YMML Melbourne - Problem Frame rate

[fsrunway]

The scenery is very beautiful, The problem is the frame installments 5/6 it is not possible to use .

hardware: 8800GTX, 4G ram DDR2, CPU 8500 Dual Core

Vista 64Bit

[Ryan Mason]

Please read some of the other posts in the help forum, there are many solutions and setup tweaks from many members that may help you get a more enjoyable experience out of YMML

[Ryan Mason]

and your order number for the product must be put on your signature or in your post before any help will be given.

Thanks and welcome.

AC

[Guest Schubido]

The scenery is very beautiful, The problem is the frame installments 5/6 it is not possible to use .

hardware: 8800GTX, 4G ram DDR2, CPU 8500 Dual Core

Vista 64Bit

Hi,

It looks like you have the same problem what I have plus a few others.. The rig you have should indeed be powerful enough to achieve reasonable FPS like the one I have but I get the same 6 to 7 FPS which is absolutely out of discussion.

Yes, there are some tweaks available but they are quite standard and nothing new. I am getting quite comfortable FPS with almost any add-on and I have almost all which are actually available for FSX. Why the hack should I now remove the sliders down and doing all the known tweaks again in order

to run YMML with a higher performance but in the same time loosing quality with the other add-ons I have.

Sorry to say but I believe there must be something wrong with YMML and it must be considered very special. If its a unknown bug its acceptable but if its designed to work only with super super hardware and Vista 64 plus plus plus I wonder if such a scenery should have come up to the table now since its known that the platform we actually use has well known limitations.

I indeed hope that I dont have to upgrade my rig again because I did it already a few months ago..

Regards

Stefan

 

[Wolter van der Spoel]

Stefan,

You have a Personal Message

[Martin Henare]

If it matters at all, my main development PC has the following spec, and i use it as the basis to which to judge perfomance.

Core Duo 2.4Ggz, 4 GB Ram, Nvidia 8600 GTS, Vista32 SP1

No overclocking or other tweaks except the standard config tweaks. I can and have always been able to run YMML at extreme Dense though slide Autogen down to normal and my FPS have been sufficient for smooth approaches, though i acknowledge a slow down at night due to the nukber of lighting effects. Yes i have slow texure load during fast direction changes but that is the limitation of my video card being only a 256 and is much less of a problem on some of the higher spec systems we have tested on

I get the same FPS as st St Maaten with exactly the same settings since everyone likes to compare FT work woth ours

[Ryan Mason]

Forgive me for being frustrated, but I am getting tired of seeing these whiny posts that there must be something wrong with YMML, I upgraded to a 3gb core 2 duo with 800gts machine a few months ago and have been able to run every product just fine, YMML did start out between 5-6 fps but after reading through everyones posts and actually taking the time to try a lot of different solutions and set ups I have managed to get between 9 (lowest) and 20fps.  My rig is a laptop to boot so it doesnt have a lot of the bells and whistles that a desktop rig has.  John Venema has made almost every screenshot and video direct from his laptop also.  Most people that are whining about this product dont want to do any work for themselves they just get on here as a first post and whine to try and get a 1 click downloadable patch solution.

THATS NOT THE ANSWER PEOPLE, you actually are going to have to do some work and figure out the "sweet spot" of your system, sure this is a frame hog, but only because it is the most detailed, complex and most realistic to scale as the real airport addon that exists in the FS community to date.  If your interested in crappy airports with all standard FS buildings and runways there are plenty of other airport designers out there that develop average to terrible airports to use.

YMML is my home airport having flown in and out of it hundreds of times over my life I wanted this addon more than anything else out there and also being a RL helicopter pilot the realism of all the areas as well as the airside is paramount for the realism that I crave from FS that has not been provided until ORBX entered the market.

I guess it comes down to how much realism your looking for but for my $53.99 this was the best money I spent all year to date (except the other 2 packages that make YMML worth it) so I implore all people that are first time users of ORBX products comming on the forums after purchasing YMML to please read this and take heed as so much work has gone into this airport and so many people have given their heart and soul to make it come to life, all I see in all these crappy posts about their bad frame rates are people that are willing to do nothing to improve their FS experience. OK rant over, but please tell me I am not the only one who thinks this way?

