Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Vinkman on December 06, 2010, 12:56:05 PM
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I've read a lot of the threads and folks say they "max out" the graphics in the game but I wonder if that means shelf shadowing and the other shadow capabilities. Maxed, to me, includes checking all the boxes for shadows and water, and setting the shadow resolution to 8192, along with cranking up the sliders for ground detail range.
Can anyone run 60 frames/s with everything maxed, in a furball over a carrier with puffy going off and some clouds around?
Curious. Thanks.
Vinkman
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I can do 4860 or whatever it is with my e8400 and a 465 evga card.fps will drop to the mid 50 sometimes.but I can only do 30s when transferring films using fraps.go figure.
Semp
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E7400 slightly overclocked to 3.0GHZ.
4GB DDR3 Ram
HD5830 ATI Video Card
1920X1200 Monitor (Resolution is important to note as well)
I can turn EVERYTHING but shadows on max (2048 textures + hi res, sliders on DETAIL and MAX DISTANCE, MAX AA, Detailed water/ground, bump map). I can turn on buildings' shadows. I can turn on Self Shadows 2048 textures +smoothing and maintain 50+FPS in 99.9% of situations. 4096 textures yields 40-50fps for the most part and some stuttering.
Because I don't like how the self shadows look at those low of textures, I run with it off. Seems to make gameplay much smoother regardless of FR.
If I turn on other plane's shadows, my FR drops to 25-30 at times.. pretty much no matter what my other graphics settings are.
When I bought the 5830 (to replace my nvidia 9800GTX+) it performed better than I had expected, but not as good as I had hoped. Looking back now I wish I had saved up for at least a 5850 but I still can't complain. The 5830 has been good so far.
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I can turn EVERYTHING but shadows on max (2048 textures + hi res, sliders on DETAIL and MAX DISTANCE, MAX AA, Detailed water/ground, bump map). I can turn on buildings' shadows. I can turn on Self Shadows 2048 textures +smoothing and maintain 50+FPS in 99.9% of situations. 4096 textures yields 40-50fps for the most part and some stuttering.
When you state Max AA, do you have the ATI Catalyst Control Panel AA checked to "Application Controlled", so that it uses the game's AA setting, or is manually set to the max setting, overriding the game's setting?
I have an OC'd E8400 (running at 3.8GHz), 8GB RAM, an OC'd 5850 (975/1200), and if I use "Application Controlled" settings and the max AA in AH (8x), the game lags. I can run with very high AA if it's manually set in the Catalyst Control Panel.
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When you state Max AA, do you have the ATI Catalyst Control Panel AA checked to "Application Controlled", so that it uses the game's AA setting, or is manually set to the max setting, overriding the game's setting?
I have an OC'd E8400 (running at 3.8GHz), 8GB RAM, an OC'd 5850 (975/1200), and if I use "Application Controlled" settings and the max AA in AH (8x), the game lags. I can run with very high AA if it's manually set in the Catalyst Control Panel.
Yes it is set to Application Controlled (however I use ATI Tray Tools instead of the Catalyst Control Panel). I have the AH AA slider set to max... I'm assuming it's 8x, but I don't really know.
The only time I notice 'lagging' is if I'm in a GV driving into action and I zoom my view... then the FR seems to kind of 'stutter' however the FR itself stays high.
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I've read a lot of the threads and folks say they "max out" the graphics in the game but I wonder if that means shelf shadowing and the other shadow capabilities. Maxed, to me, includes checking all the boxes for shadows and water, and setting the shadow resolution to 8192, along with cranking up the sliders for ground detail range.
Can anyone run 60 frames/s with everything maxed, in a furball over a carrier with puffy going off and some clouds around?
Curious. Thanks.
Vinkman
I can run with literally everything maxxed out and don't ever notice it dropping off of the refresh rate. I ended up turning the self shadowing off however, it just ended up being too distracting to me. I found I was watching shadows play through my cockpit and not watching the bad guys too frequently. When I run shadows I run them at the 4k level and haven't noticed any framerate difference at all from having them on or off. I've got a Phenom2 quad core 3.2 with 4 gigs of ram and the MSI factory overclocked 5850, nothing in the game has handed it a problem yet. I figure I've got about 2 more years before it's upgrade time again.
