PhilT a ? if i may on Nvidia and FSX DX10

[PhilTaylor 45]

As far as the crash:As I have repeatedly said, the community needs to keep feeding nVidia bug reports. Someone here had a post that informed the community how to do so.That is the only way to get them to act since I cannot feed them a repro and they tell me they cannot repro.As far as any new rendering bugs:The same is a good tactic, although I would add non-fatal issues do creep in occasionally so that isnt totally unexpected.I would add that it is probably worthwhile to be active and politely vocal on the nV forums too, so the issue gets visibility beyond the bug reports.

[Guest Gizmo]

Hi PhilMany thanks for the reply Ive been reporting these various rendering bugs to Nvidia with every one of there new driver release's for the last 6 months as have many other ppl both from this forum and others ive visited (including Nvidia's own forums) and they done jack all about themIm not sure how many more bug reports they need telling them about the same rendering errors that have been present in everyone of there driver sets for the past 6 months (flashing/z clipping runway taxi lines)so at this point i can only guess they either dont really care about the FSX community & your hard work to bring DX10 imporvments to FSX or its a hardware faultI think it might be time to give them some bad press in the form of an ATI vs Nv DX10 FSX image quality compasions article,as it seems to be the only way Nv will act on driver bugs is when they get some bad press detailing the problems(just look how fast they jumped on the crysis water rendering bug/cheat)Thanks again for the replyCheersGizmo

[Ray Proudfoot 8,955]

Hi Phil,I'm sorry to hijack this thread with an unrelated question but your presence here is infrequent so I needed to take this opportunity.I read with interest your views on what makes a good graphics card for FSX. When you wrote that the ATI Radeon HD3870X2 was not available.I'd be interested in your opinion on it. I love it but others question whether it's utilising both GPUs and the 1Gb of memory. I feel FSX must be given its demands but I'm no expert. ;-)Thanks.

[ahuimanu 50]

I am not Phil, but I had a 1 Gb 2900 for two weeks prior to getting two 3870s (seperate cards which can be CrossFired).1 GB of vid memory is cutting it cose with a 32bit OS and FSX. I have 4GB on Vista Ultimate 32-bit and the margins looked slim to me.Anyhoo, over to Phil.

[FlyinMisfit 0]

hi Ray,the Only time the 1GB of Ram will be used on the 3870 X2 is if your running the card in "Crossfire" mode (both chipsets active). and, you need the Cat.8.3's or higher to do so. in what i call non-Crossfire mode, only 1 chipset is active. And, Each chipset Only has access to 512MB of the total 1GB of Ram on the video card via a 256 bit Bus. i've seen this same info. on every Web review of the 3870 X2 that i've read. and, in Maximum PC & CPU Magazines. i subscribe to both. in case you don't know, another (now former) 3870 X2 user "sargeski" has gone back to his 8800GTX. if ur interested, ck. out his post in the FS Hdw. forum. happy flyin, FM

[Ray Proudfoot 8,955]

Hi FM,Thanks for your reply. However, I'm mystified. How do I choose whether to run in CrossFire mode or not? There is so software or hardware setting. The Crossfire link is internal in the card. I'm presuming the card is permanently in Crossfire mode. Why wouldn't it be? That is how it was advertised. As a 1Gb dual-GPU card. Not as two separate 512Mb cards.I'm currently using the 8.4 drivers so presumably the card is able to make available up to 1Gb of memory to appications. If it isn't then the manufacturers may be in breach of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (UK).The nVidia 9800GX2 is also a dual-GPU card. Does that fall into the same category where only one GPU is utilised?

[PhilTaylor 45]

The reviews I have seen indicate the 3870x2 is a very good card. And the pricing is also pretty good.With newer add-ons coming out with 2048x and 4096x textures, the extra memory is likely to be useful given some posters are already reporting 500m used. Edit: if the card can be used so full memory is available, reports seem to vary.Perf is only as good as the weakest link, however, so you need a great CPU+mobo+memory combination to back it up else you have an unbalanced system.With that in mind, it will be interesting to see what faster 45nm CPUs, PCIe 3 ( which ups the bus bandwidth by about 37% ), and 1600Mhz FSB and memory speeds provide in terms of performance uplift.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,955]

<<1 GB of vid memory is cutting it cose with a 32bit OS and FSX. I have 4GB on Vista Ultimate 32-bit and the margins looked slim to me.>>I don't understand that statement - sorry. Can you clarify?

