Video card on PCI-Express bus

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

G'day all,Is anyone using a PCI-E bus video card with Fly! II???Still wading through technical specs for a new computer upgrade and wondering if Fly! II will work with a PCI-E bus video card or whether I HAVE to stick with an AGP bus motherboard.Your help is really appreciated.Cheers,Roger

[Guest tonyc]

Roger, I don't have PCI, but from what I know, it should have no impact on your ability to run FLY2. It's strictly a bus related issue, meaning how the video card talks to the motherboard and cpu.tony

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

G'day Tony,Thanks mate: I feel a little better. I know that Fly! II can be very selective as to what video cards it likes/dislikes. It looks like I'll be the guinea pig on this issue. :-)Whilst on the subject of video cards which do think is the MORE important feature for Fly! II. A fast graphics chip or a large on board memory on the card?Cheers,Roger

[Guest tonyc]

Now, you're putting me on the spot, Roger. There's no question that with more video memory, you will be able to tweak the render.ini to your delight, thereby reducing the 4fps or errors from allocating too many texture slots. However, and this is the tough part, FLY2 initially loads textures from the hard drive, which creates those pauses as you scroll the scenery or bank an aircraft. As to the optimum number of texture slots to affect positively FLy2's performance? I am not sure whether there's a good answer to this question, or anyone ever found it.I've gone from a 256 video memory to a 128, and after the initial paranoia-- did it affect FLY2?--, I honestly can't tell the difference in performance. I am referring to the 256vs128 memory change. I did reduce the allocated slots , though.So, in terms of my persperpective on video cards.....Buy the video card that works best for msfx. Use it then for older sims.In the end, I found peace in the relentless quest for smooth, fast frames, by tweaking the high and mid resolution radii in the scenery options.My system: fx6600gt 128ram amd cpu 2500mhz 1 gig ram.FLY2 frame rates: 20-60 under all conditions.tony

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

G'day Tony,Great reply post mate!. Thanks. After all my previous video card changes I've come to the conclusion that the memory on the card is more important than the speed of the cards. I was getting quality graphics from my geForce 2 GTS 32 Mb card. Upgrading to the nvidia FX-5900 128 Mb card raised the FPS a bit but there are still pauses as data is read off the hard drive. I've mentally settled on getting the 7600GS 512 Mb card which is only half the price of the faster cards and will put the savings toward the cost of Raptor (10000rpm) hard drives, which I hope will help reduce the pauses.I don't know where MSFSX fits into the argument. I have bought it (deluxe edition) but haven't yet installed it. :-) " it's dead ; wrapped in plastic." sitting on the shelf with all my other software. :-lol The computer I'm setting up is for Fly! II. If it will run MSFSX so well and good, that's a bonus, and is secondary. Unfortunately there is no "testing" available, but I'm reasonably confident.Cheers,Roger

[Frank Dhont 1]

Hello, RogerI'm using PCI-Express video card with Fly!2 since 1 year, and can confirm it works fine and fluid (enough fps)Video card Nvidia 6800 (256 MB ram) Pentium 4 3,4Ghz Cheers,Frank

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

G'day Frank,Thanks very much for the confirmation.That's it then. I'll definitely get a PCI-Express video card.I'm feeling a lot better now. :-)Cheers,Roger

[Guest Bill Hinton]

Roger,This site may help you: www.geeks.com/techtips/default.aspScroll down to "Tech Tips Archives" and select "tech-tips HARDWARE".

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

G'day Bill,Thanks for the great link. Very informative. PCI-E it is then - its faster and most new graphics cards are for that bus format. I've also decided on high speed (10,000rpm)SATA (3 GB/sec) rather than RAID which is more complicated and COSTLY (3 hard drives needed to get performance increase AND preserve data integrity) Hardware has changed so much since I built my last computer it like starting all over again. :-)Thanks for helping.Cheers,Roger

[Guest tonyc]

Good thinking, Roger. Raid was intended for databases, not games. Do get a second drive for back up, however. Also, I have partitioned my primary drive into two partitions: the window xp partition and the Programs partition. This can have a great impact on FLY.Read up on partitions. It speeds up the computer as well as facilitate backup and restoring options when things fail. You should also look into the Ultimate Defragger (http://www.disktrix.com/ultimatedefrag/ultimatedefrag.htm). As you may know, while it's nice to have larger storage devices, in computer time they are still slow. The location of the files on the actual disk platter itself do affect the speed with which they can be read. Flight simmers swear by its ability to speed things up, especially scenery.I just purchased it, but have not installed it yet.tony