Tamper

It's interesting that the solution proposed doesn't seem to work in every case. And this was exctly my point behind seeking corroboration on other setups. What works on one might not on another, and I think there's a ton of evidence for that. Even though some don't apparently understand, my point is to identify something that works on even the more conservative setups - and the reason for this is simple: There are lots of people with more conservative rigs, who might benefit from whatever the solution is, and perhaps not having to spend a dime to do so. If Lou's poll result is any indication, a super-high-end rig isn't really necessary to get good performance. On the subject of cost, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about the cost of implementing SSDs. I'd like to point out the actual costs: Cost for one OCZ Vertex 30G SSD, about $100 after rebate Two drives, on-board RAID, total cost about $200. Hardware RAID controller, $300 - Total cost about $500. The hardware controller is really not essential, I did this more for research and on other unrelated work I do. My experience shows that even a single 30G SSD is enough space to load OFF; doesn't need to be the boot drive, and does make a night-and-day difference in the performance of OFF with regard to tearing and stutters. Of course, if you can afford it, the second drive on a FREE onboard RAID array is definitely worth another $100. (Morris recommends Intel X-25M drives if I'm not mistaken, which are reportedly excellent drives. But I think the smallest they make is 80G, so the price is nearer $200/unit - one reason I chose the smaller OCZ drive.) So, for as little as $100 (not several hundreds or thousands)...well, people have spent way more on other upgrades just to get OFF running better. And Lou's "conservative rig" result in the poll thread shows that those other high-end expensive upgrades may not even be necessary. Again, like Morris and I have both said: A question of biggest bang for the buck.

Ahh, Parky..nothing like some good old sarcasm in the middle of an intelligent discussion to help...but rather than get 'down in the gutter' with your sarcasm, I'll let the facts and figures show the real deal: Cost for one OCZ Vertex 30G SSD, about $100 after rebate Two drives, on-board RAID, total cost about $200. Hardware RAID controller, $300 - Total cost about $500. The hardware controller is really not essential, I did this more for research and on other unrelated work I do. My experience shows that even a single 30G SSD is enough space to load OFF; doesn't need to be the boot drive, and does make a night-and-day difference in the performance of OFF with regard to tearing and stutters. Of course, if you can afford it, the second drive on a FREE onboard RAID array is definitely worth another $100. So, for $100 (not several hundreds or thousands)...well, people have spent way more on other upgrades just to get OFF running better. And Lou's "conservative rig" result in the poll thread shows that those other high-end expensive upgrades may not even be necessary. Again, like Morris and I have both said: A question of biggest bang for the buck.

Dude, WTF? I ask a legitimate question...you don't answer...and cop a big attitude with me for it? I don't care if anyone buys an SSD or not. But I'm not the only one to make that suggestion. Unbelievable.

Dude, what are you worried about? Man...if it helps, I'll call it a suggestion, a hypothesis, or whatever you want...but with all the variance in this particular matter, I'm sorry, I think it warrants corroboration. Something wrong with that? You seem awful touchy just because I suggested it should prove out just the same on any other machine. I don't know what I may have done to offend you, but I apologize if I did. I won't apologize, however, for a sound methodology that always includes confirmation. I just don't get why you'd be so bothered by it. Sorry to question your findings.

Hellshade...be kind enough to point out where you see 60 FPS in BirdDog's settings? He says he has Vertical Refresh 'always on' (I assume this functions as VSYNC does, locking the FPS to the monitor's refresh rate) and does say his monitor is set to 60Hz...but he also says he uses D3DOverrider to control refresh, and doesn't say how it's set. I see no other mention of anything that would control his FPS. Help me out?

Not saying there is any other explanation. What with all the high tensions around here, just thought I'd preface any questions with a disclaimer. That's all. Wasn't necessarily saying you were wrong or anything. I'm sure you are quite confident in your findings, and there's a whole bunch of people here who would be grateful if you're right. But, being the hopelessly empirical, measurement, cross check and verify kind of guy I am, I have proposed we seek a "third party" test, to confirm, over on your thread. Good work should welcome scrutiny. Nothing to be concerned about, when your conclusions are sound. Who knows? By tomorrow, you could be a real hero around here.