Cheers

AC (apparently approaching GOF status early)

[Wolter van der Spoel]

You're not alone Ryan

[Hotspot]

Well said, that man!!    Cheers, Bill

[LBPN]

I'm getting tired of tweaks over tweaks, and not getting more than 9-12 FPS in the YMML area. It's just frustrating. Indeed hardware is still limited nowdays but the programmers need to find a balance between eye candy and performance. Yes I can get even 25-30 FPS over YMML with my rig but I neeed to lower the scene complexity to sparse. That means FSX will not render most of the YMML buildings, and well I definately can't enjoy niether YMML nor FTX. I always fly with Scenery complexity to very dense and autogen to dense and I get 50-100FPS anywhere else but YMML. I tried so many tweaks, even tweaked my graphics options and still not getting more that 9-12FPS.

The only thing I achieved was a bit smoother gameplay but it's frustrating droping suddenly from 50-100FPS to 9-10 FPS whean facing the airport.

YMML is indeeed the best airport for FSX, but definately not enjoyable. What's the purpose of having the best airport in detail if it's not very playable.

I'm pretty sure that if the developers would compress the textures more, even reduce the number of polygons on the airport buildings, we can easyly get 18-20FPS and that will be great.

I tried renaming the Texture folder in YMML and FSX did not load any texture on the airport, and believe it or not my FPS were up to 18-20FPS with scene complexity to very dense. So 7-8 FPS gain, that's huge. So I really believe that the textures should be more compressed. I remember some guy posting on the internet a while ago that he converted the FSX DDS textures from DTX5 to DTX1a and had significant FPS increase. There's a program called DDS converted I haven't tried it yet, but when I have the time I'll probably give it a try. Mabye that's the one of the case. Also with lower polygons on the buildings we could have a completly different experience with YMML.

I hope the devs will realease an urgent SP1, maybe include an option to YMML cpanel, where we'll be able to select lower res textures, I don't know...

I won't upgrade my PC anytime soon, as I just did that a few weaks ago.

My PC specs.

CPU: Q6660 (oc-ed 3.2Ghz)

RAM: Mushkin 4GB (PC2 6400 2x2GB 800Mhz Dual Channel)

GPU: BFG GeForce GTX260 896Mb OC

Motherboard: GA-P35-DS3L

Monitor: DELL 2007WFP (always playing at 1680x1050)

[Guest Schubido]

I'm getting tired of tweaks over tweaks, and not getting more than 9-12 FPS in the YMML area. It's just frustrating. Indeed hardware is still limited nowdays but the programmers need to find a balance between eye candy and performance. Yes I can get even 25-30 FPS over YMML with my rig but I neeed to lower the scene complexity to sparse. That means FSX will not render most of the YMML buildings, and well I definately can't enjoy niether YMML nor FTX. I always fly with Scenery complexity to very dense and autogen to dense and I get 50-100FPS anywhere else but YMML. I tried so many tweaks, even tweaked my graphics options and still not getting more that 9-12FPS.

The only thing I achieved was a bit smoother gameplay but it's frustrating droping suddenly from 50-100FPS to 9-10 FPS whean facing the airport.

YMML is indeeed the best airport for FSX, but definately not enjoyable. What's the purpose of having the best airport in detail if it's not very playable.

I'm pretty sure that if the developers would compress the textures more, even reduce the number of polygons on the airport buildings, we can easyly get 18-20FPS and that will be great.

I tried renaming the Texture folder in YMML and FSX did not load any texture on the airport, and believe it or not my FPS were up to 18-20FPS with scene complexity to very dense. So 7-8 FPS gain, that's huge. So I really believe that the textures should be more compressed. I remember some guy posting on the internet a while ago that he converted the FSX DDS textures from DTX5 to DTX1a and had significant FPS increase. There's a program called DDS converted I haven't tried it yet, but when I have the time I'll probably give it a try. Mabye that's the one of the case. Also with lower polygons on the buildings we could have a completly different experience with YMML.

