Amazon ship some of the EVGA cards to Australia. Just seems not the FTW version.

 

Locally, you can get a 4GB card from $520 for a Leadtek one.

 

http://www.staticice.com.au/cgi-bin/search.cgi?q=GTX+680+4GB&spos=3

Check this out, Rob...

 

EVGA GeForce GTX 670 SuperClocked 4096MB GDDR5, 2x Dual-Link DVI, HDMI, DP, 4-Way SLI Ready Graphics Card (04G-P4-2673-KR)

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Z3HZLM/ref=cm_sw_r_an_am_ap_am_us?ie=UTF8

 

 

Oops, nevermind, that's a 670

 

- Sent from my rooted, Verizon Samsung Galaxy Nexus LTE smartphone via Tapatalk because haters gonna hate.

For those that always like to say a 4GB videocard is overkill and not really needed unless you run multimonitor setups and uber-high resolutions, well let me tell this... I just did a test flight using the default C172 (using the RealAir FS9 air file) from KRIC to Norfolk NAS with TileProxy set at 30cm, level_mapping=9,10,11,14,14,14,15,16,17,18,19, and the flight was 100% stutter free and as sharp as can be.

 

When I checked my VRAM usage via PrecisionX, my VRAM usage at one time peaked at 2.8GB while it averaged around 2.6GB the whole flight. This would have choked a 2GB card and murdered a 1GB card.

 

This is using TP, REX and UTX (even though UTX is just for 3D night lighting).

 

Just wanted to point this out, where it clearly shows that when it comes to photoreal scenery such as TP, a 4GB card is the way to go.

Efrain, Thanks for the info on the 4gig cards. I was going to pill the trigger on the 670 2gig but found this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130851 instead,its a refurb but for the savings I hope a good one. Should be here today.

Jmaie Moses

The difference is that 84 gives you 2 texture loaders, where both have their own core. While 249 gives you 5 texture loaders where one has its own core while the others are hyperthreaded. 84 gives you higher FPS while 249 gives you faster texture loading at a slightly lower FPS. Texture loading can benefit a lot from hyperthreading. FPS won't.

 

Earlier I asked where you were getting these numbers from, but since then, I found the post where you'd discussed all of this. Interesting stuff and a lot of work obviously went in to creating it, but any chance you could make the spreadsheets available again? I'd love to see the data that goes with the discussion. Thanks.

 

Still trying to decide between 2 and 4 G. Been doing a lot of testing with both Orbx scenery and hi-res photo as I get ready to decide on my new graphics card and am still having a hard time justifying 4 based on the numbers I'm seeing. Efrain do you by chance use HD (4096) cloud textures?

 

Scott

Most expensive thread i've read in a while.

 

I've ordered the 4gig EVGA 680 FTW thru amazon, because of you guys.

 

As they won't ship to Australia i've had to use a US based escrow/redirection service. Guy who runs it looks dodgy as, but at least the prices were cheap.

 

 

Thanks Efrain!

Most expensive thread i've read in a while.

 

I've ordered the 4gig EVGA 680 FTW thru amazon, because of you guys.

 

As they won't ship to Australia i've had to use a US based escrow/redirection service. Guy who runs it looks dodgy as, but at least the prices were cheap.

 

 

Thanks Efrain!

 

LMAO You are welcome, Rob!

 

- Sent from my rooted, Verizon Samsung Galaxy Nexus LTE smartphone via Tapatalk because haters gonna hate.

 

 

As they won't ship to Australia i've had to use a US based escrow/redirection service

 

Rob, I don't know if the FTW is worth the slight extra cost but I have this card showing as being able to be shipped to Australia direct from Amazon.

 

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Dual-Link-Graphics-04G-P4-2686-KR/dp/B008BGXXB8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1356987322&sr=8-2&keywords=evga+gtx+680+4096

Well, tell her you want a triple SLI configuration of GTX690s. When she complains, tell her you can drop it down to a GTX680 4GB and meet her at the middle.

 

Game, set, match, BimmerCop.

 

I'm very fortunate, though as my lovely wife understands the specs and knows why I make the choices I do.

 

You just settled my personal argument about how far to go when it comes to video card performance. Thanks for passing on news many of us can use.

 

Mark

Earlier I asked where you were getting these numbers from, but since then, I found the post where you'd discussed all of this.

 

Can you link to this post, I'm utterly unconvinced that forcing FSX to use hyperthreaded cores over physical cores can be at all beneficial or that when as an afterthought MS nailed together multicore processing for FSX they did so in such a fashion as to be specific as to what cores enabled what texture loaders when they only had dual core CPUs to work from.

