Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: sizzle22 on January 11, 2012, 09:36:14 PM
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Is more video card memory more important then a faster card when playing aces high? I replaced my 9800gtx with a gtx560ti superclocked that has 1GB of ram as opposed to the 512 of the 9800, and I'm really not seeing any significant gains..... maybe I'm expecting too much or maybe I should have gotten the slower 560ti with 2GB of ram :bhead as far as what I have on for graphics in game, I cant remember right off hand but i do know all the sliders are up to max and every box is checked in advanced except the bottom on... I think that is building shadows? and shadow text is at 2048. I have tried unchecking everything in advanced with really no difference. I don't remember having these issues before I switched to this new card, granted I wasn't running with any of the shadowing turned on with the 9800. The rest of the hardware is: Gigabyte EP45-UD3P with an E8500 CPU 4GB of ddr2 Gskill 1066 ram
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Your bottleneck is the FSB and the CPU.
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You already had a good picture to begin with, the new card while faster and better doesn't really improve the game in your case.
I had the same setup. Only thing that improved was having 4096 shadows. And less heat.
Semp
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Ugh.... Should have put the monies towards new mobo/chip before upgrading cards.... Oh well at least I know what I gotta do :salute
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What kind of frame rates are you getting? What would you expect to see to conclude that the performance has increased?
What is the specs of the rest of your hardware?
Assuming your hardware is even remotely modern that 560 card should be able to run AH at full settings without ever dropping below 59/60fps!
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It's a common gimick to put cheap and slower VRAM on older video cards to make them seem more current and impressive, but it's no benefit at all. It's just an attempt to get more sales out of a weaker platform.
More memory doesn't help if the card doesn't have the muscle to use it or the speed to access it quickly. Otherwise it's just sitting there unused and could possibly slow you down as well.
In your case, the 560 blows away the 9800, power-wise. It's not an issue of which card has more memory. Memory is just the gas tank. My pickup may have a lot more gas storage onboard, but it can't turn that into miles per hour like my Mustang can (hypothetically speaking). Mustang may have to stop and fill the tank more often, but it covers the distance much faster and more repsonsively.
As mentioned, your bottleneck is your system isn't really able to feed the card fast enough. The card itself isn't to blame. The E8500 isn't the most powerful of CPUs and your RAM is rather slow. Overall those are the parts slowing you down. Your motherboard itself doesn't seem bad. I would say get faster timed RAM (look for 1600, if you can run it?) and then look into a more modern CPU, perhaps. You may be able to overclock the one you have, but I don't do that much so I won't offer specific advice.
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Video RAM is a tricky thing. Most of the time, when you find a video card with a lot of video RAM and a model with less RAM, the model with more RAM uses slower chips, which actually slow the video card down.
However, this is not always true.
Today, Aces High is not that video memory hungry, but the next update (currently in open beta test) can be very video memory hungry. Easy enough to configure a system where the next release will chew through 1GB of video RAM.
Look at video tests that show fill rates as those will give you an idea of the speed of the video RAM.
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Video RAM is a tricky thing. Most of the time, when you find a video card with a lot of video RAM and a model with less RAM, the model with more RAM uses slower chips, which actually slow the video card down.
However, this is not always true.
Today, Aces High is not that video memory hungry, but the next update (currently in open beta test) can be very video memory hungry. Easy enough to configure a system where the next release will chew through 1GB of video RAM.
Look at video tests that show fill rates as those will give you an idea of the speed of the video RAM.
are you recomending more then 1GB for when the beta becomes part of the game?
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are you recomending more then 1GB for when the beta becomes part of the game?
I am not making any recommendations. Just judging from the beta reports, it seems many people are simply going for the extreme settings, in every category, which can easily swamp 1GB of video RAM. Most probably do not understand there is a point of diminishing returns where the gains are so microscopic as to be pointless.
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Thank you all for your input! :salute I have over clocked my CPU to 3.8 from 3.16 and fsb is at 400mhz from 333. I do see some gains as far as the lag I get when im in a heavily occupied area and low to the ground. I have also oc my video card but see almost no gains in game or when I run furmark. I agree that my bottle neck is the CPU and the memory... Unfortunately my memory only runs at 1066 timings are 5 5 5 15 I think? I'll post a better hardware list and what I've done as far as in game settings and all the other fun stuff when I get home from work,typing this out on a phone is no fun :aok but I really do appreciate all the feed back.
