[Fineus]

Hey all.

I should probably know this by now, but I'd just like to confirm that the nVidia 7600 GT can run the SCP with all the graphical goodness turned on, right?

Cheers!

[Nuke]

should work, its not an ati card

[neoterran]

The only thing you'll miss out on with nvidia is ATI's smartshader / bloom effect plugin called HDRish...which does tend to look cool with SCP (HDRish lite that is) but we might have someone working on a nvidia only version for us...

[Mr_Maniac]

Well.. SCP even runs on my GeForce 3 with all Features turned on
Only the High-Res shockwaves are bringing the game to lag serious

[Fineus]

Glad to hear it. Cheers guys!

[CP5670]

You shouldn't have any problems, except with maybe the 1024x1024 shockwaves (which kill performance on any card).

The only thing you'll miss out on with nvidia is ATI's smartshader / bloom effect plugin called HDRish...which does tend to look cool with SCP (HDRish lite that is) but we might have someone working on a nvidia only version for us...

You don't get that with ATI either now, unless you use an older driver. Although I never liked it much anyway as the backgrounds looked all messed up with it.

[Nuke]

the only time ive ever seen a bloom effect would be in tenebrae quake. it was beautifull but it dropped the framrate to about 20 (on a 256 meg 6600). i really dont have anything against ati cards themselves, i do have issues with their drivers. i like the way one nividia driver works for everything, and the version numbers are alway going up and up and up. very rairly i check the nividia site and theres not a driver update. nividia also updated their stereo drivers, but i really havent played with them yet. does ati have better stereo support?

[Dark Knight]

I have an Nvidia PNY 7600 GT and I haven't had a single slowdown on scp with all the graphics maxed.

[Nuke]

thats cause you got a ****ing gt

[CP5670]

the only time ive ever seen a bloom effect would be in tenebrae quake. it was beautifull but it dropped the framrate to about 20 (on a 256 meg 6600). i really dont have anything against ati cards themselves, i do have issues with their drivers. i like the way one nividia driver works for everything, and the version numbers are alway going up and up and up. very rairly i check the nividia site and theres not a driver update. nividia also updated their stereo drivers, but i really havent played with them yet. does ati have better stereo support?

The static bloom effect is used in most modern games. It's really prominent in all of the Splinter Cell games for example.

As for the drivers, things have changed during the last year or so. ATI has released an update every month - the last two have brought considerable boosts across the board - while Nvidia has slacked off a lot, with only an official update every three or four months and a decent fps increase in only one game during that time. Both companies are quite lax about fixing bugs and both now have bloated control panels, so it's best to use third party utilities either way.

I have found that the ATI drivers are generally more feature packed (like D3D triple buffering and voltage controls) and have better compatibility with old games, but are also less stable and prone to occasional weird problems. I have no idea about the stereo view support though.

[Zacam]

ATI drivers also have a reverse ascendancy problem. Try using one of the newer catalyst drivers on, oh say, an Original Radeon 32 or 64mb DDR card. Painful. At a certain point, advancing the drivers for a piece of hardware begins to generate more problems than benifits. I've tested on my 9600 XT every driver from 4.0 to 6.3 and after 4.12, I don't see any practical reason to continue because they don't perform any better overall or even in specific relation to anything, so called "across the board" boosts show no improvement on the card in the listed applications and I even develop degredations in performance in other areas that are totally unmentioned.

My biggest and most sure test of any catalyst driver is the Milkdrop test. Installing WA5 (any version) and configuring Milkdrop to run in desktop mode and making _no other changes_ and then initiating it, I then hover over the start bar or an item in the system tray. In every single driver after 4.12 (default install, no modifications) I _always_ end up with the FPS in milkdrop cutting in half or worse while it tries to display the "pop up".

If that's an "improvement" I'll eat my socks. If it's the side effect of an improvement, I have yet to see the actually improvement itself.

