[Taristin]

Well, the way I see it, I wont be using it to its full potential as it is for a long while, I imagine. FS2, perhaps some fps titles here and there, and 3dmax will be the predominant uses for it... I dont think I need to worry about DX10 for quite some time...

I think I'll still give it a month or so before I go for it... see how prices, and new technology go.

[Sandwich]

If you can afford it, an X1900 XT 256 is WAY faster than the X1950 Pro, although it doesn't use the fancy-schmancy new CrossFire implementation that the X1950 Pro does.

[Taristin]

It's 100.00 more. Thats more than any individual part of my rig. And I only have one PCI-e slot so crossfire is out of the question.

[Sandwich]

Ah.

[Nuke]

results are in

system specs (if you didnt know)
athlon 64 3500+
2gb pc3200 ddr (4x 512's all in dual channel mode)
geforce 8800gts

3dmark 2001 (all defaults except using 1280*124*32):  22700
3d mark 2006 (defaults): 5499


quake 4, settings maxed: 60 fps (capped by monitor refresh, need to figure out how to get it up to 75 hz in quake). otherwise smooth as silk.

tenebre quake, start map (ineffieteint as hell too, with that bloom effect or whatever which used to render my rig a slide show), held at 60 fps.


fsopen 7.8 + nukemod + all mediavps:

scannin crates with ragnarok, valhalla, rummrunner, dante calld in, and alpha flying a phoenix, a chimera, a shagrath and a satyr + tc crates and vasudan support ship, no combat:
ogl, 16 anistrophic, trilinear, 1280*1024*32: 105-120 fps
d3d8, 2 aa samples, 1280*1024*32: 63-118 fps

scannin crates, alpha 1 in phoenix only + support and crates, dante vs dante:
ogl, 16 anistrophic, trilinear, 1280*1024*32: 6.2-7.9 fps
d3d8, 2 aa samples, 1280*1024*32: 8.5-55 fps


all in all im pretty happy. need to tweak some stuff, like quake 4, to take advantage of more features. freespace runs on it pretty well up till you start seeing effects, at which point, no matter what you got in your machiine your screwed. nukemod at this point is a brutal torture test, without any lod-ing on the hi poly models (yet). quake 4 is the most graphic intense thing i got, and it cant be slowed. though i need to get it to use the monitor's maximum 75 hz. my last 3d mark 2k1 test scored between 6k and 8k, so with 22.7k id say i like.

[CP5670]

Looks good, but man, you need to increase those settings bigtime. Bump up the resolution by a couple notches or try the 8xQ or 16xQ CSAA modes. Unfortunately, it seems like they might have removed the combined AA modes that were on previous Nvidia cards.

freespace runs on it pretty well up till you start seeing effects, at which point, no matter what you got in your machiine your screwed.

Are you using one of the CVS builds with that particle bug? I have been sticking with the RC builds and they don't have this problem.

[Nuke]

dot 8. no doubt its really out of date. i checked the recent builds forum, but all i saw that were newer were a bunch of experimental features builds. really making us wait for rc8 they are. but im sure is partly my fault, ive been hooked on ragnacrack online and have been neglecting the scp boards.

as for upping settings, im at my monitor's native res, going any higher is really just a waste of rendering. yes i know its a dumb idea to buy a card that half my equipment bottlenecks the crap out of. but the general idea is to have a card that i wont have to upgrade for quite some time. besides in a few months i plan to start building a computer that can keep up with it.

[Sandwich]

Nuke, all you need to do to remove the 60hz cap on games is to take off "wait for screen refresh" in the game options / video card control panel.

[Fury]

Nuke, all you need to do to remove the 60hz cap on games is to take off "wait for screen refresh" in the game options / video card control panel.

Taking off refresh rate syncing quite likely results in visible tearing in some games (if not all) even if you gain a few frames per second. If the refresh rate setting in display options don't have effect in games, you probably need to use the settings found in video card driver control panel.

[Sandwich]

Of course it results in tearing, but for benchmarking purposes, that doesn't matter. And, with these cards, it's likely to gain a bit more than just a few frames per second. A few dozen, perhaps.

[Nuke]

i usually keep vsync off. i found out how to get my refresh up in doom 3 engine games, unfortunately it supposedly forces a framecap of 60 anyway. the video card wants to go faster but the game wont let it.

freespace doesnt have a setting for refresh, and the drivers dont let you tweak in-game refresh rates. im sure theres a way around it. my monitor can do 75 fps, the video card can keep up, just a mater of getting them to do it.

[ChronoReverse]

If you're getting 60FPS and you know there's headroom, then turn on the fancy 16xQ Super Sampling Transparent Anti-aliasing.

Turning off v sync to get more FPS is a pretty poor trade off when you have a fast enough video card.  (It's understandable for people who can't get enough FPS of course).


BTW, at any resolution 1600x1200 and below, an A64 3500+ will be the bottleneck apparently for the G80s O_O

[CP5670]

dot 8. no doubt its really out of date. i checked the recent builds forum, but all i saw that were newer were a bunch of experimental features builds. really making us wait for rc8 they are. but im sure is partly my fault, ive been hooked on ragnacrack online and have been neglecting the scp boards.

That one actually should work okay. I never used it (went from 7 to 7dot9) but the particle bug is supposed to be only present in the CVS builds. It might be worth trying 7dot9 (the latest one) anyway. I've been using that and have not run into the problem.

as for upping settings, im at my monitor's native res, going any higher is really just a waste of rendering. yes i know its a dumb idea to buy a card that half my equipment bottlenecks the crap out of. but the general idea is to have a card that i wont have to upgrade for quite some time. besides in a few months i plan to start building a computer that can keep up with it.