I hope the devs will realease an urgent SP1, maybe include an option to YMML cpanel, where we'll be able to select lower res textures, I don't know...

I won't upgrade my PC anytime soon, as I just did that a few weaks ago.

My PC specs.

CPU: Q6660 (oc-ed 3.2Ghz)

RAM: Mushkin 4GB (PC2 6400 2x2GB 800Mhz Dual Channel)

GPU: BFG GeForce GTX260 896Mb OC

Motherboard: GA-P35-DS3L

Monitor: DELL 2007WFP (always playing at 1680x1050)

You are not alone..

And you are having the right ideas what should be changed. Thats a very positive way of resolving problems since most of the tweaks recommended

are just compromises. 

Stefan

[triangle]

I have to say, people that are seeking to get decent performance out of YMML are not 'whiny' and it's unfair to label people as such.  Some of us, depsite our best efforts, are finding YMML, which cost us over $50, completely unuseable because of performance issues.  This is a support forum and the idea is that people can seek support here.  It's not, in my opinion, acceptable to assume that ORBX can 'do no wrong' and label those with issues as 'whiners' ... they are a commercial company who sell us products at a commercial rate and if people are of the view that the product does not live up to its promotion (in their case, at least) then they have a right to seek support.

In my opinion, these forums suffer because there are alot of people on them who will only sing ORBX's praises and will not tolerate any dissent - I consider that unhealthy.  I look at AVSIM where there is alot of healthy and polite debate and dispute but I don't see that here and I think we are all the worse off for it.

Please don't take this as an attack - it's not.  But it is a comment that I think some people could take on board.

Andrew

[Wolter van der Spoel]

Andrew,

I can understand that you have some remarks about performance, alas it's not given to us to have a "one size fits all" thing, there are limitations as to what we can do.

What we do try is to help out wherever we can and alltough sometimes it sounds like the beaten track, we need to go through things that for some are obvious but for others are an eyeopener.

We are more then aware that not everybody has a "rocket system" and even with that there is no guarantee that things run as one would expect them, as this is dependant on so many variables that you can throw a stick at.

I understand that all want to run things with their sliders to the far right, but that has a price, and that price is hardware = money.

for example, and I'll stick to my own rig here and you can compare notes if you like, in my sig you can see the specs:

I have this setup running for a little over a month now, the first thing I ran into was that Asus didn't have decent BIOS drivers, go figure, and so far it's still a sort of trade off, but with some "fiddling" I got it running,

The Vidcard drivers, I like to think that a 9800 GTX sc 512 isn't a lame card, with the 175.16 drivers it was a dog, installing the 177.39 beta brought quite an improvement, installing the 177.79 drivers it went down the tubes again, so I reverted back to the 177.39's

To give you an idea when I first loaded YMML I got 4 fps and the well know "slide show" and even worse complete lockups, it was there sitting frozen and nothing happened, go figure how I felt with my brand new system.

Within the Team we did try, god knows how many things, to improve this and we got to a point where the concensus was that it was acceptable, hence also the various posts and screenies and info to the outside world as what to expect.

I do not know your system specs and what you have all installed there on it.

What makes it a sort of "russian roulette" for us as Team to answer questions, is that some people come barging in, blurt they have a problem and demand inmediate solutions, problem with that is that we, cannot for the world  know what the cause can be, as essential information isn't provided.

Just go through the posts and see what was asked and especially how, what info came with those posts for us to go from?

Is it to much for us to ask that one gives a listup of what his system specs are and wich OS he's using ?

On the contrary we need to go on a sort of fishing expedition and get abused and name called on top of it as well, how do you think we feel when we get posts in the lines of:

"I just bought and installed it, it doesn't work, I want my money back"

That sort of post allready assumes they have no flaws on their end and we just are the culprits of it, and whatever we say or do, it still ain't right.

