Can Anyone Run MAX Everything?

[Chalenge]

that's not really accurate.  I had to reinstall windows because somehow a needed process disabled.  I tried the "undo" function and it totally corrupted windows.  had to do a full reinstall to get my computer to work.  that was the first and last time i used it.  to this day I still dont know what went wrong as I was careful as to which processed I disabled.  after that I never used any program again.  I just manually disable whatever needs to be disabled, after all why have a program adding processes to disable processes?

after that I always used this site to figure out which processes I dont need.

http://www.blackviper.com/

Try and Decide (Acronis True Image) would have saved you.

[Skuzzy]

Gman, the game title (Aces High) is 13 years old.  The graphics engine went through another massive update less than a year ago.  It is our fourth graphics engine update.

The shadow texture size requires 256MB of video RAM, for ONE texture when you set it to 8192.  It is simple math.  It does not matter how fast or powerful any video card is.  It boils down to the amount of memory used by the shadow texture.

HiTech is not happy with the performance drop when the clouds are enabled and is working on it.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Gman, the game title (Aces High) is 13 years old.  The graphics engine went through another massive update less than a year ago.  It is our fourth graphics engine update.

The shadow texture size requires 256MB of video RAM, for ONE texture when you set it to 8192.  It is simple math.  It does not matter how fast or powerful any video card is.  It boils down to the amount of memory used by the shadow texture.

HiTech is not happy with the performance drop when the clouds are enabled and is working on it.

A little off topic but why is the required memory so high for the shadow texture? Isn't that larger than the other standard textures already?

[Skuzzy]

Do the math.

8192*8192 = 67108864 pixels

Each pixel requires 4 bytes of memory (32 bits).

67108864 * 4 = 268,435,456 bytes

268,435,456 / (1024 * 1024) = 256MB

[Gman]

Thanks for that info Skuzzy.  I should have worded that better, I know that the graphics are in a constant state of change and improvement, I've been playing since the game was free beta, and my upgrades have always been dictated by what this game is doing.  I guess what I mean by disappointment is that when you buy two systems, both of them the fastest or at very close to the fastest you can buy for gaming, and they don't max out ANY game, it's a bit of a disappointment, but please don't take that as an insult to AH, it's rather the reverse.  I'd rather always be chasing Aces High with hardware than the other way around, as that would mean that the game is stagnant and not being improved - that's about as clear as I can make myself I guess.  Maybe "surprised" is a better word when it comes to maxing out the game in terms of the hardware I'm running right now.  So please don't take my points as complaints.

I do mean what I say, I don't believe for a single instant that these guys with E4xxx whatever 3 or 4 year old dual core systems with 5870 video cards or whatever that claim "I can run at full settings at 60 fps all day long", as there are SEVERAL people in this thread with claims somewhat like this (yes I'm exaggerating for effect, but not by much) are completely off their meds or just plain lying when they make these claims.  I'm as big a defender of Aces High's graphics looks and performance as anyone, but come ON.  I'm pulling one of the video cards out of my 3930k box today, and going to run it on a single monitor, just to see how it stacks up to the 3820/single 680 4gb gtx box numbers.  I'll bet they aren't a whole lot different.  As stated, I'll state it again, at TRUE full settings, in fact not even full, as I have anti aliasing backed off a notch from full in the opening screen settings, but everything else absolutely maxed incl shadows at 8192, I see fps in the 30's when in heavy action on the deck with the 3820/680 system.  That's just fact, not a complaint, or anything like that.  I've taken film with digital camera off the system completely, as well as many screen shots to prove this through the wee morning hours today, and ran 3dmark and other benchmarks before and after, with hardware monitor running and not running, etc etc in terms of testing this, and the systems performance/heat/etc numbers WHILE testing.


Now as for what Skuzzy said about the shadows, I understand how the numbers break down now thanks to that post, but in terms of real world decision on using it, what's the bottom line?  Should it just be backed off, even on really high end systems like I'm running?  The same question goes for the environment slider.  I find it is the one that causes the largest performance hit.  I'm running it at 2 notches from the right, or bottom as it were right now, and happy with how the game looks, and with shadows at 4096, it looks super to me, and is nearly always at 60fps.  This is in clouds with the bump mapping ON in tank town, while we had that map a couple nights ago.  So the clouds at least to me aren't a huge performance issue right now.  Moving the sliders on environment however are what kills it down to 30's on the deck in traffic/smoke/etc.  I'm just assuming that this is expected to be the norm from what Skuzzy has written regarding how much power the shadows take, without even mentioning the environment.  HT said in another post someplace that there isn't a game out there that is dealing with so much going on at the extreme ranges visible in Aces High, and I think he's right, I can't think of a single game, be it Total war series, BF3, any of the DCS sims, whatever that have SO much going on.  I WOULD however like it to be clear that buying the highest end system/hardware doesn't automatically mean you'll be able to run Aces High on full blast at 60fps constant, far from it in fact.  Once the new socket 2011 chips are out in the next quarter or two, we'll see I guess so far as single GPU performance, as I purposely bought the Sabertooth and Asus RIVE motherboards for upgrading to these chips.  I sort of wish I'd kept that 690 now in order to try it in the 3820 system to see if it would handle AH at max settings and keep 60 fps with a single PCI-E slot video card solution, albeit an expensive one.

