Maybe someone in this forum can answer a technical question. As far as I know a 32 bit application has an addressing space limited to 4GB. Now  we know that P3D is moving a lot of stuff from conventional RAM to Video RAM. In my understanding, this doesn't mean that we will have more room for our textures, weather, models and so on. Hopefully we will get some improvements due to the fact that we will see a better load balancing between CPU and GPU, and that the GPU will be able to process stuff from its own memory, which should be a lot faster than moving things from main memory. I'm not expecting to solve a VAS problem tho.

 

Am i wrong about this, under a technical point of view?

 

It won't solve the VAS problem but it will (like DX10) help with it. 

DX11 does a lot more than help with it.. it lowers the memory usage as it does not need to load the full texture in to memory unlike dx10/dx9 plus there a bunch of other funky stuff it does as well

It's a decent stopgap solution to the VAS problem. DX11 itself will help. The development team has surely spent some time optimizing the rendering engine during the re-write (FSX / ESP 1.x are very bad at releasing VAS when it's no longer needed).

 

I think within 1-2 years we'll bump into the VAS limit again as add-on developers start taking advantage of the new features and possibilities in P3D 2.0. Hopefully by then a 64-bit version will be right around the corner.

Good news for those looking at having to upgrade their GPU, AMD are releasing another card so NVIDIA are reducing the GTX 650 and 660. I was sent an email by a seller with a 2GB EVGA GTX 660 Superclocked, 28nm, 6008MHz GDDR5, GPU 1046MHz, Boost 1111MHz, Cores 960  for £144. Does anybody know what this card is like or should this be a decent card to run P3D v2 with the limited information we have so far?
Don't get me wrong, I would love to go and blow another grand upgrading and updating my rig but just don't have that sort of cash on me right now so about the £150- £180 mark is all I can muster.

 

Many thanks, Gingerterry

Even with FSX now and certainly with P3D V2.0 around the corner, a 770 is minimum IMHO.

 

I fully expect to upgrade hardware early next year. (currently on a 570)

Think I will sit tight with my dual 580's for the present.  They work superb in SLI across three screens with P3D v1.4 usually holding at 25-30fps.  Can't imagine them working worse with 2.0.  But then again...  a new Titan under the Xmas tree may be down the road. 

Better to wait until the sim comes out. I doubt it will put the same kind of load on the GPU as modern first person shooters etc., but we won't know until it's officially out.

Posted  earlier today on the LM Prepar3d forums:

 

 

 

Hey Guys,
While we understand the sentiment about SLI/Crossfire, we have to prioritize our tasking leading up to the release of 2.0. Buying a mid-range gpu is obviously the cheaper choice than picking up a titan, but given the heavy utilization of new api features in the engine, you'd probably be better off with a GTX760 or R9 than you would with 2 570s or 6000 series cards, even after we put in the time to optimize for SLI/Crossfire. In short, if you have a new, mid-range graphics card, you're probably in good shape. If you have an older mid-range card, you'd be better off upgrading to a newer card than buying a second older one. We are going to focus our efforts for the release on optimizing general case performance as much as possible, so that we can provide the best possible experience for all users. After the initial release we will look into optimizing more specific use cases.
Thanks!

Zach Heylmun

PREPAR3D Software Engineer

Posted  earlier today on the LM Prepar3d forums:

Thanks Arwen, that's good to know since I bought a 770 one month ago ...

 

Oh and did I mention you've always been my favorite elf? Muche better than Galadriel, definitely.

Thanks Arwen, that's good to know since I bought a 770 one month ago ...

 

Oh and did I mention you've always been my favorite elf? Muche better than Galadriel, definitely.

My new computer has an overclocked 780 (with the overhead for a second one in SLI . . . and even a 3rd one, if I ever need it).  So I should be good.

 

Thanks on the elf part.  Arwen is not just my nick here ... it is my real name.  My middle name is Eve, which is short for Evenstar. (My Mom was a big LOTR fan.)

I know P3D is a 32bit application, but is there any benifit to having more that 6GB of RAM on my motherboard?

 

I know P3D is a 32bit application, but is there any benifit to having more that 6GB of RAM on my motherboard?

 

 

Having 6GB of ram on your motherboard will help you with other things on your system.  Especially with addons which run outside Prepar3D processes.  Windows 7 & 8.1 work really well with 8GB of Ram.  If you have 6GB you should be just fine. Just don't be at 4GB of physical Ram.

Agree about the RAM.  I thought one of my HDD was going bad as it took so long to find/display files.  I may have 1,000's in a single folder.  So on a whim (and saw a sale for my exact same RAM), I went from 8GB to 16GB.  Man what a difference!  Probably not so much in P3D but everything has so much "zip" and energy now.  Like my PC got a nice facelift.  So I am glad I added more RAM.

 

Good to know about the GPU situation from the horse's mouth (what an interesting saying?).  I'll mess with P3D 2.0 for awhile with my current EVGA 2GB 670 now installed (replaced my 580's), and figure out what new one to get.   Funny, I feel I was getting a tad better performance out of my 580's across three screens in SLI than with the single 670.  Then again, probably some placebo effect.

 

Can't wait for our Xmas present!