FSX - GTX980 or GTX980ti

[aerostar 42]

After looking at some reviews of both I see that some 980's can be clocked up to around the 1500mhz mark which is almost 300Mhz more than I can clock my GTX680 4mb version graphics card.

 

That seems like a good jump in performance, around 25%.

 

The reports for the   980ti   though show that it can only be clocked up to around 1150Mhz, which is less than the 1200Mhz speed that I'm getting just now.

Benchmarks seem to suggest that the   980ti  is the best/fastest card for most games especially at 4K  (which is the resolution I'm using for FSX). 

 

1 - Why is the slower card the better in Benchmarks and what card would be the best for FSX 4K going on the premise that FSX likes FAST CPU speeds and        presumably FAST Graphics cards ?

 

2 - How do the figures stack up with P3Dv3 as it uses Graphics cards cards differently ?

 

3 - Regarding Motherboards I have heard that they use the PCIe video Bus to also transfer Disk Drive data. Can this shared use cause stutters and is it best to      put  FSX on the same drive as Windows (less drives in use) ?

 

aero

 

[RW1 615]

I have an Asus 980ti and my OC is 1229mhz, that's using the Asus gpu tweak but i can push even more without any issues.

 

[Mickeyj 35]

I wouldnt spend too much money into either card for FSX except you would use it for gaming as well. FSX will not benefit from 980/980ti.

 

If you consider to use P3Dv3.x then you see benefits but only in the sections Tesselation, Clouds, Lighting, high AA/SGSS

 

It is best to put the sim on a dedicated drive. I suggest an SSD. It gives you faster loading times.

[aerostar 42]

Thanks Rick and MJ...  Rick have you guaged the 980TI 's performance in Flightsim against other cards ?     ....and MJ don't you think a jump from 1200 to 1500Mhz would make a difference ?

 

I see my GPU usage in P3D at 100% in added scenery areas and sometimes going to over 90% in FSX....

 

thanks...

[RW1 615]

Aero my previous card was a gtx780 which was great in fsx but struggled to handle what the 980ti can give me now in p3dv3.1, i can run great fps and do not regret spending the extra for the performance gain, i just need to update my 4770k cpu now, i also run a separate ssd for p3d.

Just make sure if you get a 980ti you absolutely need efficient cooling or water cooled setup for oc, its a must.

 

Regarding using ssd`s in the pci slots i doubt the data transfer speeds will be much better than ssd hard drives for the cost. i prefer using the full 16x bandwith for the 980.

[kevinfirth 1,392]

Am getting near to 1500MHz on my 980Ti, on air, P3D3 eats it up, not so sure FSX would benefit...

[spesimen 135]

After looking at some reviews of both I see that some 980's can be clocked up to around the 1500mhz mark which is almost 300Mhz more than I can clock my GTX680 4mb version graphics card.

 

That seems like a good jump in performance, around 25%.

 

 

1 - Why is the slower card the better in Benchmarks 

 

3 - Regarding Motherboards I have heard that they use the PCIe video Bus to also transfer Disk Drive data. Can this shared use cause stutters and is it best to      put  FSX on the same drive as Windows (less drives in use) ?

 

1- when you are comparing cards that are a few generations apart, comparing clock speeds is only a part of the picture, other things like memory bandwidth, number of shader units, floating point performance, advances in the fundamental architecture, all are very different ...and is why raw scores will show those cards as almost a 50% improvement in rendering benchmarks even at a slower clock..the newer card is doing a lot more work per clock cycle basically..

 

3- disk use should not affect other peripherals that use the bus except in very unusual or possibly broken circumstances, at least on modern systems.. the transfer rate of PCIe is huge compared to a hard drive it is like a trickle in the bucket compared to what is being thrown back and forth between the cpu and the video card (this is an oversimplification but i hope that gives an idea)

 

cheers

-andy crosby

[magnetite 38]

3 - Regarding Motherboards I have heard that they use the PCIe video Bus to also transfer Disk Drive data. Can this shared use cause stutters and is it best to      put  FSX on the same drive as Windows (less drives in use)?

 

PCIe 3.0 is faster and has more lanes than PCIe 2.0. Imagine driving through a reduced speed construction zone with one or two lanes cut off all the way to work (moderate traffic), compared to driving at full speed with no restrictions. That's under DX10. Under DX9, you're driving through a construction zone in addition to having bumper to bumper traffic.

 

The SATA ports are fed from the CPU to the chipset (eg. P67, Z170, etc), then to the SATA ports.

 

Depends on the kind of drive you use. If you have an old hard drive, then it would be a good idea. For SSDs, it doesn't make a difference.

[Bob Scott 7,716]

No real difference that I could see going from GTX980 to a GTX980Ti in FSX--the program is CPU-limited and can't make full use of either GPU.

 

If you have any potential plans for P3D or want to run late-edition 3D games, I'd go with the Ti, though.

 

Regards

[aerostar 42]

Thanks guys ,  its settled now in my mind that the GTX980TI is the way to go,  especially for when P3DV3 has most of the FSX addons working in it and I make it my main Flightsim.

 

With the 980TI able to clock to near 1500Mhz, that really nailed it.

 

Am getting near to 1500MHz on my 980Ti, on air, P3D3 eats it up, not so sure FSX would benefit...

 

Kevin I would presume you are using water cooling for the card ? Can I ask how much a difference the overclock makes and do you still get stutters or buzz or any other anomalies especially with TrackIR ?  Is it a specially factory overclocked card or what method do you use to clock the card....   would really like to get one running at that kind of speed (if it improves the sim).

 

aero

[kevinfirth 1,392]

no not water its fan cooled. it has 3 HUGE fans on it (its the zotac Amp extreme edition) and its as quiet as a gagged mouse even o/c'ed to the limit. Eats everything I've been able to throw at it bar none, even at 2x DSR...

 

picked it up from overclockers uk ovee christmas at a hefty discount

[vortex681 806]

PCIe 3.0 is faster and has more lanes than PCIe 2.0. Imagine driving through a reduced speed construction zone with one or two lanes cut off all the way to work (moderate traffic), compared to driving at full speed with no restrictions. That's under DX10. Under DX9, you're driving through a construction zone in addition to having bumper to bumper traffic.

There's apparently only a very small difference in performance running a PCIe 3 card in a PCIe 2 slot. See http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/pci-express-scaling-game-performance-analysis-review,1.html for a detailed review. Admittedly the tests were only carried out at 2560x1440 and mostly using DX11 (which puts more of a load on the GPU), but the results are surprising.

[magnetite 38]

There's apparently only a very small difference in performance running a PCIe 3 card in a PCIe 2 slot. See http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/pci-express-scaling-game-performance-analysis-review,1.html for a detailed review. Admittedly the tests were only carried out at 2560x1440 and mostly using DX11 (which puts more of a load on the GPU), but the results are surprising.

 

Those weren't tested with FSX though.

 

So in a game like Bioshock Infinite, there's only a 1-2 FPS difference between PCIe 1.0 and 3.0. Under FSX, there's almost a 20-30 FPS difference (with BP=0) between PCIe 1.0 and 3.0.

[aerostar 42]

Thinking hard about how to get the best experience from P3DV3 and future sims in 4K.....

If I were to upgrade my CPU along with the GTX 980TI.... which would be the best cpu for P3DV3 available just now...  would a 6 or 8 core be better than 4 ?

 

Thanks for all your input guys,

[magnetite 38]

Skylake i7 6700K is the current king of CPUs. As for the number of cores, I would read this.