wolfko Posted December 3, 2010 Share Posted December 3, 2010 Hi, I have asked this also on the AVSIM Forums, but I think its is best to get as many opions as possible. I would like to upgrade my videocard and kindly ask for advise which one would match the technical specs of my system best. It wouldn’t make much sense to buy the best card available, if the rest of my system cannot keep pace with it. I know, there are other parts of my system, which would need to be upgraded too, but this time I will only change the GPU (except for the PS, if the new GPU needs more power). And yes, I’m Nvidia biased. My specs are OS: Win XP 32 Mainboard: S-775 ASUS P5Q, ATX, 1 x PCI-E x16, 2x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI,´Intel P45/ICH10R, 4x DDR2 667/800/1066/1200Mhz, CPU FSB 800/1066/1333/1600MHz CPU: INTEL Core 2 Duo E8400, 2 x 3,00GHz, 6MB Cache, 1333MHz FSB, Dual Core RAM: DDR2-RAM KIT 3072 MB, PC2-800 MHz, CL5, CORSAIR current GPU: GeForce 9600 GT, 512MB HD: SATA II Seagate Barracuda, 7200.11, 320GB, 16MB Cache PS: ATX 650 Watt, Corsair 650TX Thanks in advance for any suggestions Wolfgang Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spirit Flyer_old Posted December 3, 2010 Share Posted December 3, 2010 Hi, I have asked this also on the AVSIM Forums, but I think its is best to get as many opions as possible. I would like to upgrade my videocard and kindly ask for advise which one would match the technical specs of my system best. It wouldn’t make much sense to buy the best card available, if the rest of my system cannot keep pace with it. I know, there are other parts of my system, which would need to be upgraded too, but this time I will only change the GPU (except for the PS, if the new GPU needs more power). And yes, I’m Nvidia biased. My specs are OS: Win XP 32 Mainboard: S-775 ASUS P5Q, ATX, 1 x PCI-E x16, 2x PCI-E x1, 3x PCI,´Intel P45/ICH10R, 4x DDR2 667/800/1066/1200Mhz, CPU FSB 800/1066/1333/1600MHz CPU: INTEL Core 2 Duo E8400, 2 x 3,00GHz, 6MB Cache, 1333MHz FSB, Dual Core RAM: DDR2-RAM KIT 3072 MB, PC2-800 MHz, CL5, CORSAIR current GPU: GeForce 9600 GT, 512MB HD: SATA II Seagate Barracuda, 7200.11, 320GB, 16MB Cache PS: ATX 650 Watt, Corsair 650TX Thanks in advance for any suggestions Wolfgang Hi Wolfgang, Welcome to our world so to speak. The FTX forums are a great place to hang out. I think the 1g Nvidia 460 GTX might be an excellent fit. It is universally acclaimed to be the very best surprise performer since canned beans. Kind regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfko Posted December 7, 2010 Author Share Posted December 7, 2010 Hi Stephen, Thank you very much for your warm welcome and your recommendation. I have read some reviews of the GTX460 and have seen that the prices for this card are very reasonable. So think I'll buy the GTX460 The main reason for the upgrade are colour banding in FSX, FS9 and other programmes (e. g. the sky in Google Earth 3D is banded) and also complete system crashes after a time when running AA supersampling in FSX and FS9, which both is probably caused by my current card. BTW do you think my PS 650W will be sufficient for the GTX460? Thanks, Wolfgang Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreeBird Posted December 7, 2010 Share Posted December 7, 2010 The 460 is a great card, I have one myself and am getting good results. A 650w power supply should be okay as the specs say a 450 w power supply is the Minimum Recommended System Power. Just make sure that it has two 6 pin power conectors. I have mine OC to 800 with stable performance. Josh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfko Posted December 8, 2010 Author Share Posted December 8, 2010 Thank you for your input, Josh! What do you mean with "two 6 pin power connectors"? Are there 460GTX out there with and without two 6 pin connectors? And will this be stated on the box? I ha q quick look at the two online stores where I usually buy my hardware, but haven't found the power connectors mentioned in any description of various GTX460 there. So how can I be sure that the card will have it? Thanks, Wolfgang Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreeBird Posted December 9, 2010 Share Posted December 9, 2010 All 460 cards have two 6pin power connectors, On your power supply you should have two of these. Also somtimes the 8 pin connectors have brakeoffs to make it become a 6 pin. Then again you need to ck your power supply. I posted the specs bellow. Josh http://www.nvidia.com/object/product-geforce-gtx-460-us.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjjallen Posted December 9, 2010 Share Posted December 9, 2010 Hi Stephen, Thank you very much for your warm welcome and your recommendation. I have read some reviews of the GTX460 and have seen that the prices for this card are very reasonable. So think I'll buy the GTX460 The main reason for the upgrade are colour banding in FSX, FS9 and other programmes (e. g. the sky in Google Earth 3D is banded) and also complete system crashes after a time when running AA supersampling in FSX and FS9, which both is probably caused by my current card. [shadow=red,left][glow=cyan,2,300]BTW do you think my PS 650W will be sufficient for the GTX460?