New Raedon Card

[Kelvinr]

Our country finally makes it on the map (well AMD's map anyway). :-P

http://www.guru3d.com/news/amd-radeon-hd-7...have-6gb-gddr5/

[Ian Warren]

I walked from AMD years ago .. Geforce is the product i no , Devil Red for NZ ... is that to show our anger at something or is it Santa Claus RED

[Dontcopy]

All I really need to say...

[Kelvinr]

QUOTE (Dontcopy @ Dec 26 2011,9:44 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

All I really need to say...

I use Nvidia, seems unusual though. Not sure of their message on this one.

[Dontcopy]

Weeeeell, the 7970 is quite a bit faster than the 580 so two 7970's on 1 card would be awesome.

[Adamski]

I used to be 100% sold on nVidia cards (after having been bitten by chronic ATI drivers in the murky past).

The last FSX system had a fairly decent Radeon card, but my current system is back to Geforce.

I'd like to hear people's opinions about FSAA (full-screen anti-aliasing) - as I found ATI *much* better in that respect.

I find, with nVidia cards, that the object has to be fairly zoomed in before A/A "kicks in". If you have an aircraft with stripes in its livery, it looks pretty chronic right up until you almost fill the frame. In other words - I don't think it's "full screen" at all. My ATI card seemed much better for that.

I've tried every nVidia setting to try to get round this, but no luck so far.

Also - I hate to say this - I found my [older] ATI card just a bit "crisper" and the colours a tiny bit clearer somehow. I know this isn't very "scientific" - and that it's a very subjective thing, but I did definitely notice a difference going to ATI after many years of nVidia. That said, I'm not sure why I went back to nVidia!

[metalnwood]

I used to be geforce all the way, I used to be a bit of an amd man when linux was my main OS years ago but I am happy to jump ship when someone has a leg up.

Thats certainly intel with the cpu wars and because I run triple screens I don't think the amd cards can be beat there.

The card looks interesting so I will keep any eye out for how it performs at higher resolutions, like the ~8000x1080 I run off my 6970.

With triple screens I like the idea of better framerates in sims

[Rotordude]

QUOTE (Adamski @ Dec 26 2011,12:28 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I find, with nVidia cards, that the object has to be fairly zoomed in before A/A "kicks in". If you have an aircraft with stripes in its livery, it looks pretty chronic right up until you almost fill the frame.

lol there is a real profound irony to that statement which started back about 2 years ago

[Adamski]

QUOTE (Rotordude @ Dec 27 2011,11:09 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

lol there is a real profound irony to that statement which started back about 2 years ago

Hey, RD ... what statement [that started 2 years ago]? Did I post something similar (my memory fails!).

[Rotordude]

Hey Adam no wasn't a statement you said it is something that happened. ever heard of Occam's razor?

Now this is only my opinion but have you not noticed a lot of screenies now are looking muddy and blurry, too soft no real detail FSAA blurs everything, its a big task.

Lets go to the theater for a little play

Scene 1: Prolog
The irony is around 2 years ago someone out there said hey WOW look at this tweak, if you save your aircraft textures without mipmaps you get unreal sharp textures, yes fair enough you do (up close) and all the devs followed. But as you pan out that 2048 texture is being forced onto a smaller and smaller object.... you are going to get wrinkles so to speak.

Scene 2: Ohhh what a minute

Global question "I seem to have a problem, it has just started I don't know why but my paints are all jaggy"
The answer "Simple use Nhancer and force the drivers to do FSAA (super sampling) at 8x or more and just to be sure chuck in some transparent AA as well"
Global response "WOW sweet my liveries look nice again, a little bit blurry but nice and straight"

Scene 3: WTH

Global question "I don't know why but for the last week this has been driving me insane, when ever I get near heavy AG, water or clouds my frame rates fall through the floor? can any one help"
The answer "yeah sure tweak the living s**t out of your cfg with all this stuff"
Global response "Sweet that works great" sort of


Scene 4: I'm tearing my hear out

Global question "I dont know why but all of a sudden I am getting micro stutters and massive blurries with black textures and CTD's and dll errors with lots of other stuff going wrong.... HELP"
Answer "Dude you need to go out and get a 580 with 1.5gig of vram or better that will solve your problems it worked for me"
Global response from card manufacturers "God damn we love forums and fiddlers, sales have boomed"
And it goes on......