Can you link to this post, I'm utterly unconvinced that forcing FSX to use hyperthreaded cores over physical cores can be at all beneficial or that when as an afterthought MS nailed together multicore processing for FSX they did so in such a fashion as to be specific as to what cores enabled what texture loaders when they only had dual core CPUs to work from.

FSX can not utilize virtual cores (HT) and that is straight from the project lead Phil Taylor. Cheers jja

FSX can not utilize virtual cores (HT) and that is straight from the project lead Phil Taylor. Cheers jja

 

Which is why I fail to understand why people are recommending an affinity Mask of 249, this is suitable only for 4 core i7 processors with HT enabled and is forcing physical core 1, virtual core 2, physical and virtal cores 3, physical and virtual cores 4. Given that virtual cores are unsupported this appears totally nonsensical.

The whole point to that is because AF is based on bits which correlate to cores virtual or not. IOW on a 4core wo HT you need to consider 4 bits, with HT you need to consider 8. So in effect both of these AF values will give you the same result in FSX: HT 4 core 11111001 249, 4 core No HT 1001 9. Actually to be correct you would want to shoot for 252 or 12. Just understand that 252 will give you the same result on a 4 core with or without HT. But if you DO use HT then you should go with the 252 to be correct. Remember that the whole point in setting AF is to keep the main thread OFF core 1 (0) because it is the default core that will be used by ALL apps. IOW the first bit (the odd / even bit)reading right to left should ALWAYS be 0. SO just about any EVEN AF value will work but make sure you assign at least 1 FSX main thread. AF=0 is a no-no.

 

Here are the common values in use:

4 Core No HT - 14 3 Main threads 1 worker (available to OS and other apps ectera)

4 Core No HT - 12 2 Main threads 2 workers

4 Core With HT - 254 3 Main threads 1 worker

4 Core With HT - 252 2 Main threads 2 workers

 

Note - technically speaking FSX can have only 1 main application thread. Any others available will be used on a temporary basis as scenery thread schedulers. You can see this yourself by watching the CPU activity in task manager. Actually in recent testing I found that FSX does better with only 1 thread as in AF=8. Sheez makes you wonder if FSX was designed for a single core machine.

 

BTW HT is a bad idea on a machine dedicated to FSX as much more heat is generated and FSX can't use the virtual cores anyway. Use HT if you do a lot of video encoding as it works great for that.

 

 

Cheers jja

Can you link to this post, I'm utterly unconvinced that forcing FSX to use hyperthreaded cores over physical cores can be at all beneficial or that when as an afterthought MS nailed together multicore processing for FSX they did so in such a fashion as to be specific as to what cores enabled what texture loaders when they only had dual core CPUs to work from.

 

Here's what I found: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/377105-texture-loading-ssd-vs-hdd/

 

Note that the data is no longer displayed in the original article. Going back and looking further I see that later in the discussion he links to another source for the images. Need to go back and re-read with the data now that I can find it.

 

Scott

 

Rob, I don't know if the FTW is worth the slight extra cost but I have this card showing as being able to be shipped to Australia direct from Amazon.

 

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Dual-Link-Graphics-04G-P4-2686-KR/dp/B008BGXXB8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1356987322&sr=8-2&keywords=evga+gtx+680+4096

 

Hi Ant, from ordering camera gear from Amazon to Australia I find that they often troll me into thinking stuff will ship, and it's not til you try and place the order that they say 'sorry, not available in your country.'

 

I did place an order for the EVGA classified to ship to Aus and got exactly that problem. So anyway, the decision has been made and I've got an EVGA 4gig 680 FTW dispatched by amazon via the US (the classy discount was less by the next day when i reordered).

 

For any aussies, I buy all my pc components from PC case gear, who i recommend. For comparison, that would have cost $155 more, but also there seems to be supply problems with the 4 gig nvidia cards in australia. Pc casegear list no stock with no ETA ie. not just a backorder. Looking around elsewhere i could find one or two EVGA cards, but they would have cost another $100 on top from the other resellers.

 

I'm guessing the evga 4gig cards are proving popular, given the difficulty finding one.

 

I went with Leadtek last time for availability reasons. Decided always to stick to evga from now on - the leadtek software didn't work, and i guess i do respect the EVGA brand.

 

 

Enjoy the new card, Rob. You can't go wrong with EVGA.

 

I bought a 4GB Gainward GTX 680 Phantom yesterday.