Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Rate This Thread
Hop To
#1773157 - 06/30/06 04:40 AM Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 7
mercenary Offline
Junior Member
mercenary  Offline
Junior Member

Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 7
Canada
I just upgraded from an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro to an Evga Geforce 7800gs CO and Falcon 4AF actually runs slower. I've seen massive improvements in my 3dMark05 scores as well as in Forgotten Battles and FS2004. My exact card doesn't even show up in the Settings menu, I have to choose primary driver.
I've uninstalled and reinstalled all Nvidia Drivers as well as Falcon AF. I have all the latest versions of everything. Has anybody else been having trouble with this card? Any tips or advice?

Here are my specs:

AMD Athlon xp 2500+
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
1 gig Kingston PC3200 ram

Thanks in Advance

Inline advert (2nd and 3rd post)

#1773158 - 06/30/06 04:58 AM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Feb 2001
Posts: 5,390
Speedo Offline
Hotshot
Speedo  Offline
Hotshot

Joined: Feb 2001
Posts: 5,390
NC USA
The slowdown is because of your CPU. Falcon4 is based on code which is nearly a decade old... long before the days of the modern GPU.

Really, F4 barely uses the GPU at all, so it's all about the CPU.

#1773159 - 06/30/06 10:14 AM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 8,771
Para_Bellum Offline
Oberkriegkaboomführer
Para_Bellum  Offline
Oberkriegkaboomführer
Hotshot

Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 8,771
Germany
Hhe shouldn't experience less FPS with this card.

Mercenary, at what settings exactly are you playing AF? Resolution, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering? Are you using HAL or HAL+T&L?


"...late afternoon the Air Tasking Order came in [and] we found the A-10 part and we said, "We are going where!? We are doing what!?"

Capt. Todd Sheehy, Hog pilot, on receiving orders during Operation Desert Storm

#1773160 - 06/30/06 04:07 PM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 301
DKM Offline
Member
DKM  Offline
Member

Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 301
I have a 3 gig P4 with a 7800 gs.

In the second training mission--which I always use for testing FPS--I start out the mission at about 56 FPS. This is will all sliders maxed out at 1600x1200, with AA, AS, etc. on, with HiTiles installed but trees disabled.

Hope this helps, by way of comparison.

DKM

#1773161 - 06/30/06 06:18 PM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 48
Bond Offline
Junior Member
Bond  Offline
Junior Member

Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 48
What is the differance between HAL and HAL & T&L?
What do they stand for and what do they do lol?

BTW the fps dropped because you switched to NVIDIA, I have had very poor performanec from all my NVIDIA cards, now I use ATI, and it rocks!

#1773162 - 06/30/06 11:45 PM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 185
PaulB Offline
Member
PaulB  Offline
Member

Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 185
Ive had the opposite luck, Bond

You couldnt *give* me another ATI. I'll spare you my "colorful" metaphors \:o )

#1773163 - 07/01/06 01:33 AM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 32
Rebel801st Offline
Junior Member
Rebel801st  Offline
Junior Member

Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 32
Adelaide - Sth Australia
Mercenary, did you completely uninstall your old Radeon drivers?

Firstly download and install DriverCleaner (google)

The process I normally use is to unistall your current video drivers (add/remove programs) then reboot to safe mode.

Run DriverCleaner to completely remove all the old Radeon drivers, DriverCleaner always seems to find old driver files not removed by the normal uninstall process.

Then reboot again to Windows and install your new Nvidia drivers - BTW the latest 90 series drivers seem to reduce terrain shimmering in F4.

Because F4 relies heavily on the CPU, you might be able to overclock the XP2500 a bit. I have an XP2500+ (Barton core)on an NF7 mobo, that runs perfectly well at 3200+ which really helps in F4. Since you have PC3200 ram all you need to do is raise your FSB from 166 to 200mhz.

Hope this helps

#1773164 - 07/01/06 01:57 AM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 545
TangoShadow Offline
Member
TangoShadow  Offline
Member

Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 545
Hi,

Usually in computing terms, HAL = Hardware Abstraction Layer - it handles the hardware in all respects.

T&L = Texture and Lighting. This was introduced originally as just another piece of software that was used in the then latest games, but required a beefy CPU to render. It was a method of drawing 3D lighting and textures in real-time.

Because of the CPU overhead, and the ever increasing complexity of "scenes", this was off-loaded onto the then emerging GPUs. This allowed the CPU to handle stuff like AI and more complex physics computations, whilst allowing the graphics card (which of course is optimized fror this kind of thing) to draw the lighting and the textures, and perform limited shadow computations, in real-time.

Todays cards are significantly more capable, as well as faster, than earlier GPU based cards.

The difference between a GPU card and a regular graphicvs card is that the GPU can actually be programmed to do something autonomously, as well as having memory dedicated to storing textures, whereas a regular graphics card still relies on the CPU to tell it what to draw, and when, and relying on main system memory to store the textures (slower).

Note that to take advantage of a GPU, the program must know to program the GPU to do these things. If it doesnt, the GPU just acts "dumb", drawing what the CPU asks of it. This of course requires CPU power, and means there is no advantage to having a GPU based card.