I have absolutely no problem getting on here or TeamSpeak and try and help you out with whatever problem you have or anyone for that matter, but also I ask you to keep an open mind and not to let the "Whingers" influence your opinion.

We are well aware that a number of people have a problem and you can rest asured that the whole Team is testing it's proverbial end off and trying to figure out what the cause of that can be, if we had a direct answer you allready would have had it.

So I only can ask of you is a bit of patience and give us something to work from, for example:

Stats :

YMML, RWY 16 Take Off

fps umlimited

all sliders right

Daytime

Airline Traffic 100%

Weather clear

used Aircraft : PDMG 747

System specs:

Asus  XXX XXX XXX

Q9300

4 G RAM 1066

8800GTS 512 with 177.79 Beta

XP SP3

[*img]eventual screenshot of the situation[*/img]

It's just as indication, but I really do hope that you can relate to this and as you well know, there are always two sides to a coin.

[triangle]

And I don't doubt ORBX's commitment to helping people but I resent the fact that some people on the forum make anyone who raises an issue of concern out to be some sort of whiner.  My system is high end - 3.5ghz quad, 4gb DDR3 RAM, 8800GTX 756mb and I have tried 4 different driver sets to no avail  - and I am having issues to the point that i have had to disable YMML completely.  That's ok - I absolutely accept that no software product will ever achieve optimal performance on 100% of machines given all the variables involved but I do not accept the frequent view on this forum that people who raise these issues are some sort of 'problem'.

This forum suffers for a cheer squad mentality that inhibits constructive discussion ... people should be less concerned with sticking up for ORBX and more concerned with helping others.  Note that the ORBX staff are always helpful and I have no complaint there but every time I re-visit the forum looking for ideas to address my YMML issues I am generally met with alot of posts from users that generally suggest that the issues are the fault of the poster and that by raising them they are somehow winers.  This is not fair and not helpful.  Plus it does not ultimately help ORBX because people's issues go unresolved.

I reiterate my comment about AVSIM - read those forums and the flavour of debate is very different ... no one is cheering on a developer and, as a consequence, there are no accusations of whining ... just a general and sophisticated desire to work together to solve a problem.  Just because YMML runs wonderfully on someone's laptop means nothing more than that - if it doesn't run well on my machine there must be an issue and I would appreciate help identifying what that issue is, rather than being made to feel that the problem is mine and bad luck to me ... I should be using your laptop, instead ...

I am probably getting close to making myself very unpopular with all and sundry, inlcuding ORBX, but I feel this has to be said.  I don't want to make people angry or upset but the whining comment has made me a little mad and, I think, crystallised some of my views about these forums (no doubt inviting the inevitable but churlish 'well, don't use these forums' response).  People who participate here should do so to help, not criticise.

[Wolter van der Spoel]

Andrew,

it saddens me to hear that your radioset apparantly is tuned to another frequency,

I do not know as to how I can help you, so you'll have to wait till we launch a SP1 for YMML and maybe that takes care of your problem whatever it may be as you don't seem to care to answer my questions

Sorry

[Ryan Mason]

I have to say, people that are seeking to get decent performance out of YMML are not 'whiny' and it's unfair to label people as such.  Some of us, depsite our best efforts, are finding YMML, which cost us over $50, completely unuseable because of performance issues.  This is a support forum and the idea is that people can seek support here.  It's not, in my opinion, acceptable to assume that ORBX can 'do no wrong' and label those with issues as 'whiners' ... they are a commercial company who sell us products at a commercial rate and if people are of the view that the product does not live up to its promotion (in their case, at least) then they have a right to seek support.

In my opinion, these forums suffer because there are alot of people on them who will only sing ORBX's praises and will not tolerate any dissent - I consider that unhealthy.  I look at AVSIM where there is alot of healthy and polite debate and dispute but I don't see that here and I think we are all the worse off for it.

Please don't take this as an attack - it's not.  But it is a comment that I think some people could take on board.

