GFFX-FS2k2-Me own take....

[Guest PaulL01]

Amen! ;)Just give me the Beef!

[Guest]

"It's nice that we finally have some choices after nVidia's virtual monopoly the past couple of years."Indeed it is. Finally, some competition to keep the prices relatively honest. The amount NVidia was contemplating for the FX is a pipe dream now (Remember the Voodoo6?). $399us may still be too much for most (specially outside the US), but at least its achievable for many. Pretty amazing actually for a 12 layer board with exotic thermal management on a complex chip design. That they *can* sell it for $399 list just shows to go how much they *really* make off these things (well, did ... that is).Thanks for getting your act together, ATI. :+Elrond

[Guest]

I don't run any third party scenery; except for a couple of landclasses and the autogenius. I got my frames locked at twenty. Running XP and 1600x1200x32 with all sliders maxed out. Visibility at 90miles, clouds at 60 percent. I just turned water reflections on and it didn't make a bit of a difference. AI runs at default (haven't tried anything over 40% yet). Running 4xAA & 16xAF all quality settings. My framerate sits right at twenty frames most all of the time. She'll drop down to 18 on takeoff roll with some panels. Same on landings. I actually saw 16fps on a landing before when I had clouds set on scattered on the deck; but that's rare. I've tried about every setting on the card. Tried some different resolutions all 32 bit. No real difference in frames. Tried 6xAA at 16xAF and discovered I really had to look to find any improvement in terrain textures over 4xAA. The only thing I can fault with the terrain texture appearance is some random noise in the tree tops. I guess this has to do with the way the 9700 does AF. Buildings and runways, airplanes, etc. are perfectly clear with no hint of a jaggie or aliasing whatsoever.When I drop AF from 16x to 8x, I see a noticeable decrease in terrain texture quality. Some smudging begins midway to the horizon. If I drop the AF to 4x, that smudging turns into blurry crappy textures at a distance (course what I consider blurry crappy is subject to interpretation) and I also see the nice sharp quality textures up close becoming less clear. So 4xAA & 16xAF are the sweet spots for the 9700 with FS2k2 if you want nice clear, clean, sharp textures.I don't have the CS727; but I fly the Falcon 50 often and she flies just as smooth as silk. Just like the default Cessna. I also fly the Posky and Meljet heavies with freeware pits and they fly nice and smooth. Switching views from inside to outside is instantaneous with no delay in texture draw and only on occasion, depending on the aircraft, do I see a 1 second delay in aircraft texture draw. I also now use Bill Grabowski's ERJ panel and it works with no struggle whatsoever. I think that's the pit I'm using when I saw a 16fps on landing. There just plain is no struggle anywhere at anytime running the 9700 at 4xAA & 16xAF at 1600x1200x32 color. Most all of the time, the card seems like it's just idling. If it could talk, I'd swear it was mumbling something like, OK, give me something to do, this is boring!!! So, I mostly agree with JIMMI. The 9700 runs FS2k2 in 4xAA & 16xAF at high res with no effort.

[Guest PaulL01]

Good info MG.Your figures seems close to what I have seen, are you running quality or performance settings?I think you missed my point, as I was referring exactly to the "wall" that all of us hit sooner or later as you start to purchase the power hungry add-ons that plainly flatten current CPU/9700-GFFX systems, not the less than stock settings that you describe. The system as specked below will give a similar system as yours (even with your card) a very good run for the money as most of this work is CPU bound and currently It can keep or somtimes even out pace many a decent P4-3Ghz machines running most any sim. Even the very best that you can buy liquid cooled systems that you or I would drool to own get socked, I have had to demonstrate this time and time again to the many unbelievers out there who think that their systems are "all that" There are none...yet.Turn the sliders up MG... ...Now add a good 30m high res mesh alone can start to really tax, now throw in a detailed cockpit and AC model, now add good custom 3d object scenery as available for many airfields with 100% ATC and it doesn't take long before your trying to push 5-600mb of textures and a few million triangles to AA not to mention the headroom that the multi-texturing eats up.With the currently available Add-ons that once tasted you never can be without, we are almost in the same exact position but yet have come so far in respects to hardware performance of just a year ago. Have you been in a VC as nice as CS? It is hard to go back to anything less well done, it will know doubt keep going this way, like to lines running so close but never touching...:)I could care less who makes whatever hardware, just deliver the goods. :) I think if ATI can resolve its 8x AGP MB board problems and stay up to date with drivers they will continue to make gains into the high end card market and win customers that have stayed away, or you could even say, if Nvidia doesn't resolve some performance issues with quality, speed and noise ATI will gain. Either way the ball is clearly in NV's lap, It will be "fun" to watch, probably even better than this years Stuper Bowl.