Then again, I have yet to see any of the so called problems that ATI has released fixes for, even when I have the exact model card and exact version of software that said fix relates too when using a pre-fixed driver version. Until I ran across the SCP and FSO, I never fell into the "I'm having that problem too". (The FSO problem being -env on in OpenGL results in nebula corruption during mission restart or playing more than one mission per game)

I like and respect both ATI and nVidia.....without them, I shudder to think of what 3D would look like since Voodoo went away. But they both have problems in hardware and in software that simply comes down to "The Human Factor".

Okay, enough OT for me.

[CP5670]

What's Milkdrop? Game benchmarks are the best way to test these things. You may want to see this article. Some games like Halo get decent gains even on older cards with the 5.x drivers.

It's more significant on newer cards though. On an X1900XTX the 6.5 and 6.6 drivers together give at least 10% better framerates in all the modern games I've tried (and close to 20% in some games), which is quite large for just driver updates. I would actually say the ATI drivers have a clear edge over the Nvidia ones for my purposes, if it weren't for the fact that they dropped the smartshader support for no reason. I never used it in FS2, but it looked quite nice in some other games like Deus Ex.

[Herra Tohtori]

What you're asking if an nVidia GeForce 7600 GT can run FSO with all the graphical goodness?  

Want to hear a story? Better want to, 'cause I'll tell it anyway. I've got an nVidia GeForce 6600 256 MB. I did a little bit of testing with nVidia profile settings...

I use adveffects vp file, too. Anyway. I put everything into the game; command line was as follows:

C:\Pelit\Freespace2_SCP\fs2_open_369_rc4.exe -mod fsport,mediavp368zeta -spec -glow -env -jpgtga -mipmap -nomotiondebris -2d_poof -noscalevid -missile_lighting -img2dds -no_vsync -cache_bitmaps -dualscanlines -targetinfo -orbradar -rearm_timer -ballistic_gauge -ship_choice_3d -3dwarp -warp_flash -snd_preload -alpha_env -fps  -ambient_factor 20

And on "Video" tab I set as follows (OpenGL mode, of course)

Resolution 1280x1024x32bit
Texture filter trilinear
Anisotropic filter 16x

On my nVidia Control Panel I set up a profile for the fs2_open exe:

Anti-aliasing  -  8xS
Anisotropic filtering - Application-controlled
Image settings - High Quality
Vertical sync - Application-controlled
Force mipmaps - Trilinear (not sure if this should be set to Application-controlled - is the "Texture Filter" option in Launcher exactly the same thing?
Conformant texture clamp - On
Extension limit - Off
Hardware acceleration - Single-display mode
Trilinear optimization - Off (and could not be set to On; it was grayed)
Anisotrophic mip filter optimization - Off
Anisotrophic sample optimization - Off
Triple buffering - On
Negative LOD Bias - Allow


On these exact settings, RC4 build gave me about 50 fps when facing empty space, about 30-40 fps when there were fighter(s) or bomber(s) in view, and when facing any HTL capital ship, the fps dropped somewhere around 20-25; on very near and on explosions it went sometimes as low as 10-20 fps.

However, even this low it was completely playable (no seconds-long stops at shockwaves as it used to give at earlier builds)), and quite eye candy. Reducing AA setting to lower value gives much more enjoyable frame rates - 2x AA gave 120 fps when facing empty space, about 50-60 fps in normal dogfight and about 40 when facing a Fenris/Leviathan (don't remember which it was). On shocwaves it sometimes drops to ~20, but rarely below. And it STILL looks quite eye candy with 2x AA setting.

I think that's quite well optimized, considering the looks of the game - and considering the already gaming-wise mediocre system:

GeForce 6600 (without any fancy GT's or GX's or stuff) with 256 MB,

Athlon AMD64 3200+

1024 MB DDR-SDRAM.

I'm actually very happy about how well Freespace Open runs on this computer.  

So, as an answer to your question, if there's not something wrong with other parts of the PC, that GeForce card of yours should probably keep the FPS quite... playable... at all settings on.

