Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: AV8R on June 26, 2012, 08:20:35 pm
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Ok, after playing FreeSpace Open for many months on my old PC, I felt like it was finally time to upgrade my old rig to something with more up-to-date hardware. So, after making a few bucks selling old junk on eBay, I cherry-picked some nice stuff on NewEgg and put it all together last weekend. Here's the switch:
Old PC:
Old Dell P3 Motherboard mATX (Intel i815 Chipset)
Intel Pentium III 1.0Ghz (yes, you read that right)
Mushkin 512MB PC133 RAM
ATI 9700 256MB AGP Video Card
WD 160GB IDE Hard Drive
Windows XP SP3 x86
New PC:
Asrock B75M mATX Motherboard (Intel B75 Chipset)
Intel Pentium G860 3.0Ghz (Sandy Bridge)
G.Skill 2GB 1333 DDR3 RAM
AMD FirePro 3D v4800 Video Card
WD 250GB SATA3 HD
Windows 7 SP1 x86
The old PC has held up amazing well over the years with most of the games I threw at it, but since I'm just a space-sim lover and didn't put many demanding titles on the old PC, it was adequate for the task. That is until I played Silent Threat: Reborn for the first time. Everything was fine until the Hades showed up (with all of its textures/polygons) and then the FPS went south in a hurry (avg 20-25). It got worse in the final battle - maybe 10-15FPS. I got through it but I was a little dissapointed that my trusty P3 wasn't up to the task of providing the eye-candy that FSOpen was supposed to supply.
Enter new hardware - and after I got everything put together, OS loaded, OpenAL installed and copied over my FreeSpace folder from my old PC I ran FSOpen for the first time. Well, it certainly loaded faster and, as a bonus, the opening movie played without the familiar audio skipping that had plagued me on all cut-scenes on my old PC. I went into the tech room and fired up the Warship Gauntlet just so I could get used to and performance differences between the 2 computers. What I found actually blew me away.
What I noticed immediately was the quality of the textures on the ships, especially the procedural textures. The moving "flames" of the exhaust from the capital ships (I never saw this on my old PC probably due to the age of my video card/drivers and the lack of support it had for some of the OpenGL features implemented in FSOpen) was awesome! That's why I opted for a "professional" series video card in my new rig that could handle the latest OpenGL features and has drivers super-optimized for OpenGL (that and many sims I play are OpenGL-based).
And thus the thread title - Wow, just wow! I just got done playing Silent Threat: Reborn again this week and the experience was like night and day. The beauty of the textures combined with the performance of new, optimized hardware brought the FSOpen experience to a whole new level for me. I didn't know what I was missing playing on old hardware. Hopefully this new rig will continue to serve me well in the years to come with the sims I love to play - like FSOpen.
I look forward to the continued growth/improvements that the genius coders here continue to build into this product for the enjoyment of all who love to play one of the greatest space-sims ever written.
Thanks everyone and cheers! :yes:
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Gotta love upgrades. :) I'm still stuck on my old crappy Pentium 4 Dell, but even then, going from 512 MB of RAM to 3 GB, and a Radeon X300 to an HD 4670, was like night and day.
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My old rig is tough and able to handle most games alright, but I want something to actually handle huge battles without choking. I have an early generation 2GB VRAM card that has a lot of space, but it doesn't process very efficiently. I've been saving up for the past few months to grab a $1000 computer that will last much longer than my hand-built rig.
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From a P3 to a Sandy bridge? That's like 12 years worth of upgrading right there.
So uh, welcome to 2012 mate. I hope you will enjoy your stay :p
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I did my upgrade January of last year from an Athlon 2600XP to a Phenom II X2 560.
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From a P3 to a Sandy bridge? That's like 12 years worth of upgrading right there.
So uh, welcome to 2012 mate. I hope you will enjoy your stay :p
Yeah, I'm kinda liking this whole 21st century thing now.
Perhaps I will stay. ;)
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From a P3 to a Sandy bridge? That's like 12 years worth of upgrading right there.
So uh, welcome to 2012 mate. I hope you will enjoy your stay :p
Yeah, I'm kinda liking this whole 21st century thing now.
Perhaps I will stay. ;)
Like FPS shooters? Go play Crysis. ;) Just don't forget to pick up your jaw from the floor when you're done.
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From a P3 to a Sandy bridge? That's like 12 years worth of upgrading right there.
So uh, welcome to 2012 mate. I hope you will enjoy your stay :p
Well, more like 2011, since sandy bridge came out then.
Don't shoot me :nervous:
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From a P3 to a Sandy bridge? That's like 12 years worth of upgrading right there.
So uh, welcome to 2012 mate. I hope you will enjoy your stay :p
It's only a G860. Can't really hold a candle to my i5. :nervous:
/me flaunts rig
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Yeah but I imagine he could always update to a Sandy Bridge i7 later.. What then? ;7
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It's only a G860. Can't really hold a candle to my i5. :nervous:
/me flaunts rig
Pppfffff, only an i5? Come back when you are cool and have an i7 like me. :p
Anyway, if he survived all these years with a friggin' p3... a G860 is going to be an endless world of difference. And he probably isnt running anything that would require even more power.
