Useful Upgrade Info for ya!!!

[Guest PaulL01]

Robb,You really need to become familiar with how you adjust the display settings as these have a great impact on quality and performance. See if you can get Basil or someone to help you out here, sorry but I'm off to the Glen to scout out a couple of AC Cobras (289&427) and won't be back till Sunday eve. :)Basil,I'm sure the numbers will even out once we get Robb on the same page with driver settings, this is what my experience tells me:1. With AA and AF off and ALL other settings equal (turn ATC=off) your NF2+9500+ will average +/- 3-8% better FPS than Robb

[Guest PaulL01]

Robb,You really need to become familiar with how you adjust the display settings as these have a great impact on quality and performance. See if you can get Basil or someone to help you out here, sorry but I'm off to the Glen to scout out a couple of AC Cobras (289&427) and won't be back till Sunday eve. :)Basil,I'm sure the numbers will even out once we get Robb on the same page with driver settings, this is what my experience tells me:1. With AA and AF off and ALL other settings equal (turn ATC=off) your NF2+9500+ will average +/- 3-8% better FPS than Robb

[Guest]

>Hey guys, >>I don't see an option for my system displays for any 3D >functions. Is there something I need to download? > Well, I see where Paul has gone off and left me holding the bag. :~P I'll do what I can, but I haven't messed with GeForce configurations in a year and a half.Okay, for starters, when you right click on the desktop, select Properties, and Settings, and then click on the Advanced button, is there no tab for DirectX or other "advanced" settings for your video card? If not, then you may need to download something (like Rivatuner, maybe?). But before we go there, let's see for sure what you do or do not have through your "Advanced" display settings button.Meanwhile, you can also go to the run box and run "dxdiag" to get some info about directx. Let's make sure that DirectX hardware features are not somehow disabled. Look at the "Display" tab of dxdiag and make sure that the listed DirectX features are enabled.Also, "meanwhile," we might want to make sure that we BIOS options configured optimally. I'm not thinking of anything esoteric here, just a couple of obvious ones. First, how is the AGP configured in the BIOS? 4x, 8x, auto? Second, what is the aperature setting? Third, how is your memory speed set and controlled? Do you have a "sync" option?I'm not at home right now -- at school, but I'm heading back home shortly. I'll check back in when I get home.-Basil

[Guest Bigshot]

After much, much experimentation, I've found these are the absolute best settings for the 9700 Pro card in FS2k2 with a 2.53 & 512 PC1066 ram. Running at 1600x1200x32 resolution everything is silky smooth in all situations with all aircraft with frames locked at 22. AI either off or on default. All sliders maxed except mesh at 90 percent and visibility whereever you wish. (Note: run performance Anisio instead of Quality Anisio and drop mipmap quality one notch (for the tree twinkles). Makes no pic quality difference with FS2k2's terrain engine and looks great) Note: We need a higher quality terrain engine in FS2k4) http://www.x-plane.org/users/mgdbottled/Settings1.jpg

[Guest]

Basil, et al;A year ago Doug Horton & myself put together a benchmark flight that, for a short while was available at simflight.com. It was used extensively by simhq.com as they tested CPU's, vid cards, etc. Anyway, basically simflight didn't follow through with things and it faded away. I still have it on my HD (230kb zipped) for anyone interested in having a common denominator. Your numbers are quite astounding, I must admit, and I would LOVE to see how your system does with this short but taxing flight.email me if you wish to try it!ggmagic@webryders.netbest,Greg G

[Guest]

Cool, thanks for the info! I am going to wait for the 9800Pro that is supposedly coming out in April.Robb

[Guest]