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Yes it is set to Application Controlled (however I use ATI Tray Tools instead of the Catalyst Control Panel). I have the AH AA slider set to max... I'm assuming it's 8x, but I don't really know.
The only time I notice 'lagging' is if I'm in a GV driving into action and I zoom my view... then the FR seems to kind of 'stutter' however the FR itself stays high.
Interesting. It's a hurdle that I've yet to been able to jump for some reason, so I have to use the manual settings.
Whatever setting is in the game looked very nice too, and that's the reason I was trying to get it to work, but I get the same issue where the frame rate stays high yet the game lags (or stutters).
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Lags and stutters are generally caused by CPU loading, not the video card itself.
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everyone stating their specs/framerates are missing out an important detail. your gaming resolution.
the higher res you have, the more taxing it is on your GPU to run max settings.
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Yes, it took me awhile to create the scenario you described, (I'm new to the game and had no idea what furball meant) but I stay rock steady @ 59-60 FPS with Vsync on.
I have every option active, and every slider, value set to max. However, I started playing this game on my step-father's (cobbler) PC running at more modest settings, and I can def say the juice isn't worth the squeeze and that the biggest, gameplay factor I can tell (again I'm still learning) seems to be keeping your frame rate high and distance level of detail high(seeing someone before they see you).
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I run my machine (see CPUZ info link in signature) at 1600 x 1200 resolution with 85 Hz vertical refresh. Main textures set to 1024, shadow textures set to 4096, all sliders at maximum detail, and only the "shadow on others" option is turned off. I almost never see the in-game FPS read-out vary from 85.
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Yes, it took me awhile to create the scenario you described, (I'm new to the game and had no idea what furball meant) but I stay rock steady @ 59-60 FPS with Vsync on.
next step up is to run triple HD screens. :aok
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I have mine at 1920x1080.
semp
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next step up is to run triple HD screens. :aok
I can already kinda do that, I already have 3 monitors running. The only problem is that I have (2) Samsung 23inch monitors on the sides, but I play on a 60inch Mitsubishi. So I can do it but it doesn't look quite right, and if I get a 3rd Samsung I can't play on the large display, which is already as wide as the 3 smaller monitors.
BTW, 3D gaming on the 60inch looks AMAZING!
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ati 4850 75 fsp with shadows, water etc detail terrain gets on my nerves so thats off.
Shadows on buildings off other plane shadows off :old:
Everything on its 59/60
i have a aspire predator 7200 i think its a good pc
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I can run with literally everything maxxed out and don't ever notice it dropping off of the refresh rate. I ended up turning the self shadowing off however, it just ended up being too distracting to me. I found I was watching shadows play through my cockpit and not watching the bad guys too frequently. When I run shadows I run them at the 4k level and haven't noticed any framerate difference at all from having them on or off. I've got a Phenom2 quad core 3.2 with 4 gigs of ram and the MSI factory overclocked 5850, nothing in the game has handed it a problem yet. I figure I've got about 2 more years before it's upgrade time again.
I played around with my ATI card setting last night and found that I can run Object datail maxed, Ground detail set to 3 miles, with everything turned on including self shadows at 4096 (smooth shadow set to off) and get a pretty steady 59f/s in furball over an airfield. I followed the tips on the AH boards for Catalyst ATI settings, namely...
Turned off application settings,
set AA at 2x with a box filter (x2),
Turned Open GL tripple buffering off.
Also important to note, I followed Skuzzy tips about shutting down the various usless (to running AH) processes. That may have also been a factor as I did that first and played with the card second.
Looks great. Loved the way the canopy frames move around the IP and over the wing when maveuvering in the sun. The strange part is that the smooth shadow option for the self shadows tends to blur and smear the shadows so much that the detail from each image being shadowed is almost completely lost. The shadows seemed clearer and more defined with smoothing turn off. I assume the smoothing was supposed to take the saw tooth out of the edge effects but it doesn't wok nearly as well as AA does on the object polys. The shadows look much better with it off and with a increased resolution, which was less of a frame hit than smoothing was.
I'll play around siome more today and see if I can eek more out.
