Will this do? http://www.asus.com/...660_TIDC2T2GD5/

 

ASUS GTX660Ti is good choice but with GTX660 TI-DC2T version you will most time (while high GPU-load) producing mainly heat. This model is heavy factory OC-ed, +157 MHz above reference level (980MHz). Even in case of heavy load on GPU, FSX isn't able to use all GPU resources but card is be working in highest power mode (P0) and producing a lot of heat - somewhat unnecessarily.

More reasonable, for FSX, would be GTX660 TI-DC2O version, also factoty OC-ed, but not as high, +78 MHz above the same reference level.

Good choice... :thumbsup:

 

BTW, I highly recommend shopping on Amazon. They have an awesome 30 day return policy, no questions asked. Gives you time to test it out and see how it goes. If you do get it, keep us posted on how it goes!

 

Great! Do you know if Amazon ships to Sweden?

 

 

ASUS GTX660Ti is good choice but with GTX660 TI-DC2T version you will most time (while high GPU-load) producing mainly heat. This model is heavy factory OC-ed, +157 MHz above reference level (980MHz). Even in case of heavy load on GPU, FSX isn't able to use all GPU resources but card is be working in highest power mode (P0) and producing a lot of heat - somewhat unnecessarily.

More reasonable, for FSX, would be GTX660 TI-DC2O version, also factoty OC-ed, but not as high, +78 MHz above the same reference level.

 

How can a card be running at full power while not being utilized? A card will work as needed and if it's being taxed by FSX or any other software, it's because it's working for a reason. The card will not run at max capacity for nothing. The card scales on load and demand. Maybe I am misinterpreting you but it doesn't make sense.

 

 

 

Great! Do you know if Amazon ships to Sweden?

 

Ha! Have no idea but I don't see why not. Haha

How can a card be running at full power while not being utilized?

 

Where I wrote something about "running at full power"? There is difference between "heavy load on GPU" and "running at full power". It is easy to notice difference using GPU-Z Sensors. You may have high (nearly 100%) GPU Load and much lower (60-70%) Power Consumption. More detailed explanation below.

 

Kepler GPU architecture has some specialized type of units like: Raster Engine, CUDA cores, Texture units, Special Function Units (SFU-s), PolyMorph Engine. There are some important differences in the way how is Kepler architecture built and how is handling data in comparison with Fermi. I even don't mention changes between Tesla, G92, G80.

 

FSX, or precisely Direct3D 9 functions which FSX uses, aren't able to utilize Kepler units in efficient way. Kepler architecture is designed to fully and efficently utilize Direct3D 11 set of instructions. Although there is backward compatibility between D3D11 and D3D9, structural differences are very significant.

When card is runing in P0 mode all units all ready to work at full speed (highest level of voltages), FSX calling D3D9 API functions is utilizing only some of these, rest is doing nothing - but all units still are at P0 and producing heat. Of course all units fully loaded (receiving code and lots of data continously) will consuming even more energy.

 

 

The card scales on load and demand.

 

Card power consumption scales on Power States, data load, CUDA codes utilization by shaders code (simple/demanding code) and PolyMorph Engine utilization.

Don't listen to the guys saying a GTX 670 isn't gonna change anything because it is! In the past 4 years, I've been travelling through a complete jungle of hardware upgrade, I've had lot's of computers and stuff. I've had the GTX 560Ti and upgraded to a GTX 670, and yes, there was a difference. Was it huge? No. Maybe 3-5 FPS more, which might not seem like much, but at least now my FPS drop below 30 much less often which enables me to make much better use of the 30 FPS VSync tweak. In the NGX with heavy scenery, you shouldn't see it dropping below 25 very often. In 95% of the cases, 30 FPS is no problem. And for the rest my PC is very similar to yours! Faster RAM also helps a tiny bit (1-2 FPS), YES IT DOES HELP, don't listen to the other who haven't tested nothing and just jump to conclusions.