I see - and thanks for the clarification. I haven't used FRAPS that much, and wasn't aware of the "override" effect of the setting you mentioned. Interesting. I had an idea, that would serve to corroborate your theory: Lou's rig seems to be an ideal test bed for this matter, since he reports *zero* tearing even when using TIR, *and* has (what I consider) a "conservative" rig, to boot. I checked the poll thread, and (of all the stuff he listed, God love him) MaxFPS isn't there. I wonder if we could get our good friend Lou to post his Max FPS value, and possibly change (nothing other than) his setting to different settings and give us his findings. Lou, I do so hate to impose - but you seem to be *the* "poster child" for "No Tearing, With TIR, On a Non-Outrageous Machine". (sounds like an Oscar category, huh? *lol*) Could you help us out? I'd do it, because I do have a machine similar...but I just don't have TIR. (After all this, I'm tempted to buy it just for the academic value...but I haven't bought one yet. As neat as I bet it is, I get awfully motion sick from certain things on screens...I was afraid I'd find out the hard, expensive way that I don't tolerate it well).

Hellshade, not to rain on your parade, but I have questions about what you're saying here...please see your "solution" thread. Thanks.

Interesting find - I hope someone with TIR can confirm soon...but I do have to take exception: I don't think we should confuse "refresh rate" with "FPS". They are not the same thing; I had to scratch my head and re-read your post several times before I figured out what you were saying. I don't think you can even set a refresh rate to anything lower than 60 (except on maybe older hardware, but I doubt it). Refresh rate is actually a setting for a monitor, and only indirectly then, for a video card. I believe there can be some connection between the two; for example I think when using VSYNC then the sims rate of FPS is 'locked' to your monitor refresh rate. But the monitor's refresh rate may or may not be set this way on any given system, which introduces at least a few more test cases to prove or disprove your theory. The MaxFPS setting you refer to, I believe, tells CFS3 to limit the frame rate to "x" (x being whatever the setting is). Also, IIRC, the maxFPS setting of "0" isn't minimum, it's basically eqaul to "no limit". So, that would seem to contradict your theory that a higher setting solves the problem, because a default setting of 0 means there is no upper limit. (Although maybe there is a range of optimal settings that doesn't go as far as the 'unlimited' value of 0; i.e. maybe it tops out around 100 or something like that). Of course, this all assumes I am interpreting what you're saying correctly, and that my understanding of the MaxFPS setting is accurate. Edit: Also, having read yet again, I'm not clear...are you saying you *also* had to set a FRAPS setting higher (to 60 from 25) to get rid of tearing? In addition to setting CFS3 MaxFPS value? If so, I don't think the two have anything to do with each other directly... If your FRAPS setting is what made the difference while running FRAPS, doesn't that mean the FRAPS setting only affects tearing while running FRAPS? Otherwise, the CFS3 MaxFPS setting would be sufficient to control OFF and TIR w/ no FRAPS...wouldn't it?

Very interesting, Lou - and thanks for the highly detailed outline - as well as your very comprehensive post over on the poll thread. That's the sort of detail that really helps isolate problems - heck, even I'm not so studious about documenting. I envy and admire your diligence Your experience starts to make me re-examine the entire situation, and while some conclusions might still be the same, other possibilities seem to present themselves. I do still firmly believe that access time in the mass media storage subsystem plays a large roll in the presence (and/or severity) of both stutters and tearing. I also believe that the overall 'load' placed upon a system will cause/worsen the condition. The fact that you use TIR but don't have tearing makes me think that it's really more about the overall load than anything else. And, your system being 'conservative' (no slight intended - actually, I'd say yours is probably an ideal 'test platform' in this case)...well, I think it goes to prove that super high-end graphics cards, CPUs, motherboards and memory aren't really required to get decent performance from this sim. I think your case in particular gives us all something to think about. Thanks for taking the time to explain.

