A Graphics Card Upgrade In Anticipation of OFF 2

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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I've been shopping around for a while now, in an effort to make a move up from my old GTX 9800+ vid card. While it has been serving me very well in OFF, it is max'd out as far as I can safely take it in order to push P3 at a good pace on my system. Since I don't use my flying computer for anything other than OFF when it comes to sims and gaming, I don't need to go hog wild on a new card, but I do need a step up from what I currently run. So, after a fair amount of research and hunting about the bargain bins, the replacement I've settled upon is a brand new EVGA GTX 460 SC edition from TigerDirect for the very nice price of $143.99, including delivery. This card not only has twice the onboard memory as my old 9800 but will easily be three times faster in nearly all aspects. I can't wait for it to arrive so I can pop it in, load up the new drivers, and give it a spin.

 

Hardly cutting edge technology I know, but a massive jump over what I have, and likely more than enough to max out OFF 2 when it debuts, which should be any day now ... right?

 

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[Rugbyfan1972 1]

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I've been shopping around for a while now, in an effort to make a move up from my old GTX 9800+ vid card. While it has been serving me very well in OFF, it is max'd out as far as I can safely take it in order to push P3 at a good pace on my system. Since I don't use my flying computer for anything other than OFF when it comes to sims and gaming, I don't need to go hog wild on a new card, but I do need a step up from what I currently run. So, after a fair amount of research and hunting about the bargain bins, the replacement I've settled upon is a brand new EVGA GTX 460 SC edition from TigerDirect for the very nice price of $143.99, including delivery. This card not only has twice the onboard memory as my old 9800 but will easily be three times faster in nearly all aspects. I can't wait for it to arrive so I can pop it in, load up the new drivers, and give it a spin.

 

Hardly cutting edge technology I know, but a massive jump over what I have, and likely more than enough to max out OFF 2 when it debuts, which should be any day now ... right?

 

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RAFL,

 

I am impressed that you have managed to last so long with a card that came out in 2008 (I am even more surprised that the 9800 is only 3-4 years old), I am also surprised that the GTX 460 is $144 as the cheapest I have found it for in the UK is £110 or $173.50.

 

As to the release date for P4, you should know by now it is 2 weeks away. lol

 

Enjoy your new card and let us know how much better it performs than the 9800.

[Olham 164]

Rugbyfan, my ATI RADEON HD 4870 is also from 2008 - and it performs OFF nicely.

 

OFF is not THAT graphic performance-hungry.

If you let "Scenery detail" (on "2") and "Ground object density" low enough, you can have a brilliant result, as my screenshots may show.

 

Don't know your new card, Lou, but when you say it's good: congrats, old chap.

Edited February 5, 2012 by Olham

[carrick58 23]

Con grats on ur new Card.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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Thanks RugbyFan, Olham, and Carrick. I'll be sure and let you know when I have it installed and tweaked.

 

 

Olham, here are some of the pertinent differences between the GTX 460 SC and my current card:

 

................................................. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 SC ................. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 9800+

 

CUDA Cores ............................................. 336 .......................................................... 128

Memory Config ....................................... 1024 mb ................................................... 512 mb

Memory Bandwidth ............................... 97.2 gb/sec ............................................ 70.4 gb/sec

Memory Clock ....................................... 4050 mhz ............................................... 1100 mhz

Graphics Clock ....................................... 867 mhz ................................................. 738 mhz

Shader Clock ........................................ 1734 mhz ............................................... 1836 mhz

 

APIs ..................................................... DirectX 11 ................................................ DirectX 10

........................................................... OpenGL 4.2 ............................................. OpenGL 2.1

 

Anti-aliasing ............................................ 32x ........................................................... 16x

 

 

Quite a jump in performance and memory, both of which OFF will appreciate, as will I.

 

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[Olham 164]

Where do I find these informations, Lou?