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Follow up:
I also leard that my new card from ATI has a very low out of the box clock speed setting. It turns out that the GPU setting was 157Ghz with a memory clock speed of 300Ghz. Under the ATI Overdrive Menu the clock speeds are adjustable. There is a self tester that runs a test that maxes out the GPU and checks for Tempratures to see if your installation runs cool enough to overclock the processor. Ran the test several times and it settled on new settings of 750Ghz GPU and 1000Ghz for Mem.
After that I turned up the resolution in the graphics setting of the game to 2048 [from1024], turned up self shadows to 8192, but left 'smooth shadows' off, upped the Anti-aliassing in Vd Card settings to 'wide tent'.
Running steady 60fps. It really looks beautiful. Love the shadows....really, really cool.
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You get a card out of the box that slow and overclock on the order of 150-300% and you're going to fry the card. Period.
I wouldn't trust a "self test" especially on lower end cards. It's not smart enough to be comprehensive for all cards, it's only intended for the higher end cards that can actually take overclocking.
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You get a card out of the box that slow and overclock on the order of 150-300% and you're going to fry the card. Period.
I wouldn't trust a "self test" especially on lower end cards. It's not smart enough to be comprehensive for all cards, it's only intended for the higher end cards that can actually take overclocking.
Card is an ATI 5970. After two ours of playing the temp was a cool 71 deg C. It specifies the higher clock speeds in the data sheets, but the original settings were very low comparitively. the 750/1000 speeds are 3/4 of what is possible. Not sure why they were set so low. I will continue to investigate with perhaps a post or Call to ATI. :salute
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It also turns out that the "current Setting [157, 300] were the not the factory Max Default which was 300, 400. So the 'overclocked' setting is double the default.
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Vinkman,
If you poke around various overclocking sites, you can get that card working at core and memory clock speeds with little effort, if you desire to do so.
The 5970 is a beast of a card though for AH2 purposes though. :aok
mir
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I use ATI Tray Tools instead of the Catalyst stuff... seems to reduce a lot of overhead.
I've learned that on my 5830 90+% of the 'micro stuttering' I experience once in awhile while flying low to the ground was cured by turning OFF Local Water Reflections. However I can leave everything else on max including AA, sliders, 4k smooth shadows, and building shadows (but not other planes' shadows) and maintain 59-60FPS 99.9% of the time.
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Follow up:
I also leard that my new card from ATI has a very low out of the box clock speed setting. It turns out that the GPU setting was 157Ghz with a memory clock speed of 300Ghz. Under the ATI Overdrive Menu the clock speeds are adjustable. There is a self tester that runs a test that maxes out the GPU and checks for Tempratures to see if your installation runs cool enough to overclock the processor. Ran the test several times and it settled on new settings of 750Ghz GPU and 1000Ghz for Mem.
After that I turned up the resolution in the graphics setting of the game to 2048 [from1024], turned up self shadows to 8192, but left 'smooth shadows' off, upped the Anti-aliassing in Vd Card settings to 'wide tent'.
Running steady 60fps. It really looks beautiful. Love the shadows....really, really cool.
I noticed that "wide tent" setting--what is it as compared to "box"??
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Ahhh... the 5970... that looks like a nice card. I drool over it on newegg.
Your low speeds threw me off. However, I think what you're seeing is throttled frequencies so that the card runs idle much much cooler than when in games. That's why it's showing such slow speeds. In a game it clocks up to full power. It's not a problem with the card, as much as it is a feature.
At least, from what I've read.
Do you run FRAPs and anything else like that? How does FRAPs record from films with that card and full details? My dream rig would have that card and I'd (in my wildest dreams lol) use it to make some decent quality AH videos.
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Ahhh... the 5970... that looks like a nice card. I drool over it on newegg.
Your low speeds threw me off. However, I think what you're seeing is throttled frequencies so that the card runs idle much much cooler than when in games. That's why it's showing such slow speeds. In a game it clocks up to full power. It's not a problem with the card, as much as it is a feature.
At least, from what I've read.
Do you run FRAPs and anything else like that? How does FRAPs record from films with that card and full details? My dream rig would have that card and I'd (in my wildest dreams lol) use it to make some decent quality AH videos.