Thinking back to an earlier post, "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." There are now two people who emphatically state they use TIR with absolutely no tearing whatsoever. If we accept that these two people's reports are accurate, then it certainly seems to indicate that using TIR does not automatically mean you will have tearing. This subject gets more interesting by the moment, to me. - Regards

Hi Lou...having read your post over on the poll thread/same topic, I am absolutely fascinated. While you seem to have a fairly conservative hardware setup - C2D CPU w/no o/c; non-GTX series GPU; single drive setup (not counting the paging file drive)/ no RAID or SSD) - you report having no problem at all with the 'tearing'. So, questions, then, if you please: Did you ever have a time when you did have problems with either stuttering or tearing? Also, if you had to say, which one(s) of the factors listed in your comprehensive spec posting would be most responsible for the lack of stutters/tearing? Or, to put it another way...if we wanted to *cause* your rig to have stutters or tearing, what setting(s), value(s) etc would you say we should change to 'force it to break'? I hope you can indulge these questions, and that they are clearly enough expressed that you see what I'm asking. - Thanks in advance.

Don't use TrackIR CPU: C2D e8400, o/c to 3.7G RAM : 4GB Crucial Dominator PC2-6400 Video: eVGA GTX260 /core216 896M GDDR3 MB: eVGA 780iFTW Viewsonic 19"wide (16:10 aspect; 1440x900) HD: 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 500G in RAID0 (C:); 2x OCZ Vertex 30G SSD RAID0 (D: - OFF installed on this volume) - ALL SATA300 drives; ALL on AMCC/3Ware 9650SE PCIe 2.0-16x "hardware" RAID controller On-board RealTek sound PS 750 Watt Corsair HX750 OS: Windows XP 32-bit, SP3 OFF BH&H, HitR patched to 1.47 video settings (generally) per sticky and OFF home page recommendations No stutter or tearing at all since SSD RAID array set up, even when using on-board RAID controller. BUT definitely had both stutters and tearing - without TIR - prior to SSDs. Great idea for a poll, Rabu. I would still be concerned about people being objective in their observations/reporting, FWIW.