[Zacam]

What is MilkDrop?

MilkDrop is a sound reactive visualisation (sometimes called eye candy) plug-in for the world renowned media player Winamp. It was created by Ryan Geiss who produced the ground breaking plug-in ‘Geiss’ many years ago which has been downloaded many millions of times.

MilkDrop is his latest ground breaking plug-in and has already achieved a hefty 1,600,000+ download to date from the Winamp site alone.

It uses 3D graphics hardware, combined with iterative image-based rendering techniques, to create a visual journey through sound.

It creates detailed graphical images seamlessly blending 3D effects into one another this is coupled with intelligent beat detection. Unlike many other visualisation plug-in you may have seen what really sets MilkDrop apart that it make the sound come alive.

It is fully configurable and you can create all your own separate presets and loads of VJ support and messaging display options.

It's fairly intensive. And "desktop mode" basically means that it's running the visualizer as your windows wallpaper. And I run at 1600x1200. In short, while it may not be as "tried and true" as a game benchmark, it's still a hefty piece of weight to throw at a card and driver.

Regarding game benchmarks and synthetic benchmarks, I've run those as well, they've only further solidified the 4.12's for this particular card I'm currently running.

Nice article though, I must have missed catching that one, thank you. (though I notice thier version tests don't actually include all of the releases, and it actually seems to bear out exactly what I just mentioned....as far as halo's concerned though I get the same fps in 5.x and 6.x that I get in 4.12....36.6 @ 1280x1024)

[pecenipicek]

What you're asking if an nVidia GeForce 7600 GT can run FSO with all the graphical goodness? 

Want to hear a story? Better want to, 'cause I'll tell it anyway. I've got an nVidia GeForce 6600 256 MB. I did a little bit of testing with nVidia profile settings...

I use adveffects vp file, too. Anyway. I put everything into the game; command line was as follows:

C:\Pelit\Freespace2_SCP\fs2_open_369_rc4.exe -mod fsport,mediavp368zeta -spec -glow -env -jpgtga -mipmap -nomotiondebris -2d_poof -noscalevid -missile_lighting -img2dds -no_vsync -cache_bitmaps -dualscanlines -targetinfo -orbradar -rearm_timer -ballistic_gauge -ship_choice_3d -3dwarp -warp_flash -snd_preload -alpha_env -fps  -ambient_factor 20

And on "Video" tab I set as follows (OpenGL mode, of course)

Resolution 1280x1024x32bit
Texture filter trilinear
Anisotropic filter 16x

On my nVidia Control Panel I set up a profile for the fs2_open exe:

Anti-aliasing  -  8xS
Anisotropic filtering - Application-controlled
Image settings - High Quality
Vertical sync - Application-controlled
Force mipmaps - Trilinear (not sure if this should be set to Application-controlled - is the "Texture Filter" option in Launcher exactly the same thing?
Conformant texture clamp - On
Extension limit - Off
Hardware acceleration - Single-display mode
Trilinear optimization - Off (and could not be set to On; it was grayed)
Anisotrophic mip filter optimization - Off
Anisotrophic sample optimization - Off
Triple buffering - On
Negative LOD Bias - Allow


On these exact settings, RC4 build gave me about 50 fps when facing empty space, about 30-40 fps when there were fighter(s) or bomber(s) in view, and when facing any HTL capital ship, the fps dropped somewhere around 20-25; on very near and on explosions it went sometimes as low as 10-20 fps.

However, even this low it was completely playable (no seconds-long stops at shockwaves as it used to give at earlier builds)), and quite eye candy. Reducing AA setting to lower value gives much more enjoyable frame rates - 2x AA gave 120 fps when facing empty space, about 50-60 fps in normal dogfight and about 40 when facing a Fenris/Leviathan (don't remember which it was). On shocwaves it sometimes drops to ~20, but rarely below. And it STILL looks quite eye candy with 2x AA setting.

