Where are the GTX 470/480's gone?

[Ian Warren]

Cripes .. Firth down the list , Thanks Pete , give a good insight and listen for the future buyers out there

[dbcunnz]

QUOTE (IslandBoy77 @ Sep 21 2010, 08:28 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

"Still, if one wants to spend more money and have slower overall system performance, that's one's own prerogative..."

"So while ATI is probably the better card oiverall, for FSX, Nvidia is the best option re weather, clouds, water, and anythig else shadery! And for FSX you need a single GPU card, the 470/480 are that and fast. Dual GPU lose the frane synchronisity between each GPU."
Fair enough. I'll certainly cop to the fact that very few of my system builds over the last 2 years are high-end (a few were, even a few for FSX). It's one of the banes of assembling - not having like for like ATI / nVidia cards to test against each other in EXACTLY the same system. I will say that I think RAM & Hard Drive actually give better "bang for buck" than a very expensive graphic card. When I upgraded my RAM from 4 to 8GB, I got a lift of some 5-10 frames - that's nothing to sneeze at!

One thing I was musing on thinking about all this - I wonder what impact the bigger drivers for nVidia have? The standard install file for the nVidia nForce is 210MB vs the ATI Catalyst @ 78MB. Can anyone post how much RAM the nVidia drivers actually take up on "idle" (that is, while just at desktop with nothing happening?). Catalyst seems to sit around 12-14MB at idle.

Just on idle my nvvsvc.exe Nvidia driver Version 197.13 CPU = 0 Memory = 7.200K video card = G Force 9800 GTX+

Doug

[pilot.masman]

QUOTE (dbcunnz @ Sep 21 2010, 08:49 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Just on idle my nvvsvc.exe Nvidia driver Version 197.13 CPU = 0 Memory = 7.200K video card = G Force 9800 GTX+

Doug

mines using about 1,664K using driver version 258.96

[AndrewJamez]

RE- the large Nvidia driver size - after installation you can uninstall the physics and stereoscopic drivers, that will get rid of have the meat.

[Naki]

QUOTE (tdale @ Sep 21 2010, 08:04 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If I was a general gamer I'd go ATI, the biggest I could get. But FSX is Nvidia friendly, its to do with the shaders. Quote "they have completely different architectures, the ATI's have LOTS of tiny 'slow running' shader processors, the nVidias have fewer shader processors (a lot less) but they are TWICE as fast. unquote.

So while ATI is probably the better card oiverall, for FSX, Nvidia is the best option re weather, clouds, water, and anythig else shadery! And for FSX you need a single GPU card, the 470/480 are that and fast. Dual GPU lose the frane synchronisity between each GPU.

Thats exacty what I read in more places than one...over at Orbx, SOH etc they swear that the 470/480 are the best for FSX.

[dbcunnz]

QUOTE (pilot.masman @ Sep 21 2010, 09:41 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

mines using about 1,664K using driver version 258.96

I have the 258.96 versin downloaded a couple of days ago but haven't got round to installing it yet

Doug

[IslandBoy77]

Interesting figures posted for the nVidia driver. Note that there are usually 2 portions to a driver - the desktop interface (10MB for Catalyst) and the driver by itself (1014kb for ATI). I note also that the Catalyst interface only uses 7-8MB on my Vista 32-bit system. And of course if I exit the Catalyst interface, I've only got the driver running. Since the Catalyst interface allows for tweaking of various hardware settings, I guess it's fair to say that I probably have to leave it running - does anyone know whether quitting the interface (for either nVidia or ATI) 'undoes' settings contained therein or not?

This is the 1st time I've dissected things to this level, so it's a very interesting exercise...

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (Naki @ Sep 21 2010, 10:06 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thats exacty what I read in more places than one...over at Orbx, SOH etc they swear that the 470/480 are the best for FSX.