[Ray Proudfoot 8,955]

Hi Phil,Thank you for confirming what I expected. My system is detailed in my sig - System 1 is my FSX PC so you can see it has a new Penryn E8400 3GHz CPU on an Asus P5K-E/Wi-Fi mobo - 1333FSB, Crucial Ballistix PC8500 RAM and a couple of fast Samsung Spinpoint HDs. If there is a weak link there I'm not sure where it is. The CPU I suppose as it always needs to be faster! :-)In your opinion would FSX be using both GPUs and by definition more than 512Mb of RAM? Or is it not demanding enough? With nVidia now bringing out their own twin GPU card it seems to be the way card manufacturers are going.Is FSX able to take advantage of twin GPU cards?

[PhilTaylor 45]

As long as the magic happens in the driver like SLI/Crossfire then yes we should use the hw.How much advantage we get from it, well that is going to depend on the rest of the system and the settings.If you are displaying 250,000 trees and 250,000 buildings and are bus bandwidth bound, the graphics card isnt going to help with that.

[Guest S1mPilot]

I've been a member at nvnews since approx 1998. It's clear to me that it's one of the most preminent english speaking nvidia fan sites. I'd say it's a given that a very large number of nvidia employees frequent the site.Gizmo, Solar Eagle, and myself (amoung others) fuel a long running FSX thread there, http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=78216We've posted some simply beautiful screenshots in that thread. I'm fairly confident that they introduced many new users to flight sims and FSX in particular. Those same screen shots really highlight nvidia's hardware imo.I've crashed the majority of beta/whql driver threads there at nvnews and reported whatever fsx bugs I've noticed. Gizmo, and Silly have continualy done the same. I've personaly linked to video footage of the flashing taxiways under dx10. IMO there is no way that nvidia is unaware of the problems. My conclusion is that they are indifferent towards fixing FSX.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,955]

Well I'll start counting trees and buildings on my next flight but I'm pretty sure I don't have that number visible. :-)Perhaps there is an option in Ray Adams' Tray Tools I can select that will show the amount of video RAM being used. If it's > 512Mb then the second GPU and its RAM is being used.Thanks Phil.

[sargeski 16]

>I've personaly>linked to video footage of the flashing taxiways under dx10.>IMO there is no way that nvidia is unaware of the problems. >My conclusion is that they are indifferent towards fixing>FSX.Being an owner of both the 3870X2 and the 8800GTX the DX10 issues are not fixed with the ATI card. It appears to me that problems lies with FSX DX10 preview.Just thought I would share that. For some reason many people tend to beleive those anomolies do not exsist with the ATI Radeon cards......The reality of it is they do. I do not see any driver tweaks fixing FSXs impemenatation of DX10.

[FlyinMisfit 0]

Ray,if memory serves me correctly you have to enable Crossfire in the CCC. the 1GB of Memory will only be used if Crossfire enabled. what i mentioned in my previous post about each chipset individually having access to only 1/2 of the total Ram is verified (assuming that Crossfire is Not enabled) by going into Display Properties and clicking on the adapter tab and you'll see that only 512MB of Memory is displayed. you can also run the DirectX diagnostic tool (Start/Run and type DXdiag.exe then click ok) and click on the Adapter tab and see the same thing. and, you can open the CCC and click on the little "plus sign" to the left of "Information Center" then click on "Graphics Hardware" then look near the bottom on the right side and look at the "Memory Size" field and again you'll see 512MB. if you don't believe me that's ok. i'm just passing along the same info. that i've read in the reviews as stated in my previous. i'm not sure how SLI is enabled with the Nvidia cards. i haven't used one in years. happy flyin, FM

[FlyinMisfit 0]

hi sargeski,using the X2 myself as well i can confirm what you just stated. the ATI cards do not eliminate the DX10 issues brought about by SP2 for FSX. also, i had the same issues with my old ATI X1950 XTX with FSX and SP2. happy flyin, FM