In closing:

The shadows on others, env slider maxed, max shadow texture size and max AA combined with all other settings in a furball with 30 or so cons and GVs on the ground seems impossible for most current PCs to run.

This is about the only time I've ever read anything from Midway that isn't him acting and pretending to be a 12 year old in love with Bruv and the few, hah.  This sums up my feelings perfectly really, in a thread with a lot of confusing claims and information.  I don't think there is a single person in this thread that has a system as powerful as my 3 screen box, 3930k at 5ghz with 32 gigs of the best ram you can buy and 2 of the best 680gtx's in sli, and I think it MAY run max settings in Midway's scenario on a single screen, just MAY, as it doesn't on 3 screens I can assure you of that, and the 3820 system has absolutely NO hope of 60fps in this scenario.  Both of these systems are brand new, no viruses, no file sharing software, built only to play this game and a couple others.

Again, restating, I'm not complaining at all about AH performance, it's extremely good looking and playable at the settings I'm using, if anything I'm just trying to state the facts as I'm seeing them regarding performance of AH with high end hardware on absolute max settings.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Thanks for that info Skuzzy.  I should have worded that better, I know that the graphics are in a constant state of change and improvement, I've been playing since the game was free beta, and my upgrades have always been dictated by what this game is doing.  I guess what I mean by disappointment is that when you buy two systems, both of them the fastest or at very close to the fastest you can buy for gaming, and they don't max out ANY game, it's a bit of a disappointment, but please don't take that as an insult to AH, it's rather the reverse.  I'd rather always be chasing Aces High with hardware than the other way around, as that would mean that the game is stagnant and not being improved - that's about as clear as I can make myself I guess.  Maybe "surprised" is a better word when it comes to maxing out the game in terms of the hardware I'm running right now.  So please don't take my points as complaints.

I do mean what I say, I don't believe for a single instant that these guys with E4xxx whatever 3 or 4 year old dual core systems with 5870 video cards or whatever that claim "I can run at full settings at 60 fps all day long", as there are SEVERAL people in this thread with claims somewhat like this (yes I'm exaggerating for effect, but not by much) are completely off their meds or just plain lying when they make these claims.  I'm as big a defender of Aces High's graphics looks and performance as anyone, but come ON.  I'm pulling one of the video cards out of my 3930k box today, and going to run it on a single monitor, just to see how it stacks up to the 3820/single 680 4gb gtx box numbers.  I'll bet they aren't a whole lot different.  As stated, I'll state it again, at TRUE full settings, in fact not even full, as I have anti aliasing backed off a notch from full in the opening screen settings, but everything else absolutely maxed incl shadows at 8192, I see fps in the 30's when in heavy action on the deck with the 3820/680 system.  That's just fact, not a complaint, or anything like that.  I've taken film with digital camera off the system completely, as well as many screen shots to prove this through the wee morning hours today, and ran 3dmark and other benchmarks before and after, with hardware monitor running and not running, etc etc in terms of testing this, and the systems performance/heat/etc numbers WHILE testing.


Now as for what Skuzzy said about the shadows, I understand how the numbers break down now thanks to that post, but in terms of real world decision on using it, what's the bottom line?  Should it just be backed off, even on really high end systems like I'm running?  The same question goes for the environment slider.  I find it is the one that causes the largest performance hit.  I'm running it at 2 notches from the right, or bottom as it were right now, and happy with how the game looks, and with shadows at 4096, it looks super to me, and is nearly always at 60fps.  This is in clouds with the bump mapping ON in tank town, while we had that map a couple nights ago.  So the clouds at least to me aren't a huge performance issue right now.  Moving the sliders on environment however are what kills it down to 30's on the deck in traffic/smoke/etc.  I'm just assuming that this is expected to be the norm from what Skuzzy has written regarding how much power the shadows take, without even mentioning the environment.  HT said in another post someplace that there isn't a game out there that is dealing with so much going on at the extreme ranges visible in Aces High, and I think he's right, I can't think of a single game, be it Total war series, BF3, any of the DCS sims, whatever that have SO much going on.  I WOULD however like it to be clear that buying the highest end system/hardware doesn't automatically mean you'll be able to run Aces High on full blast at 60fps constant, far from it in fact.  Once the new socket 2011 chips are out in the next quarter or two, we'll see I guess so far as single GPU performance, as I purposely bought the Sabertooth and Asus RIVE motherboards for upgrading to these chips.  I sort of wish I'd kept that 690 now in order to try it in the 3820 system to see if it would handle AH at max settings and keep 60 fps with a single PCI-E slot video card solution, albeit an expensive one.

