8800 GT video = smooth

[martinvk]

After all this time watching a mild case of the sttttutttttters on busy routes with an older video card, I changed to a new 8800 GT and the difference is amazing. Smooth flowing graphics, even with the sliders maxed and the tuning.dat set for 5 km. More that RAM size, video is what changes an ordinary view into a great view. :mop: :mop:

Even the souped up jetsled that would crash the game if pushed to the max, continues to zip along with this card.

 

[backyard]

I ordered one...

8) ...from Amazon.com, for $269.00, but it won't ship until January!

 

[john259]

Yes, I've long felt that the power of the video board is of critical importance with regard to the performance of 3D programs generally.

Obviously the choice of video processor and the speed of the video ram are vitally important.

A question though: does the amount of video ram have any effect on performance, or does it only determine the highest possible x/y/colour resolution?

John

 

[Euphod]

Welcome to 8800 joy.
Ed

 

[johnwhelan]

Yes, I've long felt that the power of the video board is of critical importance with regard to the performance of 3D programs generally.

Obviously the choice of video processor and the speed of the video ram are vitally important.

A question though: does the amount of video ram have any effect on performance, or does it only determine the highest possible x/y/colour resolution?

John

Since the textures in a single scene can be 700 MB you can assume that in this case having less than 700 mb on the video card will mean more data having to be transfered to the video card than if it was cached on the card. Having said that if you are racing across the desert and there aren't many textures around then it doesn't make any difference.

Cheerio John

 

[yojimbo]

8800 GTX = speed and smoothness but no anti-aliasing

This is indeed strange. My old 6800 GT card did manage quite well on the anti-aliasing, but with my 8800 GTX anti-aliasing seems to have gone altogether. Kinda frustrating to get an increase in the speed and smoothness dept. but a considerable decrease in viewing pleasure. Had to change to OpenGL to eliminate the jaggy look and even then not 100%.

Any idea what to do. Tried the latest drivers to no avail and I am getting frustrated.

Luckily the 8800 GTX kick butt when doing 3D work else it would have too much of a bummer.

 

[john259]

Just checking, you've tried nVidia Control Panel presumably? In particular, that you haven't got a Program Setting for Trainz which is overriding the Global Settings? Humble apologies if I'm teaching grandma to suck eggs here.

HTH John

 

[yojimbo]

Just checking, you've tried nVidia Control Panel presumably? In particular, that you haven't got a Program Setting for Trainz which is overriding the Global Settings? Humble apologies if I'm teaching grandma to suck eggs here.

HTH John

No harm done, I did try all options before asking here, and you know what today the card behaves like a well trained alsatian and I am getting more and more grey hairs.

John259 how about a screen dump showing your settings, I think quite a few will benefit from seeing a well tested TRS setup for their card.

 

[john259]

I can tell you how my 7600GT is configured but I'm certainly not claiming that it's optimal. Of course, the trainzoptions.txt settings have just as much effect on performance vs quality if not more so. If anyone can suggest any improvements to the following, fire away please.

Anisotropic filtering: 16x
Antialiasing - Gamma correction: on
Antialiasing - Setting: 8xS
Antialiasing - Transparency: Supersampling
Conformant texture clamp: Use hardware
Extension limit: Off
Force mipmaps: Bilinear
Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration: Single display performance mode
Texture filtering - Anisotropic mip filter optimisation: Off (greyed out)
Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimisation: Off (greyed out)
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Clamp
Texture filtering - Quality: High quality
Texture filtering - Trilinear optimisation: Off (greyed out)
Triple buffering: On
Vertical sync: Use the 3D application setting

AFAIK these settings apply to both DirectX and OpenGL. There don't appear to be separate settings for each.

John

 

[Lo_Poly]

Man, this makes me really sad. Instead of ordering an 8800GTX a few months ago I could've ordered 2 8800GTs and put them in SLI, which would have more performance while saving some money at the same time.

Oh, the cruelty!

But, welcome to the fun of 8800.

 

[dnutter]

I have just curious, if when I buy new the Nvidia 8800GT mean my Graphic Card or Video Card need increase upgrade or didn't need it?

 

[thegrindre]

I, too, have just installed a 8800 but I'm not that impressed over my old Radeon 9800. The 8800 runs a little better but not that much better.

I would like to see some other vid tweaks. I may be running this thing in third gear instead of 5th.

 

[john259]

Rick,

That's extremely curious. My 7600GT gives me a huge performance improvement over the previous Radeon 9800.

I've only got an AGP socket on my system board. Is yours AGP or PCI-E?

With AGP, it's important to set the AGP aperture window to the correct size in the BIOS. I don't know if the same concept or any other BIOS setting applies with PCI-E, possibly not.

One other quick thing - in Trainz Configuration Advanced Settings, make sure "Disable Hardware TL" is not ticked.

John

 

[laika]

Hi,

Its not only a vid. card that counts. The hole system need to be upgraded. I mean i dont think a 8800 make mutch difference in a system that is nood good enough like the HD and memmory. The 8800 is made special for DX 10 that even Trainz doesn't use. I have a P4 so for that system a 9800pro is perfect. So a 8800 doesn't make any sence in a old system in my opinion. And look at the price for SLI 2 of these cards. To expensive . For that money you can buy a great system that will be perfect for DX9 games as trainz
Greetz laika:wave:

 

[ess1]

Rick,

That's extremely curious. My 7600GT gives me a huge performance improvement over the previous Radeon 9800.

I've only got an AGP socket on my system board. Is yours AGP or PCI-E?

With AGP, it's important to set the AGP aperture window to the correct size in the BIOS. I don't know if the same concept or any other BIOS setting applies with PCI-E, possibly not.

One other quick thing - in Trainz Configuration Advanced Settings, make sure "Disable Hardware TL" is not ticked.

John

AGP aperture window: how would I check that and amend please?

 

[john259]

It's not only a vid. card that counts. The whole system need to be upgraded.

Yes, very true. Also, it can be very difficult to know where the performance bottlenecks are.

AGP aperture window: how would I check that and amend please?

Firstly and most importantly it only applies if you've got an AGP video board. Go into the BIOS settings and it should be obvious. The size of the AGP aperture should be the same as the amount of video ram on the video board (unless anyone knows different). A search on Google for "agp aperture" will lead to more information.

HTH, John

 

[AussieNightcrawler]

Yes, very true. Also, it can be very difficult to know where the performance bottlenecks are.

Firstly and most importantly it only applies if you've got an AGP video board. Go into the BIOS settings and it should be obvious. The size of the AGP aperture should be the same as the amount of video ram on the video board (unless anyone knows different). A search on Google for "agp aperture" will lead to more information.

HTH, John

That was the case a few years ago, AGP Aperture was set to the same as the amount of memory you have on your video card, but these days with video cards have over 256MB memory its not that important.

Not at home right now, but from my memory, if video card has 64MB memory then set AGP Aperture to 256MB, if video card has 128MB memory then set the AGP Aperture to 128MB, if video card has 256MB (or more) memory then set the AGP Aperture to 64MB.

 

[ess1]

Thank you both.