Falcon doesn't know how to take advantage of a GPU card (yet?), so upgrading from one type of card to another is *almost* pointless; the speed of the card is the *only* thing that will affect its performance, so going from card running at a certain speed to another of a similar speed, is totally pointless, even if the newer card has greater capabilities.

I hope that answers your question.

How much of a drop in performance did you see exactly?

--TangoShadow

#1773165 - 07/01/06 03:38 AM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 7
mercenary Offline
Junior Member
mercenary  Offline
Junior Member

Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 7
Canada
These are my settings:

Direct3D Hal
1600x1200 32 bit 4:3
all sliders maxed to the right
anisotropic filtering on
mipmap terrain off
mipmap 3d models off
cockpit selection: default
texture quality: ultra (only 32 bit textures)
canopy cues: both

No addons

My fps at the start of training mission 2 stabilizes to 25 .

DKM, can you actually select your 7800gs from the video driver drop down list or does it only say “primary driver”?

I used the ATI uninstaller to remove the ATI drivers and then used Nvidia’s directions to remove theirs. I’ll try your advice Rebel50. I also have a 3200+ sitting on my desk so I’ll see if that makes a difference too. After putting in the 3200+ I should have comparable frames to DKM if the 7800gs is working.

Thanks all

#1773166 - 07/01/06 03:42 AM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 7
mercenary Offline
Junior Member
mercenary  Offline
Junior Member

Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 7
Canada
The fps only dropped a few frames, anywhere from 3 to 5 fps

#1773167 - 07/01/06 08:30 AM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 32
Rebel801st Offline
Junior Member
Rebel801st  Offline
Junior Member

Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 32
Adelaide - Sth Australia
I have recently upgraded from an ATI 9600 pro a 6800GS with my XP 3200+ and although I have not checked framerates in a campaign - it seems to fly smoothly.

I will check when I get home later and let you know. Also my 3dmark03 went from 5K to over 10K with the new card.

My settings are:
Direct3D Hal
1024x768 32 bit 4:3
all sliders maxed to the right
anisotropic filtering On
mipmap terrain ON
mipmap 3d models ON
cockpit selection: default
texture quality: ultra (only 32 bit textures)

I use 4X AA and AF application controlled (Driver)

Interestingly I also noticed that only "Primary Driver" is available in the drop down and there were less resolutions choices available compared to when using he ATI drivers (9600)

The 6800GS has made a big difference to other games that utilise the GPU (see Tango's post) but there was not a huge difference in AF, however it certainly is not slower.

#1773168 - 07/01/06 09:34 AM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 8,771
Para_Bellum Offline
Oberkriegkaboomführer
Para_Bellum  Offline
Oberkriegkaboomführer
Hotshot

Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 8,771
Germany
Mercenary, do you have applied anti-aliasing in your ATI control panel or is this setting set to application preference? AA can eat quite some performance, especially at higher levels (e.g. 8x).


"...late afternoon the Air Tasking Order came in [and] we found the A-10 part and we said, "We are going where!? We are doing what!?"

Capt. Todd Sheehy, Hog pilot, on receiving orders during Operation Desert Storm

#1773169 - 07/01/06 01:57 PM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 545
TangoShadow Offline
Member
TangoShadow  Offline
Member

Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 545
Hi,

I agree with Para_Bellum, above.

Quote:
Direct3D Hal
No effect

Quote:
1600x1200 32 bit 4:3
On your spec machine, I'm surprised it is doing so well

Quote:
all sliders maxed to the right
Which sliders?

Quote:
anisotropic filtering on
Small impact on frame rates

Quote:
mipmap terrain off
Use MIPS - reduces Moire

Quote:
mipmap 3d models off
You might want to enable this for performance

Quote:
cockpit selection: default
No effect

Quote:
texture quality: ultra (only 32 bit textures)
Big effect right here. Use the middle setting (some 32-bit textures). There is nothing wrong wiht DXT3 textures at all. They are an accelerated (therefore quicker) texture. Running pure 32-bit textures is an ego thing IMHO. 32-bit textures are inefficient as hell.

Quote:
canopy cues: both
Very small impact here

One setting I don't see mentioned here is your AA setting. This has the greatest impact on frame rates. Disable AA and see what it runs like then. ;\)

--TangoShadow

#1773170 - 07/01/06 01:58 PM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 129
BwanaBob Offline
Member
BwanaBob  Offline
Member

Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 129
Colorado Springs, CO
Quote:
Originally posted by TangoShadow:
T&L = Texture and Lighting. This was introduced originally as just another piece of software that was used in the then latest games, but required a beefy CPU to render. It was a method of drawing 3D lighting and textures in real-time.
That would be Tranformation and Lighting.
It wasn't really 'introduced' as it's fundamental to 3D graphics when it all started back in the 60's.

Quote:
Note that to take advantage of a GPU, the program must know to program the GPU to do these things. If it doesnt, the GPU just acts "dumb", drawing what the CPU asks of it. This of course requires CPU power, and means there is no advantage to having a GPU based card.
GPU's have fixed functionality that perform basic Gouraud Shaded T&L and texturing. There's no impact on the CPU unless explicitly programmed to not use the GPU.

