

 

Fact: You can have "gaming benchmarks" show average framerates - or even 'in-game' framerates - that are well beyond 60+FPS...and (get this) still have ugly stutters that, even if sub-second in duration, are still very noticable. 60 FPS doesn't mean that all 60 frames are distributed equally at 1/60th of a second, does it? Nope, it doesn't. You could load/display 58 of those frames in a half second, and then only 2 frames for the next half-second - and the result is stutter. This is documented all over the Internet as well, so not much point going on about that.

 

Point is, if you're obsessed with thinking frame rates are the end-all measure of performance, well, you're just not very informed about how this stuff really works. Don't take my word for it - read up sometime.

 

And please note I didn't say anything about "magically increasing framerates in OFF" by using SSDs. I'm talking about the real-world (in OFF) elimination of the white triangles and stutters - and that's all I've said, if you'd read what I wrote. I woudn't refer to magical increases in framerates because (unlike some people, apparently) I understand that high frame rates do not necessarily or automatically equal smooth gameplay.

The fact is, even after all the other obvious upgrades were done - and even though I had very good frame rates (60 or so), I still got triangles and stutters. And my settings were already run down too low to be consistent with my hardware (and, like others, I had no problems in other games).

 

In fact, this was a major deciding factor in the purchase of a RAID controller and SSDs. After all the hype I read about this video card and that CPU, this 64-bit OS and that 6 gigs of memory...I realized that it's not a problem with my hardware (I had suspected this all along, realistically). It's a loading problem; you could literally watch as certain situations/textures would predictably and reliably cause stutters/triangles, almost always at the same point(s) and almost always for the same duration - no video card, overclocking, CPU, memory timings (within reason) made any difference.

 

(Incidentally, if all this is caused strictly by TrackIR, what of those many who reported having these symptoms, yet they didn't use TrackIR???)

Incidentally, being able to observe these stutters and triangles is, I realized, during the periods you describe as the few that a hard disk does anything. But that's exactly my point: Even if few and far between, when they did happen, they were slow. Noticably causing things like the stutters and the triangles.

 

Your PC doesn't run entire apps from memory. Fact is, it loads stuff into memory, unloads some of that and loads other stuff later on as needed, and all the while is also 'swapping' into and out of a paging file. And, for each of these load/unload activities, guess what? The slowest thing in the entire chain is your hard disk. Yes, even those speedy Raptors - even in RAID - are painfully slow compared to RAM speeds.

 

So, at any point during your gameplay - even in the "real world" of OFF - if you're going to load, unload, or swap anything from a platter based hard disk, it'll be faster - much faster - with an SSD. I got to where I could *make* it happen, by doing certain things in certain circumstances, and the stutter/triangle effect was right there, predictably and reliably.

 

On the question of whether the SSD's were an upgrade done at the same time as other major upgrades - honestly, dude, you don't think much of anyone else's intelligence, do ya? I did *not* fool myself by measuring after several different upgrades were done; rather, I did do several upgrades, but did so each one at a time, carefully measuring and documenting betweeen each step to see exactly what improvement each one made.

 

But, get this: None (as in not one) involved a CPU, memory, or graphics card. All were strictly in the mass media storage subsystem. Each one showed it's own relative, measurable effect on the outcome. Single hard disk over RAID volume, on-board RAID controller v. "real" hardware controller, platter-based drives vs SSDs. I worked on this for almost two months, building, tearing down and rebuilding arrays, changing the boot volume, changing where the OS paging file is stored, where the actual executables are run from, etc...

 

Conclusion? SSD's rock. Way more than any platter-based drives, regardless of configuration. In OFF (and, oddly enough, everywhere else, too).

 

But, I don't expect you'll take my word for it - you're way too smart for that. However, you might be particularly interested in the next step of my experimentation about all this:

 

(What's that? You thought I was done...finished in my own conclusion, you thought? You don't know me, at all. I am not the kind to arrive at a conclusion without at least some corroboration. More the better).

 

Never mind that Morris has already told you exactly what I am...but, you're way too smart to listen to him, either...

 

My next experiment is to use SSD(s) on a machine that is decidedly marginal with respect to OFF. I still have an old socket 478 board with a 2.0G P4 on it, and an AGP slot, at that. Probably still got a 7800GS card, too; maybe even a 6800XT...or a 6200LE. Whatever - point is, as minimal as I can get to run the game and intentionally reproduce the white triangles and stutters. No other upgrades at all. Then, I'll install an SSD, maybe two in a RAID array as a separate test - but that's it; nothing else. I anticipate having to turn the graphics down a bit overall, just due to the very conservative hardware other than the disk. But what I'm looking for here is an SSD's ability to eliminate the white/blue 'jaggies' and the stutters.