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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Olham, a good starting point is at the manufacturer's website. They list the specs for most of their cards, current and past. You can also go to the various benchmarking sites and look at their reviews. Just Google the card model you are interested in along with the word 'specs' and you should find all the info you desire.

 

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[Olham 164]

My card has also 1 GB memory on board. I guess that helps a lot for better performance.

[nbryant 8]

Picked up a 3 TB drive at Best Buy today and was so tempted to pick up the Nvidia 560TI. Was a bit pricey and my ATI 5770 handles everything I do very well. Decided to wait awhile longer and see what the prices do.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Gee, I guess I need to think about replacing my GS8600 with its whopping 256 Mb memory, huh?

[TSmoke 2]

The GTX9800+ is the exact same card that I had and upgraded a year or so ago the the GTX460. You will be happy with your choice. At least I am from 30 fps with the 9800 to 60+ with the 460. I use ground object density on medium, sliders 5,3,3,5,5 and receive 60 + frames pretty much every where except the airfields at low alt.

 

It performs well with other games such as Battle field 3 and the usual 1st person shooters.

[Olham 164]

Is "OpenGL" still used in OFF / must it be selected in the card's settings?

[Andy73 3]

I always thought the CFS3 Engine is using Direct3D instead of OpenGL?

 

For me personally my Geforce GTX 460 is running perfectly. Also important is enough RAM (I've got 6 GB) and the Card (no matter if Geforce or Radeon) should always have 1 GB of Memory. I'm using Supersample instead of Multisample (8X) for Anti-Aliasing and with V-Sync ON my FPS are always between 40-60, even at low Altitude or heavy Air-Combat.

Great Graphics, smooth Gameplay, everything is okay

 

Hopefully my System is also strong enough for smooth Gameplay with Phase 4 .....

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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I am encouraged to hear the positive reports from others running the GTX 460 with OFF. Thank you TSmoke and Andy73.

 

Andy and Olham, you are correct that CFS3, (and therefore OFF), makes use of Direct3D rather than OpenGL, so that upgrade won't have an affect. Although, I do seem to recall comments in the past from some folks who claim that enabling Triple Buffering does make a difference, so go figure.

 

Herr Prop-Wasche, you might want to consider an upgrade sometime in the future ... maybe.

 

Nbryant, I was also looking hard at a 560Ti 448, but decided I would give the 460 a go at half the price.

 

I should mention that with my current system tweaked up I can usually run sliders at 5-4-4-5-5, (or 5-3-3-5-5 depending on the mood of the computer gods), and have beautiful, smooth performance throughout a mission. Here are my system specs at the moment:

 

CPU: Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0ghz Wolfdale 6mb 1333fsb 45nm with Arctic Cooler, (OC'd to 3.90)

Memory: 8gb DDR2 PC2-6400 800mhz, (OC'd to 890 with volts set at 2.1)

Mobo: ASUS P5QL Pro

Hard Drive: 2 Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA, (with the OS and OFF installed on 'C' drive, and nearly every other program parked on 'D' drive)

Opti Drive: LG 22X DVD+/RW Dual Layer SATA Rewrite

Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512mb

PS: Corsair HX 850 Watt

Windows XP Pro 64-bit OS

LG 22" flat screen LCD monitor

Three large case fans

 

I have the card speeds on the 9800 bumped up to: core clock 820, shader clock 2040, memory clock 1275, with the fan at 70%. Speed and memory, OFF loves them in that order.

 

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[Andy73 3]

So then also watch out for your Settings in your NVidia-Driver Control Panel: When you are using Triple Buffer ON then you also should (or must) use VSync ON, or use VSync Application Settings. This gives you a little boost in FPS. Without those two Settings I have some little Stutters.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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Yes, you definitely want VSync on, (at least with the nVidia cards), because without it you get that nasty graphics tearing, where it looks like the images are being ripped apart at the edges. Not to be confused with the dreaded white, (or sometimes blue), triangles that can appear if your system can't keep up with the frame filling demands, (back to the speed issue again).