In closing:

This is about the only time I've ever read anything from Midway that isn't him acting and pretending to be a 12 year old in love with Bruv and the few, hah.  This sums up my feelings perfectly really, in a thread with a lot of confusing claims and information.  I don't think there is a single person in this thread that has a system as powerful as my 3 screen box, 3930k at 5ghz with 32 gigs of the best ram you can buy and 2 of the best 680gtx's in sli, and I think it MAY run max settings in Midway's scenario on a single screen, just MAY, as it doesn't on 3 screens I can assure you of that, and the 3820 system has absolutely NO hope of 60fps in this scenario.  Both of these systems are brand new, no viruses, no file sharing software, built only to play this game and a couple others.

Again, restating, I'm not complaining at all about AH performance, it's extremely good looking and playable at the settings I'm using, if anything I'm just trying to state the facts as I'm seeing them regarding performance of AH with high end hardware on absolute max settings.

Are you sure your AH2 sli profile works at all? That fps seems unbelievably low for that setup.

[Gman]

Rip, I'm only running one 680 video card in the 3820 box I'm talking about.  My 3930k box is running 3 screens on an SLI setup, but the 3820/single 680 isn't SLI (yet), and THAT is the box that drops into the 30's when at low alt in the "crap" with lots going on.  In 3 screens with my 3930k/SLI box, with everything maxed but shadows at 4092 and environment at 2 notches, I get 60fps much of the time, except in that scenario Midway described, where it will drop A LITTLE, but not a whole lot.  I'm going to do some mixing around for testing purposes today, putting one of the 680 cards in the 3820 box and running SLI on it, and vice versa on the 3930k box, pulling one out and running just a single 680 on a single screen, then going back to sli on the 3930k and keeping single screen, then going back to normal, 3930k SLI on 3 screen, and compare all the results.

As I said, I'm completely satisfied with how my 3930k box performs with Aces high, particularly with the multi monitor gig, I think it's the most satisfying upgrade I've done since I started flying this game 13 years ago.  However, I was surprised that the 3820 box with a single 680 performs how it does in the "nightmare graphics" scenario on the deck with smoke at 30 cons around at max settings.  I had figured it would still be powerful enough that you could safely assume as an upgrader that you would have constant 60fps for an investment of over 2 grand.  Don't get me wrong, the 3820 box is still really good in Aces high, it's just that a few settings need to be lowered to keep it at 60, and it's really not that noticeable in terms of how it looks at plays.  

[Vinkman]

The math never seems that simple. If you have a duo core Machine with a chip speed of X, with single Vid card of Speed y, and 1 gig vidram, and 4 Gig of ram at speed Z and you get a frame rate of 20 with everyting turned on, you'd think that by getting a quad core maching with chip speed of 2X, with dual Vid cards of Speed 2Y each,  and 2 gig of vid ramRam, and 8Gig of ram at Speed 1.67 Z, you'd think you'd run 80 FPS...

... But you run you end up with 32.

how the game is broken up and distributed to be processed over the varius processors is a mistery to me, but I have experience with doubling the ram, and quadroupling the vid capability of my rig and getting a 12 FPS bump.

I think we long for simple math to work, which is why there are so many of these threads here. But it's just not that simple. 

[Skuzzy]

There is no way to tell the exact impact any given hardware upgrade is going to make.

Just speaking about Aces High, for any given frame draw, the game has to process data from the network, prepare data for the sound and video card, and process inputs from the user.  Any one of those things can shift the workload around enough to alter the time it takes to draw that one frame.

[Gman]

Well, the jury is in on the OP's question.  I can run max everything now.

On my 3930k box, with both 680 4gb ftw+le's in SLI, on a single screen, with anti-aliasing at full blast on the entry screen, textures at 2048, and every single thing turned on and at max detail in the clipboard settings, including shadows at 8192, and the environmental slider cranked, I'm getting 59/60 fps constantly, again on a single 24" LED LCD Asus monitor.  That's pretty impressive considering how much was going on in the areas I quickly flew in today for about 45 minutes of testing, with lots happening on the deck to about 6k or so.  I didn't see the FPS counter even flicker to 58 once, in all the action I saw.  This system is o/c'd to 5ghz on water cooling, and the video cards have a very mild overclock with the Afterburner utility.  I'm going to try SLI in the 3820 system later today or tonight, and see if it will perform the same way.

