Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: oboe on February 16, 2015, 09:56:04 AM
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In case others are interested to know how a well a proposed build might run AH2, I thought a benchmark thread might help. This was my simple method:
1) Start AH
2) Select Video Settings
- Disable Vsync
- Note screen resolution
- Set Max texture size to 2048
- Move Anti-Aliasing slider to "Most"
- Click OK
3) Choose terrain
4) Choose Offline Practice
- Go to field A1
- Looking East from tower view, record Frame Rate (CTL-I toggles video info)
- Go to Hangar, select P-51D
- Spawn NE
- Looking Forward, record Frame Rate
- Look Back-Right, record Frame Rate
5) Post results
My machine specs:
MOBO: Asrock H97 Pro4
CPU: Core i5-4590 @ 3.3 GHz (no overclock)
RAM: 8GB G.Skill DDR3-1600
VIDEO: XFX Radeon R9 280X 3GB
OS: Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit
SCREEN: 1680x1050
Performance:
Looking East, tower: 167 fps
Looking fwd in cockpit, on runway: 101 fps
Looking back-right in cockpit, on runway: 195 fps
Hope that helps, hope my methodology makes sense in creating a useful, comparable benchmark between different hardware configurations. I'd be really interested in what MrRipley's Pentium G3528 build produces, and some of you guys' i7 builds using the NVidia GTX 970 video card.
EDIT: I think I missed some info - aren't there other graphic settings I should make a note of? I can't recall where they are right now. This was a brand new install of AH, using the HiRes textures, so those other graphic settings are set to the default, whatever that might be...
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The GTX660 I have in the budget box is much weaker than the 280x. But once I get AH downloaded I'll post results.
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Your effort is appreciated. I do think that for the benchmarks to be useful, however, a few standards need to be applied:
Resolution - the most common resolution for gaming is 1920x1080p. Your "benchmarked' resolution is below that, and so your framerates will be higher than those who run the "standard" resolution. You should re-run the benchmarks at 1080p, if possible.
FPS - frames-per-second is always fluctuating. By listing a single value, you're basically cherry-picking numbers that may or may not be representative of actual performance. You should download a program like MSI Afterburner that gives you charts for your performance, and then calculate your average values, with min/max to show the range.
In-game graphics settings - you should provide the in-game graphics settings you used. For example, was ground clutter turned on? What about environment updates? Plane skins? Etc. You will probably also want to provide performance under various configuration settings.
I'm sure there's other ways to improve, but, at a bare minimum, the above should be provided with your results to give an accurate idea of performance.
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Your effort is appreciated. I do think that for the benchmarks to be useful, however, a few standards need to be applied:
Resolution - the most common resolution for gaming is 1920x1080p. Your "benchmarked' resolution is below that, and so your framerates will be higher than those who run the "standard" resolution. You should re-run the benchmarks at 1080p, if possible.
FPS - frames-per-second is always fluctuating. By listing a single value, you're basically cherry-picking numbers that may or may not be representative of actual performance. You should download a programs like MSI Afterburner that gives you charts for your performance, and then calculate your average values, with min/max to show the range.
In-game graphics settings - you should provide the in-game graphics settings you used. For example, was ground clutter turned on? What about environment updates? Plane skins? Etc. You will probably also want to provide performance under various configuration settings.
I'm sure there's other ways to improve, but, at a bare minimum, the above should be provided with your results to give an accurate idea of performance.
Yes, standards, absolutely! I tried to think of as many video/graphic settings as possible, but forgot about those in-game graphic settings - although since its a brand new install of AH, they're all set to whatever the default values are, unless AH detects vidcard capability and sets them to an appropriate value that could vary between people's configuations.
Unfortunately, my monitor doesn't support 1920x1080. I have it set to its recommended (and highest) resolution, so I thought I could handle that by including my resolution setting in the benchmark (I wonder how many people have older monitors like me?). A monitor upgrade is next for me (first I need flight controllers).
FPS - yes, the numbers sometimes fluctuated, depending on the # of drones in view and the #s of ack firing, but I tried to report a number that was in the middle of the fluctuating values. Looking Back-Right actually had no activity at all - just some runway, a little bit of terrain, and sky.
