Nividia or ATI, Intel or AMD

[TonyD]

As Flanker says, almost verbatim At the moment there is no better choice than the i5 2500k. As far as graphics cards go, this may provide some guidance if you’re thinking about the amount of VRAM that may be necessary: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...o_card_review/

When it comes to CloD, I found the additional memory allowed higher detail settings without a frame rate penalty, but the difference wasn’t huge. More of it certainly doesn’t hurt, though.

[Widowmaker214]

get what you want :p

I prefer intel CPUs but know plenty that run AMD... I think intel will run faster but thats my opinion.

As far as video.. Nvidia.
Some of my regular fly buddies have had ATI, then swiched to nvidia..and refuse to go back.
to many troubles with drivers all the time.
I have an ati card in my latest laptop... only because I coudnt get it configured with an nvidia card and no other laptop I could get configured close to it.
and the driver crashes all the time. have updated it.. rolled back.
its just a mess. And I hear that same thing from my friends using ATI.
most have switched to nvidia.
I have 3 home built computers running nvidia, and one laptop. No issues.

[335th_GRAthos]

Just picking up on what ICDP mentioned regarding the 570GTX, he is right!

I fly nicely at 3072x resolution SLI with 70+ fps no problems as long as my VRAM is not full.
e.g. REPKA server islands with all options grass, shadows, roads etc etc.

If I fly on a heavier map (REPKA server channel island), the moment my VRAM is filled up above 1240Mb, I have 30fps.
If I lower the eye candy (roads, shadows, grass=OFF) the my VRAM will go up to 1140Mb and I continue enjoying my 70fps.

So, no matter what kind of card you are going to choose, make sure you have 1,5Gb and more if you want to enjoy.

My next card(s) will have 3Gb VRAM for sure (I only need a rig to fly IL2 and CoD so this is the only requirement), I bet it will be available by next year.

~S~

PS: thanks for mentioning ICDP, it made go back and start testing....

[ICDP]

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos

Just picking up on what ICDP mentioned regarding the 570GTX, he is right!

I fly nicely at 3072x resolution SLI with 70+ fps no problems as long as my VRAM is not full.
e.g. REPKA server islands with all options grass, shadows, roads etc etc.

If I fly on a heavier map (REPKA server channel island), the moment my VRAM is filled up above 1240Mb, I have 30fps.
If I lower the eye candy (roads, shadows, grass=OFF) the my VRAM will go up to 1140Mb and I continue enjoying my 70fps.

So, no matter what kind of card you are going to choose, make sure you have 1,5Gb and more if you want to enjoy.

My next card(s) will have 3Gb VRAM for sure (I only need a rig to fly IL2 and CoD so this is the only requirement), I bet it will be available by next year.

~S~

PS: thanks for mentioning ICDP, it made go back and start testing....

I had a single GTX460 for a while and it is a great card at 1920x1080. I bought two more monitors and an extra GTX460 but at 6048x1080 they just could not handle the hit due to lack of VRAM. So I traded them in when the HD6970 came out and bought two of them. Two GTX580s were an option but I felt for the extra 10% performance at that resolution it was silly to spend and extra £240.

I always look at price/performance/features when making a graphics card purchase. When the GTX460 was released it was the best bang for buck so I bought one, then another. This time it was 2X HD6970s that got my vote.

[335th_GRAthos]

HD6970! yeaaah would have been an option, were it being produced by NVidia!


Just joking...

No, the bad news I read in that hardware review, the 3Gb 580GTX GPUs are there but they bring hardly any noticable performance advantage. So it is the next 1-2 generations of GPUs we need in order to see performance.

I will have to wait...

[WSP_Zoop]

I'm definitely going to go SB, probably i5_2500K and 2X GTX 570's in SLI. I'm not willing to gamble on AMD again and as Vengeance pointed out I'm not done with IL-2: 2-0 for Nvidia!
If CloD definitely runs better on Direct X rather than GL then there should be no issue, but as IL-2 is the only one of the two that I know of on line at this moment then I'm decided.
I want to thank everyone who responded to my querie. I very much appreciate it.