[/glow][/shadow] Thanks, Wolfgang Yes (go a little bigger if you can afford it) - The 460 sips power. jja Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfko Posted January 4, 2011 Author Share Posted January 4, 2011 So, I now accidently got a Gigabyte GTX 460 1GB OC from Santa! Thanks to everyone for recommending this card! Performance is great, the graphics look great, except when I’m experiencing the graphical issues described below. I hope it is Ok to post this here and not in the PC Help forum Strange artifacts flashing all over the scenery, most of the time outside the VC only but sometimes also reaching into the VC. Those artifacts mostly are geometrical fugures,s omeetimes with textures of FSX buildings sometimes with textures of the plane I’m flying in. It also can be solid walls of textures extending to the horizon, or kind of transparent shadows crawling over the landscape (looks like someone had spilled liquid over the scenery.) and other strange looking artifacts hard to describe. Turning/looking away from the articfacts often helps. But when turning back the artifacts are there again. Looking into the sky sometimes helps to get completely rid of them. For instance when flying over Chicago I get the artifacts once KMDW is in the centre of the screen in the far distance, changing the heading a bit and the issue is gone turning back and the issue is there again. But sometimes the artifacst completely block the outside view in every direction. What have I done so far, trying to cure my problems - I have already exchanged the GTX 460d I got from Santa with another card of exactly the same model – but to no avail - tried 3 sets of drivers (with the 258.?? I experienced Blue Screens instead of artifacts) - I have completely uninstalled FSX and did a clean reinstall - tweaking the FSX,cfg (helped a bit) - reduced autogen (only “no autogen†and “sparse†seem to work within Orbx PNW) - reduced max. FPS setting within FSX from 25 to 20 then to 15 – no effect! I have also reinstalled my old GF 9600 GT. With this card I have absolutely no problems only the FPS are lower than with the GTX460. Could this indicate that the GTX460 is too strong for the rest of my system? Or could id indicate that the 2nd power connector is faulty (how can I check this). BTW the artifacts cause absolutely no loss in FPS, no stutters, the sim will continue running fluidly.! According to NVidiaInspector there is no overheating. the temp of the GPU is between 40° - 50° when the artifacts appear. Also the GPU is never fully loaded, even in dense sceneries. The max. I have seen was about 60 % (this seems strange to me?) FYI I have not problems though runnung FS9 with the most FPS heavy add on planes at the heveist payware aiports mit traffic at 100 % and everything aelse fully maxed. Here are the specs of the card, which is OC by default Chip: 715 MHZ, Memory 1800 MHZ, Shader 1430 MHZ, Voltage o.935 Thanks in advance for any suggestions Wolfgang Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreeBird Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 I had a similar problem when I first got my 460 card. First I downloaded Nvidia driver 260.99 and saved it. What I did next was to run driver sweeper and removed all video drivers new and old. Then I rebooted into safe mode and installed the new driver. After the install I ran Geforce Sli Profile tool and loaded profile c16xs. I don't know if this profile is available, but pm me with your email and I will send it to you. This solved all my issues that I had with this card.. Josh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfko Posted January 4, 2011 Author Share Posted January 4, 2011 Josh, thank you for your reply. I sent. I have a question though - would a SLI profile really help me out? I thought this is only good when haveing 2 cards installed, bu I only have a single GTX460? Wolfgang Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edward Boyte Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 I have a question though - would a SLI profile really help me out? No. FSX doesn't support SLI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterhayes Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 Wolfko IMHO the artefacts that you are seeing are in part due to WinXp ie the 4xx series cards until the very latest driver do not work well with WinXP! From NickN on simforums, "Nvidia engineering has posted a message to me that the issue with the 400-500 series cards and FSX has been fixed", and he posts a link to the new beta driver http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64-266.35-beta-driver.html (that should work!! . Also on a 32 bit OS running a 460 either 768 or 1024 MB VRAM, you will be in serious danger of getting OOM errors due to you exceeding the Virtual Address Space (nothing to do with physical RAM) and the FERMI architecture (used in the 460) works much better with a later Windows OS such as Win 7. Plus the 460 will be throttled by your cpu and a 260 may hav been a better match! Regards PeterH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfko Posted January 4, 2011 Author Share Posted January 4, 2011 Hi Peter, Thank you very much for your reply and pointing out the new driver. Unfortunately this is for XP64 only. I was not very delighted to hear that a 460 will actually not fit my system Probably time to upgrade ton Win7. One thing that I realized today when checking out Gigabyte's and my reseller's websites. According to both sites the memory clock of my card should be 3600 MHZ, but according to NvidiaInspector my card has a memory clock of