Pol - I use OCZ Vertex drives; the "second gen" models with the Indilinx controllers (opposed to the crap JMicron in their first gen drives - which, incidentally, was responsible for a lot of the bad rep SSDs got at first. Both Intel and OCZ have *drastically* improved the areas of shortcomings with their SSD drives. Also why Morris specifies carefully the Intel "M" drives, if I'm not mistaken). Over50 - the terms "heated" and "aggressive" were not my words; those were posted by others - so it must've been *their* perception - not mine. I was not 'heated' nor aggressive; more what I'd call "spirited" and "deliberate". That said, I'm also not going to sit by, idle, while someone refuses to accept an entire industry full of empirical data just because they've not done any actual empirical study themselves. I have done the study, and have the results to show for it. So has Morris, and you see his endorsement. Seems to me that those questioning the SSD performance advantage here are all the ones who *don't* have any first-hand experience with it. Isn't that curious to anyone but me? Now, for the question of whether the 'overhyped' comment was made with reference to the industry: Yes, I understand the industry does that - as BirdDog as pointed out, usually via marketing. Believe me, I know the industry pretty well after 30 years. But what it seems no one understands is that, just because the market overhypes something does not mean that Morris or I would have any reason at all to do so - especially not here. Doesn't anyone consider that we may just be trying to share something potentially important? Moreoever, something that we both have first-hand, recent, real-world experience with, in OFF? In other words, why is the assumption that we are both also guilty of the industry's supposed over-hyping? I can't speak for Morris, but I'm a professional, trained technician with a few decades experience. I don't 'hype', I measure. I don't assume, I test. I analyze the empirical data - and sometimes the anecdotal as well. In any case, I am trained to be skeptical of hype, and I don't give out advice I can't prove. Yet folks here assume that, because the industry is full of hype, then I must be, too (and Morris). Sorry, that's just unfair. Hellshade - I agree completely with the idea you've proposed re: the FRAPS video test. I would've pointed out, though that (of course) you'd have to account for the additional load presented by FRAPS running. Obviously, you've realized this, as in your following post you mention the factor of recording using FRAPS worsening the effect. And, I think you're spot-on in your observation that this strongly suggests there is a definite relationship between the 'tearing' and the relative performance of the mass media storage subsystem. All I can say is God bless those willing to be objective, forget about "industry hype" and all that, and just think logically Oh, and to Von Paulus - last but certainly not least: I believe a single SSD would help; running two or more in RAID array will help more. A good, genuine hardware RAID controller will help even more. As I said earlier, I did my testing on all this in 'stages' - with one platter-based drive, then w/ one SSD, then platter-based RAID0, and finally SSD RAID0. Each stage showed it's own, measurable improvement. Although I would be happy to share the detailed results with you, I regretfully cannot address the question of 'tearing' as specifically caused by TIR, because I don't use it. What I can definitely say, though, is I also had both tearing and stutters - even without TIR - after upgrading CPU (to an e8400 o/c'd to 3.7G), video card (to a GTX260core216), and memory (4G Crucial Ballistix PC2/6400), all on an eVGA780iFW board. In fact, I even tried SLI for a while (let's not get me started about how wrong people are about SLI)...but NONE of this really overcame the problem with stutters and tearing. When I put in the SSDs - even before I bought the hardware RAID controller I now use - the stutters and triangles were history. Finally, for all the cost-v-storage size arguments: Folks, that's really a losing argument. You don't buy SSD's for volume, you buy them for speed. And they deliver, trust me. This is why I still use a regular set of platter-based drives for all my other stuff that doesn't require the fast access times that the SSDs offer. That 60G volume is reserved for only the most demanding of apps (so far, OFF is the only thing installed there...I own RoF, which could benefit from SSDs in the load time area, but I took that game off my drive and may well never look back) And the best part? While your hot-rod, $300+ video card won't do a darn thing for Windows boot time or program loading times...the SSDs will, and they also make a huge difference with OFF. But they aren't limited to helping with OFF, by any means - so you can't judge the cost as something that's only going to benefit this one game. It benefits the entire computer, in a lot of ways. If your financial situation prohibits your buying SSDs, I can completely relate. I certainly am not criticizing you for being unable to afford them, at all. But I do take issue with those who won't admit the advantages are real, not hype. Measurable, not just subjective. And (assuming you can even afford them at all) continuing the argument that they're not cost effective - they are, they're just not something you buy for space. You want space for storage, buy a tractor-trailer. You want speed? Buy a Lamborghini. Neither is intended to do what the other does best. Best to all.

Over50, I've stated quite plainly several times I did have stutters and "tearing" after all the usual upgrades (CPU, memory, etc.) but they stopped when I installed SSDs. Granted, I do not use TIR - but then, I never said I did. Morris does use TIR, and noticed a big difference when he went to SSDs. He has now re-affirmed that, several times. (I could infer the balance of the tearing - the 'hardly any" that everyone will now jump all over - could easily be attributed to any number of other factors). Point is all those other things didn't address the tearing or stutters like the SSDs did, dollar-for-dollar. Finally, as to the "heat" and "aggressiveness" in this thread...can't help but feel these comments are directed at me. I think if you look back, you'll note the "first shot" was fired by someone saying the experiences Morris and I reported were "overhyped". Essentially, we're both being dismissed, our experiences and input to this discussion thrown out, because God forbid our experiences don't agree with someone's opinion. You'll note I say "opinion", because the "overhyped" remark was made by someone who doesn't even own SSDs, and therefore really can't have much experience in this area to contribute. I even posted further corroboration, and further still offered that the cost argument was negated by the fact that many spend more for a video card. I - we (Morris and I) present facts, figures, supporting discussion...and get nothing but guff for daring to disagree. Now, let me ask you: How would you like to be treated that way?

