AH2 rig benchmarks

[Gman]

Not to mention by the time the new version is out, Skylake could be here, plus a whole new generation of nVidia, and especially AMD cards could be out.  Also, not having a standard set for detail and resolution levels makes the comparison a little iffy, but wth.

I tried it with both 1920 x 1080P and with 2560 x 1440P, with details all maxed and detail distances maxed, with reflections/environment on 1 from the bottom, where I play in game.

Tower Fps - 505fps with 1080p and 455 1440p.  Cockpit 185 1440p, 190 1080p, back right 426 1080p, 378 1440p.

Specs
x79 Platform/Sabertooth MB
4930k Cpu @ 4.6
980 eVGA Superclock x2, one disabled (no sli as the profile nvidia has made for us is p00) overclocked to 1475
16gb 1866 Corsair Dominator
Asus ROG Swift 1440p 144hz 27" LCD

I don't fly with vsync off for various reasons, I don't know if Gsync helps AH out or not, but it does smooth other FPS games out, and I have it enabled in Aces High as my Vid card and monitor support it.  I rarely see lower than 143 (max fps) in game at max detail with reflections on either 1 or 2, so after the PITA of getting the video settings to work wtih vsync off - it would work in the arenas, but offline would lock at 100fps for some odd reason with all the settings the same - I finally got it to work, and was pretty surprised at how high the fps were, especially in the tower.

[-ammo-]

I have a question - what does "vsync" in AH do?  If you check it (turn it off), a message pops up saying not recommended due to some unwanted effects (paraphrased). 


With vsync on, I never go above 60 FPS.  Since my monitor's refresh rate is 60 hertz, I figured that must be tied to the AH vsync option somehow.


I am still happy with my current rig though I am toying with the idea of upgrading video card. With the eye candy pushed up, I can see stutters in some situations.  Also, NVIDEA Control Panel has an option to view how well your system should run a game.  AH is listed there and I get a "good" with "excellent" being the best and "not recommended" being the worst.


Intel I7-2600K @ 3.4GHz
Geforce GTX770
Viewsonic IPS VP2770 (2560x1440)

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I have a question - what does "vsync" in AH do?  If you check it (turn it off), a message pops up saying not recommended due to some unwanted effects (paraphrased). 


With vsync on, I never go above 60 FPS.  Since my monitor's refresh rate is 60 hertz, I figured that must be tied to the AH vsync option somehow.


I am still happy with my current rig though I am toying with the idea of upgrading video card. With the eye candy pushed up, I can see stutters in some situations.  Also, NVIDEA Control Panel has an option to view how well your system should run a game.  AH is listed there and I get a "good" with "excellent" being the best and "not recommended" being the worst.


Intel I7-2600K @ 3.4GHz
Geforce GTX770
Viewsonic IPS VP2770 (2560x1440)

Vsync is short of vertical synchronization. Basically what it does is it makes your graphics card suspend drawing frames until your monitor has managed to go through it's refresh cycle. Some monitors cycle at 60hz, some 120 or 144hz.

When vsync is off the graphics card continues to draw new frames even when your monitor is still quarter or half-way drawing the image to your panel. This generates 'tearing' effects to moving images. Basically what happens is that when you move your view your screen starts to draw the image in position 1. Before your screen manages to draw that full image your graphics card already pushes in the new image making your on-screen image appear like a collage of different pictures instead of one coherent picture.

With vsync you get just one 'snapshot' in time at once. As you can imagine this has performance ramifications because your graphics card has to patiently wait for your screen to do its slow drawing each frame even if it could do double or triple the speed itself. This is not even the problem (performance wise) the REAL problem becomes if your graphics card is too slow to draw at 60fps. What happens then is that it has to skip all together a frame in order to draw at least one full frame. This is why your performance will drop from 60fps to 30fps vsync on instead of just going to steady 59fps.

