XPX and graphic cards

[Ayki 2]

with GTX 680 everything full and clicked except AA is FXAA. = 15-20 fps.  I love the environment so much that i reject to lower graphics  
 

Edit: Forgot to mention,  nvidia is better than ATI imao but new series may be better never tried them. (290x 290 vs vs)

[HiFlyer 9,359]

That's what I was wondering. So in X-Plane a 4GB 770 won't make much of an improvement over a 4GB 760?

 

Well, I tried a little experiment. Everyone and their dog seems to be aiming to get a 4gb graphics card, but is it really necessary? I took a look at a video, done with these reported settings and this equipment:

 

GTX 770 4 GB

Intel Core i7 4770 3.4 GhZ

OCZ Vertex 4 SSD

8 GB RAM

Linux Mint 15, 64 bit

 

Scenery settings: HDR on (4x SSAA+FXAA), objects TOO MANY, trees OVERGROWN, roads TONS, shadows HIGH, detail distance HIGH, anisotropic filter 16x, cars Siberia, clouds 35%, texture resolution VERY HIGH, compress VRAM textures off. Visibility 100, clouds variable.

 

 

Watching that video, I noted his FPS seemed to bottom out at about 13 and top out at 19, only going higher when he switched to evening which effectively took shadows out of the equation. 

 

My system: i7 920 @ 4ghz \ Corsair H80 Cpu Cooler \ Asus P6T Deluxe\Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty

Nvidia 770GTX 2gb \ 6 Gigs Corsair Ram 7-7-7-20 1N \ Windows7 Ultimate 64Bit

 

I then matched those settings on my 2gb card; only as a stress test I had both X-plane 10 default scenery and Aerosofts ManhattanX running simultaneously. Not surprisingly, my frames ranged between 14 and 10 which was actually better than I was expecting with those settings especially since I chose a time when shadows were very elongated.

 

 

Switching to just to Xplane with the videos same settings netted me.... pretty much the exact same FPS he was showing. (see pic below)

 

Granted, my Cpu is overclocked to 4.0 GHz but his Cpu automatically scales to 3.80 GHz and is a newer architecture. He also has more ram than me. Functionally, the systems are very close, yet his extra Vram made no effective difference. Additionally, my texture load was less than 1Gb and handled easily by my card.

 

 

It seems that the place where X-plane really takes advantage of more Vram is when textures are maxed (extreme) and probably when uncompressed settings are used. For myself, I find the visual difference so small that I never use those higher settings anyway.

 

Based on what I have been seeing, my conclusion is that If I was forced to choose between a faster 2gb card and a slower 4gb I would likely go for the faster 2gb card. 

[JimmiG 244]

With VRAM, you either have enough, or you don't. If the sim is only pushing 600 MB of textures, having a ton of VRAM sitting there all empty will not enhance performance. However if you're trying to display 1,500 MB of textures with a 1GB card, everything will slow to a crawl because textures have to be constantly swapped to main RAM over the slow PCI-E interface.

 

Also keep in mind that X-Plane *needs* ~19 FPS or more. If you get less, the whole simulation engine will run in slow-motion.

[stefltt 11]

 

 

It seems that the place where X-plane really takes advantage of more Vram is when textures are maxed (extreme) and probably when uncompressed settings are used. For myself, I find the visual difference so small that I never use those higher settings anyway.

 

And maybe VRAM is needed if you use HD Mesh V2 from Altpilotx and OSM sceneries at the same time with an add-on like the 757 or the 777 from FlightFactor, I think.

Actually Win7 is telling me that I need to close the program because I am running out of memory (I have 8Gb RAM)

[HiFlyer 9,359]

And maybe VRAM is needed if you use HD Mesh V2 from Altpilotx and OSM sceneries at the same time with an add-on like the 757 or the 777 from FlightFactor, I think.