Andrew

Andrew,

being that I started this with my post I may need to clarify.  Yes I am a big fan of ORBX products, partially as I have been around since before ORBX was around and it was a bunch of freeware developers under the VOZ banner. So I am a little more invested as I have seen the hard work they put in for free and are now trying to make a successful business out of it.  But the spirit of my post was meant to refer to the "whiners" not as people asking for help being shunned, it was to refer to people who would barge into the forums and not read any posts at all and just make a post like the first one in this post that clearly shows they have not done any research whatsoever on the forums to help resolve their own problem like I did.

The term I used was not to demean the average user who does the right thing, which is get on a forum and read things such as "support forum FAQ's - read first" and other forum posts relating to their problem to see if it might in some way improve their experience before blurting out that their system is not the issue and this addon is horrible on FPS etc.  For instance the last 2 posts I read referred to the users (who still haven't done as requested in several posts and added an order number) not being able to get 50-100 FPS like everywhere else?? the human eye cannot pickup much past 25 so I dont know why that matters, I think people get far to concerned with the little red writing on the top of the screen and forget to just enjoy flight simming addons now.  It shouldnt be about what uber FPS you can get it should be about how enjoyable it is to see the product and all its detail.  But I digress, point being is the people posting that are upset are still yet to do as asked and even supply specs so they can be helped and are more concerned about being called "Whiners" which in my book people remain until they start to step up and take part in their own help process, that is all I am trying to get across.

If you have problems there are hundreds of talented people here to help you but dont be a rear seat passenger, supply what is needed, i.e specs, order number, progress reports on trying tweaks.  It will then make it a lot easier to help you! I do occasionally get frustrated at this stuff so if anyone is offended by it sorry, but I am merely stating how myself and a few others feel when people ask for help and have not done anything to help us help them or themselves.

AC

[LBPN]

@aussiecop. My friend, nobody is that addicted to the red FPS indicator in FSX as you think. The FPS indicator is just a reference and is very related to game smoothness. In order for others to understand the lack of smoothness in somenone's game they post their FPS.

I don't mind getting 17-18 FPS because at this framerate the game is smooth enough, but most of us are getting 9-10FPS sometimes 5-6 which is loooow and definately not smooth. Don't tell me that you get smooth transition over YMML area at 5-8 even 12 FPS. So smoothnes is tied with FPS.

Also tell me if someone on the forum have really gave a solution to YMML low FPS issue. Instead of FSX.cfg tweak (which doesn't do too much), and blaming users PC's configurations, no one gave a workable solution. There is no real solution until the devs release an SP with a completly changed product.

I don't care if someone's low end laptop gets smooth gameplay, mabye he sets everything to low or sparse so what's the point of just pause the game and change the sliders back and forth once you leave/enter the YMML area.

So even with scenery complexity and autogen set to sparse you'll definately not enjoy YMML because FSX wil not load most of its buildings.

I also don't believe there is anyone here getting more than 13-14 FPS with sliders set as stated in the manual. And 13-14 FPS is not smooth at all. I believe people saying they get smooth gameplay don't really bother with lack of smothness and low FPS.

We don't expect 100FPS at YMML, but this product should get at least 18 stable, and we'll be all happy. I guess this can be achieved if the developers really consider our problems (not labeling us as "whiny") and fix it with a Service Pack.

[Ryan Mason]

Well this thread is going nowhere fast, I just want to clarify as no one seems to realise, I am not an ORBX developer and I was the only person to use the term whiny. So please don't think that any developers used that term.  But we have both said our points and spoke out minds so lets agree to disagree on this and move on.

Cheers

AC

[Rainey]

Can I just say that I had much success with YMML frame rates by disabling both airside and landside vehicles and animated people in the control panel. I have my frame rate fixed at 20fps which helps reduce blurries and stutters when the gpu is texture swapping. I am now averaging 15fps when flying in and around the airport which is very acceptable. My machine is of similar specification to yours, so I'm confident that with a bit more tweaking you can get good results, just follow John's guide in the manual. Good luck!

