Resolution does play a part in taking up more space in the memory on the Video card. Today's games are bumping up resolution on the textures themselves. Which means the more textures you can load into Memory the less swapping the card does across the bus which even at 16X is slow. That's what causes studders. It's only a matter of time when they will keep increasing the resolution of the textures. 1 gig is starting to become the norm now for Video Cards. That means my 512 will start to swap and studder a game.

The key to having more memory is if the Game actually us using higher end textures. ie... The new maps and cockpits in the mods are much higher resolution than the original game of IL2. That's why they look much nicer. Oleg and crew aren't going to be aiming at systems with 64megs or 128 megs of ram on the video card anymore. They will have some selection like they have now. Land detail = high and that may bump the res quite a bit.

Make sense?

I would say shoot for a 64 bit OS and you always have the option of adding more Ram. Ram is also coming down in price as well. It means there is quite a bit of breathing room for games of the future. I don't know what Oleg will shoot for in terms of a memory foot print but I bet it's going to be 2gig or more.

Well now that multicore is pretty much the norm now even for lower end systems CPUs can now be dedicated to do more than what they've done in the past. Flight Sims generally speaking are more CPU intesive though that may change with Oleg creating a new engine to take advantage of DX11 etc. Flight sims are more CPU dependant because they are doing all the math for the FMs damage weapons AI etc. With multiple cores some of that can be spread across the cores.

Falcon 4 actually uses more than one CPU or core. For the most part when you fly in the campaign mode 1 cpu runs the 2D war and the other cpu or core runs the 3d game which has the FM weapons modeling radar etc. It basically runs about 40-60 percent faster than a single core CPU and it came out in 1998. Remarkable scalability.

I know that Rise of Flight is using multicore as well.

The key will be how much will it really add and building applications to take advantage of that technology isn't easy. It doesn't mean things will get faster it may just mean things get more complex. There's a lot of overhead associated with building these apps. Timing of all the processing has to be done just right. Also Win 7 while much better with multiple CPUs and Cores is a good OS it's not perfect. We may need another OS rev to come out before we see the real benefit.

S!

Will be an interesting test, getting a nVidia 480GTX for a spin. Will run tests with it compared to my 5870HD and see. Maybe barbeque some meat in the process or keep my coffee mug hot :D ;) Seriously speaking, will be interesting to test the card. Brand is PNY.

interesting info/opinions here. lots to think about.
Flaker35M, good luck with your -480. Do you own "Rise of Flight"? That might be a good test of your new card, probably more so than testing IL2 (multi-core usage, and a powerful GPU) imo.
Flyby out

Well there's rumours flying around the net that ATI have already got the Southern Islands chip (6XXX series?) ready and may have engineering sample cards ready in just over a month. Mind you, they are rumours :rolleyes:

S!

Will post ASAP when I get the card, they are quite far and between at the moment. So propably next week I will get it :) Gonna test it with Rise Of Flight, IL-2 Sturmovik, Metro 2033, S.T.AL.K.E.R. - Call Of Pripyat, EVE Online etc. The games I play :)

As of the new 6XXX cards, would be interesting if those showed up now :) Might stir up the competition a bit :D And that would be good for us end users don't you think :D

Rise of Flight might be a good test for sure... Though there is something about their art I don't like... IMO.

Apparently an issue is with noise on the 480GTX

But if the cards kept in a cool case the temps don't get up there, I've not noticed the temps over 75' yet and its quiet.
But
I don't overclock, never seen the need too.

S!

Alpha, you got a 480GTX? Which brand? I chose between Asus and PNY, the latter I favored because of previous good impression with my GeForce I had earlier.