Informed Graphics Card Decision

[n4gix 4,947]

P3Dv2 has been recoded for the engine to take more advantage of the GPU by reducing the strain on the CPU, thus meaning that in P3Dv2 a card with additional Vram is useful. I think a lot of the issues some users are having with P3Dv2 is that they simply have not upgraded their cards to take advantage of the newly coded sim. This is my understanding of things...

Well, I'll be able to see for myself come Monday (or Tuesday) as my new 770 OC 3GB and 750watt PSU should be installed by then.

 

I still have a completely "virgin" P3Dv2 installation, so I'll be able to tell immediately just how much difference going from an ancient GTX550Ti 1GB card to a GTX770 OC 4GB card makes!

[Rocky_53 1,579]

Well, I'll be able to see for myself come Monday (or Tuesday) as my new 770 OC 3GB and 750watt PSU should be installed by then.

 

I still have a completely "virgin" P3Dv2 installation, so I'll be able to tell immediately just how much difference going from an ancient GTX550Ti 1GB card to a GTX770 OC 3GB card makes!

 

Hey Bill, I think you'll see a considerable difference. I'm still with FSX but I could see a noticeable difference in certain scenarios having upgraded from a 580. So in P3Dv2 I suspect the difference will be even more noticable.

[MikeT707 1,181]

Well, I'll be able to see for myself come Monday (or Tuesday) as my new 770 OC 3GB and 750watt PSU should be installed by then.

 

I still have a completely "virgin" P3Dv2 installation, so I'll be able to tell immediately just how much difference going from an ancient GTX550Ti 1GB card to a GTX770 OC 3GB card makes!

I thought you were getting a 780.

[JesC 88]

Following a bit of research and feedback from other guys on the forum I eventually opted for the 770 4Gb card.

 

Jesse - I think that is a very solid choice.  Please let us know how things work out with that card.  I will likely be purchasing a 770/4gb myself.

 

Great choice- the 4GB of VRAM is VERY important in the long scheme of things.

Is there a view that the Titan is just not worth it compared to the 780?  As with many it seems, I too am in the market for a new card.

I think you made a good choice.

I'm another soon-to-be owner of a GTX770 4GB.

 

 

The new 4 GB EVGA GTX 770/ACX Classified arrived late Friday afternoon and I installed it the next morning. The installation went smoothly, if not entirely flawlessly. Initially the card was apparently unrecognized and I was unable to get a Windows boot. Eventually it dawned on me that my BIOS was several generations out of date.

 

After the BIOS updates were applied and  BIOS settings restored, the card installation went completely as expected. I was unable to stop the Windows auto installer so new Nvidia drivers had to be installed (probably a good idea, anyway). Once I had restored my Nvidia Control panel and Nvidia Inspector settings, cleared the FSX shader cache and deleted the Display.Device entries to the FSX.cfg it was time to fly.

 

I am very pleased with the results in FSX. As Howard said; “I'm still with FSX but I could see a noticeable difference in certain scenarios having upgraded from a 580. So in P3Dv2 I suspect the difference will be even more noticable.”

 

My GTX 580 has served me well. It has performed reliably and given many hours of excellent flying experiences. The GTX 770 has definitely been an improvement and with BP=0 and Vsync the performance is smooth and frame rates have been staying in the upper 20’s to 30 (locked) even in heavy weather conditions (my favorite kind of flying). Texture loading during view changes seems almost immediate without lags and I’m not experiencing any texture loading flashes or autogen  spikes in spite of having the autogen sliders maxed.

 

Once again I want to thank everyone for your input and contributions to this and many other discussions. Your counsel has been invaluable.

 

Thank You All

 

Jesse

[MarkW 1,493]

Time for dumb question of the day.

 

If you upgrade a card from say a 580 to a 770, can you still keep your 580 installed so it can be used in SLI mode?  Not sure if you have to have two cards exactly the same for SLI to work properly.

 

I recognize SLI will not work in FSX, however, it is apparently on the horizon for P3D.

[RWFeldman 159]

No Howard. For SLI you need the same GPU.

[Need-To-Know 34]

 

 

If you upgrade a card from say a 580 to a 770, can you still keep your 580 installed so it can be used in SLI mode? Not sure if you have to have two cards exactly the same for SLI to work properly.

 

You could use the old card as a dedicated PhysX card in games that support PhysX. Not really a big benefit (certainly not for FSX or P3D) and I personally do not do that but others have.

 

Interesting Rendi that you have a 4 Gig GTX 780 - I did not think they made those.

[RWFeldman 159]

4 Gig GTX 780 - I did not think they made those.

 

Its a 3 Rob. Ill fix that. Thx. I had a 680 4gb and everyone was SO convincing P3DV2 microstutters were caused by the 680. Well, that is total BS, like usuall.

[Need-To-Know 34]

No problem just thought I had missed a card since I just bought mine a couple of weeks ago.

