Nvidia GT280

Thanks for posting that info Golden Eagle, its good to know that the GTX280 can handle this sim well. I have 2 X 8800GTX cards in SLI and although i have an average score of 57FPS on the Black Death Track with everything ramped up at 1920X1200 i still get a big drop in FPS when things get busy. Anyone who claims they dont get a big drop in FPS with lesser cards at high settings and at high res are just kidding themselves. I build custom gaming rigs for a living i build at least 2 PC's a week on average and i always advise my customers to opt for Nvidia cards not because they are necessarily better but because the drivers are more inclined to work well with many more games than ATI have been known to.

Anyway thanks for the info mate and enjoy your new rig!

[Feuerfalke]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

Thanks for posting that info Golden Eagle, its good to know that the GTX280 can handle this sim well. I have 2 X 8800GTX cards in SLI and although i have an average score of 57FPS on the Black Death Track with everything ramped up at 1920X1200 i still get a big drop in FPS when things get busy. Anyone who claims they dont get a big drop in FPS with lesser cards at high settings and at high res are just kidding themselves. I build custom gaming rigs for a living i build at least 2 PC's a week on average and i always advise my customers to opt for Nvidia cards not because they are necessarily better but because the drivers are more inclined to work well with many more games than ATI have been known to.

Anyway thanks for the info mate and enjoy your new rig!

Actually Golden_Eagle_FM posted that it is not the SLI that makes this sim run fast

I couldn't put it any better than he did. It's not the Twin 8800GTX that makes your rig fast (or not), but the combination of the parts in your PC. As it was stated in the recent weeks a lot of times, Crysis runs on a 600$ PC with perfect settings. I just depends on what you spend your money and that you configure your PC right.

So "Anyone who claims they dont get a big drop in FPS with lesser cards at high settings and at high res are just kidding themselves." is as wrong as wrong can be, especially for this sim. If I run IL2 with my C2D 6600 & 2400 and at 3600MHz, it's a difference of about 5-9 AVG FPS gain in BlackDeath.

@ Eagle:
Do you play LockOn? I'd really like to know what FPS you get, when setting clipping-distances to max.

You missed my point entirely, i was saying that i do get a big drop in fps when it gets busy with my cards in SLI. I have already posted before that the best upgrade for this game would be a better CPU, that is a given. However, if you are trying to tell me that if we had identical rigs other than your 6600 against my 8800GTX's in SLI that our FPS would be the same or similar then you are very much mistaken.

[Feuerfalke]

A C2D 6600 is a processor

Anyway, with my single 8800GTS I get 53FPS AVG in TBD-track, when overclocked, about 46 when running with 2.4GHz, all maxed out 16x/16x @ 1600x1200.

So, I'm not saying that your whole point in this thread is wrong, but as I posted before, "Anyone who claims they dont get a big drop in FPS with lesser cards at high settings and at high res are just kidding themselves." is.

Infact when I ran the game with my old trusty 9800pro while I had to send my old nVidia back, there was barely any drop in FPS at all, because I was playing with 32-35 FPS all the time and my CPU only awoke, when cruising over a city.

[Thunderbolt56]

FPS fluctuates all the time depending on number of objects, number of players, overall activity etc,. Things absolutely slow down when dropping down onto Berlin with 15 flak batteries spread out on 5 towers and a handful of aerial adversaries chasing each others' butt.

The statement is that, for me, it's still playable and smooth with frames over 30 even under historically stressfull conditions. Maximum frames are irrelevent IMO. Minimum and average frames are the only things that really matter and when my average frames, at my settings, stay in the high ~70's without vsync and at ~58 with vsync getting new hardware to get an extra 10 frames in a group of games that already looks stunning is a waste. I don't do it for a living, but I allot funds monthly because fiddling with pc's IS a hobby of mine that is important, but I don't "play" 3DMark.

When there are a couple games that will benefit from the new hardware, I'll be cruising through newegg on the double first in line to grab it...and the price will be lower.

[Feuerfalke]

I couldn't agree more, Thunder and it's the exact approach I have.

Even the average FPS is hoax, when using the ingame measurement. In my first run, before that last post, I had an average FPS of 238, because I ran the game without vertical synch. IMHO it's just a digital version of a ruler, if you know what I mean.

If my games run with 30-35 FPS I'm even more happy than with FPS reaching from 200 to 25.

Synthetic benchmarks don't show anything anyway. ATI and nVidia have years of experience to optimize their drivers for these tests, without really having any positive effect on games.

[Zoom2136]

LOL killer card indeed but iL2 is CPU limited... hell my 7900GTX OC is enough... had 2 of them in SLI but deaseable one for the SLI prob that all know about...

So a fast CPU... mine a E6600 OC to 3.4 is way more important than the latest and greatest GPU. Hell my FPS rarelly drop under 60 (low over large cities) with everything maxed out and EFFECT=2... I also run VSYNC so I'm limited to 60 FPS...

Hope you play other games...

As far as bang for $$$ goes ATI are king right know but I guess you new that ;o)

[~BeoWolf~]

The future may not be as bright as we would hope if you're an Intel/nvidia fan. Seems like they are having an intense love hate relationship at the moment. If you have dreams of running the new Nahalem CPU and nvidia SLI, it may be a pipe dream if you get a mother board using Intel chipsets. They will not support SLI. nvidia at the moment does not have a working chipset that will support Nahalem and SLI either. So if you were planning on buying all this when available, you may have to wait awhile longer or opt for the the single GPU nvidia has now. Only time will tell.

[Thunderbolt56]

I've used sli twice. Once with dual 6800GT's and again using a 7950GX2. Performance with both systems was great...for their time. The reality, though, is that there are single slot solutions that are truly badass cards that are already putting the bottleneck back onto the current crop of CPU's.

I'm using an 8800GTS 512 right now and I love it. If I were building new, I'd get a GTX280 period, but wouldn't be at all unhappy with a 4870 or maybe even a 9800GX2.