Well, more like 2011, since sandy bridge came out then.
Don't shoot me :nervous:
:beamz:
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I'm currently having a look at technical progress (by playing Wolfenstein 3D and reading old Dilbert strips :)), we indeed went a long way in those 12 years.
I think you might like this: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-02-19/
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Yeah but I imagine he could always update to a Sandy Bridge i7 later.. What then? ;7
Actually this motherboard supports Ivy Bridge processors. So when I get bored with the G860 (and have some disposable $$) I can upgrade at my leisure (it's a drop-in upgrade). And as a bonus, I'll also get a boost from the 1600Mhz memory bus (up from 1333 using Sandy Bridge).
Win-win! ;7
@ Dragon: Loved the classic Dilbert cartoon! :D
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35 inch is still a huge monitor though :p
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I still find the advance of technology fascinating. And I still have a computer from that era hanging around, that once in a while I like to pull out and fiddle around with. Though a 35" screen would still be pretty awesome even now.
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Did anyone tell Intel that their newer names for processor lines are incredibly silly? I mean, what's a "sandy bridge," anyway? A bridge that someone tracked sand onto? :p
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it's as good as any other name there's ever been for hardware.
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IIRC, the "Bridge" part refers to some important structure inside the CPU (don't ask me what is it exactly, I study physics, not engineering), and "Sandy" might be the name of somebody important to the project (or maybe the design team).
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or Intel just has a naming convention of naming processors after bridges
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"Sandy Bridge CPU architecture -- Successor to the Nehalem microarchitecture. Manufactured on the same 32 nm process as Westmere. Renamed from Gesher. Gesher in Hebrew means bridge and there is a lot of sand in Israel. Thus "Sandy Bridge" is born. "
"Gesher CPU architecture -- A processor microarchitecture, the successor to Nehalem. Renamed to Sandy Bridge after it was discovered that Gesher is also the name of a political party in Israel.[19] The Hebrew word for 'bridge'. 2006 "
from Wikipedia. It had a Hebrew name initially because it was developed primarily in Israel.
Edit actually: http://newsroom.intel.com/community/news/blog/2010/12/28/sandy-bridge-breaks-the-mold-for-chip-codenames
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A quote from that article:
"Ever since the early 1990s Intel has used existing geographical, non-trademarked places in the United States or Canada that can be located on a map for codenames."
Apparently, Intel had to be careful about using names of cartoon characters, movies and deceased famous peoples' names as code names (the article mentions the "Zappa" debacle - as in Frank Zappa). Using rivers and small town names (Clarkdale, Lynnfield, Bloomfield, Gulftown, etc) ended up being a safer bet - less of a chance of trademark infringement and litigation.
Makes me wanna go out a trademark the word "trademark" - this way everybody has to pay me to name their products! :lol:
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I think someone should just go Max Payne on those responsible for the trademark / patent mess. Protecting your inventions is one thing. Being an asshole at the expense of everyone else is another.
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I think someone should just go Max Payne on those responsible for the trademark / patent mess. Protecting your inventions is one thing. Being an asshole at the expense of everyone else is another.
*cough* Apple *cough*
:nono:
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You wouldn't happen to be BeachAV8R from SimHQ?
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That's why I opted for a "professional" series video card in my new rig that could handle the latest OpenGL features and has drivers super-optimized for OpenGL (that and many sims I play are OpenGL-based).
Now I'm curious. Is there really a significant increase in performance running OpenGL applications with a FirePro (or Quadro) compared to "normal" consumer cards? I mean, the price difference can be pretty huge. Is the gain worth the price?
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You wouldn't happen to be BeachAV8R from SimHQ?
Nope. Not an anti-Apple fanboi either (in fact I really like the iPad). I just read jr2's comment and Apple's insistence that it solely created the "touchpad" and its subsequent litigious stand against all things touchpad-related from any other manufacturer is the first thing that came to mind. Yes, old news, but true.
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Now I'm curious. Is there really a significant increase in performance running OpenGL applications with a FirePro (or Quadro) compared to "normal" consumer cards? I mean, the price difference can be pretty huge. Is the gain worth the price?
Professional series video cards (and their drivers) are super-optimized to render OpenGL graphics programs (CAD, GIS, medical imaging, etc) far better than their consumer-type video card counterparts (which are DirectX optimized). It's simply a matter of need/choice - if most of the software you run is graphically DirectX-based, then a consumer-type video card would work best for you. Likewise if most of the software you work with is graphically OpenGL-based, then a Professional series card might be a better fit.
Since most of the sims I play are OpenGL-based (like FSOpen), I wanted a card that could render OpenGL graphics most efficiently - so I chose a FireGL card instead of the Radeon card. Another reason is I don't play any modern DirectX games that require a super-optimized DirectX video card. The older DirectX games I do play work fine on the FireGL card.