Hey Basil,I downloaded the GeForce Tweak Utility from guru3d.com. I have not made any changes. I have nothing in my Advance settings or a tab of DirecX. I did do the dxdiag and all the 3D options are enabled, so we are okay there.I could not find the AGP option in my BIOS for some reason....hummmm. I will have to check the manual...I have done a little overclocking today.Right now, I am at 170/34x14 which is effectively 3000+. I had to boost my core voltage from 165 to 170. One of the things I forgot to mention on my initial post, because I forgot, is that I have my frames locked at 30! That is probably why my frames at Meigs were as low as they were!!!!Sorry about that... Does that make any difference? With that into consideration, now do my frames per second seem low? Was that the reason for the belief that my performance looked at little weak?Anyway, with my new 3000+ CPUWith 767 PIC at Meigs, I am getting 18.1 to 19.1 and at SimFlyers LAX 7L, I am getting 10.1 to 12.8Also, my cpu temp is currently 122.5F or 50.5C... How much headroom do I have here if I want to boost my bus up a bit. One amazing thing about my CPU was that the multiplyer setting is not locked. I took it from the defaul 13.5 to 14... There is no option for 14.5. It just goes 15, 16, 17... on up. I would not work at 15 because the machine would lock up. Also, I am using only a 300 watt power supply. However, I would like to move the bus up a bit but don't want to burn up my CPU. I have a great copper based fan, very large and big...Anyway, I'll wait for your thoughts and thanks again!!Robb

[John_Tavendale 453]

Up 'till a few days ago I was using a P4 system, but I felt AMD was the best bang for my buck. Esp so now with the nForce2 motherboards that feature Dual DDR, good riddance to VIA :-hahI got myself a XP2100+ T'Bred 'B' CPU and a EPoX 8RDA+ motherboard, right now I am pretty happy with it. My CPU is rock solid stable @ 2.17Ghz (13*166 2700+ speed) stock voltage, its been priming all day with my Corsair @ 200Mhz 2-2-2-5 @ 2.9V. I plan to push it more when my Swifty and Zalman NB heatsinks arrive this week, hopefully I'll see the 2.4Ghz mark.Not bad for $385AU :)

[Guest]

What do you get at Meigs with the frame rate unlocked? As for the overclocking, the temps seem a little bit high, but maybe that's just in relation to the 2100+, and would not be out of line for the 2800+. A good test of whether or not the heat is too much is to get Prime95 and run it in "torture test" mode. If you get errors, then you are running too hot or too fast.As for the multiplier, you want to lower it, not raise it, and then push the FSB up to compensate. At 170x14 you are at 2380. Try 183x13 for almost exactly the same thing (2389). The limiting factor here is going to be your memory, which is PC2700, which is only rated to 333 Mhz DDR, and at 183 FSB you are pushing your memory at 366 Mhz. If it is quality memory, it might hold up. When I put my system together, I got PC3200 so I could take the FSB all the way to 200. Well, I didn't get there -- anything above 192 and prime95 starts having fits.You are probably not going to be able to overclock much more, or any more. But see how high you can get the FSB by lowering the multiplier.Back to the video card. I have another system with a Geforce2 GTS. When I click on the display settings advanced button, there is a tab that says "Geforce2 GTS". Clicking on that leads to a display of a bunch of driver info, and yet another button that says "additional properties." Clicking on that gets me to a page with tabs for Direct3D and FSAA.The point being that there must be something similar for your display settings. It is all very much a function of the display driver you are running with your video card. What driver are you using?-Basil

[Guest]

>My CPU is rock solid stable @ 2.17Ghz (13*166 2700+ speed) stock >voltage, its been priming all day with my Corsair @ 200Mhz 2-2-2-5 @>2.9V. I hope your memory doesn't fry. ;-) You probably meant 1.9V, right?Why not drop the multiplier to 11 and see how high you can push the FSB? You're not even beginning to take advantage of that 400 DDR memory. 11x197 would give you about the same total Mhz, and give you quite a bit more memory bandwidth.Let me know how your cooling mods go. I'm thinking that cooling may be what is keeping me maxed out at 11x192 (2112 Mhz). I can get a wee bit higher, but not without prime95 errors.-Basil

[John_Tavendale 453]

Oops! :-lol 1.9V I mean :-hahI'm waiting on my new cooling bits before I drop the multiplyer and up the FSB, as it stands my CPU is at about 63 under load at the moment, I don't want to take it too far with this default sink, I couldn't find my AS2 paste, so it has the default heatpad right now.

[Guest]

Tell us a little more about this benchmark. I have always wondered how simhq.com tested their hardware using FS2002. That always give some frames per second but never a means of how they obtained their info in terms of situations and settings.Thanks,Robb

[Guest]

I am now wondering if the guys who sold me my Athlon 2800+ actually sold me an overclocked CPU. The reason I mention this is because the multiplier was unlocked. How can I tell? Also, what are the advantages using the FSBus rather than the multiplier to go up in clockspeed? My guess would be that it is because you can move up in increments more slowly. Any other reasons?Robb