Question about graphic card & about directx
 

Hi,

My actual card does support dx 9 only ( Nvidia gtx260), are there improvements in the image quality with newer cards which support dx 11 when plaing CoD ?

As well, some technical questions, what is recommended ammount of ram for the graphic card ? what is benefit from high quantity for that ram ?

And finally, is the graphic card able to make the game playable with a high enough number of fps in high res high graphics with a processor as limited as Phonom nowadays that much more powerful proc do exist, I mean is the proc limiting the fps or is it only a matter of graphic card power (after all the Phenom is quite capable anyway) ?

Thanks devs, thanks mates.

Hi,

first of all, the GTX260 does support DX10, but only if the PC is running MS Vista or Windows 7. No, a DX11 GC won't improve the quality in COD, because COD doesn't support DX11 (at the moment).
I've noticed a big improvement in fps when I did move from WinXp to Windows 7 (+50%).

On my system, the GC is the limiting factor, none of the other components is running at the 100% limit.

For the VRAM I think the same can be said as for money: the more, the better :D - I've heard a lot of good things about the GTX 560 Ti with 2GB

Nvidia gtx260 supports DX10.0 - which is crappy. What is far far better and the devs mean when they say dx10 will boost performance is DX10.1, which in essence is closer to DX11 than DX10/DX9 and insures the card can actually handle dx10 features but still DX11 is the way to go. DX11 builds on DX10.1 by further optimizations and adding a host of new possible effects and tools, which will be used more and more in the next year and to come. I doubt any computer only games released in 2012 will support DX9, BF3 coming later this year is multiplatform and only DX10+ aswell, EVE is cutting shader model 2.0 support (dx9.0) - and its an MMORPG...

Now as far as newer cards go, of course there will be a big performance boost, even if it is not dx11. gtx260 was originally a mid range card at release, currently we are about 1.5-2 gens ahead of that, so performance will probably be atleast 3-4x more on a 560 purely hardware wise. A 580 is probably 15x more powerful on a modern 10.1-11 game than your card considering the hardware tech (brute power), softwaree optimization and architectual change.

Ram is memory, its how much information your pc can hold for quick access at the same time. Think of it as notes you took in class that are right infront of you, thats ram, the more of it you have the faster and better you can answer questions. Since ram is limieted (as is the size of a page) if its not in ram the program must request data from the hardrive (called paging) which is mechanical and where as ram is solid state. So imagine harddrive paging like going to your textbook to look up a page and number, then adding that to your notes and erasing other notes to make room. Also remember there is Vram (for your card) and system ram, vram is only used for holding graphical assets while system ram is for the whole game and can feed your vram faster then a HD would.

What is your processor version? You want to aim at a 4 core CPU, preferably a i7 which are the best atm (the 40nm range not the 32nm sandy bridge). If your graphics card is good, it can be bottlenecked by the CPU, which routes the info and results in the GPU sitting and waiting for necessary rescources before it can perform a task (leading to stutters and other nasty things). Personaly I wouldnt touch the phenom with a barge pole, its very old tech. Get an i7 or wait for AMD Bulldozer.

You will notice a big performance jump when moving from 200 range to 400 or 500 range which is DX version based and hardware vs normally just hardware (outlined above).

So are you saying we should change the config.ini entry from d3d10_0 to d3d10_1?

I think there needs to be some clarification made here ...

There's no real difference between DX10 and DX10.1 in terms of feature sets, and there is certainly no performance gain using DX10.1 over DX10 at all.

DX10.1 was an update in standards not features, DX10.1 made graphic card vendors make some optional components of the DX10 API mandatory in their hardware.

The main standards to be mandatory were:
- 32-bit floating point filtering
- 4xAA sampling and two specific sample patterns.
- Programmable shader output sample masks and multi-sample AA depth read backs.

In terms of DX11, it is just DX10.1 with three additional features made to the API:

DX11 = DX10.1 + Tessellation + Multithreaded rendering + Compute Shaders

People need to remember that DX11 also includes COM objects from the DX7 API such as DXInput calls and the like. What that means is each new "version" of Direct X is not a complete rework of the API, it's merely added features being implemented.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...=vs.85%29.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microso...#Direct3D_10.1

Every bench test I've seen, notably Tom's Hardware lists the i5 2500 as the best performer ATM in regard to gaming and Sandy Bridge is by all accounts the recommended path for top shelf performance. What do you base your recommendation on?