[JRBarrett 3,071]

The new 4 GB EVGA GTX 770/ACX Classified arrived late Friday afternoon and I installed it the next morning. The installation went smoothly, if not entirely flawlessly. Initially the card was apparently unrecognized and I was unable to get a Windows boot. Eventually it dawned on me that my BIOS was several generations out of date

Same thing happened to be. My ASUS Sabertooth Z77 mobo had a mid-2012 BIOS, and I received an error message on first boot that the UEFI system could not fully recognize and initialize the newly installed hardware, though the card did work well enough to actually display the BIOS setup screen. I updated the BIOS to the latest Oct 2013 image, and no further problem.

 

The latest Nvidia 331.82 drivers have been installed, and all went well. I got called in to work before I had a chance to really test the 770 in FSX and P3D, but I'll have the opportunity to do that tonight...

[n4gix 4,947]

I thought you were getting a 780.

That was the initial plan, until having to pay my dentist's avgas bill (*cough*) to the tune of $1,100 put paid to that idea! So ultimately I had to scale back my plans to a more modest GTX770 4GB Superclocked card... :blush:

[JesC 88]

That was the initial plan, until having to pay my dentist's avgas bill (*cough*) to the tune of $1,100 put paid to that idea! So ultimately I had to scale back my plans to a more modest GTX770 4GB Superclocked card... :blush:

 

I have a feeling you will be very pleased with your decision. (I imagine the dentist is pleased). I couldn't be happier with mine.

 

Best of luck on your install; looking forward to hearing how it goes. Thanks again for your input and help.

[KingGhidorah 209]

If my intention is to run 3 monitor surround once switching to P3D, what do you think would be the best configuration?

 

I'm inclined towards an SLI configuration (p3d and dcs will support in near future, other applications, right now) but I'm in a dillemna what is the right thing to do.

 

single Titan or 780 ti? Two 780's (3gb) in SLI?  Two 760 (4mb) in SLI?

 

Any way, it is going to hurt the pocketbook, but what would be the smartest?  When running multiple screens, what will hurt me the most, lack of speed or throughput, or lack of Vram? 

[Robert McDonald 167]

If my intention is to run 3 monitor surround once switching to P3D, what do you think would be the best configuration?

 

I'm inclined towards an SLI configuration (p3d and dcs will support in near future, other applications, right now) but I'm in a dillemna what is the right thing to do.

 

single Titan or 780 ti? Two 780's (3gb) in SLI?  Two 760 (4mb) in SLI?

 

Any way, it is going to hurt the pocketbook, but what would be the smartest?  When running multiple screens, what will hurt me the most, lack of speed or throughput, or lack of Vram?

 

I would say the VRAM is extremely important, in my view it is of paramount importance.  I simply couldn't cough up $3000 for triple Titans.  So I have Titan on my main pc, and bought a pair of happy meal pcs from a membership club for like $699.  I yanked the cheap nvidia GTX620 and the stock power supply and put in 750 watt Corsair CX750M (semi-modular) plus each PC got its own Msi GTX 770 OC card with 4GB VRAM.

 

I can't say about P3D-- but I will say in XPlane this works very well, frames are insane.  If graphics are important (and let's face it, you aren't considering 3 screens because they DON'T matter to you, you may want to really think hard about doing something along the lines I mentioned.  My system means there is a distinct CPU -and- GPU doing the rendering for every monitor.

 

The Matrox triple-head solution, or driving 3 monitors off ONE video card means that single card has to draw 3 times the display size in pixels, all at the same moment.  Can it be done?  Yes.  But there are two negatives.  The first is optical distortion when  you try to take a 1920x1080 widescreen and make it 3 times wider but the same vertical height.  This is sometimes called "fisheye".

 

Second is the fact that heavy texture loads become even heavier as the size of the window is so much bigger, this can result in Vram flooding which in turn causes stutters and even freezes that can last from micro to several seconds in length.

 

SLI has a history of its own, and you'll have to research it.  Newer video games that are engineered for SLI are going to handle it better than older stuff.  FSX doesn't benefit from SLI.  I see your comment that P3D will "soon" support SLI.  I always flinch when the "soon" word is thrown on the table.

 

Best of luck to you.

[Need-To-Know 34]

Use to use Newegg and Tiger for all my builds/addons. Now, only Amazon.

Ok I would add to your rep on this if the option was still available. I have ordered allot of computer products over the last few weeks (4k +).

 

I have order from:

• Tiger Direct - After 2 1/2 weeks of nothing shipping and having to alert Visa & Google shopping protection since they would not refund my money they finally agreed to refund my money. (Only to be notified three weeks later they never even had the product)
• Newegg - Takes them on average 4-5 days to even get the product out of the door - Ordered GTX 780, Asus Black Edition motherboard, memory, processors and fans.
• Frozen PC - Shipped same day I ordered all of my new watercooling.
• Amazon - Shipped same day.
• EVGA - Shipped next day -  Ordered GTX 780 backplate

So Mr Feldman that is good advice and will be switching to Amazon (not their vendors) for my orders from now on.