Rabu, I agree wholeheartedly with your approach. I did have comment, though: 1. I didn't say at any point that I use TIR. Nor did I attempt in any way to imply that I did - so if that's anyone's impression, to be fair, it's 'self-induced'. What I have said is that I had both triangles and stuttering, even after the 'most common' upgrades, and SSD's eliminated that problem. I don't know that Morris said he uses TIR either (although I haven't searched extensively). 2. Some people who don't have TIR also do have the triangles. All by itself, this tells me it cannot be an issue exclusively with TIR, yet that's been stated here several times. I believe it is more an issue of 'resources', which is aggravated by whatever load TIR places on the system. And, as you said, it might be that using SSDs successfully addresses that problem. 3. (Perhaps more observation) - You say that some people 'dont get the tearing' - and I think your observation is accurate; that is actually what they say. However, I think there's always has been at least some lack of objectivity with regard to people's observations concerning how OFF runs. At the end of the day, you'd have to admit these observations - including mine and Morris' - are subjective, by definition (not talking about the benchmark numbers here). And, after all, what guy who just spent $2000 upgrading his PC is going to admit that all the money he just spent didn't do what he thought it would? (How often do you see a post saying "I just bought myself two brand new GTX295 video cards, and boy do they suck total a$$" ?) Regards,

"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.

*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.

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.

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...

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

Thanks for getting back to us :) Dells have a Service Tag number, usually a bar code on the back, some 6 alpha-numeric characters. Getting that (if you can) will help us more, because Dell keeps *exact* records on the configuration of every machine they sell. It will not only confirm the motherboard (see below) but will also tell us about the hard disk (since you indicate it hasn't been changed). If you can't get that, you can go into Windows' Device Manager, click the "+" beside "Disk Drives" and you'll see all your drives. Any CDs/DVDs should be fairly obvious, and you'll also see the hard disk model number. Take that number and Google it, or post it here; we can use that to get specs on the drive itself. Now for some "good news/bad news": I've looked at what Dell says is the motherboard in that machine. First, the drive controller on the board does appear to support SATA300 drives, so at least it's not *so* old (as to have AGP video and IDE/PATA hard disk). And, as VP mentioned, the Intel ICH8R means the board does have RAID. However, pending confirmation of the Service Tag Number, the board only appears to support RAID1, which is a 'mirrored' RAID array (RAID0 is striped). This means, unfortunately, you won't gain much by way of drive speed with building a RAID array. There are still options, though: You can use an SSD. They're still quite pricey, compared size-per-unit of storage to a conventional drive. And they aren't without some limitations, as I touched on earlier - this may dissuade you altogether (and nothing at all wrong with that). But the big payoff with SSDs is, as above, the random seek speed and read speed in general, which seems to help (or completely eliminate, in my case) the "small texture load stutter". You could also consider an add-in card RAID controller that will support RAID0 configurations. I have an add-in card that cost a sinful amount ($300) but is a 'real' (hardware-based) RAID controller. You needn't spend that at all to get RAID0 speed advantage, just letting you know there is a difference between the (*ahem*) "inexpensive" cards and those where performance has priority. (But I'm sure you already knew that this is the case, just like CPU's, video cards, and everything else *lol*). So, if you want, I'll tell you more about RAID add-in cards. Also, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, allow me to remind you: It would be worth your time to download both HDTach and the ATTO disk benchmarks. At the end of the day, I can yammer on about this and that, but what you want to find out about is performance. I wanted to ask you a question: If I've followed, you indicated the 'micro-stutter' doesn't always occur, but is definite and noticable when it *does* occur - is this correct? I ask, because it sort of ties in with something I noticed long ago about OFF (P2, at least) and others have asked about. Have you noticed it seems to happen more (or 'only') depending on the aircraft that are 'popping in'? Or, perhaps only over certain areas/certain time periods in the war? Each of these has given me cause, either in my own observations or as reported by others, to suspect loading - and is why I ultimately decided to do something aggressive to minimize texture loading time. For me, I finally figured out that (at least) the Airco DH2 - again, back in P2 - would stutter reliably as the sun, not only when it first 'popped in' but also as the range grew progressively shorter. In my mind this made sense, because the closer you get (I assume) the more detailed the other aircraft's textures are displayed - hence, texture loading. I even went so far as to look at all the planes, and sure enough, some of the files are much bigger than others. Mind you, this isn't to say that bigger *automatically* equalled stutter - but there was obviously a noticable difference. Some planes stuttered predictably, while others didn't at all. (This is much easier to figure out in QC sessions, since you can easily adjust the type/number of other planes). One last thing (for now - sorry to go on) - based on the 'texture loading' association, I also figured something else out a long time ago. Every configuration reference I've ever seen for the "overrides" section of the graphics properties mentioned you should check (select) "Terrain Detail Texture". But I found that, especially on slower machines, de-selecting this makes a big difference in performance. As you might expect, it steeply cuts into the realism of the terrain, but it's a great way to squeeze performance out of even some of the most hopelessly outclassed hardware, in my experience. It's the difference between playable and not, literally, on some machines. (I have 9 computers at home, ranging from a very slow Pentium 3 @ 1Ghz with a FX5200 card on AGP 4x graphics...to an Core2Duo e8400 with a GTX260/216, so I have lots of variance in 'test beds'). Sorry, again, to go on. Look forward to hearing back.