You should look into upgrading your monitor in that case. (which I've always maintained is the most important part of a computer) Although I suppose on the flip side, you won't have to worry about framerate dips for quite some time. The rest of your stuff is pretty much fine.

i usually keep vsync off. i found out how to get my refresh up in doom 3 engine games, unfortunately it supposedly forces a framecap of 60 anyway. the video card wants to go faster but the game wont let it.

freespace doesnt have a setting for refresh, and the drivers dont let you tweak in-game refresh rates. im sure theres a way around it. my monitor can do 75 fps, the video card can keep up, just a mater of getting them to do it.

Yeah, the Doom 3 engine has some annoying issues with that. I don't remember exactly how to remove the framecap (and the stuttering it causes), but it can be done with some combination of the console parameters com_fixedtic and com_precisetic.

As for FS2, just add a dword registry flag called OGL_RefreshRate and set it so that the decimal value is 75.

If you're getting 60FPS and you know there's headroom, then turn on the fancy 16xQ Super Sampling Transparent Anti-aliasing.

16xQ has no SS component. It's purely MS. I've seen a few complaints about this, as Nvidia seems to have entirely removed the various combined and pure SS modes and replaced them with these Q modes. The Q modes offer much better performance but don't look as good on textures.

[Nuke]

That one actually should work okay. I never used it (went from 7 to 7dot9) but the particle bug is supposed to be only present in the CVS builds. It might be worth trying 7dot9 (the latest one) anyway. I've been using that and have not run into the problem.

didnt know there was a newer build. found it, now i get better performance in the dante vs dante test in this build. still some initial slowdown during the guns blazing jump in, but once the warp mesh goes away i see framerates from 60-110. huge performance boost there.

You should look into upgrading your monitor in that case. (which I've always maintained is the most important part of a computer) Although I suppose on the flip side, you won't have to worry about framerate dips for quite some time. The rest of your stuff is pretty much fine.

dont think il be getting a better monitor any time soon. a second monitor is something i want though.

Yeah, the Doom 3 engine has some annoying issues with that. I don't remember exactly how to remove the framecap (and the stuttering it causes), but it can be done with some combination of the console parameters com_fixedtic and com_precisetic.

As for FS2, just add a dword registry flag called OGL_RefreshRate and set it so that the decimal value is 75.

il try the doom 3 tweak here in a bit. i set the fs2 tweak and it seems to be working. my monitor has of ghosting at 60hz and much much less at 75. it looks smoother than it did as well. thanks for the tips.

16xQ has no SS component. It's purely MS. I've seen a few complaints about this, as Nvidia seems to have entirely removed the various combined and pure SS modes and replaced them with these Q modes. The Q modes offer much better performance but don't look as good on textures.

im using as much aa as the games will let me, its really nice to actually be able to use it for a change. sence ive never had a card with suffietient performance to actually use aa, its not too big of a deal that they took out some modes. any aa is better than none.

[ChronoReverse]

16xQ has no SS component. It's purely MS. I've seen a few complaints about this, as Nvidia seems to have entirely removed the various combined and pure SS modes and replaced them with these Q modes. The Q modes offer much better performance but don't look as good on textures.

If I meant 8xMSAA+2xSSAA then I'd say 16xS.  However, I said 16xQ Super Sampling Transparent AA.  The super sampling refers to the transparency part (known as adaptive AA for ATI).  This feature is enough to bring the GTX to its knees for some modern games with a lot of alpha textures.

You have to set this in the control panel btw.  It's not enough to set it ingame.


Incidentally, because TSSAA is still in the G80, that leads me to believe that the super sampling modes are still there but just hidden by the driver.  Nonetheless, the 16xQ is actually very good (as opposed to plain 16x CSAA which can deteoriate down to 8xQ depending on the scene).  And it performs better than a theoretical 8xS on the G80 would.

[Nuke]

i got supersampling enabled. its something i tweaked after i installed the card.

[Taristin]

What is this Q and what does it mean?

[Taristin]

Also, while we're on the subject... Which is a better buy?

SAPPHIRE 100186L Radeon X1950XT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail       $269.99

or

DIAMOND X1950PRO512PCIE GDDR3 VIVO Video Card - Retail     $259.99

[CP5670]

didnt know there was a newer build. found it, now i get better performance in the dante vs dante test in this build. still some initial slowdown during the guns blazing jump in, but once the warp mesh goes away i see framerates from 60-110. huge performance boost there.

That sounds a lot better. I also get a strange slowdown when certain types of weapons fire for the first time in a mission (a prolonged framerate drop rather than the stutter you might expect), but it doesn't occur after that.

If I meant 8xMSAA+2xSSAA then I'd say 16xS.  However, I said 16xQ Super Sampling Transparent AA.  The super sampling refers to the transparency part (known as adaptive AA for ATI).  This feature is enough to bring the GTX to its knees for some modern games with a lot of alpha textures.

Never mind, I misunderstood what you were saying there.

Some people are saying that 8xS and 16xS (it actually consists of 4x MS and 2x2 SS) both look better than 16xQ with transparency SS due to their effect on non-transparent textures. I suppose the two SLI AA modes are still available with multiple cards, but those are inferior to the xS modes from what I've seen.

What is this Q and what does it mean?

Presumably quality. Some of the new AA modes on the 8800 cards are labeled with a Q and use extra color depth information over the non-Q versions. They look slightly better, although the difference is supposed to be very small.

Also, while we're on the subject... Which is a better buy?

SAPPHIRE 100186L Radeon X1950XT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail       $269.99

or

DIAMOND X1950PRO512PCIE GDDR3 VIVO Video Card - Retail     $259.99

The first one, easily. Although that Pro is far too expensive; those are normally around $200.

[Taristin]

Well... I just bought the HIS X1950XT >..>;; Reeeealy nervous now.