[solareagle]

I'm very displeased with this thread. There is no reason a users support request thread should be turned into a community debate between fanboys and concerned users, and there is no reason customers should be labeled as whiners.  I feel there no place for this kind of tone and content in a company support forum.  I don' even own YMML so you can't lump me on either side.

[John Venema]

No Orbx staff have called any of our customers whiners, so please forgive the impression we treat our valued customers with disrespect, that's simply not the case. We own each and every problem our customers have to resolve it to the best of our abilities and resources. We try to moderate these forums without resorting to overt gagging and editing of posts, so if some comments by "fanboys" cause you offense, again we can only apologise.

[solareagle]

Ok, my appologies.  I'm not blaming Orbx and I didn't mean to offend anyone.  The fanboy comment was not at all fair, but that's just kinda how it looked when I read through.  I just didn't think this was the right place to debate.  Again my appologies. 

[Bendigoandy]

My 2 cents worth

I can see both sides of this debate BUT and a BIG BUT I knew buying YMML would mean a lot of tweeking (that I enjoy) and as I stated before I get  12-25   FPS over YMML with the "glory poly" setting and most other things turned off  and when I use YMML I like to hop in a Ultra light glider and play tourist !

Now I know we are all different and use FSX and FTX differently and understand why some Folks are getting Shippy about the FPS.. to be honest I  do chase FPS, being a geeky type Techie(I think its kind of like tuning a sports car)

But I say this ..Their will be a answer, lets not take the swords out, and just wait to see what comes of it.

Orbx is a Computer geek term for :  "we wont let you down"

How many out folk out their have never had to "Tweek or wait for a SP to come out for any computer program out their...    not one !

Even PCs from any Computer Shop will need "Tweeking"

Thats why they have XBOXs and PS3s

sorry that was 2 bucks worth 

[---]

who deleted aussiecops last post if I may ask?

Regards

Bernt

[Wolter van der Spoel]

That was deleted at his own request

[chumley]

who deleted aussiecops last post if I may ask?

Regards

Bernt

Must have been a victim of a rush of blood. It happens to us all at some time and I must admit it did to me yesterday but I quickly hit the delete key.

Hopefully in the cool light of day he will rethink and be back.

Thanks

Aybe

[Heiko Glatthorn]

The scenery is very beautiful, The problem is the frame installments 5/6 it is not possible to use .

hardware: 8800GTX, 4G ram DDR2, CPU 8500 Dual Core

Vista 64Bit

I have a similar system and OS - however my E8500 runs at 3.8 GHz and my GTX is factory clocked to 650/1500/2000. I posted those pics already in another topic, but i think it fits here as well. Everything is active for YMML, MTX airliner traffic is set to 40% - the only thing i changed from my usual setup is autogen from very dense to normal (i also use the trees per cell tweak at 2000).

[LBPN]

Mango my friend 16FPS it's pretty low taking into account that your CPU is almost 4Gb. I can get 16 -17 FPS with my Q6600 oc-ed @3.6Ghz. But at 3.6 it's not very stable so I can't keep it like this.

I get 11-14 FPS sometimes 15FPS with my CPU @3.3Ghz stable, FSB:DRAM 1:1 (4-4-4-12) 4GB (Autogen:Normal; Scenery complexity:Very Dense, of course), but it's not smooth and I get pretty much stuttering . If I get 18-20FPS I call it smooth enough.I hear a hotfix is on the way. Maybe we'll be all pleased with it.

[John Venema]

Maybe you will, maybe you won't - one thing is for sure, we're all growing weary of your posts and you need to spend less time with your FPS obsession and more time just simming.

[teecee]

16-17 frames is pretty good.. Again, I do not have YMML, still waiting for that windfall..but I would be happy with that.. Fabulous screenies by the way.. Teecee.

Nice to see the trend toward putting the knockers in their place too.

[Heiko Glatthorn]

Thanks Teecee  .

Like i mentioned in another post, my system is GPU restricted at 1920x1200 plus secondary monitor at 1280x1024. A 280 GTX is on it's way...  . I searched the most demanding spot for the pics and all bells and whistles are enabled. All MTX AI models are the high quality DX10 compatible ones. And yes, in this case i think 16 - 17 FPS isn't bad at all. A patch is on the way, which will improve performance.