Von Paulus hit the nail on the head. it wwold be most appropriate to look at the system, as a whole, and identify any bottlenecks. In my case, after heaving money *lol* at every other subsystem (graphics, busses, memory and the CPU) I decided the only thing left was the hard disk. Kidding aside, I didn't just heave money at it - but, like others here, I learned over time that OFF appears to do a lot of loading textures, and figured the way to improve that is by addressing the 'mass media storage subsystem' (hard disks) And please don't overlook the need for a good cleaning/purging, as it helps and is never a bad idea if it's been a year or two. As VP points out, SSD and RAID are not the same thing. Solid State Drives are a relatively new technology that uses solid state memory to reproduce a physical hard disk. Outside, it's the same as a normal "platter-based" drive, but inside, there are no motors, no servos, no platters...none of the 'guts' that a typical hard disk consists of. Just a lot of chips, each one very similar to those in the memory card in your digital camera or a USB 'zip' drive (ot 'thumb' drive). All these use "flash" memory devices, which are tiny computer circuits that, once written to, hold the information written even without power. The key difference is that, having removed all those parts that need to move, we cut out a lot of the power required, and therefore the heat generated, as well as mechanical wear associated with moving parts. The biggest benefit is that it's *fast*. Since we no longer rely on spinning a platter, moving a head, and all the other physical movements a conventional hard disk uses, you gain a lot fo speed - particularly where finding that one, random piece of data you need to load in a hurry (hence the term "random seek", and why it's 100 times faster in an SSD). RAID stands for Random Array of Inexpensive Drives. There are lots of different kinds of RAID "arrays", but most involve either what's called 'striping' or 'mirroring' (or both). Striping is usually done for performance. If you can imagine taking two drives, and making each one do half the given work, then (at least in theory) it takes half the time - thus, performance increase. "Mirroring" is usually done for 'fault tolerance'; if you copy everything to two different drives and one of them fails, the other one still has a copy of the exact data. It's a "mirror" of the other drive. Some forms of RAID combine striping and mirroring, mostly this is determined by the number of drives you have to build the array with. Obviously, it takes at least two drives for any of this to work; and you can combine mirrored and striped drives for both performance and reliability if you have enough drives. One common arrangement is to have four drives, two striped and two mirrors of the two stripes. For striped drives, the performance increases in proportion to the number of drives you add - but it's not necessarily directly linear (meaning three drives don't necessarily equal exactly 3x the performance). I hope all that makes sense. I'll be glad to ramble on more here if it'll help, or you can PM me if you want. If your machine is somewhat dated, you may not have an onboard RAID controller. Speaking of the machine, if it is dated, then it means two things: Your hard disk may be getting over toward the full side (and is usually cluttered up pretty good by the time it starts to get toward full), and it may actually be an older (like VP mentioned above) PATA drive - this can be determined by looking in Windows Device Manager at the drive's properties, then Googling the model number of the drive. Parallal ATA (PATA) is an older spec and a little long in the tooth by today's standards. It's slower than SATA (Serial ATA) - and the first generation of SATA drives (SATA150) were slower than the second gen (SATA300)...and of course now we have SATA600 (all my drives and my RAID controller are SATA300; SATA600 is very new and still costs a premium). If you'll post your motherboard model number, hard drive model, and other specs, we can see if you have onboard RAID or not, which will help you decide what/whether you want to do anything with it, or try something else, what-have-you. I look forward to more discussion