Don't listen to the guys saying a GTX 670 isn't gonna change anything because it is! In the past 4 years, I've been travelling through a complete jungle of hardware upgrade, I've had lot's of computers and stuff. I've had the GTX 560Ti and upgraded to a GTX 670, and yes, there was a difference. Was it huge? No. Maybe 3-5 FPS more, which might not seem like much, but at least now my FPS drop below 30 much less often which enables me to make much better use of the 30 FPS VSync tweak. In the NGX with heavy scenery, you shouldn't see it dropping below 25 very often. In 95% of the cases, 30 FPS is no problem. And for the rest my PC is very similar to yours! Faster RAM also helps a tiny bit (1-2 FPS), YES IT DOES HELP, don't listen to the other who haven't tested nothing and just jump to conclusions.

 

lol, too bad I just ordered the 660Ti I'm sure it will work out though

lol, too bad I just ordered the 660Ti I'm sure it will work out though

 

Don't regret it. There's barely a difference between a GTX 660Ti and a GTX 680. Somebody tested both and reported a difference of 0.5 FPS in heavy scenery with one monitor. With 3 monitors the GTX 680 was 3 FPS faster, same with ultra high AA, but who runs that anyway? What I was trying to tell you is that any GTX 660Ti (or better) graphics card is better than a GTX 560Ti in FSX. Whether you buy a GTX 660Ti, 670 or 680, doesn't make that much of a difference for FSX.

 

I think a CPU upgrade will improve things. Haswell should be could, extra cache helps according to some, and it should overclock easier and have better clock-for-clock performance.

Don't regret it. There's barely a difference between a GTX 660Ti and a GTX 680. Somebody tested both and reported a difference of 0.5 FPS in heavy scenery with one monitor. With 3 monitors the GTX 680 was 3 FPS faster, same with ultra high AA, but who runs that anyway? What I was trying to tell you is that any GTX 660Ti (or better) graphics card is better than a GTX 560Ti in FSX. Whether you buy a GTX 660Ti, 670 or 680, doesn't make that much of a difference for FSX.

 

I think a CPU upgrade will improve things. Haswell should be could, extra cache helps according to some, and it should overclock easier and have better clock-for-clock performance.

 

Okay, thanks

You will certainly notice an increase in performance from the 560Ti to the 660Ti based on your FSX configuration that you provided here. Lots of good advice especially from Bimmer & Arjen. I've just upgraded to the GTX 670 from the 560 Ti 448 and now I can finally fly around with the settings that I like (very close to yours in terms of Anti-Aliasing, Resolution & sliders within FSX) and have great performance. One thing I can add that I haven't seen posted is that you should definitely overclock the memory speed on the 660 Ti when you get it. The 192-bit memory bus might get a little overworked with your Anti-Aliasing settings & global texture resolution but there is huge headroom in the memory clocks which will increase your memory bandwidth quite a bit.

 

Congrats on your purchase!

Thanks

 

I'll probably receive my card tomorrow, although the Swedish post is not very reliable during the winter

 

I'll keep you updated

Don't listen to the guys saying a GTX 670 isn't gonna change anything because it is! I've been travelling through a complete jungle of hardware upgrade, I've had lot's of computers and stuff. I've had the GTX 560Ti and upgraded to a GTX 670, and yes, there was a difference. (... ) Maybe 3-5 FPS more

 

Are you sure that only change was replacing GTX 560Ti with a GTX 670? No others changes in hardware and FSX configuration files?

 

The key for a pleasant flying with FSXem is high image quality (with high definition textures, sharp ground, no stutters) obtained with a satisfactory defined (locked) FPS level (30FPS is preffered as half of Vsync). Maintaining this is far more dependent on the performance of the CPU and the appropriate balance of important parameters in fsx.cfg than using extremly powerfull graphics card.

 

For each configuration of the computer for FSX can be matched appropriately powerful graphics card and its replacement by faster one already do not help - but ALWAYS use a faster CPU will give more FPS. At the same time, it is clear that the three monitor setup requires more efficient card than a single screen configuration.