You right about the low rates being displayed when in d-2 mode looking at the CCC [gui]. Learned that today too. I don't use fraps or make movies. So I can't tell you how well it works for that. I'm going to hook up a second monitor so I watch real time GPU and power chip temps while game is running. Also like to see what the fan speed on the card is doing.
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You right about the low rates being displayed when in d-2 mode looking at the CCC [gui]. Learned that today too. I don't use fraps or make movies. So I can't tell you how well it works for that. I'm going to hook up a second monitor so I watch real time GPU and power chip temps while game is running. Also like to see what the fan speed on the card is doing.
Take notice of any microstutters when you do this.
One of the issues that plagued me for a long time on two variants of ATI cards was micro-stutterring, both when using two 4870's in Crossfire, and my current 5850.
What I found was that any monitoring of the fan and/or temperature was causing a microstutter every time the software polled the card. It was frustrating.
Once I found some information about this, I turned off the portions of the software that I used for monitoring the GPU and the microstutters went away. I was using MSI's Afterburner as well as OpenHardware for monitoring things.
I still use MSI's Afterburner to Overclock my 5850, but I disabled all of the monitoring features.
mir
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Take notice of any microstutters when you do this.
One of the issues that plagued me for a long time on two variants of ATI cards was micro-stutterring, both when using two 4870's in Crossfire, and my current 5850.
What I found was that any monitoring of the fan and/or temperature was causing a microstutter every time the software polled the card. It was frustrating.
Once I found some information about this, I turned off the portions of the software that I used for monitoring the GPU and the microstutters went away. I was using MSI's Afterburner as well as OpenHardware for monitoring things.
I still use MSI's Afterburner to Overclock my 5850, but I disabled all of the monitoring features.
mir
Thanks Mir. I haven't had that issue so far. I did try today to hook up a second monitor so I could play AH on 1, and have the desk top on the other. Was a disaster. Had to abandon after a few hours.
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Vinkman I recommend you set fan speed to manual and 100% when playing games. You can turn it down to 30% for normal use or put it back to auto. You'll see a big difference in temps.
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Vinkman I recommend you set fan speed to manual and 100% when playing games. You can turn it down to 30% for normal use or put it back to auto. You'll see a big difference in temps.
100% may be quite loud though, depending on the brand of card. I have mine run up to 70% and it sounds like a vacuum cleaner. 100% is like a high pitched scream.
It's not bad when wearing headphones, but what an annoying sound without them. :)
That said, going with manual fan speeds or a customized fan curve will drop the temperatues a lot.
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It sounds like a jet at 100% but that's better than 160 F.
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True, but that's okay for a 5970. It's still damned hot though, and I'd want good flow moving that air out of the case.
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I have all ingame graphic settings at max (max detail, max distance, horizon, all shadows settings enabled w/ max of 8192, gamma set at 1.0, AA set to Most, textures set at 1024 hi res). VC driver setup in Application-Controlled settings for AA, AF & Vsynch w/ TB. Transparency AA set Multisample, Gamma Correction AA enabled, Textures set at Quality settings w/ trilinear optimizations enabled. Driver vers 260.99 being displayed on a HP 2710m LCD at 1900 x 1080 x 32 (native res). FPS runs consistently between 58-60 w/ lowest dip in 1 instance to 56 FPS.
Setup:
Win Vista HP 64
Intel C2D E8600 OC'd to 4.0 Ghz
EVGA 780i FTW mobo
OCZ Reaper 4.0G PC 8500 DDR2 at 1067MHz 5-5-5-18 2.2v (factory stock)
EVGA GTX 470 SC running at stock clocks (625/1250/1701) & voltage (.997v)
Asus Xonar DS 7.1 Sound Card thru a Klipsch THX 2.1 speaker/subwoofer setup or Sennheiser PC 350 headphones (depending on the mood I'm in at the time).
WD 74Gb Raptor HDD's (no RAID)
PC P&C Silencer 750W PSU
All housed in a CM 690 Nvidia case.
:salute
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Vinkman I recommend you set fan speed to manual and 100% when playing games. You can turn it down to 30% for normal use or put it back to auto. You'll see a big difference in temps.