 

We'll see.

[Tamper 9]

"I have no need for a couple of SSD's aside from the humungous cost premium ..."

 

My two SSDs (30G each; combined to a 60G RAID0 array - controller at the time was 'free' by configuring the MB) cost less than $200 after rebates. Enough space to load the OS and OFF; everything else at the time was installed on my old platter based drive (D:)

 

Many here spend more than that on a single video card, much less two - and obviously still don't necessarily solve the stutter/triangle problem.

[rabu 9]

FWIW When I built my first SLI rig in May '08 my first priority was a top quality single +12v rail power supply with a +60 RMS amperage rating based on the recommendation of an Evga rep who specifically advised that a single +12v rail eliminates power balancing considerations with multiple +12v rail power supplies. As such I opted for a PC Power & Cooling 860 watt flavor with the following spec's:

 

860W Continuous (930W Peak) @ 50°C

Heavy-Duty Caps, Inductors, Heat Sinks, Etc.

External Fine-Tune Voltage Adjust (+3.3, +5, +12)

Premium Sag and Surge Protection (.985 PFC)

Ultra-High Efficiency (84% Typical)

+12VDC @ 64A/70A Peak (Powerful Single Rail)

Ultra-Tight Voltage Regulation

24Pin, 8Pin, and 4Pin M/B Connectors

4 PCI-E and 15 Drive Connectors

NVIDIA SLI Certified (Dual 8800 Ultra)

Ultra-High Reliability (200,000 Hr. MTBF)

 

Since then I've upgraded to a Tri SLI Evga mobo paired with a I7-930 which I have overclocked to 3.8 GHz in tandem with (2) Evga GTX 260-216 SC (factory over clocked) GPU's, opted for a 300 GB 10K Raptor HD, and beefed up my case fans to a total of 7. I have yet to see even a hint of graphics display issues with any game, from Crysis to BFBC2 in addition to every worthwhile flight sim. Yes, the PS cost over $200, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

 

As for TIR use with OFF and the fast scan tearing, like most folks here I have no need for a couple of SSD's aside from the humungous cost premium - which I debated even opting for the 10K Raptor vs a standard 7200 HD of the same capacity.

 

Thanks for replying, very interesting... Hellshade, what PS are you using in your rig?

[+Winder 32]

Dear Parky,

 

I have OFF installed on my PC. I play OFF and the occasional ROF.

These were the steps I followed during the upgrade of my PC for play OFF since Nov 2009.

 

New motherboard

CPU

RAM

1 x Ati 5970

2 x extra samsung monitors for eyefinity

 

But for me OFF still needed some tweaking so,

 

2 x WD Raptors (sorry but that was not the answer - returned it)

 

Then I received 2 kingston SSD (these SSD did not support TRIM in Win7 meaning Stutter problems) and returned them.

 

Got 2 x intel SSD (wow) no loading stutters while playing OFF. Now this is better.

 

Got a thermaltake 1200 power supply to run 2 x 5970 cards

Got an extra Asus 5970 (now I have crossfireX) even better FPS still without stutters

 

This is the logic reason I'm saying that SSD made the biggest difference in my setup playing OFF - like you said this is a OFF Forum.

 

Hope the info helps.

 

M

 

Morris where did you get the Intel SSDs from - keen to get some myself.

 

WM

[Hellshade 110]

Thanks for replying, very interesting... Hellshade, what PS are you using in your rig?

 

850 Watt. I want to say it's made by BFG tech but I don't remember the brand to be honest.

 

Hellshade

[Morris 2]

Winder,

 

The companies name is Blue Tek in Potchefstroom @ 018 2970164. Ask to speak to Sanet and tell her you got her number from me. She knows everything (well almost).

 

I will give her a phone call and tell her that you might phone her. I asked her this morning to get me a price on Corsair 256 gig SSD.

 

The Intel i have installed are 2 x INTEL X25-M SATA SSD 80 gig.

 

or

 

go to www.jump.co.za - search solid state drive.

 

http://www.jump.co.za/compare/intel-solid-state-drive-x25-m-sata-80gb-2-5-17970.htm

 

Select the best price and deliver it like a pizza at home

 

Cheers

 

m

Edited May 27, 2010 by Morris