I was wondering the same thing ...

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/142?vs=288

In the anandtech bench, the 2500K (~$250AUS) is comparable to the i7 980X (~$900AUS) in almost all aspects.

The new i7 990X might be a different story but that's currently going for ~$1300 :rolleyes:

You are wrong, I am so tired of correction people on this forum its driving me up the wall. Also for a start I dont see why you repeating my statements about DX11 helps your argument because thats exactly what I said. But despite that the DX11 features are significantly more powerful then anything in dx10/10.1, I have gone over this is in great detail a million times already so I will just link you to the posts.
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...795#post233795

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Level_Shader_Language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX#DirectX_10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D#Direct3D_10.1
Dx10.1 allows shader model 4.1 and parrallel cube mapping (basically it improves shader/lighting performance greatly) and established standards for hardware so you dont have crappy cards that cant actually run any dx10 features used, aka a dx10.1 card will be able to use dx10 features decently where as a dx10 card most likely cannot. For example look at Shogun 2 - DX10 cards will not be getting AA while dx10.1 cards will be.

DX11 features added are a massive performance improvement when used properly. But out of interest, what did was the purpose of your post exactly? Do you disagree that a 400 range card will easily beat out a 200 range? Or are you just saying dx10=dx11? Because there is a monstrous differance interms of upper end capacity, but in any case DX11 is 100% the way to go.

The fact that my hardware post was used by Creative assembly and pinned at the top of their forums for the guide on pc hardware? The fact that I compete in EVGA rig competitions. Also I have about 5-6 computers running atm of various ages for work, so I am familiar with a range of setups.
Sandybridge is not worth the extra $, you are paying for an integrated gpu on a cpu thats not needed. Above that sandybridge is the same as gulftown except the architecture was shrunk and they slaped on that integrated gpu then marked up the price. If you get a 40nm i7/i5 you can overclock it to 4.25+ghz on air stable, and 4.5-4.75 with a good water cooling system. Also buying an i5 is retarded if you want to keep the pc for any amount of time, how long are those 4 threads going to last you when BF3 comes out later this year and uses 8? For now its ok but it has no lasting ability as more companies come out with heavily threaded engines.

In addition the fact that you picked the 15 2500 is lol worthy. You do realise for like $20 more you could of got the K which has the better integrated GPU, and has a unlocked multiplier for overclocking? If you bought it, dumb decision you should of read more.

@Codex - no they are not really comparable, the 980 wins out, and those tests were favourable to the i5, so keep your thinking cap on ok? If a program only uses 4 threads then of course there will not be a large performance differance, some of those programs were from 2007... Now on the otherhand I have 12 threads and 6 cores, which means an immediate 33% boost due to the cores and up to (but unlikely) 3x more performance with heavily threaded programs (graphics design etc).

As for my CPU I needed it for rendering for Autodesk/Maya cgi, I also intend this pc to last for a bit so will be eventually adding another 12g of ram, and 2 more 580s with a nice raptor raid setup or even better SSDs. So to be bottlenecked by the CPU would suck, which wont happen when I overclock the 980x to 4ghz+...

For some one who keeps complaining that nobody reads their posts it's surprising that you don't bother to read other people.

Codex quite clearly said

Is IL-2 CoD supporting dx 10.1 or 11 ?

Regards

CoD uses DirectX 10 features in windows Vista and Windows 7 and DirectX 9 in Windows XP.

Because DirectX10 is a subset of DirectX11 if your running Windows 7 or vista with DirectX 11 you just use DirectX11. When the developers decide to implement the DirectX11 only features you will need a DirectX 11 graphics card to access those features.


from Wikipedia
"Direct3D 11 runs on Windows Vista and Windows 7. It will run on future Windows operating systems as well. Parts of the new API such as multi-threaded resource handling can be supported on Direct3D 9/10/10.1-class hardware. Hardware tessellation and Shader Model 5.0 require Direct3D 11 supporting hardware.[32] Microsoft has since released the Direct3D 11 Technical Preview.[33] Direct3D 11 is a strict superset of Direct3D 10.1 — all hardware and API features of version 10.1 are retained, and new features are added only when necessary for exposing new functionality. This helps to keep backwards compatibility with previous versions of DirectX."
Cheers!