I wanted the two screens so I could watch the temp and fan speed while playing. You don't trust the software to increase fan speed as needed? I though of just setting at 100% but thout there might be a down side other than noise, like burning out the fan, but of course I have no clue. Thoughts on that?
<S>
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8192 shadow textures is overkill to the max.
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8192 shadow textures is overkill to the max.
Perhaps but I've always wondered why such a large texture is required to display a plain shadow on a plane and why is the shadow tearing up on lower texture size?
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I wanted the two screens so I could watch the temp and fan speed while playing. You don't trust the software to increase fan speed as needed? I though of just setting at 100% but thout there might be a down side other than noise, like burning out the fan, but of course I have no clue. Thoughts on that?
<S>
I expect the auto fan speed setting is more of a marketing decision due to the noise than an engineering decision. As long as the card doesn't shut down you can run it hot but you might want to look at the temps you get with different fan settings.
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I expect the auto fan speed setting is more of a marketing decision due to the noise than an engineering decision. As long as the card doesn't shut down you can run it hot but you might want to look at the temps you get with different fan settings.
Agreed with FLS here.
It's also important to consider the temperature of other components if you're not expelling the hot air created by the vid card.
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I expect the auto fan speed setting is more of a marketing decision due to the noise than an engineering decision. As long as the card doesn't shut down you can run it hot but you might want to look at the temps you get with different fan settings.
And you were right, the temp was ruinning around 71 deg and the fan was not going over about 40%. I manually set the fan to 80% and the temp dropped to 40 deg C. Huge difference. It's noisier, but with the headset on and the game blasting I don't hear it at all.
Also I have a correction, It turns out that I was running 1024 resolution and not 2048. When I upped it to 2048 the frate rates ran in the 30s, so I had to back the shadow textures off to 4096. At 4096 the frame rates were back in the high 50s. So I went back and dropped the res to 1024 and re-upped the shadows to 8196. This game similare Frame rates fo high 50s.
I do think the shadows look better in 2048 mode but the rest of the game looks the same to me. I have teh screan res set at 1920x1200 which may also be overkill for the game since my monitor is only 24" Perhaps but I've always wondered why such a large texture is required to display a plain shadow on a plane and why is the shadow tearing up on lower texture size?
I'm wondering the same thing. The shadows are very pixilated compared to the rest of the game. But they look really cool when you can get them smooth. The frame hit to do so seems unexpected, but I'm not a 3D render expert...or even novice. ;)
I'll keep tinkering
Vinkman
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The 2048 texture setting only makes a difference with the 2048 cockpits, I think there's only a couple of those so far. I would go with settings that maintain 60 fps at all times.
Aces High will always look best at your monitor's default resolution.
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The 2048 texture setting only makes a difference with the 2048 cockpits, I think there's only a couple of those so far. I would go with settings that maintain 60 fps at all times.
Aces High will always look best at your monitor's default resolution.
Only plane I fooled around with yesterday was the P-38. Do the cockpit details include the canopy frame structure? Those are the shadows that seem most effected by the 2048 vs. 1024 res. They also seem sharper when reflecting out on the wing than they do on the dashboard and closer surfaces.
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I think we're talking about 2 different settings. I was referring to the max texture size in the video setup not the shadow texture size.
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From testing the game by running it strictly off the vid card's drivers for AA, AF, V-synch w/ ingame AA set to None & then running the game w/ the vid card's drivers set to Application-Controlled settings for AA, AF, V-synch w/ ingame AA set to Most I found it to be a no contest that the game ran best, rendered best & thus looked best when the VC drivers are set for Application-Control by 2-to-1.
This was clearly visible to me by Precision showing the VC mem usage between the 2:
Nvidia drivers @ 445 mb while flying (16x AA, 16x AF, V-synch Force On & AHII ingame AA set to None)
AHII Ingame @ 835 mb while flying (AA set to Most & Nvidia drivers set to Application-Control in AA, AF & V-synch)
Clearly Hitech & Co have done a bang-up job in tuning the in-game graphical sets for the best blend of graphics rendering w/performance IMHO.
There is a reason why Hitech set the upper shadow texture range at 8192.
And I LOVE it!
:salute