Are you able to tell us what exactly it is about the 470/480's that seems to suit FSX so well? Is it the driver? Or what hardware aspect is it that seems so well-suited? I wonder if it has anything to do with the Vertex Operations that the ATI cards seem to have "missing"? Also, I wonder if it has anything to do with chipsets on the motherboard - are all the guys at Orbx / SOH using Intel chipsets / CPUs? Are any using AMD chipsets / CPUs? One of the big selling points for AMD / ATI is that if one buys a trio - CPU, Mobo, Vid - they are designed to play well together, where with Intel, supposedly nVidia is not as closely integrated.

Would be interesting to get some more meat and details so we can see things more clearly beyond people's general "recommends".

[pilot.masman]

im using an amd phenom cpu with my 470, probably would be better going with intel instead of amd or vice versa but hey, that will be my next upgrade.

as to the processes, i have 3 on idle and 4 when i open up the nvidia CP, ill screenshot the processes

note the process (nvvsvc.exe) using more ram isnt the one in use by the card. apparently. i went to the Nvidia service and clicked go to service and in opened up the smaller of the two....

it might be because im running 64bit. (ie 1 for 32, 1 for 64)

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (pilot.masman @ Sep 22 2010, 02:20 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

im using an amd phenom cpu with my 470, probably would be better going with intel instead of amd or vice versa but hey, that will be my next upgrade.

as to the processes, i have 3 on idle and 4 when i open up the nvidia CP, ill screenshot the processes

note the process (nvvsvc.exe) using more ram isnt the one in use by the card. apparently. i went to the Nvidia service and clicked go to service and in opened up the smaller of the two....

it might be because im running 64bit. (ie 1 for 32, 1 for 64)

Awesome - thanks for that. So it would be reasonable to say that in all likelihood, both card types use about the same in terms of idle as each other. And in truth, I wouldn't expect that to be otherwise.

Over the next few days I'm going to fiddle with drivers to see if there is any performance difference over the last 3 versions of the ATI drivers. Might be a somewhat tedious job, but I'm interested now to see if ATI's drivers are holding steady or not...

[Lapun]

At the minute there seems to be no shortage of nVidia cards here in OZ, so lucky us.

A couple of points which may be of interest from my experience, bearing in mind that each rig performs differently, and the FSX results are definitely 'in the eye of the beholder' - one of my PC's has an Evga SLI LE board and runs well with two GTX460's with three screens in surround - the smoothest in 5/6 years of simming. The drivers are the ones that came out of the box and I cannot fault them, the temps of the GPU's at load are 59, and they can't be heard, even though the PC sits 30cm above the RH monitor. The FPS sits at a steady 45 - 60 in Orbx country scenery, and a steady 33 over heavily built up areas with autogen on 'dense', and 26 over the built up areas with autogen on 'very dense'.

Prior to that I was using a single GTX280 with an Arctic 3 fan cooler with good results on early 182.5 drivers which were good and stable for the whole eighteen months they were fitted - no reason to change them.

Similarly another machine has an E8400 @ 3.87 driving a GTX460 with a 22" monitor in FSX with surprisingly good performance, so the 'old tech' on this machine doesn't bottleneck the modern card. The GTX460 sells here for less than 300 AUD which may be hard to beat on 'bang for buck.'

With the performance as experienced over the years, I have no complaints about Intel chips, having used them exclusively from 2005 (forgotten the model) thru the E6600, E8400, E8500, Q9550, i7 920, and i7 975X; nor any complaints on nVidia cards or drivers, the only bad IT experience in terms of reliability, performance and warranty has been with Asus mobos, three of which ended up junked.

The comments in above posts on ATI cards and drivers indicate that, similarly, good performance and value can be had by judicious choice for ATI enthusiasts as well - so I guess it boils down to trial and error, research and perseverence.

Thanks for your interesting and informative comments -

[Bazza]

I have been reading these threads with great interest....

I have just re-checked the specs of my equipment and am going outside to commit hari-kari.

How on earth I manage to get a moving picture with the rubbish I can afford totally beats me.

Farewell, cruel world.