Turned another side, would the game look nicer (recent amazing visual effects) while changing from (for example) Nvidia 260 to 5xx serie which - as far as I understand - does support a feature rich set of visual effects on top of the old ones.

Thanks

The game gives dx10_0 in the conf file. try to change that for 10.1? Won't work :)

Who cares if you are using professional software that takes advantage of the i7's hyperthreading! That has nothing to do with gaming or Cliffs of Dover. All you're doing is trying to get people to throw away hundreds of dollars on something they don't need. When people ask, "What's a good system for Cliffs of Dover?" they're not asking," what's a good system for Cliffs of Dover and running professional video editing software?". Understand?

They don't want to throw away thousands of dollars on a system that's going to be spanked by an $800 one a year from now. They don't care if the i7 will allow them to render their CGI nerd fantasies 40 seconds faster. Nobody cares about that!

Dude, are you blind? I told them to buy a cheaper cpu then others suggested. Seriously you need to read... They are saying to buy sandybridgre 32nm cpus, I said to buy the older, cheaper but currently comaparable Nehalem range which is gen 1 i7. I also never suggested to by a gulftown cpu. Now next time read the post before you respond, or atleast try to know what the differance is between cpus. Kthx

He also said there is no performance differance between dx10 and dx10.1 other then standardizing the chips. Then he said dx10.1 = dx11 but dx11 has more features. You do understand how to use formal logic right? If A=B (which he said didnt change anything other then a hardware requirment), then he said B=C (with C adding additional features), but then said that DX11 other then additional developer features does not increase performance over dx10.1 and therefore he is saying A=C and C just has standardized requirments and additional end features, but no performance improvement.

As for dx11 on vista - I actually did not know that they made it back compatible now, I cant believe I missed that (and when I am wrong or learn something new I always mention it if you read my posts).
Now to be nitpicky DX11 is a subset of DX10, which is quoted in your quotes (so I imagine this is a simple mistype error). Given that DX11 is a huge leap in reality. Shader model 5 is alot faster and efficient for ssao and other lighting effects than dx10.1. Also DX11 has the abilitiy to use rasterizing/ray tracing which we will see in the future, along with tesselation for planes and especially terrain (huge detail boost and easy and fast for devs to use) along with direct compute which I suggested mid last year should be used for the sea/water, also for smoke and particle physics which would enable a plane flying through a smoke collumb to disturb the smoke/particles realistically which would be incredible (as well as clouds). I was pretty much firmly dismissed especially after the news that DX11 would not be in release, I believe one of the devs even said that they would only use tesselation for plane wheels... I said that was absurd and laid out why it should be used. Now I dont think it was due to me but the interview I linked obviously shows a major 180 interms of using dx11, especially tesselation. Also they will use direct compute for FM physics and they need DX11 to take full advantage of modern cpus, which again I strongly advocated for and was told that it would not make a differance in performance/was too hard/no one has them, and now obviously the multithreading is the big thing this game needs to improve performance (so I was right again).

Now this doesnt mean by any stretch that I am always right, but over time I have been pretty much spot on with predictions.

my quote actually said
"Direct3D 11 is a strict superset of Direct3D 10.1" it is correct.

"Because DirectX10 is a subset of DirectX11 if your running Windows 7..."

Really? I was talking about what you typed, not what you quoted (just noting what I thought was an unintentional discrepency).

Hmmm... first reply you made.

I eagerly await your huge copy and paste reply from Wikipedia/Tom's Hardware/wherever.

No what I said is logically(and mathematically) correct. You are either miss-reading it or are trolling.

IF DirectX11 is a Superset of DirectX 10.1 THEN DirectX 10.1 MUST logically be a SubsSet of DirectX11.

from Wiki again
"Direct3D 11 is a strict superset of Direct3D 10.1 — all hardware and API features of version 10.1 are retained, and new features are added only when necessary for exposing new functionality. This helps to keep backwards compatibility with previous versions of DirectX.