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Thank you all for your input! :salute I have over clocked my CPU to 3.8 from 3.16 and fsb is at 400mhz from 333. I do see some gains as far as the lag I get when im in a heavily occupied area and low to the ground. I have also oc my video card but see almost no gains in game or when I run furmark. I agree that my bottle neck is the CPU and the memory... Unfortunately my memory only runs at 1066 timings are 5 5 5 15 I think? I'll post a better hardware list and what I've done as far as in game settings and all the other fun stuff when I get home from work,typing this out on a phone is no fun :aok but I really do appreciate all the feed back.
For the record I have an E7400 (O/C to 3.15GHZ), 4GB of DDR3 ram very similar to your memory specs, and an ATI 5830 Video card (yours is much better). Your system has mine beat yet I run 2048 textures, 1920X1200 resolution and almost full settings yet I rarely see a drop below 55fps and only on rare occasions do i see a tiny bit of stuttering (which includes lots of planes and fire/smoke). The only settings I don't have cranked to full is AA (set to only one notch) and shadows are turned off. I can run 2048 shadow textures smoothly but choose not to do so simply because I don't like how it looks but that's a personal preference.
Even the Beta seems to run well on my system without even disabling the grass while in flight, but I haven't really been able to test it with a lot of planes around.
And I do this with running Track IR, Logitech profiling software, and Microsoft Security Essentials in the background (Win 7 64bit).
Simply put even with your E8500 you should still be able to run ACES HIGH just fine, just back off on the AA and turn down the shadows some. If you still have issues I have to wonder if you have some kind of resource hog running in the background.. maybe a Norton protection package or a ton of processes running. Possibly even a malware infection!
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For the record I have an E7400 (O/C to 3.15GHZ), 4GB of DDR3 ram very similar to your memory specs, and an ATI 5830 Video card (yours is much better). Your system has mine beat yet I run 2048 textures, 1920X1200 resolution and almost full settings yet I rarely see a drop below 55fps and only on rare occasions do i see a tiny bit of stuttering (which includes lots of planes and fire/smoke). The only settings I don't have cranked to full is AA (set to only one notch) and shadows are turned off. I can run 2048 shadow textures smoothly but choose not to do so simply because I don't like how it looks but that's a personal preference.
Even the Beta seems to run well on my system without even disabling the grass while in flight, but I haven't really been able to test it with a lot of planes around.
And I do this with running Track IR, Logitech profiling software, and Microsoft Security Essentials in the background (Win 7 64bit).
Simply put even with your E8500 you should still be able to run ACES HIGH just fine, just back off on the AA and turn down the shadows some. If you still have issues I have to wonder if you have some kind of resource hog running in the background.. maybe a Norton protection package or a ton of processes running. Possibly even a malware infection!
No Norton. And im 99% sure it's not maleware I built this rig pretty much for this game... Granted that was a few years back, but I think what it comes down to is me. Im really just nit-picking my computer and how it handles this game. Don't get me wrong this computer does a awesome job at running aces high. The little bit of lag I have mentioned drops from 60 to 50 then back up to 60.... Not that big of a deal, I guess I should have asked advice on getting rid of that. But like I said earlier in post I'll go into more detail when I get home. Again thank you all for the input
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Video RAM is a tricky thing. Most of the time, when you find a video card with a lot of video RAM and a model with less RAM, the model with more RAM uses slower chips, which actually slow the video card down.
However, this is not always true.
Today, Aces High is not that video memory hungry, but the next update (currently in open beta test) can be very video memory hungry. Easy enough to configure a system where the next release will chew through 1GB of video RAM.
Look at video tests that show fill rates as those will give you an idea of the speed of the video RAM.
Yea, my 6950's in XFire might not be overkill anymore.
Although since I just went to a 120hz 27in monitor I'm glad I have some horsepower.
Yama
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OK home at last!!!! :cheers: Here's what I'm working with: GA-EP45-UD3P Motherboard over clocked FSB to 400MHz,
CPU is a E8500 over clocked to 3.8MHz, 4GB of Gskill DDR2 RAM running 5-5-5-15 at 1066MHz, EVGA GTX560Ti running at 900MHz with 1GB of DDR5 RAM. All powered by a Corsair HX1050 (over kill I know, but I have big planes....lol). The OS is win7 Ultimate 64bit. Clean install done maybe 6 months ago.
Now as far as in game settings: Video Resolution is 1680x1050 Texture's are set to 2048 and Anti-Aliasing is maxed out. As far as the sliders in game they are all on max and all the boxes are checked with the exception of the building shadows, shadow textures are at 2048 as well.
What I have done to remedy this is unchecked the boxes that have to do with shadows and I still run into the small lag when rendering the ground with others close by.