[LBPN]

Maybe you will, maybe you won't - one thing is for sure, we're all growing weary of your posts and you need to spend less time with your FPS obsession and more time just simming.

Ok then, sorry for being weary. I won't complain about YMML then.

[Hank]

Hi Heiko,

When you get your Nvidia 280 installed, can you tell me if it improved the frame rates? Are you going to run

two of these in SLI, or just the one? How much was it price wise?

I don't think I'm going to fork out the money for the YMML till this forum can convince me that it doesn't take too

much frame rate loss to run it smoothly. Hope to hear from you soon about the 280.

I read about it in the Computer magazines where they mention a lot of other games (which don't interest me),

but they never give reports on FSX in those  mags. Don't they realize that flight simming is the only "game"

product worth investing in?

Regards

Hank

[LBPN]

I have a GTX260 896Mb. I cannot tell you how much the GTX280 will improve YMML. But I can tell you for sure that as long as FSX+FTX runs muuuch better with my 260, I'm sure you'll be more than pleased with the 280. Also keep in mind that FSX is more CPU dependent than GPU so you should pair your future graphic card with a powerfull CPU.

[Gurdy]

i get 13 - 18 FPS over the airport with a stock E8400 @ 3Ghz, 2Gig Ram and a 9600GT with FSX native, and normal Autogen. I can post a screenie if no one believes me

One hint ...defrag defrag deafrag, and at least use  decent defragger that allows you to place your most used files on the outer edge of the HDD to improve seek times. And don't put FSX on a partitioned drive...

My 2 cents worth....

[E-Rock]

Hi Heiko,

When you get your Nvidia 280 installed, can you tell me if it improved the frame rates? Are you going to run

two of these in SLI, or just the one? How much was it price wise?

I don't think I'm going to fork out the money for the YMML till this forum can convince me that it doesn't take too

much frame rate loss to run it smoothly. Hope to hear from you soon about the 280.

I read about it in the Computer magazines where they mention a lot of other games (which don't interest me),

but they never give reports on FSX in those  mags. Don't they realize that flight simming is the only "game"

product worth investing in?

Regards

Hank

I'm very interested as well. Apparently some people are getting worse performance with GTX260 / 280 than their old 8800GT / Ultra. The FSX test on Tom's hardware also indicate poorer performance. Here's the link which you may find useful.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-gtx-280,1953-15.html

They think it is a driver issue which is holding them back on performance, but they seem to excel in most other games they tested so I'm still sceptical on how much improvement they will bring to FSX if upgrading from a mid-end card. Ultimately if your CPU's the bottleneck getting the best card money can buy is not going to do much.

Eric

[Heiko Glatthorn]

Well, i take all those tests with a big grain of salt. It always differs completely from what i am seeing on my system. When i read this :

All the synthetic DirectX 9 tests were run under Windows XP because of their instability under Vista (Fillrate Tester, RightMark 1050, ShaderMark 2.1 and SPECviewperf 10). RightMark 3D 2.0 (DirectX 10) was of course run under Windows Vista (without SP1 due to its instability with it), and Vista SP1 was used for all the games, CUDA tests, environmental measurements and overclocking. UAC, Aero, SuperFetch and indexing were disabled to ensure stable results.

i have to say they didn't have a driver to actually run this test...

ForceWare 177.34 beta (GTX 260 and GTX 280 under Vista)

What was the first whql driver for the 280 ? If i remember correct 177.44 ?

Hank, i'll keep you posted as soon as the card arrives. It's quiet a drama because it was shipped from Europe to Asia and arrived DOA (dead on arrival). It's now in the process of replacement.

[LBPN]

There's a 177.83 and 177.89 driver on guru3d.com, still in beta, but I can tell you I get much better results than with 177.41. Maybe you should give it a try.

[Heiko Glatthorn]

I would like to. But unfortunately EVGA scheduled the RMA for after the next ice age...