I think that's quite well optimized, considering the looks of the game - and considering the already gaming-wise mediocre system:

GeForce 6600 (without any fancy GT's or GX's or stuff) with 256 MB,

Athlon AMD64 3200+

1024 MB DDR-SDRAM.

I'm actually very happy about how well Freespace Open runs on this computer. 

So, as an answer to your question, if there's not something wrong with other parts of the PC, that GeForce card of yours should probably keep the FPS quite... playable... at all settings on.

well, i have a simmilar tale to tell, only, the fun fact is, i'm running FSO on an AthlonXP 2800+, 512 megs of ram and a FX5700. 8x anistropic and 2xAA. i get 85fps on open space(vsync, i dont like page tearing...), around 50 in a small fight or with just a lotta ships and with shockwaves and all it goes rarely below 20. 1280x1024 res btw. with adveffects, cause animated glowmaps rule

as far as halo's concerned though I get the same fps in 5.x and 6.x that I get in 4.12....36.6 @ 1280x1024)

i couldnt get that framerate in 1024x768, how the hell did you manage to pull that off?

[Zacam]

i couldnt get that framerate in 1024x768, how the hell did you manage to pull that off?

Honestly? I haven't the slightest idea. I know it's a vast improvement over my 9200 (which was an SE none the less) and it's significantly better than my roomates 8500. I just know that it's the average consistant FPS that I get. There are only 4 places where it dips any lower than that, but it's still above 30 fps.

FSO is another interesting application where I don't know how I'm getting the FPS I am. With vsync turned off in the game and the drivers, I peg 120 at mission start and rarely drop below 75-80. If I set the vsync on in the drivers or the game, it pegs at the refresh rate (which I have set to 85) said "drop zones" only drop to 55-60.

While I am running mv_adveffects.vp, I did remove the 3D shockwaves. While pretty, I didn't like the staggering that would happen, especially when there was more than one. (which would cause a drop to between 29-39 fps with vsync enabled, never tried them with it disabled.)

[CP5670]

On my nVidia Control Panel I set up a profile for the fs2_open exe:

Set the LOD bias to clamp instead. Most games will look better (less texture shimmering) with no performance hit.

It's fairly intensive. And "desktop mode" basically means that it's running the visualizer as your windows wallpaper. And I run at 1600x1200. In short, while it may not be as "tried and true" as a game benchmark, it's still a hefty piece of weight to throw at a card and driver.

Regarding game benchmarks and synthetic benchmarks, I've run those as well, they've only further solidified the 4.12's for this particular card I'm currently running.

Nice article though, I must have missed catching that one, thank you. (though I notice thier version tests don't actually include all of the releases, and it actually seems to bear out exactly what I just mentioned....as far as halo's concerned though I get the same fps in 5.x and 6.x that I get in 4.12....36.6 @ 1280x1024)

Ah right, that's what it is. I thought I had seen that Milkdrop name somewhere before.

Yeah, the improvements aren't quite as big with the older cards, but with the current gen cards I think ATI has generally done better with the driver support. (for Nvidia there was one large boost in FEAR around March, but that was pretty much it)

While I am running mv_adveffects.vp, I did remove the 3D shockwaves. While pretty, I didn't like the staggering that would happen, especially when there was more than one. (which would cause a drop to between 29-39 fps with vsync enabled, never tried them with it disabled.)

I have also gotten rid of those for the same reason. The framerate drops like that on any system with those shockwaves. I think there is a more sane 512x512 version somewhere, but I can't find it.

[Fineus]

Cheers guys, I had a bit of a hit and miss time getting the game running again on my new rig but it work's beautifully now. Time to play through the campaign all over again!

[Nuclear1]

Congratulations, Kal, your soul now belongs to FS2 again.

[Cobra]

Praise Hojo! (see 3rd newest VGCats comic if you're confused)

Now someone give me $500 so i can get a 7800 GT and a gig of memory.