Nvidia GT280

[Golden_Eagle_FM]

The new top graphic card of Nvidia is the GTX280. I can say it is the best card ever up to now. Even if the driver I have is the first one and so future optimization and performance improvements will come, allready now Il2 runs flawlessly and with stellar performance.

I had the 8800 Ultra before (an excellent card) but this card beats it hands down. I tried the 8800GX2 but that one was a desillusion. It was an SLI card and with IL2 it was not up to the task. Shadows were blinking, reflections on water were blinking, and there was strong stuttering when flying over and near the ground. That card did boast 1GB video memory but it was a cheat. In reality each processor had 500MB that is less then my 8800 Ultra with 768MB.

The GTX280 is mono GPU with 1BG fast DDR3 video memory.

My Nvidia settings are:

Screen 1900X1200
Anisotropy forced to 8X
Antialiasing forced to 8X
Transparency Antialiasing -On and set as Multisampling
Image in Quality mode
Vsync is set to ON
Triple buffering is set to ON

The IL2 settings are

All to the max and in perfect mode (Open GL)
Landgeom=3
Effects=2
TypeClouds=1
Water=3
Forest=3
3dgunners=1

The hardware is

Mainboard: Asus Rampage Intel X48 chipset. FSB set at 1600MHZ
Processor: Intel Extreme Quadcore QX9770 at 3.2 GHZ with FSB at 1600MHZ
Memory: 4GB of DDR2 Patriot 9600 running at 1200 MHZ
Display: Samsung SyncMaster 244T 24"
Power Supply: Thermaltake 1200Watt
Graphic Card: Asus GeForce GTX280
Hard Disks: 2X 150GB Raptors at 10'000 rpm and 1X 500MB at 7200rpm


The Black Death test track runs mostly between 50 and 60 fps with all the settings above.
Due to Vsync it is limited to 60 but I prefer the triple buffering with Vsync set to on. The image flow is much smoother and without glitches.

So even if a little expensive the best card for IL2.

Gold