I'll look into MSI afterburner - I started looking for benchmarks like 3Dmark, etc but talked myself out of it because I was just interested in this machine's performance in Aces High anyway. But I'll give Afterburner a look.
Thanks for your help, I hope this helps other vets like me who are thinking about coming back but know they need new hardware. Just some basic ideas for comparison on what an i5 vs an i7 does, for example, or the FPS difference between a $350 vidcard and a sub-$200 one.
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For some reason in offline mode im capped at 128 fps even with vsync disabled in AH and CCC .... been that way since install . Online i dont have any issue with as i have a 144hrz monitor and with vsync i rarely see it drop off 143fps .... without vsync i see 200's in the tower havent really tested it flying . The only one i can really show as a comparison to yours above is :
Looking fwd in cockpit, on runway: i get between 111 low- 113 high fps . All other views max at 128fps
I5 3570k @ 4.5ghz
8 gb gskill 2133
sapphire r9 280x
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The download from HTC took so long that I had to go to sleep and now I'm on a work travel. I will try to post results on thursday.
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opps forgot my res is 1920x 1080
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My build: Asus Z97-pro gamer + Corsair Vengeange 8Gb combo (was on offer for 155 bucks)
XFX black 450W PSU
Pentium G3258 with stock cooler overclocked to 4.3Ghz with the one click automatic setting
GTX660 DirectCU II OC
Many hdd:s and the Intel 520 256Gb SSD
OS Windows 10 release preview
SCREEN: 1680x1050, max anti-alias
Performance:
Looking East, tower: 158 fps clipboard up, 164 fps clipboard down
Looking fwd in cockpit, on runway: 94 fps
Looking back-right in cockpit, on runway: 215 fps
I'd say this is pretty good bang for buck.
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My rig
AMD 8350 8 core @ 4.3
16 gig Corsair Vengeance
EVGA 970 4gig vid card
Windows 7 sp1`
Screen resolution 1920 X 1080
full water cooling loop on cpu and vid card
In Tower looking forward 192 FPS with map up
In Tower looking forward 244 FPS with map down
In P51d looking forward 124 FPS with map up
In p51d looking forward 215 FPS with map down
In Panther position 2 zoomed in/out 312/244 FPS
in Panther position 3 zoomed in/out 245/211 FPS
I hope that is what you are looking for..
LawnDart
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Some of these numbers are making me drool!
I did find more graphic settings under options, Graphic Detail/Advanced. I found out I can tank my fps into the low 40s by sliding the environment map to "Full Updates". I leave it at one notch.
Also I have Object Self Shadow set to "smooth" and 4096, all other options X'd on that window. Object Detail is set all the way toward "detail", and Ground Detail Range is set to the max of 4 mi.
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E8400 @3GHz, 4GB RAM, HD7870 Radeon @ 1GHz, WinXP SP3
4XSSAA, 8XAF
AH settings: detail max, gnd range max, gnd clutter off, environment off, obj self shadow on, smooth shadow 4096, detail water on, detail terrain on, local water reflection off, bump map clouds on, bump map bldgs off, bump map other planes on
A1 Tower E: 63 fps
P51D Forward: 58 fps
P51D Back Right: 64 fps
P51D Left: 28 fps
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I hate to rain on the parade here, but you do realize none of these results mean anything once the new version of the game is released?
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Skuzzy I know LOL but I thought I would post..
LAwnDart
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I hate to rain on the parade here, but you do realize none of these results mean anything once the new version of the game is released?
QFT
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I hate to rain on the parade here, but you do realize none of these results mean anything once the new version of the game is released?
Of course, but they mean something now and it may be quite some time before the new version is released. Plus, when the new version does come out we can run a similar test again to see how it compares with these results from the old version.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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Thank you for that great explanation.
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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....
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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.
:salute
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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
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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.
:salute
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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?
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nope .... im using sapphire's Trixx software for overclocking.
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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.
:salute
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........... :D
:salute