Uncleal - as I said, it might not be fun - and not something "anybody in their right mind would do", but money can be a real motivational factor. I have put 'standard' motherboards in all kinds of cases; Dells, HPs, and eMachines included. It *can* be done. Among the biggest reasons for doing this? Dell wants $100 for a replacement motherboard (mind you, putting a replacement in means it's just as outdated as the one you're replacing), where I can buy a brand-new, current technology, *warranted* motherboard for less than half that. And yes, as I said, I've done it. I'll try to get pics if you'd like. I've also resoldered a pin sheared *clean* off a Pentium 3 CPU, and it worked fine (I have pics of that, too). You could find plenty of people who would tell me it wasn't possible, or wasn't worth it, or wasn't practical. But I did it, and it worked. I went to micro-min repair school in the Navy, and we learned to repair things that most would consider hopeless, against the odds that circumstances may leave no other alternative at some point. Moral of the story: Don't underestimate someone's ability when they're motivated - by whatever. Note, I'm not saying it's actually worth it, in every instance - a cheap case only costs $30, so why not buy a case and motherboard for <$75? Done that, too. And yes, quite a few Dell cases were built that would truly be impractical to even consider. I have also installed replacement motherboards purchased from Dell (at the client's preference). But it's another thing altogether to say it can't be done, ever. For some of us out here, the challenge comes in the form of people who say "It can't be done". Incidentally, although I'm admittedly not sure, I believe Dell does *not*make their own motherboards. I think they're made by one of a few companies, Intel and Asus maybe, among others. Again, not practical for someone - even as big as Dell is - to do this, when there are way too many vendors out there, already set up for doing it. Making multilayer PCBs with the contstraints a PC has isn't something you just jump into. Dell is a system designer, an "integrator" for all intent. They take parts made by others and build their own machines. Al - yes, RAMDrives have a lot of very good parts...but, if it were all that simple, I'm pretty sure the business-minded in the PC industry would've pushed it along without us asking. So, why not? Well, I suspect a few things: Power requirements, for one. RAM is mostly caps, and caps don't hold a charge forever. The way it's used almost depends on it not holding on to data for very long. It requires 'refresh' to hold anything, and that uses power - a surprising amount, all things considered. SSD ('flash' memory), OTOH, doesn't require power at all to hold a state, and it holds indefinitely. Another component, probably, is noise. Charging and discharging caps is relatively noisy, since the levels are not "pure" DC. Now, anything that switches has some degree of noise, but the problem(s) become amplified when you're constantly having to refresh voltages across gigs & gigs of RAM. I'm no engineer - but I went to the best electronics school the US Navy has to offer, and I know that reactive circuits (those with capacitive and/or inductive elements) are a lot more finicky with things like noise than their resistive counterparts. Not to mention there's the 'bootstrap' issue. True, once it's loaded, the RAMDrive theoretically holds whatever can be reliably refreshed. But, in terms of loading time...well, it still has to be loaded initially, and most software (at least currently) isn't set up to load everything onto a RAMDrive each time it's run - even if it were, well, the wait for loading isn't determined by the RAM at that point, it's determined by what you're loading *from*. I'm not sure they've 'screwed the pooch'; I think it's more accurate to say they haven't figured out (yet) exactly *how* to screw that particular pooch. They might, but something tells me they already thought through it - and, when things like manufacturing costs were figured in, etc. well...they settled on flash technology. For now Sorry to hijack (again)...still interested in seeing what others have to say about drives, speeds, and the little 'lags'. For me, speeding up the old "mass media storage subsystem" has elminated those pesky lags, once and for all.

Yes, al...*lol* I didn't say it was enjoyable to try and upgrade Dells...but I have worked on them :) The fans can be found; like I say, even Dell isn't big enough to compel a fan vendor to make something only they will buy. The power supply pinouts are all over the web. Basically that funny blue/black-wired connector stunt they pulled is the 3.3V, if I recall...but I actually made a whole conversion chart once, been a while. The connectors you need, well, they're robbed off the "other" power supply, depending on which way you're going, and if you don't mind splicing some wires. Remarkable what you can do when 'cheap' is the objective, or when there is no alternative.