Actually Win7 is telling me that I need to close the program because I am running out of memory (I have 8Gb RAM)

I am using the hd mesh as well, but yes, if you are throwing the kitchen sink at the sim,your ram usage will be higher. But I think xplane gives you good control of that. For instance, if you are flying a tubeliner up above the clouds, why would you need high resolution ground textures?

[Longranger 148]

And maybe VRAM is needed if you use HD Mesh V2 from Altpilotx and OSM sceneries at the same time with an add-on like the 757 or the 777 from FlightFactor, I think.

 

Especially something like OSM + Autogen, add the European Library in a European setting, HD Mesh 2 (in some locations it needs dramatically more RAM than in others. In NYC the needed RAM sholud be pretty low),a plane with HD textures, and a few custom buildings and you will know where VRAM is needed. I had to lower my resolution to very high after a flight through Frankfurt.

[Humpty 751]

wow shots !

 

Why not check the 290x .

[stefltt 11]

At first, I was going to buy an AMD R9 290X but after reading the different answers, my choice will be an EVGA GeForce GTX 770 Dual FTW ACX Cooler 4 Go.

It seems that the latest Catalyst Drivers have problems with HDR in XPX, and they recommend to revert back to the previous one, but unfortunately, they are not suitable for the latest 290X.

[Humpty 751]

At first, I was going to buy an AMD R9 290X but after reading the different answers, my choice will be an EVGA GeForce GTX 770 Dual FTW ACX Cooler 4 Go.

It seems that the latest Catalyst Drivers have problems with HDR in XPX, and they recommend to revert back to the previous one, but unfortunately, they are not suitable for the latest 290X.

 

 

Oh K.

[mtaxp 666]

The VRAM amount has nothing to do with the performance,unless you are getting close the MAX amount of the card,or even pass it,then the GPU needs to do some inside optimizations and that KILLS the fps.

For example:

GTX 770 2GB VS R9 280X 4GB.

 

These 2 are supposed to give you pretty much the same performance,but when you well reach 2GB+ of VRAM (And it mostly depends on the resolution of your textures&your monitor) the GTX770 will struggle because it's reaching his MAX VRAM amount while the R9 280X still has many free VRAM space,so,in this kind of situations,the R9 280X will give MUCH better performance.

 

I guess that XP10 when maximizing settings will reach about 2.5gb at 1920X1080, so it'll be safe to buy a 3GB (GTX780 3GB is great per value after the decrease in it's price)

 

BTW when XP10 will use Open GL4.1 (and this will happen with 10.30),the VRAM usage is supposed to get much lower,although there will be more effects and eye candy.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

The VRAM amount has nothing to do with the performance,unless you are getting close the MAX amount of the card,or even pass it,then the GPU needs to do some inside optimizations and that KILLS the fps.

For example:

GTX 770 2GB VS R9 280X 4GB.

 

These 2 are supposed to give you pretty much the same performance,but when you well reach 2GB+ of VRAM (And it mostly depends on the resolution of your textures&your monitor) the GTX770 will struggle because it's reaching his MAX VRAM amount while the R9 280X still has many free VRAM space,so,in this kind of situations,the R9 280X will give MUCH better performance.

 

No argument there.

 

I just wonder about the huge ram hunger XPX and now P3D are showing when other programs throwing around numbers of polygons and effects that make these two seem like toys are not requiring these enormous ram budgets. Something seems askew, and the old saw about Sims requiring more power because of intricate Flight models is getting weaker and weaker, if it has any relevance at all nowadays.

 

If XPX and P3D! truly requires those sort of ram budgets then something seems wrong. Somebody else said it better.