only 1800 MHZ which can be overclocked to max 3000 MHZ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alainneedle1 Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 Wolfko IMHO the artefacts that you are seeing are in part due to WinXp ie the 4xx series cards until the very latest driver do not work well with WinXP! From NickN on simforums, "Nvidia engineering has posted a message to me that the issue with the 400-500 series cards and FSX has been fixed", and he posts a link to the new beta driver http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64-266.35-beta-driver.html (that should work!! . Also on a 32 bit OS running a 460 either 768 or 1024 MB VRAM, you will be in serious danger of getting OOM errors due to you exceeding the Virtual Address Space (nothing to do with physical RAM) and the FERMI architecture (used in the 460) works much better with a later Windows OS such as Win 7. Plus the 460 will be throttled by your cpu and a 260 may hav been a better match! Regards PeterH Now that's what I call a good post..... @ wolfko, what card is showing in your fsx.CFG ....? Deleting the fsx.CFG folder and have FSX rebuilding it may be good? Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterhayes Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 Wolfko Maybe nvidia Inspector hasn't caught up with the latest card specs? As I say above the standard clock 460 would be throttled by your cpu so why overclock? You really need to match the cpu, mobo RAM and vifeocard for best results. I run an E8600 with a GTX 260 and it works very well! Regards PeterH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spirit Flyer_old Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 Hi Peter, Thank you very much for your reply and pointing out the new driver. Unfortunately this is for XP64 only. I was not very delighted to hear that a 460 will actually not fit my system Probably time to upgrade ton Win7. One thing that I realized today when checking out Gigabyte's and my reseller's websites. According to both sites the memory clock of my card should be 3600 MHZ, but according to NvidiaInspector my card has a memory clock of only 1800 MHZ which can be overclocked to max 3000 MHZ? Hi Wolfgang, It probably is a good idea for you to upgrade your operating system to Windows 7 anyway. Your memory is double the number showing in Nvidia Inspector, MSI or EVGA Precision or any other monitoring software. 1800 x 2 = 3600. Also, Josh was not referring to using SLI in FSX, but the tool by that name provided by Nvidia which inserts Game profiles, including several choices of FSX Profiles, into your Nvidia settings, thereby rendering high quality gameplay. Kind regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfko Posted January 4, 2011 Author Share Posted January 4, 2011 @Alain Thank you for your suggestions. I had already deleted the old FSX.cfg and let FSX rebuild a new one, which shows the GTX460 as graphics card @Peter This card comes lready overclocked out of the box. One more thought to the (non)compatibility of the 400 seires with winxp. Is this only valid for FSX ? Yesterday I had run FS9 with the GTX460 for about an hour for testing reasons under very heavy load (100 & traffic, heavy wather, detailed airport scnery, FPS esating add on planes...) without any problems. Did I only have no issues, because FS9 is not as demanding as FSX is? @Stephen Thanks for clarifying Wolfgang Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterhayes Posted January 5, 2011 Share Posted January 5, 2011 Wolfgang I thought that it was peculiar to Windows XP (and as you surmised it may well only be the 64-bit version affected). Further, FSX handles graphics differently to FS9 and that may be the reason for the difference! The overclock - OK I understand now - it is probably just the way nvidia inspector sees the card! Regards PeterH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horatio Posted January 5, 2011 Share Posted January 5, 2011 Wolfgang, just to add my two cents worth to the fine advice above from everyone...based on my experience with my own previous system (e8400) and FSX performance (similar to what you describe) , I would say the weak link in your picture is Windows XP. Doing a clean install of W7 64 bit made a big big difference to fsx performance in my case. You can always pick up an OEM copy of 64bit Home premium - around here anyway for - under $100. Apart from the fact that you will be utilizing all your memory, it is just a much more finely tuned OS and very customizable for people like us once you get to know it. And it's prettier by far into the bargain.. regards, Michael H Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurice_King Posted January 6, 2011 Share Posted January 6, 2011 I wouldn't bother upgrading your Graphics Card until you get a decent processor, IMHO your stumbling block will be your CPU, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfko Posted January 21, 2011 Author Share Posted January 21, 2011 Problem solved!!! ;D I installed the brand new 266.58 drivers and the problem is gone! Actually I had planned to upgrade to Win7 64 next week, as some suggested! Not sure if I do this now or in summer together with building a new rig. Thanks to everybody who gave his input into this thread! Wolfgang Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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