[335th_GRAthos]

Something more since you are preparing your order, take a look at my other post here
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...t=23302&page=2

And, since you mentioned 2 x GTX570 which is exactly the setup I have, my advice today:

I personally would buy two 580GTX 3GbVRAM if I would go to the shop today so, unless if you want to play very high resolution (3072x and higher) you should to buy a single GTX580 3Gb VRAM GPU.
Should cost the same or be cheaper than 2 x 570GTX
Wait for the game to support 3Renders (3 monitors), by then the prices of GTX580 will have dropped and you can buy your second GTX580 when you will really need it.

I say this because the 1380Mb VRAM of the GTX570 is always at the limit at the resolution I play (3072x1024) so I will always recommend more than 1380Mb VRAM (you can see screenshots of the 570GTX VRAM usage in my pictures on the "SLI Working" thread).

Still, the 580GTX is a medium term solution so you will need to buy a new card in a year or two.

My 2cts...

~S~

[Flanker35M]

S!

People should stop spreading false information about CoD. It runs at DirectX ONLY. Period. It was in beginning OpenGL, but switched to DirectX later on. So a DirectX capable card should run the title just fine AFTER the devs have fixed their code, after that AMD/nVidia can make applicable drivers/CAP etc.

[Ataros]

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos

Still, the 580GTX is a medium term solution so you will need to buy a new card in a year or two.

Exactly. I think Battle of Moscow will not introduce much challenges but Battle of Stalingrad which may come next year will probably have at least some elements of new water, clouds and/or weather. 580 will be able to run it on medium settings but for those who can not settle for less than everything maxed out a nextgen card will suit better.

Since the 2 blue lines bug is fixed ATI 2GB vram 69xx series is a strong player again. As a medium term solution I would recommend going for 6950 flashed to 6970 and adding the 2nd one when/if needed depending on nextgen cards price/performance ratio and timing of Il-2 addons issue.

2x570 is a waste of money imho as it does not have enough memory to last long term and is too expensive as a med-term solution.

ps. BTW my 4890 runs original Il-2 in OpenGL fine without any artefacts.

[Flyby]

Originally Posted by TonyD

As Flanker says, almost verbatim At the moment there is no better choice than the i5 2500k. As far as graphics cards go, this may provide some guidance if you’re thinking about the amount of VRAM that may be necessary: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...o_card_review/

When it comes to CloD, I found the additional memory allowed higher detail settings without a frame rate penalty, but the difference wasn’t huge. More of it certainly doesn’t hurt, though.

This from that article:

"In all of our gameplay testing we haven't hit the VRAM wall with the GeForce GTX 580 with 1.5GB of RAM. In Metro 2033 we had the opportunity to show you what this looks like. We found that at 2560x1600 with Very High quality and 4X MSAA enabled and Depth of Field enabled, the VRAM requirements are at least a 2GB video card. This graph above proves that.

If you look at the GeForce GTX 580 line, it has a framerate between 6-9 FPS, varying only by 3 FPS the entire run-through. This is a clear cut VRAM bottleneck imposed by the insufficient 1.5GB of RAM on the video card for these settings. When you look at the performance of the AMD Radeon HD 6970, with 2GB of RAM, the performance is better and there is a wider range of framerate over time. The same goes for the 3GB MSI N580GTX Lightning XE which is faster still, with varying framerate."

So, TonyD thanks for that link. It has helped me decide on the 6970. I won't be running at that 25x16 rez, though. Probably 19x10 (or 12). Two gb of vram should hold me in good stead with CLOD in that case. Nothing like data! Perhpas when CLOD implements that weather thing, and Crossfire gets optimized for CLOD, I could always add another card. BTW, I sold my i7-920. I'll buy an i5-2500k. It's not because of FPS. It's because of power usage. I never even used the 920 at any rate. It's off to a good home.
Flyby out