However, there is nothing to believe that in a well-balanced rig replacement GTX560Ti graphics card with the GTX670 will lead to increase FPS of 5 frames over the initial level of ~25 FPS - that would be increase of performance by 20% - really huge and hard to believe - especially without any changes to CPU.

 

Of course, you can configure parameters such way that even the GTX670 will have problems, just exaggerate with texture_max_load and Anti-Aliasing settings, using 4096 and 2x2SS + 8xMS. However, is is hard to say such behavior is optimal.

 

Bluescan, I think you did good choice with GTX660Ti and if you want better performance in future you should more think about faster CPU, maybe about incoming Haswell than about faster GPU.

 

Btw Before buying my GTX660 I was testing both cards GTX660 and GTX670. I didn't see any noticeable difference at any sceneries I'm using, even under heavy weather condition made by REXE+ weather engine.

Since when is a 2500K @ 4.8GHz not enough CPU performance for FSX? I can attest to arjen's post as I pretty much did the same sort of upgrade and there definitely was a big increase in performance. And yes the GPU was the only thing that changed (I actually increased sliders in FSX after upgrade and still got much better performance).

Since when is a 2500K @ 4.8GHz a bottleneck in CPU performance?

 

For example: since 737 NGX, Lod_radius=6.5, photoscenery with "texture resolution" 1.2m and large airport with "scenery compexity - extremely dense". Are you able to maintain 60FPS (for Vsync) even with [email protected] with such settings?

I think you may be happy with 30FPS.

I think you may be right, 30FPS would be great if that happened under the scenario you mentioned! Now 60FPS...even "Broadwell" or "Skylake" won't give us that sort of performance! But you can't realistically expect to match Vsync in FSX, I find 30FPS absolutely fine and smooth on my end.

Are you sure that only change was replacing GTX 560Ti with a GTX 670? No others changes in hardware and FSX configuration files?

 

The key for a pleasant flying with FSXem is high image quality (with high definition textures, sharp ground, no stutters) obtained with a satisfactory defined (locked) FPS level (30FPS is preffered as half of Vsync). Maintaining this is far more dependent on the performance of the CPU and the appropriate balance of important parameters in fsx.cfg than using extremly powerfull graphics card.

 

For each configuration of the computer for FSX can be matched appropriately powerful graphics card and its replacement by faster one already do not help - but ALWAYS use a faster CPU will give more FPS. At the same time, it is clear that the three monitor setup requires more efficient card than a single screen configuration.

However, there is nothing to believe that in a well-balanced rig replacement GTX560Ti graphics card with the GTX670 will lead to increase FPS of 5 frames over the initial level of ~25 FPS - that would be increase of performance by 20% - really huge and hard to believe - especially without any changes to CPU.

 

Of course, you can configure parameters such way that even the GTX670 will have problems, just exaggerate with texture_max_load and Anti-Aliasing settings, using 4096 and 2x2SS + 8xMS. However, is is hard to say such behavior is optimal.

 

Bluescan, I think you did good choice with GTX660Ti and if you want better performance in future you should more think about faster CPU, maybe about incoming Haswell than about faster GPU.

 

Btw Before buying my GTX660 I was testing both cards GTX660 and GTX670. I didn't see any noticeable difference at any sceneries I'm using, even under heavy weather condition made by REXE+ weather engine.

 

In comparison to a GTX560Ti it was a good improvement, and no, nothing in my computer changed, I already was using Sandy Bridge with everything the same. Same CFG (Bufferpools=0). I didn't say 5 FPS, but I said 3-5 FPS. Which means a 3 FPS increase compared to the previous 30 FPS, and around 5 FPS compared to the previous 50 - 60 FPS. That's approximately a 10% increase.

 

I'm not saying a GTX 680 is much better than a GTX 660Ti or something, cuz it isn't according to many. But a GTX 560Ti quite a weak card compared to a GTX 670. Maybe not in FSX, but it definately makes a (small difference).