Besides, it sure makes all of those FSOpen graphics look pretty.... ;)
EDIT: Both consumer and professional series cards are price competitive - and decent entry-level consumer card (~$100) costs about the same as an entry level pro card (~$100). My mid-level AMD FirePro 3D 4800 w/ 1GB of GDDR5 memory cost $150. And yes, high-end pro cards can be $500+ but so can high-end DirectX cards (seen how much a Radeon 7970 costs?)
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Now I'm curious. Is there really a significant increase in performance running OpenGL applications with a FirePro (or Quadro) compared to "normal" consumer cards? I mean, the price difference can be pretty huge. Is the gain worth the price?
Professional series video cards (and their drivers) are super-optimized to render OpenGL graphics programs (CAD, GIS, medical imaging, etc) far better than their consumer-type video card counterparts (which are DirectX optimized). It's simply a matter of need/choice - if most of the software you run is graphically DirectX-based, then a consumer-type video card would work best for you. Likewise if most of the software you work with is graphically OpenGL-based, then a Professional series card might be a better fit.
Since most of the sims I play are OpenGL-based (like FSOpen), I wanted a card that could render OpenGL graphics most efficiently - so I chose a FireGL card instead of the Radeon card. Another reason is I don't play any modern DirectX games that require a super-optimized DirectX video card. The older DirectX games I do play work fine on the FireGL card.
Besides, it sure makes all of those FSOpen graphics look pretty.... ;)
EDIT: Both consumer and professional series cards are price competitive - and decent entry-level consumer card (~$100) costs about the same as an entry level pro card (~$100). My mid-level AMD FirePro 3D 4800 w/ 1GB of GDDR5 memory cost $150. And yes, high-end pro cards can be $500+ but so can high-end DirectX cards (seen how much a Radeon 7970 costs?)
Ah okay, alright. Well, considering pricing, I had something like this in mind: http://www.alternate.de/html/product/PNY/Quadro_6000/574428/?
;)
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Ah okay, alright. Well, considering pricing, I had something like this in mind: http://www.alternate.de/html/product/PNY/Quadro_6000/574428/?
;)
Ok, maybe a slight bit of overkill for what we're talking about here.... :p
Keep in mind, just due to driver optimization, a low-end pro card will give a high-end consumer card a run for its money in OpenGL graphics performance. Of course, in that case, the consumer card will trounce the pro card in DirectX performance but again, it's what you're looking to accelerate - OpenGL or DirectX.
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Having owned a thinkpad with the professional series graphics card... the (gaming) performance difference to regular/consumer cards of the same "caliber" wasn't all that noticable - if at all noticable - from my experience.
Admittedly... I never benchmarked it, just played games on it. ;)
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Which is not a surprise, given that the chips used are the same. The only difference are the drivers, at least in theory.
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If that's the case, then you should be able to install drivers for the pro optimized version with a little fiddling, and get it to work as long as the model you selected has the same GPU as your consumer card, right?
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In some cases, "fiddling" would mean flashing the card's BIOS to fool the drivers into thinking its a different model card (like I did with my old ATI Radeon 9500 to make it think it was a 9700). If it works, great. If not, you have a PCB paperweight.
There are safer "soft mods" which use tweaked drivers to achieve the same affect. Check out a short article about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_FireGL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_FireGL)
Edit: Ok the article is a little dated, but you get the picture. :P
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I think someone should just go Max Payne on those responsible for the trademark / patent mess. Protecting your inventions is one thing. Being an asshole at the expense of everyone else is another.
*cough* Apple *cough*
:nono:
*cough* Disney *cough*
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Ok, a better AMD/ATI article here that discusses every chipset/video card they ever made:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_graphics_processing_units#FireGL_series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_graphics_processing_units#FireGL_series)
Actually when comparing my FireGL 3D v4800 with the newer low-end v3900, I discovered there aren't a lot of differences. Other than using GDDR3 instead of GDDR5, which effectively halves the bandwidth from 57.6GB/sec on the v4800 to 28.8GB/sec on the v3900 (which is certainly no slouch), it would still probably be a great OpenGL performer. And for a little over $100US, it's alao a bargain! :yes:
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My old rig is tough and able to handle most games alright, but I want something to actually handle huge battles without choking. I have an early generation 2GB VRAM card that has a lot of space, but it doesn't process very efficiently. I've been saving up for the past few months to grab a $1000 computer that will last much longer than my hand-built rig.
1000$ computers generally do not last longer than handbuilt rigs - quite the contrary ;).
lol.
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1000$ handbuilt rigs, however, usually hold their own for 2-3 years, and do alright for ~5, if upgraded enough.
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if you have to max out all the latest games all the time, sure. but if you do your homework and are willing to turn the settings down slightly as time goes on, a $1000 can last a LONG time. my $700 from when i started college would still be kicking (and is for a different user) but i wanted to splurge a little. the graphics card in my new one is likely the only thing that will get upgraded in the next several years. maybe some RAM when i see a deal that's just too good to pass.
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My 6-700 dollar build from almost 3 years ago is still kicking, though I have upgraded it a few times (4Gb of better RAM, Radeon 4870 used for $50, and a 1TB secondary hard drive). Most brand-spanking new games need to be brought down to medium-high/high from Ultra, but still.