BirdDogICT

UncleAL, I would recommend leaving the "then run the game briefly" as it is. I put that in the instructions because CFS3 can be finicky when it comes to some multi-core processors and antivirus software. Best to check that CFS3 works before proceeding with BHAH installation. Thanks

Lou, your experience matches mine pretty closely...

Hellshade, You are spot on...I was talking about the industry as a whole. No insult intended. As Von Paulus stated, many of us enjoy the differing viewpoints of the users here, including Parky, Von Paulus, Morris, Tamper, Almccoyjr, UncleAl, and many others. I learn something new everytime I tune in to one of these discussions. Keep in mind that my "overhyped" comment was from my professional perspective. As a former marketing director in the electronics industry, I spent a lot of time specing new electronic products with engineers, going to trade shows, sorting through press releases, and trying to decipher the hype of my competitors (so I could deliver my own overhyped marketing messages with a straight face ). I've seen a lot of promising technologies come and go. From what I've gathered here and elsewhere, SSDs show a lot of promise and I'll consider one if and when the price comes down and I can see some clear benefit in my PC applications. I'd love to have one to evaluate. Thanks, Morris & Tamper for sharing your knowledge.

Watching others fly has definitely helped me learn new habits that increased my kill and survival rates.

I could have included SSDs in the list, but didn't want to step on anyone's toes

Creaghorn, Choosing the right combination of PSU and GPU can be a challenge. Check out post #57 here: http://forum.combata...es/page__st__40, it has links to a few review articles that should give you some idea of the power consumption problems with many newer graphics cards. Having the most powerful graphics card on the market often comes with additional costs. Underpowering your GPU can cause graphics anomalies, system crashes, and potential early failure of other components on the 12V rail(s). BTW, I think you have the start of a very nice system. I tend to build AMD/ATI-based systems and have been very happy with the results. It's hard to beat ASUS boards, especially their heat dissipation if you plan to overclock. I've always been a fan of Corsairs matched memory pairs...they are higher priced because they're throuroughly tested and hand picked. I recently switched to G.Skill and have been surprised by the quality and easy overclocking. Also, thanks for SoundTweak II. Definitely adds to the OFF experience!!!

Rabu, You've identified a common problem...more consumers are trying to upgrade their graphics cards or build systems without sufficient power. At least nVidia and ATI are finally posting recommended PSU wattage AND amperage draw for their cards (summarized here: http://forum-en.msi....?topic=104805.0 Keep in mind that the recommended PSU wattages are for non overclocked minimal system hardware setup. Usually one HDD/Optical, no sound card or other add-in cards, simple case fan and CPU cooler, minimal RAM. The recommendations at least give the consumer a starting point. Additional devices, like quad core CPUs, or overclocking have a significant impact on amperage draw.). Sure would be nice if PSU manufacturers stepped up to the plate and proviced similar specs. My guess is that they don't for a simple reason: most PSU brands are actually private labeled, that is, manufactured by someone else (see here: http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=PSU_Manufacturers). The private label companies don't do much testing, and may not actually know how their equipment operates under load (even if they did test the PSUs, there aren't reliable industry test standards). Some inflate their power ratings in order to gain market advantage: advertising peak power, stating continuous output power capability at room temperature of 25C rather than the typical 40C temp inside a case, and advertising total power as a measure of capacity, when modern systems are almost totally reliant on the current available from the 12 volt line(s). It pays to read the specs. If they're complete, there's a better chance that they actually did some testing and aren't inflated by industry "specmanship". My experience is that the the higher priced OEMs represent a pretty good value. Private label electronics can carry a 10-100% price premium depending on distribution channel.

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

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.

Big Al, You can find several CFS3 and OFF profiles at the CH forum. I usually find one that is close to what I want and them modify it in CH Control Manager. Programming in CH Control Manager can be a little intimidating at first, but starting with a known good profile eliminates a lot of the headaches of creating a profile from scratch. All I have to do to get the profile to work with OFF is to load the profile into memory through CH Control Manager, and OFF recognizes the devices without any problems (at least that's true with my FSPTPP setup). You didn't mention TrackIR...you can program various views, but the CFS3 viewing system is clunky...you should consider TrackIR mandatory. Here's a CFS3 profile for CSPTPP that is compatible with OFF: http://www.ch-hangar...ulator-3-CSPTPP Bonz's most recent OFF Profile for FSPTPP that you could modify: http://www.ch-hangar...hase-III_FSPTPP Good luck!!

Most older Americans remember Adagio for Strings as the dirge played at President John F. Kennedy's funeral. Even older Americans remember it played during the radio announcement of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's death.

Same here. One less potential aggravation. Onboard VIA sound had some glitches, as well, but were easily solved with a driver upgrade.