"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX_10#DirectX_10

For your argument in this case to be correct you must be able to list one feature of DirectX10.1 that is not in DirectX11.

You are correct - I made a mistake because I was taking chronological order into account and I got my terms wrong. My bad m8

Why? Whats your argument? I said buy a gen 1 i-7, they said buy a gen 2 i-7 or gen 2 i-5 which are both more expensive than the gen 1 i-7 I believe. If you are too lazy to read/think, its not worth the time to try and educate you. Its easy information to find and it is pretty clear what I stated and that you are either playing dumb or trolling.

So what hardware would you suggest? Do you think for $800 you can play COD on good settings? I would say definitly not.

Hi,

Question turned another way, would the game look nicer (recent amazing visual effects) when changing from (for example) Nvidia 260 to 5xx serie which - as far as I understand - does support a further feature rich set of visual effects on top of older cards ?

Thanks

I bought the i5 2500k - But I am not going to argue with your logic, as money does not appear to be a deciding factor for you.
For me it was and the i5 2500k serves me well. I am however interested in your statement that battlefield 3 will utilise 8 cores.
I have not played any game yet that has come even close to using even 3 cores effectively let alone 4 properly.
For what you do for a living 8 cores may be the way to go.
But the i5 2500k is a good cpud that overclocks well and if you want to blow most of your budget on a graphic's card which is what clod demands then the small performance boost an i7 gives is not worth the money :grin:


Just realised you also suggested cheaper options than mine in the i7 line. Have to agree with you on that.

Just like to point out that in the two UK-based retailers that I usually use for PC components (Scan and OCUK) there are currently NO socket 1366 or 1156 i7s cheaper than the i5-2500K.

Closest was the quad core i7-950 at 188 (pounds) compared to the 2500K at 166.

Cheapest 6-core was i7-970 at 440 pounds.

And the i7-8xx's start at 206, and are considered inferior to the SBs.

Basically to get any better performance than Sandy Bridge you need to spend a huge amount more. And even then it may not be worth it if you don't run highly threaded applications.

Hi,

Better graphical effects with newer card ?
e.g. gtx 260 --> serie 5 ?

Or just smoother & faster ?

Regards

Sheesh jf........I don't think your microphone is working :confused:....lets just go get a beer ;)

sg

"But you guys! Video Editing! Seriously, i7 is cheaper and better than i5! You guys, pay attention to me, despite everything I ever said being either wrong or a lie, or a longwinded quote from Wikipedia." :(

"LISTEN TO ME!!!!" :evil:

You are an ass clown
http://www.compusa.com/applications/...283&CatId=4074
http://www.compusa.com/applications/...&Sku=I69-2500K

-i7 is $40 more, but double the threads and better memory cache. Also thats a expensive i7, I have seen ones for cheaper than the i5 there. So before you act like a smart ass, maybe read, also read the person above who edited his post because he got the cpus confused. Yet all you do is make stupid comments (which is typical of too many on this forum) which completely lack a purpose other than to troll, which you are not doing well in any case. Love how you didnt reply to my question though.
I also dont need to quote from wikipedia - 1. Because you obviously have problems with reading anything past one or two lines and two because it has nothing to do with wikipedia and the info wouldnt be there anyway.

Fail troll.

Wrong you did not read correctly - I said 8 threads, not 8 cores. Over that BFBC2 already uses 8 threads.
You have been playing the wrong games then - and over that if you read properly I said in the near future. I5 2500k is a good cpu, but its better to get the older gen i7. Please make sure to read what I say (and thank you for noting it, its funny that I get smack talked in the meantime) because I said threads not cores, then you assumed I use this pc for a living - which I dont, I use it for gaming and graphics design is a hobby (I said I have multiple pcs running for my job, and this is summer job when I am not at school and the pcs are mostly pretty crappy.)

