Nvidia GT280

[Flyby]

It's been very hard for me to get a handle on this issue of one gpu or dual cards. On the one hand, a single powerful gpu seems to be the most elegant solution (for gaming), but the "latest and greatest" gpus cost a million dollars. To offset this one can buy two lesser gpus and run them together either in SLI or Crossfire mode. Of the latter option it appears to be frought with scaling issues. I've read here and at other sim forums that getting dual cards to operate properly in our favorite genre is often a chore. My understanding is it's a matter of proper drivers from the card manufacturer. Based on that, one might very well opt for a single card.
Hopefully when SoW_Bob comes out there will be an adequate driver suite to run dual cards in that sim. Two 4870 in Crossfire would be very nice, and less expensive than the 4870X2 (but is that X2 at 2ghz of ramped gddr5 memory worth the cost, and willit show up as one card?). Does that, and the huge price drops put the GTX 280 in play? What to do?

[Zoom2136]

Like some of you I will be shortly changing my aging 2x 7900GTX OC for a new ATI 4870. I don't plan waiting for the 4870X2 as this is as you know a 2gpu card and could have the same prob that SLI have with iL2.

I think that $299 is a good price for a high end card. NVIDIA are just screwing their custumers... And it shows... as soon as the 48xx series from ATI hit the street the prices of the 2xx series from NVIDIA came down. Hell analyst predict that NVIDIA was not selling more then 3000 cards per month (280s) in the entire US. LOL Talk about a good business move... NVIDIA is now banking on the 8800GT to get them true this slump... its their only card that shows any kind of sale volume since the 48xx series from ATI became available...

As for reliability all my previous ATI card perform flawlessly till I got tired of them and just trew them away due to old age. Hell my X850XT ran highly overclocked (with catalyst) for over to years without a problem. Ran hotter then hell but still add no problem. Both my BFG 7900GTX OC had to be RMA within the first six months because the cards just died on me. Also setting up is a pain... having to install new drivers... test... rollback drivers... test... rollback somemore... test... udgrade drivers... etc.. its a pain...

With ATI... install the latest Catalyst..... and follow Coesties setup guide ;o)

Well just my 2c

[Flyby]

Hey Zoomie,
I think a lot of people share your view on the 4870. It's a highly competent card at a good value/price position; better in that sense than Nvidia's latest offerings. Super-powerful cards like the GTX280 and the 4870X2 seem like overkill in some ways. Their true benefit seems to come in running max settings at very high resolutions, as on 30-inch monitors. I'm not sure many simmers here run on 30-inch monitors. Like those super gpus, 30-inch monitors are very expensive. It's hard to see spending so much money for the most powerful graphics cards only to run them on the (average) 22 monitor.

I guess that's where I'm at. I want to build a new system one day, and I want a video card that will perform very well in new combat flight sims, on the monitor I select (22-24 inch). Oddly it seems that newer cards like the 4870 have shifted the "bottleneck" back to the cpu. In that sense too the ultra powerful, very expensive GPUs seem like overkill. You can't get max performance out of them unless you spend the $$ to run them at their most taxing settings, again on huge monitors. at very high resolutions. I think if I match a video card's best performance to the average monitor resolution (on an lcd its 16x or 19x, generally speaking) I'll be fine. I doubt that SoW_BoB will tax a modern gpu like the 4870 as much as it will a modern cpu like the e8500 or a quad 9300.
Buy hey, that's just my opinion. I'm sure I've overlooked a lot of considerations.
Flyby out.

[Golden_Eagle_FM]

As usual nothing is black and white.

My rig is a little of an overkill regarding the CPU for what Il2 is concerned. As I mentioned before I have a QX9770 which at the moment is the fastest you can buy at an uneconomical price for sure. Stock you get 4 cores running at 3.2 MHZ with huge cache memory and FSB at 1600 which is also the max you can get. Some overclocking is easily done without special cooling and you can run at 3.4 even 3.6 MHZ. I use a Zalman CNPS9700LED cooler which is excellent.