I see the system requirements on newer boxed games often have three categories now, required, some sort of intermediate requirements, and "ultra" or "really smokes" hardware recommendations.  I would say for Aces High, if it were ever sold in a box format with these things written on its box, the "Ultra" or "Max settings" system requirements would be a 3930k, or even a 3770/3600k/3820 CPU, with 680 SLI or 690.  Pretty heady stuff, definitely puts HTC at the top end of the heap in terms of graphics capability and requirement in the gaming arena.  <S> To a continuing job well done IMO.

[Chalenge]

Even with the best system you can have individual computers that cannot fulfill the results that others achieve. I remember chasing down one particular squaddies issue as being the email system he chose to use. Once that was removed everything was back to normal. It is hard to tell someone they have to get rid of program A so that AH will run smoothly. People just dont realize what they are doing to themselves and then they blame the game.

[numb1]

This game really doesnt use that much gpu or cpu.I can get 87 fps with everything maxed out at 1080 with vsync off and my gpu never even gets above 40c.I go into Far Cry 3 and i get 25 fps with everything maxed out and my gpu temp is at 60c.You dont need sli or crossfire to max this game out.I have a 7850 with 2 gigs and a 3570k all stock clocks and it will drop down to 50fps in a major fight but thats it.

[Chalenge]

Apples versus oranges.

The idea is to have a smooth video whether you use vsync on or off. You can experiment with vsync off but to say you are getting more than 60fps with it off is not accurate in most cases. Unless your monitor is capable of a higher refresh rate it will not display more than 60fps. What vsync does is match refresh to frame rate (as best it can). The adaptive vsync that Nvidia is experimenting with is intended to turn vsync on and off seamlessly (pun there somewhere) in order to give users the best video experience possible. Ati may have something similar I dont know but in any case vsync works the same way no matter who makes the card.

It used to be said that humans cannot see faster than 32fps. That is not true. This urban legend began because Hollywood chose a frame rate of 24fps for its movies. That frame rate was selected because it was the lowest rate at which humans would take in video and accept it as smooth enough. However humans can see many more frames in a single second than that and always have been able to. Even 120fps does not maximize the human ability to discern a change in frames. We 'allow' ourselves to accept it as smooth but it isnt the same thing.

So. . . you can say you get 87fps only if your refresh rate is higher than 60Hz. Otherwise your system is 'capable' of 87fps only when the limiting factor of your monitor is removed. You might be surprsied to find that some systems can hit frame rates into the hundreds but the monitors cannot display frames at that rate.

[numb1]

I have my vsync on.The point of me saying that was that you dont need sli and 2 680s to get good fps lol.But thanx for telling me what i already knew 8 years ago lol

 

[Gman]

Numb1, so your res is 1920 max, with 2048 textures and max anti aliasing, with everything maxed in control panel, distance, environment, shadows 8192 and every option turned on, with the high res texture package installed?  With a 7850, I find it strange you don't drop lower than 40fps in the "nightmare" scenario of 30 or more cons and 15 gv's near a smoking town or base.  Your 3570 cpu isn't much less powerful than the 3820, very close in fact, but the 7850 out performing the single 680 gtx 4gb is hard to understand.  Especially when you describe your Far Cry 3 numbers, as I'm getting 60 fps on Ultra with temps in the 50's with the GPU fan profile adjusted up a bit, and that's with the CPU and GPU o/c.  Why would I be smoking you in FC3 numbers (I can post screens and video of both FC3 and AH2 fps numbers) so badly, yet be slower than you in AH?  This is with our 3820/680 single box.

Any ideas what I should try?  I will say that at 1600x1200 in AH the difference in performance re fps is noticeable, but at 1920, numbers are as stated in previous posts, down into the 30's when pushed.  I'm by no means an expert on CPU/GPU performance and tweaking, and I'm just going by the last few months of research on other boards that specialize in this, but I've tweaked both systems out as per blackviper, have very simple win7 running with all the performance sapping stuff off, and only about 1/2 dozen games and nothing else on both boxes.  I can post/email dxdiag's and screen shots/video to anyone that thinks they can help increase my AH performance in the 3820/680 system.  The 3930k/sli box smokes AH on a single screen with max settings like I said, I'm not concerned with it.  I almost built a 3570 and o/c it to 4.6 with a 7950 GPU, but considering it would 3dmark out with less performance numbers than the 3820/680 box, I'm glad I didn't, as it SHOULD on paper perform a little less....does anyone else like Numb1 have a similar system to that who can test AH on max everything and let me know the results?  If they are better than my 3820, I'll then know for certain that something is amiss and to keep messing with tweaks and settings.