Technologies like G-sync have been created in order to match the monitor refresh to the graphics cards refresh even when the card can't push the full 60hz. G-sync enables your card to draw anything between 1 to 60 frames per second without having to skip an extra frame (due to the monitor syncing actively to the card). The end result is a smoother moving image in conditions where your framerates drop below the native monitor refresh.

[-ammo-]

Thank you for that great explanation.

[oboe]

Outstanding explanation of vsync, thanks for that.

When the next AH version comes out, we could start a new benchmark thread.   And it'll be interesting to compare what our rigs did under AH2 versus what they can do under AH3.  I'm not quite sure what to expect -- perhaps my frame rates will be even higher, with more of the processing load put on the video card in AH3?   

Gman......nnngaaahhh.   Just nnngaaahhh.   I need a drooling emoticon....

[Pudgie]

Not to mention by the time the new version is out, Skylake could be here, plus a whole new generation of nVidia, and especially AMD cards could be out.  Also, not having a standard set for detail and resolution levels makes the comparison a little iffy, but wth.

I tried it with both 1920 x 1080P and with 2560 x 1440P, with details all maxed and detail distances maxed, with reflections/environment on 1 from the bottom, where I play in game.

Tower Fps - 505fps with 1080p and 455 1440p.  Cockpit 185 1440p, 190 1080p, back right 426 1080p, 378 1440p.

Specs
x79 Platform/Sabertooth MB
4930k Cpu @ 4.6
980 eVGA Superclock x2, one disabled (no sli as the profile nvidia has made for us is p00) overclocked to 1475
16gb 1866 Corsair Dominator
Asus ROG Swift 1440p 144hz 27" LCD

I don't fly with vsync off for various reasons, I don't know if Gsync helps AH out or not, but it does smooth other FPS games out, and I have it enabled in Aces High as my Vid card and monitor support it.  I rarely see lower than 143 (max fps) in game at max detail with reflections on either 1 or 2, so after the PITA of getting the video settings to work wtih vsync off - it would work in the arenas, but offline would lock at 100fps for some odd reason with all the settings the same - I finally got it to work, and was pretty surprised at how high the fps were, especially in the tower.

Hey Gman,

What did you do exactly to unlock your 100 FPS offline issue? I had the exact same issue w/ my 780Ti on 347.25 drivers but I gave up & went to bed.

 

[38ruk]

I'm having the same issue with an AMD card (280x)  .... offline is capped at 128 with vsync disabled in both AH and cataylst Cp .  Online works fine with fps in the 400's in some views ....but offline it's stuck at 128fps no matter what i do. Not that big a deal cause i always use Vsync with my 144hrz monitor ....just curious what u might have done to fix it that i overlooked....  thx

[Pudgie]

Tried to work this issue some more w/o success....still locked at 100 FPS offline.

In the process I've found out some more interesting things & it may be due to my monitor's RR & Nvidia's GPU Boost, even though I had the ingame settings as well as the driver settings set to not V-synch. I set the game profile to default settings (same as driver global settings) so the driver should not be interfering w/ the game.

My monitor's RR is 60Hz & native res is 2560x1440 (DoubleSight DS-279W S-IPS 27"). I can go online & the vid card will not v-synch but the FPS wouldn't respond until I turned off EM...went from 81 to 190. Put the ingame settings to default the FPS went to 256. Turned off local water reflections FPS went to 275. Went back in offline the FPS went back to 100. Got out & checked the GPU clock rate in AB card clocking 675-705. Had priority set for temp....changed priority to power then went back in offline mode but FPS still stuck at 100 FPS.

I gave up at this point but I got an idea. I left the game profile set in default, changed the in-game video settings: unchecked v-synch & set AA to Most, then went in game to Graphics Details & set all settings to max...including EM & made sure all was checked in Advanced tab (this puts the game at Max graphics-wise) then went & flew around for a while. All ran very smooth & stutter free w/ FPS at 59-60 regardless of activity. Checked AB...GPU clocks steady at 705. In driver the transAA is turned off. Turned this back on & went back in game & FPS tanked pretty bad...avg 42-48 w/ GPU clocks pegged at 1020 (max GPU Boost GPU speed) according to AB. Now I see why Waffle said to turn this off in the Technical section...this is a resource hog in the worse way on it's own but when combined w/ EM it's a GPU killer.