Unfortunately IL2 runs on one core only. So if IL2 was multithreaded and I hope SOW-BOB will be so then I would get the full use out of the investment.

I also suppose that IL2 even if improved since the beginning, does not use best the available power of the GTX280 with DirectX10. The last DLL with graphic improvements are now nearly a year old if I am not wrong.

A less expensive double core at similar frequencies should have similar results with the same graphic board.

Someone in this thread mentioned that he hoped I did not use this rig only for IL2. He is right I also played COD4 and some more graphically advanced games. I did play a little Lock On and I can tell that the FPS all to the max (3D shadows, exhaust heat, max quality of water etc.) are stellar and fluidity is perfect but I love propellers and close air combat.

Shooting down airplanes over the visual horizon with missiles is not my style and when you go at those jet speeds everything is simply too fast to have the time to feel the heat. I strongly appreciate the power with Adobe Photoshop CS2 which uses all cores and 3DMax which also make good use of all this power.

But it is a hobby activity and not professional which makes it all the more agreable.

My next dream would be three 30" screens to cover central and lateral views (not the way it is done in IL2 which is unrealistic) with the same performance I have today. It is doable with three GTX280 each one driving a full 30" screen. You would not need SLI. Only the game should be programmed such as to produce the data to feed three synchronized image channels. The four CPU cores would then be perfectly used.

Oleg if you read me do not forget this function in BoB-SoW!!!.

I do not know which motherboard would allow this but god it would be heaven.

Gold

[Test-4-Echo]

I just picked up a BFG GTX 280 OC for $375 from CompUSA (424 shipped-30 rebate-20 paypal) and sold off my 4850's in Crossfire.

Verdict: I like the GTX 280 much better. Much easier to setup and smooth as silk. The ATI cards in single or dual configuration has always given me jerkiness in 1946. Rolling the airplane always resulted in a slight pause, drove me nuts. This is with both a 3870 and 4850's. I've given it a shot twice with ATI but simply found nVidia to be better, both with an 8800 GTS G92 and now the GTX 280. Currently using beta drivers 177.79.

I didn't buy the GTX 280 just for 1946, it really shines in new games such as UT3 which is outstanding.

All in all both ATI and nVidia are good performers, I just like OpenGL performance of nVidia in 1946 better.

[Flyby]

that's a great price! I'm now up in the air. GTX280 or ATi 4870. I guess the 280 will have the power reserve, but my head hurts again!
Flyby out

[Deovis]

From the very begining of Openglide, end of 90s, up to now(opengl 3.0) i always choose an Nvidia processor graphic card...and i must say that it never let me on the spot!
Personally i dont consider Ati cards...because i know, deep in my mind, that i'm an Nvidia Fundamentalist.
If you want to play a game or any graph program using OpenGL (i do recommand it!)Nvidia cards are the best.

An OpenGL Fan!!!

[MaD88]

Originally Posted by Zoom2136

(...)
With ATI... install the latest Catalyst..... and follow Coesties setup guide ;o)

Well just my 2c

Where can I find this guide? While waiting for BOB (I wanna upgrade my PC when BOB or BlackShark is finished), I switched to an ATI 3850 AGP so it would be nice to find some more hints for Grafix...

[RCAF_FB_Orville]

MaD88, Try this http://www.angelfire.com/ultra/coastie0/ATICP.html

This is coasties ati guide, to my knowledge the most up to date so far? (Jan 06) don't know a lot about ati cards as up till now I have been exclusively an Nvidia guy, but good luck and i hope it helps you out.

BTW First ever poster here! Hello to all and sundry, some very interesting and helpful stuff here, glad to be aboard!

[Chivas]

I've waffling about which card to buy but this link may have made up mind to either buy an ATI card now, or wait for the next generation Nvidia card, as the current Nvidia cards appear to be defective.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...55nm-parts-bad