[Guest]

Paul; all quality settings, all terrain & aircraft sliders maxed. Here's an interesting clip: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1779&p=18 . If I increase the framerate lock, it'll run faster, but then I just lose terrain and pic quality. We now have the cards, the next step is bigger processors. Both of the top cards now are still CPU bound. A PIV 4.0gig with the R350 or NV35 will really make this sim shine. But it's pretty awesome now. Let's hope they don't mess FS2k4 up?? Here's my settings:http://www.xplanefreeware.net/freehost/mgdbottled/9700.jpg

[Sarge27 0]

Well, all this lackluster news about the FX kinda sucks. Are you guys saying I should sell my NVidia stock? How about WorldCom? I got some of that for sale real cheap! ;(8

[JimmiG 244]

"The only thing I can fault with the terrain texture appearance is some random noise in the tree tops. I guess this has to do with the way the 9700 does AF."This can be explained, but there's currently no workaround.It has to do with how the FS2002 graphics engine does not mipmap the alpha (transparent) textures, which are used for trees. This is not a problem with the default trees, really, because the detail is so low that there is no texture noise when the trees are viewed from a distance (the texture size is still bigger than the screen res, even when the trees are far away).With high-resolution replacement trees, the textures are so detailed that they need mipmapping, but the FS2002 graphics engine does not call for mipmapping on them. The result is texture noise. CFS3 does seem to properly filter tree textures, so we can assume FS2004 will also do this properly. Until then, the only cards that can fix the problem are those using super-sampling, such as the Geforce2, Radeon 8500 and Voodoo5. Supersampling, unlike the newer Multisampling, also anti-aliases alpha textures, and removes almost all the texture noise.

[Guest PaulL01]

FS2k2 does indeed mipmap transparent textures any DXT3 with an alpha channel will get mipmaped, however if you use a DXT1 with a single alpha channel mipmaping gets ignored.The problem being that if we were to convert the tree textures over to DXT3 the backroun color surrounding each tree would need to be changed to somewhat closly match the overall color of the tree as when the mipmaping starts this backround color will start to "bleed" through and slowly at increasing distance with more and more mipmaping the trees branches will get thicker and thicker. Will this be noticable from x distance? probably but we can try.Give me a little time (not today), I'll create a post about it and provide a link for you to download and try.I can look into this, I have all the tools.

[Guest]

Like Jimmi said, there's no real problem with the default trees other than they're really ugly and they tend to blend into the terrain from distance so you can't see em'. So, I use Gerrish's GTL trees. I think the GTL trees are about the worst for twinkling of them all; but they look so much better than any other trees. IMHO even with the twinkle. I read something a while back about the way the 9700 handles alpha textures causing noise in both trees and in grass in some sims. Something to the effect that the tree textures and grass textures (no grass in FS2k2) don't get aliased for this reason or that. Like I said, it's not a show stopper; but the trees are the only thing on the screen with any wiggle in them. AA & AF settings make no difference. It'd be nice to get rid of it without having to go back to the default trees. Maybe a future driver update??

[Guest]

Very interesting discussion guys, but I have a question.Do you ever really get to "fly" in between all the testing and tweaking you're doing?gwillmotCeleron 1.4GhzGeForce2 MX400 64Meg128Meg Good ol 133 MemoryGod only knows what the motherboard is.......

[JimmiG 244]

It's a limitation with all cards that use Multisampling (Geforce3, 4, FX and 9700 Pro). Not only the R9700 Pro suffers from this problem. It might be possible that the *XS modes (4XS, 6XS etc.) on the GeforceFX would fix this problem, but I don't know.Supersampling is the best solution, but it's slow. I think I understand what you mean, Paul, but I still think mipmapped trees would look better than trees that twinkle and move.If it's possible to convert the trees into a texture format that gets mipmapped, I would be really interested.

[Guest PaulL01]

>It's a limitation with all cards that use Multisampling >(Geforce3, 4, FX and 9700 Pro). Not only the R9700 Pro >suffers from this problem. as far as I have been told by a member of the MSFS team it is a part of the FS graphics engine, not the card.In my Rochester Photorealistic scenery I used this to advantage in some bulidings that used a rather large number of transparent textures that overlaped each other.It might be possible that the *XS >modes (4XS, 6XS etc.) on the GeforceFX would fix this >problem, but I don't know. >>Supersampling is the best solution, but it's slow. I think I >understand what you mean, Paul, but I still think mipmapped >trees would look better than trees that twinkle and move. >>If it's possible to convert the trees into a texture format >that gets mipmapped, I would be really interested. Yes, that is exactly what I was saying, it possible but will have side effects as I mentioned that will require some work, I will be happy to look into it.

[Sarge27 0]

NOW I'M REALLY CONFUSED....Take a look at these benchmarks...shows GFFX on top in most categories,even using some of the same benchmarks on the other sites. I've already cancelled the pre-order for the GFFX based in part on the info we've all been seeing lately. I guess we'll all just have to sit back and see what the FX and the upcoming R350 can do with our favorite sim!http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDIxLDI=

[Guest PaulL01]

Sarge,Yes this has been confusing, you can also add that as reported early today that the drivers as used with these test where shown to not support DX9 at all(no effect on DX8 marks). Also some raw test showed that even a GF4 was ahead in some benchmarks (no AA no AF) so we do know that somthings are clearly out of wack and considering the time that was envolved to sort this stuff out is beyond thinking, be that as it may I would wait to see Nvidia's response wand what better drivers will achieve.The card has the goods, somthing is very obviously holding it back and I personaly doubt it is the 128bit memory.Just have to wait.