Wrong, the older gen i7 quads perform better overall substantially per $ than the newer sandybridge i5s - this is due to the fact that they both can OC to the same level, while i5 has faster architecture because of the shrink, the i7 will "Always" beat it on anything heavily threaded, and often beat it on 4 threaded apps because the i7 uses the extra threads to run the os etc, while the i5 cannot do that (no hyperthreading).

Thanks to avoid dispersion, I ask a simple question, it has not yet been answered to.

Get the best video card you can afford! Unless you are using a directx9 card you are not missing out on any graphical features until they add DX11 support.

Really don't want to keep this going, (OP still hasn't got an answer and it's a question I'm interested in myself) but It is just incorrect that:

'the older gen i7 quads perform better overall substantially per $ than the newer sandybridge i5s'

recent tests in MANY magazines and websites demonstrate that the i5-2500K outperformed all but the most expensive i7s in everything but highly multi-threaded apps.

My last post showed that the extra performance also comes at a cheaper (MUCH cheaper for comparable performance) price than the i7s too.

The ONLY proviso in all this is whether or not you intend to run heavily multi-threaded apps. In this case, as you say, the top-end i7s will be better, but even then many people would be put off by the extra expense.

---------------------

Now - can someone answer this?:

gtx560ti 2GB OR gtx570 1280MB ???

for CoD obviously, :), at 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 and for high settings.

You might have to wait for them to get everything ironed out, but I would probably go for the 2GB version. It's going to pay off if you are gaming at the higher of the two resolutions and want to up the details.

As for the OP's question, like pretty much every hardware question, get the best you can afford unless it's one of the specialty cards that only gives you a 5% FPS boots more than another card $300 cheaper.

e: ignore me. if I have something useful to say I'll edit it in... :D

"many magazines" doesnt really count as a source...
That being said you havent read the post - the i7 can be clocked to more or less the same OC clock as the i5 can, they are both the same price (930/920 cheaper and 940/950 slightly more) but they have double the threads. Now its getting really tiresome, but do you seriously think the thread count of apps wont be increasing rapidly from now on? New phones coming out are dual core, the new ipad 5 is probably a dual too. BFBC2 runs 8 threads. Now even if you only run 4 threads, so even with the i5 - the clock is the same, the i5 SB wins slightly interms of speed because of the new mem/arch BUT the i7 can run the OS and other apps using the spare threads and comes out even or on top. In addition this gap will only increase into the future.
I5 SB will always lose to a i7 N unless its a K version SB then you can OC it, then its even until you get to newer software and the I7 wins. Its the better longterm buy.

"many magazines" doesnt really count as a source...

Your capacity to discount evidence that doesn't fit your desired conclusion is impressive. :) This being an Internet forum and not an academic journal it seems a little OTT to supply detailed references.

You're still maintaining that the i7s are cheaper. At the suppliers I usually buy from they aren't:

The 930 is 229.99 at OCUK (and currently out of stock with no ETA) against 179.99 for the i5-2500K.

Regarding number of threads - with SBs you have a choice of 4 core hyper-threading with the 2600K - equivalent to the lower i7s. There is possibility that 6-core SBs will be coming out for the 1155 socket.

Even if that doesn't happen, I could replace my motherboard AND get a new 6-core cpu for less than I would have to pay to get the cheapest 6-core i7 currently.

Sorry I dont speak for UK prices - only US online and retail that I have seen, so I my comment cannot (and does not) apply to the UK if what you say is true interms of a big price gap. That being said NO i5 has hyper threading!: http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollecti...familyId=42912

Hyper threading is only for i7s. Also a 6 core SB cpu would be great, but that would be replacing the current i7 980x gulftown cpu as their top cpu and will probably for SB take on the same price ($1000). On the other hand once we reach Ivy Bridge architecture (28nm from 34nm) then its likely we will see midrange 6 cores and high range 8+ cores for the upper end. I am holding out hope they stretch the 1366 alittle more and give us a 8 core gulftown as or after the 995x in 2011/2012.

In any case what you have said about the 6 cores validates my whole point - that for the future you need more cores/threads. While the i5 SB is newer, it loses out to the older and (in the US) comparably priced i7 which can match it closely in thread limited performance but spanks it when you go to heavily threaded apps = the future. So $ per performance the i7 N is better atm imo.