So in the process I have learned the AH graphics settings that are the big resource hogs:
In Advanced tab:
1. EM 2. Local Water Reflections
In Graphics Detail:
3. Object Detail 4. Ground Detail Range

At the driver level:
TransAA (TemporalAA if AMD/ATI....assuming the same cost. Will be finding this out soon.)

Also found out w/ GPU Boost 2.0 set priority to Power instead of Temp so GPU will be adequately powered to run smoothly regardless of clock speeds. When in Temp priority the GPU power was not as steady & would cause power spiking thus GPU instability.

Just thought I'd mention this while I was stuck trying to figure out the offline FPS issue.

 

[Pudgie]

I'm having the same issue with an AMD card (280x)  .... offline is capped at 128 with vsync disabled in both AH and cataylst Cp .  Online works fine with fps in the 400's in some views ....but offline it's stuck at 128fps no matter what i do. Not that big a deal cause i always use Vsync with my 144hrz monitor ....just curious what u might have done to fix it that i overlooked....  thx

38ruk,

You using AMD PowerTune on that 280X?

[38ruk]

nope .... im using sapphire's Trixx software for overclocking.

[Pudgie]

Tried to work this issue some more w/o success....still locked at 100 FPS offline.

In the process I've found out some more interesting things & it may be due to my monitor's RR & Nvidia's GPU Boost, even though I had the ingame settings as well as the driver settings set to not V-synch. I set the game profile to default settings (same as driver global settings) so the driver should not be interfering w/ the game.

My monitor's RR is 60Hz & native res is 2560x1440 (DoubleSight DS-279W S-IPS 27"). I can go online & the vid card will not v-synch but the FPS wouldn't respond until I turned off EM...went from 81 to 190. Put the ingame settings to default the FPS went to 256. Turned off local water reflections FPS went to 275. Went back in offline the FPS went back to 100. Got out & checked the GPU clock rate in AB card clocking 675-705. Had priority set for temp....changed priority to power then went back in offline mode but FPS still stuck at 100 FPS.

I gave up at this point but I got an idea. I left the game profile set in default, changed the in-game video settings: unchecked v-synch & set AA to Most, then went in game to Graphics Details & set all settings to max...including EM & made sure all was checked in Advanced tab (this puts the game at Max graphics-wise) then went & flew around for a while. All ran very smooth & stutter free w/ FPS at 59-60 regardless of activity. Checked AB...GPU clocks steady at 705. In driver the transAA is turned off. Turned this back on & went back in game & FPS tanked pretty bad...avg 42-48 w/ GPU clocks pegged at 1020 (max GPU Boost GPU speed) according to AB. Now I see why Waffle said to turn this off in the Technical section...this is a resource hog in the worse way on it's own but when combined w/ EM it's a GPU killer.

So in the process I have learned the AH graphics settings that are the big resource hogs:
In Advanced tab:
1. EM 2. Local Water Reflections
In Graphics Detail:
3. Object Detail 4. Ground Detail Range

At the driver level:
TransAA (TemporalAA if AMD/ATI....assuming the same cost. Will be finding this out soon.)

Also found out w/ GPU Boost 2.0 set priority to Power instead of Temp so GPU will be adequately powered to run smoothly regardless of clock speeds. When in Temp priority the GPU power was not as steady & would cause power spiking thus GPU instability.

Just thought I'd mention this while I was stuck trying to figure out the offline FPS issue.

 

I should have said AdaptiveAA here, not TemporalAA..................

When my XFX Radeon BE R9 290X gets here I'll surely get learned up on this stuff...........