As far as what my settings were when I had the GTX9800 (nothing at this time was over clocked, and my PSU was a 550watt rosewill) I did have any of the shadow box's checked and was running 1680x1050 with textures at 1024 and Anti-Aliasing was maybe half way up the slider or more, cant quite remember that. but the thing is I rarely had any issues with rendering the ground in heavily occupied areas with this set up..... I'm starting to think I was hoping that my new video card would be the mother of all eyecandy bringers. :(
Here's what I'm going to do now, right after I post this..... I'm gonna bump my textures down to 1024 and my Anti-Aliasing down one notch and see what happens.... :joystick: :salute
Again thanks to all who have taken the time to help me beat this dead horse even deader!!! LOL
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Ok.... So I turned AA down and the lag isn't that noticeable.... Its there but I can hardly notice it. :bhead... meso stupid thanks for the help gents :salute
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Ok.... So I turned AA down and the lag isn't that noticeable.... Its there but I can hardly notice it. :bhead... meso stupid thanks for the help gents :salute
Yeah and you probably don't even notice a decrease in video quality do you?
In the old days when lower VGA resolutions were more normal AA made a huge increase in video quality but these days with HD resolutions it's not such a big deal. A notch or two can make a noticeable improvement but in my opinion any more than that really doesn't improve video quality enough to make it worth the decrease in performance.
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I see this a lot. People running 1920x1200 resolutions cranking up the AA to 16x and wondering why they get stutters. When I ask them why they are running such high AA settings, they simply say it looks better.
Sugar pills. Mathematically you can only reduce aliasing by so much. Some people actually believe AA adds more pixels to the monitor.
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I Some people actually believe AA adds more pixels to the monitor.
:lol got to remember that!
Seriously speaking, there are monitors doing 1920x1080 in many different sizes, varying from 15.6 to over 60 inches. All of them can be used to play AH. Since the anount of pixels remains the same, naturally the size of them grows. Also, with the bigger TV sets used as monitors, the viewing distance increases. From the cockpit photos seen on this board indicates that the viewing distance for gaming is much shorter than that of normal TV watching.
If the monitor is viewed from the normal distance, i.e. about 70 cm/2 ft/an arm's length, what is the monitor size where the pixels start to show a significantly disturbing sawtooth effect on diagonal lines? I use a 24" 1920x1200 monitor and the sawteeth are hardly noticeable with no effect on gameplay, one notch of AA makes them disappear. Since doubling the diameter quadruplicates the surface area and thus also the pixel size, am I right to suggest that for the same experience a 48" screen should be watched from about 3 metres/10 ft?
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My monitor is 27" and 2560x1440, I usually don't bother with antialiasing. But I can see where someone playing full-hd with a 50" tv might want some :)
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I noticed no difference when I moved it down one notch as far as smoothness goes but I notice a huge difference with the AA slider all the way down.... Looks like I could cut down a tree with my wing! I play on a 22 inch monitor... :o
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AA is evil. :noid
In almost all cases, it's better to use a higher resolution with no AA than having a lower resolution and using AA.
I run AH fine with hi-res, 1920x1080 with self shadowing and shadows at 2048 smooth shadows. Bumping shadows to 4096 can make the game choppy in furballs, 8192 turns the game into single digit FPSs.
Running AA with 2048 smooth shadows turn the game also into single digits. Yet there is almost zero improvement in image quality (at least none that I can see). I wonder if anyone here can actually run 8192 shadows, max resolution AND max AA smoothly.
My rig is a Core2Duo 2.9Ghz, Radeon 5570, 4GB RAM.
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I can until I find a horde with about 30 planes around it drops to about 35 fps iirc
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Just remember a single 8192 shadow takes 256MB of video RAM.
Doing real-time shadows almost always involves some type of trade-off. The more natural the shadow looks, the higher the processing level for the video card. HiTech's approach achieves good balance with the rest of the system.
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Just remember a single 8192 shadow takes 256MB of video RAM.
Doing real-time shadows almost always involves some type of trade-off. The more natural the shadow looks, the higher the processing level for the video card. HiTech's approach achieves good balance with the rest of the system.
Good Morning Skuzzy,
so if one was to use the 4096 shadow setting , would that be equivalant to 1 single 4096 shadow = using 128 meg of video RAM ? or is the difference not a exact difference of 1/2 the ram used per next lower setting?
just trying to understand how shadows work in regards to accessing/using one's Videocard / Video RAM ......
I know my HD6950 2 GIG XFX card takes a major frame rate hit ( major as in drops like 10 to 15 fps ) using the 8192 setting........ but using the 4096 setting, my frame rate stays pegged at 60 fps using 1920 x 1200 screen res ....
TC
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4096 uses 64MB of video RAM.