Quote:
Falcon doesn't know how to take advantage of a GPU card (yet?), so upgrading from one type of card to another is *almost* pointless; the speed of the card is the *only* thing that will affect its performance, so going from card running at a certain speed to another of a similar speed, is totally pointless, even if the newer card has greater capabilities.
This is true for T&L, not pixel processing (i.e., resolution, FSAA, texturing, AF, etc).
Hence, at this time, the bottleneck for most people is the CPU as it's doing the campaign, AI, flight model, ... and transformation/lighting ALL the vertices in the scene.

#1773171 - 07/01/06 03:22 PM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 301
DKM Offline
Member
DKM  Offline
Member

Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 301
"DKM, can you actually select your 7800gs from the video driver drop down list or does it only say “primary driver”?"

It only says "primary driver."

DKM

#1773172 - 07/02/06 12:55 AM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 7
mercenary Offline
Junior Member
mercenary  Offline
Junior Member

Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 7
Canada
I was using application controlled settings for AA and AF. I set them both to 4x and then turned them both off. The difference was negligible. Maybe 2 extra fps with AA and AF off. I did put in a 3200+ and that gave me about 5 extra frames on training mission 2. Right now I'm getting 30 fps at the start of training mission 2.

#1773173 - 07/02/06 01:56 AM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 2,536
AV8R Offline
Senior Member
AV8R  Offline
Senior Member

Joined: May 2000
Posts: 2,536
Southern California USA
On one of my systems, the frame rate jumped big time when I:

- switched from 32 to 16 bit, (1280res)
- regular tiles (no high res)

Im getting 65-200 FPS in the 2D cockpit,
and 50-70 in the No-HUD view
and 35-50 in the 3D cpit
and 25-40 in the 2D cpit forward view

Before making the above changes, I AFv107 was limping along such that I wasnt using AF on this system.

Intel P4 2.4 Ghz
1 Gig DDR
ATI x700 pro, latest drivers, no AA/AF/MM
WinXP SP2
NO HiTilesAF

The biggest gains are the 32 to 16 bit.
Im not sure why this has such a profound difference. I cannot come close to the above FPS on my other system I normally use for AF:

Intel P4 3.4 Ghz H.T.
1 Gig DDR2 Corsair
ATI x1600 pro, latest drivers, with 4xAA/4xAF/MM
(running 1600x1200x32)
WinXP SP2
Yes, HiTilesAF

Where I get around:
Im getting 25-50 FPS in the 2D cockpit,
and 35-70 in the No-HUD view
and 35-70 in the 3D cpit
and 25-50 in the 2D cpit forward view
(some micro pauses with HiTiles)

I imagine if I go to 16 bit and no high res (or no HiTileAF), then Ill get much improved FPS on this system too.


AV8R
#1773174 - 07/02/06 04:57 PM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 14
kyle_l5l Offline
Junior Member
kyle_l5l  Offline
Junior Member

Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 14
mercenary:
Do you have the latest/greatest/craziest DirectX? That _could_ have some effect.

7800GS CO...is that an AGP card or a PCI-X? If it's AGP, what is your AGP Aperture set to in the BIOS? (That setting doesn't really affect your performance unless it's WAY too big or small. I think setting it to 1/4 or 1/2 of your RAM is usually good.).

In the nVidia section of the graphics controls, you can change between Best Quality or Best Performance. Switch it to performance and see what that does.

AV8R:
I'm going to guess that the big performance boost in switching to 16bit color is probably a memory bandwidth issue. Probably.

#1773175 - 07/02/06 08:34 PM Re: Slow Allied Force Fps With Evga Geforce 7800gs Co  
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 7
mercenary Offline
Junior Member
mercenary  Offline
Junior Member

Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 7
Canada
The 7800gs CO is an agp card. My agp apperture size is set to 128mb, half of the 256 mb video card ram. Nothing really seems to make a difference in my framerate. The biggest difference was a 15 fps jump when i disabled trees. The next biggest jump comes when I go to the 2048x1536 resolution, I lose about 3 fps. Maybe my expectations were too high for the 7800gs. If Falcon is as cpu intensive as everyone says, then my situation seems to make sense.


Moderated by  RacerGT 

Quick Search
Recent Articles
Support SimHQ

If you shop on Amazon use this Amazon link to support SimHQ
.
Social


Recent Topics
Carnival Cruise Ship Fire....... Again
by F4UDash4. 03/26/24 05:58 PM
Baltimore Bridge Collapse
by F4UDash4. 03/26/24 05:51 PM
The Oldest WWII Veterans
by F4UDash4. 03/24/24 09:21 PM
They got fired after this.
by Wigean. 03/20/24 08:19 PM
Grown ups joke time
by NoFlyBoy. 03/18/24 10:34 PM
Anyone Heard from Nimits?
by F4UDash4. 03/18/24 10:01 PM
RIP Gemini/Apollo astronaut Tom Stafford
by semmern. 03/18/24 02:14 PM
10 years after 3/8/2014
by NoFlyBoy. 03/17/24 10:25 AM
Copyright 1997-2016, SimHQ Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.6.0