It's still a decent card: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_5770_5750_performance/default.asp The article makes the point that this card can't keep up with high levels of AA at higher resolutions. Overclock it with ATI Overdrive or MSI Afterburner or AMD GPU Clock Tool. Buy another and Crossfire it. Or upgrade in a year when the prices on the 58XX and 59XX have come down.

I found the same thing...shadows off and lowered ground density didn't seem to effect clouds. And turning off in cloud fog actually lowered my FPS (seems counterintuitive...thought it would have helped). Turning down the cloud slider didn't seem to make much difference either. I'm curious to know if turning down the level of AA works for you.

Barkhorn1x, First of all, Von Paulus and Polovski's advice to turn down your sliders is spot on. Second, I've had the same problems with clouds with a ATI 5770, and have spent some time tweaking my new system. I bought the 5770 to replace a burned out 4870, and while it's close to the 4870 in performance, I've found that it has a few limitations in BHaH, depending on your CCC settings. I've applied all of the standard tweaks within the game, turned shadows off, running sliders at 553355, 1920X1080 resolution with in-game AA off, and Ground Density set on Low. My CCC settings are 2X(Box)AA, 2XAF, Catalyst AI Disabled, Mipmap Detail Level at Performance, AA Mode at Performance (Multi-Sample), Vertical Refresh Always On, OpenGL Triple Buffering On, using Catalyst 10.3 driver. Two CCC settings dramatically effect clouds: Use Multisample AA The type of AA you choose in CCC dramatically effects performance with clouds. Supersample AA dropped my FPS in clouds from 60 to 15-25. Multisample AA dropped FPS from 60 to 50 (insignificant amount). There isn't much need for AA in the game, anyway, especially if running at a high screen resolution. Set Mipmap Detail Level at Performance Increasing mipmapping may improve the image in some games, but may increase jaggies even with high levels of AA. With mipmap density set to performance, you don't have to use much AA, so clouds aren't effected much. (This is contrary to the graphics setup FAQ, which recommends that Mipmap be set to Quality. I've always set it up that way, but could never get rid of shimmering landscape when flying low. Now the shimmering is gone.) Third, I hate the white screen tears from TrackIR, it's a real immersion killer for me. So I'm using VSync with OpenGL Triple Buffering. Unfortunately, CCC doesn't support these features in all versions of DirectX, so I have to run D3DOverrider in the background. This effectively locks my FPS to 60 (occasionally drops down to 40), and eliminates screen tears when changing views. Hope this helps...your mileage will probably vary.

Top notch!!

The only difference I can tell between terrain 4 and 5 on my brand new spec PC is that I experience a few jaggies on 5, especially when changing views with TrackIR. Visually 4 and 5 are the same, but running terrain on 5 bogs down my system somewhat if near the ground at an airfield, over the frontlines, or in a 20 plane furrball. As Barkhorn stated, terrain looks very good on 3. I've seen posts from the developers that the AI may run better on higher slider settings, but have never seen this quantified...and it's unclear to me which sliders may effect AI. So I usually try for higher settings. Currently running at 54455. Can't tell much difference between 1 and 5 with Clouds, but FPS is almost unplayable if set on 5 and flying in a thunderstorm. The only benefit of running clouds on 5 is that the enemy can't see you behind a cloud.

I bought a Visiontek 4870 512MB graphics card last year to play BHaH, and it failed after 13 months. Today I received a replacement from Visiontek, but no longer need this card. I'm offering it to anyone who needs to upgrade their machine. Comes with manual, CD, connectors. If you already have a 4870, this would be an easy way to upgrade to Crossfire. PM me to let me know if you're interested.

[quote name='Dogzero1' date='02 April 2010 - 10:42 AM' timestamp='1270226548' post= Thanks Birddog. You're welcome. Glad to help a fellow flyer.

I noticed that I actually had FEWER resources available when using AMD Fusion in Win 7. Didn't effect gameplay negatively, but didn't help it either. BUT, my CPU is already OC'd, I don't overclock my ATI card, and I'm already running pretty lean without a lot of unecessary background programs.

Nice that ATI issued Catalyst 10.3 drivers that solved your problems.

So true...as you know from building PCs, each combination of OS, CPU, GPU, PSU, etc., etc., is different with sometimes quirky results. I know the people that are building his custom machine, and they do fine work, so have every confidence that it will be a good one.

Once you get BHaH, she'll be waiting a while for that to happen again!!

I used AlacrityPC or AMD Fusion to squeeze a little better performance out of XP SP3, but since upgrading my PC and installing Win7 64 bit, I find that AMD Fusion actually slows down BHaH performance. Based on the specs you provided, BHaH should really scream on your new machine without any additional help.

Springroll, I have very close to the same setup, with the exception of X2 550 processor and ATI 5770. Runs BHaH like a scalded cat at default CPU speed of 3.1 GHZ. Runs even better OC'd to 3.6, and I don't have any issues with heat with only two cores. Running with most settings maxed out.