Hard Light Productions Forums

General FreeSpace => FreeSpace & FreeSpace Open Support => Topic started by: Admiral Nelson on October 03, 2011, 10:59:47 am

Title: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: Admiral Nelson on October 03, 2011, 10:59:47 am

Goober suggested I post this question here.  My current GPU (8800 Ultra) seems to be on its way out, with periodic crashing and the requirement to underclock it for it to run in a stable manner.  Given that FSO is what I play most often I wanted to solicit an informed opinion on what GPU would be the most appropriate to replace it with. I have a Q9550 CPU with 8 GB of RAM installed.  I figured an nVidia Ti 560 of some sort would be the most logical replacement given the issues I have read about with Radeon boards and FSO.

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: The E on October 03, 2011, 11:07:43 am

Well, not all (or even a majority of) the Radeons cause issues. It's only older models that aren't really supported by the drivers that get shafted, or ones that you can't really buy anymore. A 5k or 6k series card should definitely be OK.

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: bloated on October 04, 2011, 01:12:24 am

I'm dealing with some kind of issue right now with my GTX 460, I was searching for a solution when I noticed this thread.

I played FSO 2 years ago with a Radeon and it worked great and now that I've been dealing with random crashes with the 460 I'm thinking about going back to Radeon.

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: LHN91 on October 04, 2011, 08:29:00 am

Currently running a Radeon 4870, it's been fairly good with FSO. Before that I ran a Geforce 9800 GT. Also worked fine with FSO. I'd probably get a radeon, but that's at least as much because I'm a bit of an AMD fanboy as it is because of relative quality, but admittedly, historically NVidia has had better openGL support.

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: Admiral Nelson on October 04, 2011, 08:33:32 am

Hmm, thanks for the inputs, guys.  I suppose I am still leaning to an nVidia 560Ti.  This 8800 Ultra has worked great for years now, so I'd hope to get something that can last as long.

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: T-LoW on October 04, 2011, 09:03:13 am

I'm still sticking to my 8800 GT (slightly overclocked) and it's running FSO (and Crysis 2 e.g.) like a charm. Gonna buy a complete new machine when the next GPU versions are out.

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: Admiral Nelson on October 04, 2011, 09:09:23 am

Yeah, if I wasn't worried that this board will give up the ghost entirely I'd wait too.

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: LHN91 on October 04, 2011, 09:57:19 am

Would have held on to my 9800 GT too had the situation not warranted a swap (Needed a graphics card for a budget build for a friend, and the 4870 was only 50 bucks Canadian used, and was subjectively better than the 9800GT, so I kept the 4870.)

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: AV8R on November 09, 2011, 04:41:02 pm

Since FSOpen is OpenGL driven (for the most part), has anyone tried using an AMD/ATI FirePro series card? I know they're more for professional use but the OpenGL driver optimizations for these cards far exceeds the "gaming" cards out there (which are more DirectX optimized). I got a FirePro V4800 from a friend who recently bought a new high-end PC (the V4800 came with it). He wanted to put some other nVidia card in the PC so I got his "cast off" (pretty nice - for a cast off).

Anyway, I soon plan build a new Intel "Sandy Bridge" processor-based gaming rig and use this FirePro V4800 as the video card. I'll let everyone know how well it works with FSOpen when I get it all together (should have it done by December).

Specs on the AMD/ATI V4800:

http://www.amd.com/us/products/workstation/graphics/ati-firepro-3d/v4800/Pages/v4800.aspx#2 (http://www.amd.com/us/products/workstation/graphics/ati-firepro-3d/v4800/Pages/v4800.aspx#2)

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: QuantumDelta on November 09, 2011, 05:00:57 pm

Don't let FSO be your deciding factor in which graphics card you buy!
FSO is fine with any current generation card from either manufacturer, you wont regret anything past a 58xx or a 480 really.

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: AV8R on November 09, 2011, 05:27:24 pm

Quote from: QuantumDelta on November 09, 2011, 05:00:57 pm

Don't let FSO be your deciding factor in which graphics card you buy!
FSO is fine with any current generation card from either manufacturer, you wont regret anything past a 58xx or a 480 really.

See my post again - FSOpen was not my deciding factor, a free professional-grade video card was! ;)

Anyway, most of the video games I play are ported to, or can do, OpenGL graphics (I'm partial to older space-combat sims). That's the only reason why I mentioned it. Since I really don't have a lot of DirectX-based games an OpenGL-optimized card like this fits the bill for me (but that's my situation - YMMV).

I was really just curious to see if others have tried FSOpen with a FirePro-based video card, that's all.

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: QuantumDelta on November 10, 2011, 03:06:59 am

I was talking to the OP.

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: Nohiki on November 10, 2011, 07:59:58 am

I got GTX 560 Ti  and i'm happy with it, just ran BF3 on Ultra without any problem, same as FSO

Title: Re: GPU recommendations for FSO
Post by: AV8R on November 10, 2011, 08:13:29 am

Quote from: QuantumDelta on November 10, 2011, 03:06:59 am

I was talking to the OP.

Wow. Sorry. My bad.