Ash,
I cannot tell you anything specific about my system yet because I've only had it for one day. I know a lot about PCs and I spent a long time selecting the system. I intended to build one myself, but that Dell happened to have all the components I wanted and pretty cheap. They use standard stuff, so there should be no problems with upgrades later.
It gives me nice framerates at 1600x1200 in 32 with triple buffering offline but I am sure that on-line I would have to go lower - 1280 or 1024, do not know which yet. I would prefer 32 - the sunset does look better. But 16 should be much faster.
At 1280x1024 I can set 100Hz refresh rate which is helpfull in case I do not use tripple buffering (should I disable it?). Triple buffering costs lot extra memory on the card but makes the frame rate independent from the refresh rate, much like with V-sync off, but without tearing effects.
At the same time with triple buffering disabled a frame rate is a fraction of the refresh rate. So at 1280x1024 it is 50fps or 33fps. Most likely it will be 50fps when alone but probably never lower then 33fps no matter what. Is it reasonable to fly at a stable 33fps or should I try to squeeze more? Should I sacrifice 32 bit for extra framerate?
It would seem to me that there may be advantages to a card producing a stable 33fps if that is an acceptable rate:
1. Constant frame rate makes aiming a little bit more consistant. What you see is delayed by 1/33th of a second but always by that amount, so your aiming habits comensate for that.
2. Absence of the third frame buffer at 1280x1024x32 frees 5,2 MB of the card memory which improves efficiency and eases the load on the memory. It increases speed but that is pointless because you are limited to 30fps anyway, unless that is enough of the increase to push me into 50fps.
3. If a card can only draw 33 or 50 screens per second instead of, say 75, it redices the load on the rest of the system because it uses some of teh CPU and bus throughput anyway, and that can only make the rest of the game more stable.
I will have to do some extensive testing unless someone gives me an advice. on those settings for a similar system.
I've ordered the only pedals worths considering - CH Pro-Pedals USB. Anyone who keeps alive the obsolete CPU-hogging, spikng and trouble-prone 20-year old analog gameport standard by buying not-USB peripherals deserves all the traouble he will get.
AH is probably the only flight sim now supporting the multiple controllers, but that is what we fly anyway.
miko--