((X * Y) * 4) /(1024*1024) = video RAM used
X and Y are the value chosen in the shadow size.
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AA is evil. :noid
In almost all cases, it's better to use a higher resolution with no AA than having a lower resolution and using AA.
I run AH fine with hi-res, 1920x1080 with self shadowing and shadows at 2048 smooth shadows. Bumping shadows to 4096 can make the game choppy in furballs, 8192 turns the game into single digit FPSs.
Running AA with 2048 smooth shadows turn the game also into single digits. Yet there is almost zero improvement in image quality (at least none that I can see). I wonder if anyone here can actually run 8192 shadows, max resolution AND max AA smoothly.
My rig is a Core2Duo 2.9Ghz, Radeon 5570, 4GB RAM.
I run the game hi-res @ 2048, everything on maxed, override game and let Catalyst control it, 16xAA, Adaptive multi sample AA, Catalyst AI on high quality, Antistropic filtering and tessellation application controlled, vertical refresh on quality.
I run 120 fps almost everywhere, sometimes it dips to 100 very briefly, even in a very large fight over a base or around carriers. Never a stutter, people complaining about frame rates around me and I am rock solid.
Samsung 27in S27A750D 120Hz at 1920x1080.
I do see a big detail difference at lesser settings.
With the settings I run little things like details on planes I am fighting, completely smooth edges on everything, tags and lettering like ammo counters etc. The game looks really good, a difference you would have to see in person to believe.
A 120hz monitor makes a huge difference.
Here's the deal IMHO
To see the benefits you have to have a machine fast enough to do it, as well as a monitor good enough to show it to you.
$3000 plus to play AH maxed and smooth as silk.
But I can play almost any game maxed out as well. There are titles out there that make it work a bit. But never without smooth gameplay.
Yes Skuzzy the drivers are finally matured enough that it all works :)
Overkill perhaps, a bit of tweaking to get it smoking fast and stable? Yup, but its a tasty sugar pill. Sweet eye candy
Intel i7 SandyBridge 2600K 3.4 @ 4.8
Asus P8P67 Deluxe v.3 1702 bios
ThermalRight Silver Arrow Cooler
Corsair Vengence 8gb 1600 8-8-8-24-1
OCZ Vertex 3 Sata III SSD 120GB x2 Raid0 (C:drive)
1.5 TB WD Cavair Black x2 Raid1
640GB WD Cavair x2 Raid1
2x Sapphire HD6950 2gb Crossfire (4GB of video ram) HD6970 Bios Mod - Catalyst 11.10
E-MU E-DSP Audio Processor 1616m
LG Blu-ray Burner WH10LS30
LG Blu-ray Reader UH10LS20
Corsair AX1200 1200 watt PSU
Antec SX830 Modded
Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Samsung S27A750D 120hz Monitor
Yama
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You're making me jealous, I hope you have a lock on that rig because I'm stealing it. :noid
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i spent about 3k on mine and plays the same as yours but with 3k I also have all the accessories (trakir, stick, pedals...) on 3 monitors. main thing is you dont have to spend 3k all at one time unless of course you have it. I didnt so it took me a couple of years to put it all together. my first puter e8400 based only cost me 900 buck 2 years ago. between then and now I added all the extra's one thing at a time. i upgraded I believe last may to the 2500k and just last november to my 3rd monitor and 2nd evga 465 card which i bought as a remanu for about 1/3 that I paid for my first. patience is golden, unless you have a rich gf and you are good in bed .
semp
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i spent about 3k on mine and plays the same as yours but with 3k I also have all the accessories (trakir, stick, pedals...) on 3 monitors. main thing is you dont have to spend 3k all at one time unless of course you have it. I didnt so it took me a couple of years to put it all together. my first puter e8400 based only cost me 900 buck 2 years ago. between then and now I added all the extra's one thing at a time. i upgraded I believe last may to the 2500k and just last november to my 3rd monitor and 2nd evga 465 card which i bought as a remanu for about 1/3 that I paid for my first. patience is golden, unless you have a rich gf and you are good in bed .
semp
My monitor is $500 semp x3 would be 1500 for those alone. 120Hz as I said makes a huge difference. I had 3x 22in Viewsonics before going to it. I could buy 2 more (my money) but she already hates AH enough.
Have trakir5, throttle, pedals, stick.
$500 for 2 SSD's in Raid0 and so on.
I usually buy stuff 1 year behind cutting edge. This time I went for it, next time perhaps wait.
Cutting edge is not without teething pain either. Drivers, bios etc. Until they get sorted out, which it is now.
BTW semp, I'm 56, shes 38 (and good looking) and makes over 100k a year so I could get her to buy it. But I do too, and I am :)