 

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[Olham 164]

... I do seem to recall comments in the past from some folks who claim that enabling Triple Buffering does make a difference, so go figure.

Thanks, Lou, and also Andy - I will check it out.

[Olham 164]

VSync - is that the same as "Vertical refresh"? Or where must I look for that?

Couldn't find it in OFF Graphics Settings?

[Siggi 10]

VSync - is that the same as "Vertical refresh"? Or where must I look for that?

Couldn't find it in OFF Graphics Settings?

 

They're the same thing Olham. :)

[Olham 164]

Okay, thanks, Siggi.

[Baldric 42]

I'll add that my 460 is a solid card, and as I've just re-installed OFF BHaH (can't find my details for HiTR) and set up all the graphics as per one of the threads I've recently read in the faq/help area using the nVidia control panel...wow...the game looks and runs lovely! I always enjoyed the ambiance, almost gritty appeal of OFF, but now with a better card than my last ancient card, this sim is really is looking and performing great. I had originally picked up the 460 last year to run RoF better, so I figured OFF would look good...should have re-intsalled long ago. S!

Edited February 6, 2012 by Baldric

[themightysrc 5]

Now you lot have got me wondering...

 

You'll probably know that I bought a Lenovo H420 with an i3 (apparently a P6) processor and 4gb of ram in it in the New Year sales. The one point I was uncertain of was the graphics. For £330, you can't expect miracles, and the main point of the new box was to act as a business workhorse for the next few years, as well as allowing me a bit of gaming fun to boot.

 

Having read this thread, I decided to fire up PC Wizard and check out what the graphics actually are - I knew it wasn't a dedicated card. Here's the output:

 

Manufacturer : Intel

Model : Intel® HD Graphics Family

Bus Type : PCI

Texture Memory : 1760 MB

Processor : Intel® HD Graphics Family

Converter : Internal

Refresh Rate (min/max) : 59/120 Hz

 

GPU Information :

Number of GPU : 1

Memory Type : 1 GB 0

Pixel Shader Version : 3.0

 

I think that gives me a gig of onboard graphics memory, yes? Any opinions on how far up or down the graphics league this device is?

 

Cheers,

Si

[Parky 8]

I think that gives me a gig of onboard graphics memory, yes?

 

 

 

It would appear so....however, the HD Graphics 2000 (which I'm pretty sure is what you have) has no dedicated memory but shares the fast Level 3 Cache with the CPU cores and also part of the main memory.

 

 

 

 

Any opinions on how far up or down the graphics league this device is?

 

 

 

Beer league.....as opposed to the NHL (if you're a hockey fan of any sort)

 

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

Edited February 10, 2012 by Parky

[themightysrc 5]

"It would appear so....however, the HD Graphics 2000 (which I'm pretty sure is what you have) has no dedicated memory but shares the fast Level 3 Cache with the CPU cores and also part of the main memory."

 

Hi Parky,

 

I think that you're saying that I could probably do with getting a decent graphics card, yes? Otherwise I'm sharing the 4 gig that the rest of W7 is using?

 

Cheers,

Si

[Parky 8]

Hi Mighty,

 

If your's is the same system I'm thinking of, it does allow for the addition of a PCI-e graphics card. You'd have to pay careful attention to power requirements though. I believe your system has a 280 Watt PSU. That doesn't leave a whole lot of overhead for graphics adapter upgrades without having to upgrade the PSU as well.

 

And yes, your Intel Graphics are integrated into the processor, so it shares L3 cache memory along with sytem memory. There may be a setting somewhere in your BIOS that allows you to predetermine just how much system memory can be made available for graphics processing.....not really sure without researching it.

 

Regardless, if at some point down the road (or even now for that matter) the system is struggling with 3D apps, upgrading to some kind of mid-range card should certainly be a viable option. I'm sure some of the guys in here would be able to recommend something suited to your needs.

 

Cheers,

 

Parky