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. :D I'm sure I've overlooked a lot of considerations.
Flyby out.

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

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. :cool:

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! :D
Flyby out

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.:cool:
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!!!:rolleyes:

Well if you want to get really stupid do what these guys did ...


http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforc...e-review-test/


and SLI three of the 280 cards.

Just bought the 4870X2, no problems here. ;)

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...n/DSC00077.jpg

Now where did I put my flak helmet?

Forget the pictures, I don't watch my pc's guts when I'm chopping air at 15,000ft. Give us some benchies!

This isn't exactly apples-vs-apples, but some of the rhetoric regarding the king-of-the-hill title are relevent in this link. http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=609

With today's crop of GPU's and the cache+clockspeed of the latest CPUs, just about ANY GPU will provide fantastic IQ and framerates with most eye-candy settings in the upper range.

Isn't that all that really matters?

you mean no microstutters as the two GPUs interface? I read that is still an issue with dual GPU systems whether on the same card, in Crossfire or SLi. SO, more info please.
thanks,
Flyby out

Well this is my first dual GPU card so I don't know alot about the stuttering. I have only just reinstalled everything last night and have to admit I haven't flown in the pit yet. I've just ran "Blackdeath" a number of times trying out different settings. Couple of things come to mind about this:

- Not everything is ready driver wise for the 4870X2. You have to use CAT 8.8 beta at this stage as 8.7 won't recognise the card.

- If this an issue with both SLI and Crossfire setups then I would put that down to IL-2, not the cards. You have to remember SLI and Crossfire was only a wet dream when the Pacific Fighters engine came out.

- SoW will (I hope) be optimised to take advantage of Dual GPU/CPU set ups. Which is what I'm really aiming for.

Before IL-2 I've been testing the card on STALKER, Crysis, Jerico and ETQW and I have found no problems at all.

The only problem I've come accross is ARMA but thats because it doesn't like VISTA 64 with 4GBRam :evil:

My system (nothing overclocked):
E8400
4GB DDR3 Corsiar 1333
GA-X48T-DQ6
PowerColor 4870X2 2GB
150GB WD Raptor
XF-i