Things just start to downward spiral to a point where all these tweaks had to be made because of one catastrophic tweak.
Actual cure, put the mip maps where they belong, the end result was pretty much the same as full 8x ssaa with no hassles, and the bonus is that 8 or 9 series gfx card you used to have will still be happy.


Like I said, it's my opinion that I believe is pretty much true, I fell into that trap now I have reproduced all textures with mips (external and VC) a stock standard fsx.cfg with only one mod ant that is increasing the lod from 4.5 to 8.5 and I am friggen happy with the result. No blurries, no VC panel shimmers, super crisp ground textures and no terrain popping in front of my eyes. And yes the water shimmers, but it does in real life as well, funny that

[Adamski]

QUOTE (Rotordude @ Dec 27 2011,3:16 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hey Adam no wasn't a statement you said it is something that happened. ever heard of Occam's razor?

Yep!

QUOTE (Rotordude @ Dec 27 2011,3:16 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Now this is only my opinion but have you not noticed a lot of screenies now are looking muddy and blurry, too soft no real detail FSAA blurs everything, its a big task.

Hmmm ... not sure about that (!!) ... Marty's are always crisp - and Bugdani's are nothing short of amazing! Maybe they're both ATI

I have FSAA maxed out (32X) with transparency, super-sampling - you name it (it's a GTX580) ... it's all very sharp ... but *too sharp*, dammit ... even when I roll things back a bit in quality.

Great post, BTW!!! Thanks!

[Rotordude]

QUOTE (Adamski @ Dec 26 2011,12:28 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I find, with nVidia cards, that the object has to be fairly zoomed in before A/A "kicks in". If you have an aircraft with stripes in its livery, it looks pretty chronic right up until you almost fill the frame. In other words - I don't think it's "full screen" at all.

QUOTE (Adamski @ Dec 27 2011,4:16 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yep!
Hmmm ... not sure about that (!!) ... Marty's are always crisp - and Bugdani's are nothing short of amazing! Maybe they're both ATI

I have FSAA maxed out (32X) with transparency, super-sampling - you name it (it's a GTX580) ... it's all very sharp ... but *too sharp*, dammit ... even when I roll things back a bit in quality.

Great post, BTW!!! Thanks!

I think you missed my point, all this work to make a straight line non jagged can be achieved with correct texture protocols and not at the expense of blurred ground textures and popping mesh or crashs because FSX is operating outside its boundries. As your top quote says, you still have jagged lines.

On a side note, check how you have your settings as I would say AA is not actually active at all, nvidia inspector is possibly not set up correctly.
Only reason it looks sharp when you are zoomed right in, is because the texture "fits" hence no mip maps. if you have set up correctly there would be no jagged lines at distance especially at 32x.

Hence my post, chucking hardware at a simple little texture issue. we are all FSX lemmings.

[wairoaboy]

QUOTE (Adamski @ Dec 27 2011,4:16 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yep!


Hmmm ... not sure about that (!!) ... Marty's are always crisp - and Bugdani's are nothing short of amazing! Maybe they're both ATI

I have FSAA maxed out (32X) with transparency, super-sampling - you name it (it's a GTX580) ... it's all very sharp ... but *too sharp*, dammit ... even when I roll things back a bit in quality.

Great post, BTW!!! Thanks!

Hi Adamski

Just a wee question....You have the GTX580? I'm running the 560ti. Given the performance difference between the 560ti, 560 2win, GTX 580 and GTX 590 (money aside for the moment), would you consider there to be any performance difference (in any aspect of texture, clouds and ground etc) to justify and upgrade from a 560ti to any of these cards?

Much Obliged for your opinion

[AndrewJamez]

I would be interested in the response to this question aswell. I am running a 560ti and it runs very well except with large quantities of clouds the frames drop off somewhat and the dreaded micro stutter creaps in. This happens with an up to date modded cfg file.