 

http://8f5fd8f1af.49.mycloudproxy.com/showthread.php?t=1648445&page=2

 

I wouldn't call myself an expert, but I do have some experience with graphics programming. The screenshot you show illustrates how the engine manages the LOD (look how the upper fifth of the image becomes blurry). The high detailed parts of the image is middle and bottom. For a 1920x1200 display, this level of quality is easily supplied by 512x512 textures (which are all 1MB before compression). Assuming that the rendered scene utilises 36 (6x6) tiles, its well under 40MB of VRAM (under 60 if you include bump maps). What indeed would use lots of VRAM is the highest-level of detail, but you only need to load it if you are really close to the ground, basically, if all other tiles are not or just barely visible. Let's, for the sake of the argument, assume that you need the highest level of detail when your plane is below 5km. Assuming cruising altitude of 8000 km, even if you direct your plane straight down to the ground at mach 1, your engine has 8 seconds to stream the texture data to the card. This is actually enough to open the file, load the texture, decompress it on the CPU and upload it to the GPU. This way or another, there is no reason why the scene you post should use up over 2GB of VRAM, because no texture level over 512x512 is even being utilised there! The only explanation I can find is that engine programmers are 'lazy' and upload all texture levels simultaneously, instead of streaming the highest level of detail dynamically as required. I mean, ID software managed to utilise HUGE textures for their games, without using up too much VRAM and maintaining very good performance levels - because of smart engine programming.

 

 

I don't totally agree with this (especially the comment about lazy programming) But I really am skeptical about the amount of ram these programs are swallowing.

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

I use the zotac gtx 770 4gb.

 

It works fine in x-plane 10.25 with skymaxx pro, hd mesh 2 and addon aircraft. I keep global shadows at medium. Lowest I ever see is 19fps in a heavy city area. My VRAM usage is normally between 2200 and 2800. I don't compress textures and run at extreme setting.

 

No complaints here!

 

Ian

[Slayer 190]

I've maxed out the Vram on my Titan (6GB) not even at max settings using Nvidia surround. Don't be so quick to write it off. Nothing can still touch this card in XPX/multimonitor setup

 

Even with modest settings and triple monitor it's up to 4.5 GB so even a 4GB card will not cut it.

 

I don't see any other 6GB cards on the horizon either....

[Longranger 148]

 

I just wonder about the huge ram hunger XPX and now P3D are showing when other programs throwing around numbers of polygons and effects that make these two seem like toys are not requiring these enormous ram budgets. Something seems askew, and the old saw about Sims requiring more power because of intricate Flight models is getting weaker and weaker, if it has any relevance at all nowadays.

Not really. The comments that were made have a huge problem. If you really want to differentiate so much with the flight level you will always have certain hights where the simulation stops, since your graphics card more or less have to reload their complete VRAM. Not really practical. You can avoid a lot of these problems with special rules when to reload or triks in the texture generation itself, but the more rules or tricks you use, the more difficult it becomes for users or 3rd party developers to modify.

When you have a flight simulator many of the most common tricks to manage huge textures fail. If you have a huge area to manage and depend on 3rd party contributions it becomes more and more difficult to find useable tricks.

Think about it: Laminar uses some advanced tricks but suddenly everything that was done before is no longer useable. Would you like this flight simulator?

I think X-Plane is on a way to improve some of their systems in the long run. They use WED. If most of the library was managed or improved by WED it might be possible to rebuild the content for the new version.

For Prepare3D it would be even more difficult to allow and support such upgrades.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Think about it: Laminar uses some advanced tricks but suddenly everything that was done before is no longer useable. Would you like this flight simulator?

 

Isn't that kind of what happened in the switch to 64 bit? From what I have read, LR has not exactly been shy historically about changing things that subsequently break other things for 3rd parties.....

 

Oh well.

 

 

Its just..... When I see things like this, I get very curious about how the sim is using memory, and where on earth its all going, and under what circumstances. I've been experimenting a lot, changing settings and etc, trying small alterations again and again (mostly playing with AA) to see what happens..... and something about how XPX handles textures/memory seems..... unusual. For instance, why does it require extreme, memory gobbling texture settings just to get an un-blurred runway????

 

It just makes me go Hmmmmmmmmm.....  :unsure: