pc upgraders which trak
 

hey all you simmers who've upgraded to new pc systems, I have a qustion: what IL2 trak did you use to test your upgrade's performance,and what were the results. Also, please mention your cpu, gpu, ram and mobo (if it's not asking too much)
much obliged ;)
Flyby out

I think that "Black Death" is often used for reference...

When running IL2 1946 at 1280x1024 and 16AA + 16QX + Open GL perfect and water 4, I get 72 fps in average with my one year old system below (running XP naturally, Vista sucks for gaming):

Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (@3.0Ghz - 1200Mhz FSB)
Asus Striker Extreme NForce680i SLI MB
Asus GeForce 8800GTX 768Mb
2 x 1Gb Corsair PC6400 XMS2 XTREME CAS4 @900Mhz 4-4-4-15 2,1 Volt
1 x RAPTOR 150GB + 2 x Raptor 74Gb (raid 0) + Hitatchi T7K500 320GB
Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional
Zalman CNPS9700 Cpu cooler
Antec TruePower Trio 650W
Antec P180B Chassis
Dual boot - Windows XP SP2+ and Vista64 Ultimate

Regards /Mazex

thanks Mazex
 

Thanks for running the BD and reporting your numbers. Impressive rig you have! If I might ask, could you run the Kamikaze trak? I found that one to be more debilitating to my meager system than the BD trak. Looks as if you'll have Sow_BoB well in hand. ;)
Flyby

Black Death as well, I just did a up-grade, it's great for IL-2...unknown for Bob

Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI 939 pin Mother
2 Raptors
OCZ gamer memory 2x1000
Ocz gamer PSU 700 watt 4x12volt rails
AMD 4000+ San Diego, stock speed
ATI X1950XTX
CH controls

Hey Slipball
 

Hey Slip,
were'd ya buy the power supply? Nice system. How ya liking the Ati card?
Flyby

Re: Hey Slipball
 

Hi Flyby, thanks....the Ati I just got off e-bay I like it alot. I bought a OCZ 600w from Newegg, after 2 years of use it recently failed...so OCZ sent me the 700w as replacement. They have a 3 year power swap warranty, so there was no charge

props to OCZ then,
 

Hey Slip it's always good see a company honor it's warranty (especially with an upgrade as a replacement). That's the kind of service anyone would want. Good luck with it. I wonder what made the first one fail after two years? Well, build a billion, and at least one can fail, eh? ;)
Flyby

OK Flyby, tried the Kamikaze track, here's my fraps log for that:

2007-11-09 21:26:33 - il2fb
Frames: 11821 - Time: 161509ms - Avg: 73.191 - Min: 32 - Max: 225

As before, IL2 1946 at 1280x1024 and 16AA + 16QX + Open GL perfect and water 4. Using Nvidia 163.71 drivers.

Regards /Mazex

Mazex, it just goes to show ya
 

On my old system (p4-2.8/800fsb 1.5gig of pc3500, 6800 ultra) I saw a minimum fps of 7 on the Kamikaze trak. :shock: So your min-fps of 32 is over a 400% increase! I think I see my upgrade path beginning to reveal itself.
Interestingly SoW-BoB will support dual , and quad cores. I've watched the price of Kentsfield (65nm) quad cores drop. I expect that they will drop further yet when the mid-line Penryn duo and quad cores become available next year. They'll probably be available before SoW_BoB comes out! :D
Thanks for using your time to test and report on the Kamikaze trak on your system.
Flyby out

No problem. The min fps is really not the issue for me at least as it very seldom occurs (only once per measuring naturally ;)). On the kamikaze track I guess it was for a very short period when that Betty hit the Carrier. I'm more intrested in the lower quartile, and the average. What's your average on your rig running "Kamikaze"?

my average kamikaze fps?
 

well, my current system is in parts now (has been for quite a while now), but iirc my average fps for the Kamikaze trak was in the low 30s with water set to 3. in usual game play I didn't have many issues, but I noted that I needed to tone down the flak from ships and such. I made a lot of at-sea type mission and learned that ship flak, if not set properly would bog my sytem down. I also remember a mission I made where the object was to down some Ju-52s before they could drop their paratroops. Well the first time the interception failed, and when those troops dropped, my system REALLY slowed up! :oops: It was an online coop mission and the opfor won the day. I had to reduce the nimber of troop transports to get it to run acceptably.
At any rate, the new seroes of intel processors should see me clear. I need to see how the x38 chipset/mobo prices look too. I'm not going for an extreme system, so maybe the p35 chipset will have to do, and DDR2 if the price of DDR3 doesn't drop enough by the time I'm ready to step up. Also I figure that since I own a BFG 6800 ultra, I might get lucky with their trade-in policy, and get that hot little 8800gt-oc they offer.
I hope the dollar bounces back by then. If not, 7fps is not a bad minimum rate at all!! :D
Flyby

Well it will be good to see yopu back in the air..

thanks Boss!
 

I feel so discombobulated not flying online with the mighty 99th. The squad has gone far in my absence, and added many new and talented members. I'll be a flaming noob once I do return. :D
99th_Flyby out

I figured I would run a test to see how my system performed. Somehow Mazex seems to know how to squeeze that little bit of extra speed out of his rig.
All of my tests are running at 1920x1200 resolution, 16xAF, 16XQAA, water=4, forest=3 and 3dgunners=1. For the record I play using water=3. My rig just doesn't like water=4 but I did the tests with it anyway. Oh, and my driver is 158.22. I found that for now, it works best.

For the Black Death I got Min.29 Max.109 Avg.73.736
For Kamikaze I got Min.27 Max.239 Avg.71.884

I also used ProcessAffinityMask=2 which only uses the second core I believe. Even having a four core system, Il2 seems to run best using only Core#2 for some reason. If there is a way to somehow optimize this quad core system I am all ears.

My system specs:
QX6700 Quad Core @ 3.22GHz
Asus Striker Extreme Mobo
8800GTX SLi
X-Fi Xtreme Audio
280GB Raptor HD RAID0
370GB Storage
24" Widescreen

Well, our scores are very similar, but you are using 1920x1200 while I'm only running at 1280x1024 (got a 19'' monitor). If I would run it at 1920x1200 my scores whould drop quite a bit I guess. Rightfully so, as you are running your 8800GTX's in SLI. Considering IL2 only uses one core I guess your extra two cores makes no real difference - and the clock difference between 3.0 and 3.22 does not matter either as It´s not the CPU that's the bottleneck.

Regarding parameters you mention that I haven't: I'm using 3Dgunners=1 and ProcessAffinityMask=2 too - but forest=2 (not that it matters on Kamikaze ;))

Regarding tuning for using multiple cores: "It's tough to learn an old horse to sit" as we say here in Sweden. I guess a complete rewrite of the core logic in the renedering engine would be required for that.

Anyway, I guess that our experience is rather similar :)

EDIT - thinking of buying a new monitor as that's the only part of my system that feels a bit "out of scope". I haven't tried IL2 on a widescreen monitor - is it a lot better? Even though I'm using TrackIR 4 I'm feeling that it would be nice to have that widescreen view... What about that widescreen monitor when you play old games that only support 4:3 resolutions? Does it crop the image in the right and left end and keep it sharp or do some zoom/stretch thingy that makes the image blurry and distorted etc?

hmmm...
 

It seems the thread has taken an interesting turn. I'd like to hear about monitors too. :)
Flyby
ps Nice numbers there, choctaw.

I haven't really tried any older games on this rig :oops: I would imagine that it would either crop the image as you say or just stretch it out to fit. On the newer games, if I choose a non wide screen resolution, it just stretches the image to fit the screen.

I forgot to mention that I only use 2 Gigs of RAM. XP doesn't recognize any more than 2.5 Gigs anyway.

As far as monitors are concerned, I use an Acer 24" widescreen that I have had since March of this year and I am VERY pleased with it. I paid a premium for it back then but they are very reasonably priced now. The picture and clarity are great and overall is a very good gaming display.

Just did a quick test running the numbers on the settings I normally use: Water=3, Effects=1, 16AF, and 4xAA and still 1920x1200.
For Kamikaze they are: Min.28, Max.298 and Avg.84.711
For the Black Death: Min.29, Max.183 and Avg.93.750

I found that 4xAA still looks ok compared to 16XQAA and I get a little bit of a performance gain, but not much. This change is most noticeable during engine startup and when a lot of smoke is present. I like to keep my frames pegged at 60 as often as possible when running V-Sync on (when not testing). I may do more testing at 16XQAA and see how often those frames drop below 60 during normal game play. The thing that really gets to me is flying over large cities! FIFTEEN (15) frames per second!! :evil: That kind of thing should not happen on a rig like this for a game as old as this one...but it does, and I don't know of anyone who has found a way to solve this problem.

Nice postings here guys, thanks !
My two 8800GTX are ordered I am gathering information on appropriate NV drivers.

Choctaw, I thought you had a 3 monitor (Matrox TrippleHead2Go) setup?

Can anyone post some benchmarks at ultra high resolution ?
I run IL2FB on 3072x768



Thanks in advance

It would be nice to know whether these will be enough to play SoW or not...... I guess at this moment that is not possible to know :?

Well, If an 8800GTX SLI setup does not run BoB fairly OK - then Oleg is in big trouble even if the game ships late 2008, otherwise the target audience is getting narrow. I think that it really has to run well on normal/high settings on an 8800GTX (or two) to succeed, but naturally it would be nice with some beefy maximum settings that gets a rig like that "up against the wall" - for future "lebensraum" ;) There is no game today that does not run well on my 8800GTX system (accept Combat Mission Shock Force ;)). I'm running all the lastest great looking games at maximum settings without any problems (Crysis demo, World in Conflict etc).

As the fps has always been good in IL2 (even on the rig I had when v 1.0 was released - with a Geforce 2 Ultra if I remember it correctly), I'm not that worried actually...

/Mazex

Saqson posted on SimHQ that he thought a system that was cutting edge at the time of release would be unlikely to play BoB at maximum settings and that it would probably be a further six months before such a system was available. Oleg's posted that the game's full potential won't be realised or realisable until the series and computer systems are more mature which makes sense.

I am not worried about playing BoB in this system. How well and on what settings is anyones guess. What I do know for certain is that another high powered system will be purchased after the Sow:BoB release just to fly it. :wink:

Speaking in timeframes, that sounds like a three years in the future PC configurations from now to me........

Then again, I could be wrong.

TBH FB took even more...............................

Because I don't wanna waste my money on the last possible hardware configurations, those are really pricey...... after 6 months or one years price drops noticeably so it sounds more reasonable to get it then.

If the game/sim releases Q1 2008 as they say, I'm confident my one 8600GS and Athlon x2 4200+ will run it nicely - certainly not at the highest settings though.
They would´nt want to release a game that 1% of the market can play... So don´t worry me thinks :)

I do not believe the 8800GTX will be enough for BOB. Whenever BOB will arrive is written in the stars. Two yrs delay and I expect it to hold another year until the Dix10.1 story has cristalised...

The future is Dix 10.1 The 8800GTX is NOT Dix10.1 compatible therefore dead end.

Why I buy 2 of them now? Because:
1- I have been waiting for 12 months for BOB to arrive in order to see what kind of HW will be required.
2- I have been waiting for a card to be Dix10.1 compatible
3- I realised that BOB will take months to turn up
4- the 8800GT and 8800GTXver.2 are very good cards but still do not reach the power of the 8800GTX at ultra high resolutions (I fly 3072x768)
5- IL2FB is the only game I play (so I do not care about performance in any other game)
6- ultra high resolution can only be played at SLI mode
7- I got fed up every year listening to ATI anouncing a super dupper card for after Xmas (the twin 3870X2 this time)

~S~

with limited treasure...
 

I hope when I buy a new system it will run SoW_BoB fairly well, but I feel the need to make certain compromises. I have only limited treasure in this life, and where it gets dispensed in sane proportions is always a challenge. So I figure I'll put more money towards the processor, while forgoing a top line gpu. I hope an 8800gt will be sufficient. NO SLI plans here. It's all compromises for me. I played IL2 and LOMAC at 1280x9xx, and on a 2.8 processor, and 6800 ultra that was fine for me.So I figure the laws of lcd purchasing will be duly effected by that rez setting. A good mobo that will allow me to upgrade the processor, and some fast ram should give me a system with a bit of longevity.
I sincerely hope Oleg remembers the average sots who bought his sims, and flew them on moderate systems, and so optimizes the codes for SoW to allow this center of fans to enjoy a bit of it at moderate frames. I am one of them, and I need to use my limited treasure for eevryday living too. ;)
Flyby out

I've been looking into a new system as well. The one thing that I am having a hard time with is motherboards. How do you compare them with all of the specs? Should I start by picking a cpu and video card(s) setup, then just find a mb that works with that? Or get a better one that let's me have a better upgrade path? And how much of a geeg do I have to be to compare all those mb specs?

All good points guys, there is no easy answer, it is a question of philosophy rather than budget.

The only recomendation I can do is:
IF you want to invest, buy a quad Core processor.
Rumors had it that new games (inkl BOB) can use 1 CPU for the AI, 1 CPU for the Graphics and 1 CPU for the remaining functions. This leaves you 1 CPU for the operating system as well so, Quad core is a reasonable investment.

My personal philosophy is: Buy what you need for that very moment (interpret that as "3-5 month horizon").
Any longer time frame is not worthwhile:
Every 12 months there is graphics card with double performance at the same price.
Every 12-18 months there is a new CPU with approx. 50% more performance at the same price.

Do not even think therefore to buy a CPU for EUR 1000,-- unless if oyu absolutely necessary need it right now...

my 2 cents...

my upgrade thinking is...
 

First, I want to go quad core, but whether or not that's a 65nm or 45nm depends on the price of the mid-range Penryn (45nm) quad cores when they come out in the next 45 days or so. Either way, the mobo I select will support both. Asus is a leader. Gigabyte touts sturdier components for longevity. I'm not going for SLI with two gpu cards, so I settled for the 8800gt. It should still be a relevant card by the time I'm readdy to buy. Prices should be down a bit for most components by then too. Ram looks like DDR3 if the prices of that ram drop, DDR2 if not. Again, I'm not investing in a top-of-the-line system.
As for sorting out which component (cpu, mobo, ram, gpu) to buy, I visit the following sites:
www.tomshardware.com
www.firingsquad.com
www.extremetech.com
www.sharkyextreme.com
www.anandtech.com
Most of these sites test equipment and make comparisons,and recommendations. Then there are motherboard forums, but I haevn't checked out many of those lately. I once had an ABIT IS7 mobo, the ABIT's forums are a very good sourceto find out what life is like living with it's products. People there were very helpful.
One thing for sure, I hope to score a mobo that has a Windows-based bios update. ABIT had one, and it made updating the bios an absolute breeze.
Flyby out.
PS I'm leaning towards either an ASUS or a Gigabyte mobo at present, based on tech reviews.

(quote)
Gigabyte touts sturdier components for longevity




Funny thing, I was so sure that my 3 year old mb was bad that I sent it back to Gigabyte twice......each time they tested it for 6 hour's straight, and then promply returned it to me....no charge for each time!......turns out that I had a finickey psu :lol:

Slipball, about Gigabyte
 

Perhaps your story is truly indicative of Gigabyte being sturdy! :D
Flyby

Yes flyby I have been very happy with gigabyte. When Bob has been out awhile I will build a new system, and gigabyte will be in it for sure......I was looking about, and found this card, it sounds awsome! I wonder if my board supports it, I might check it out :P
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130072

Hey Slipball
 

That's one mighty card there. I wonder if your board will have enough room? If you're thinking of upgrading, might two 8800GTs in sli mode be about the same price. But I'm not sure about performance, though these cards have 512mb of onboard ram. It might be close.
Thanks for the positive feedback on Gigabyte. It's in the running for my next mobo brand.
Flyby