Video Card Updated!

[tommieboy]

Welp,

I'm pretty much out of flight simming and just kind of a on-looker / lurker at this point.....but.....my computer / gaming rig that I "gifted" to my friend's son at the beginning of the year, turns out to be way under-powered for his son's budding needs. So he's getting brand spanking new cutting edge computer set-up this summer, what ever that might mean. In any case, the computer rig came back to me with a new ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB 128-Bit GDDR5 installed in lieu of the EVGA GTX 285 that was in there when I shipped it off to him. He told me that they had too many issue with Windows 10 and the EVGA GTX 285 as the available drivers were just too old and antiquated. The ZOTAC solved the Windows 10 driver issues. They were smart enough to pull my original hard drive with my Window 7 Pro install, and purchased a new hard drive for their Windows 10 install. I reconnected my original hard drive with my Window 7 Pro install and it booted right up! I just needed to install the new Nvidia drivers for the ZOTEC it was good to go. It was pretty painless.

So, what's the point, Tommy!

I was told it would be better to upgrade the entire rig as they (more than one person) felt that the CPU was the bottle neck on my system, and not the graphics card. Though I no longer have a joystick, rudder, etc., I do have FSPilot (autopilot) installed so I though why not? and I fired up FSX Steam. Turns out the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB 128-Bit GDDR5 solves many of the FSX issues that I had just chalked up the overall age of my computer. That being said, my FSX is still locked at 30 FPS, but I can now run the following without any issues: Preview DirectX 10, Lens Flare, Light Bloom, Filtering: Anisotropic, Anti-alasing. Prior to this I could run none of those settings without running into some sort of issues along the way. Now I can run all those settings, all at the same time too! With Preview DirectX 10 I can now run Steve's Interior Cockpit Shadows and Cloud Shadows. It's a whole new flight simulator!

The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB 128-Bit GDDR5 is considered to be a budget graphics card these days and priced accordingly, as it has one fan, is less the half the length of my old GTX 285, gets its power directly off the motherboard slot unlike the GTX 285 which used three (3) power connectors directly of the main power supply. With FSX running with all the new settings the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB 128-Bit GDDR5 is dead quiet (yes the fan is working) vs the EVGA GTX 285 which would sound like a hair dryer kicking in and out depending on the graphics load. That kicking in and out of the fan was too annoying to deal with over the long haul.

Just thought I'd share for those on the fence.

Tommy

[FlyingsCool]

Have you considered overclocking your processor? Don't need to go extreme. I did a relatively mild overclock on my i7-950 and brought it from 3.07 to 3.8 GHz with a very noticeable increase in performance.

Thanks for the very detailed description of what you did and the benefits, tho. I'm always looking for info on improving performance.

[tommieboy]

Have you considered overclocking your processor? Don't need to go extreme. I did a relatively mild overclock on my i7-950 and brought it from 3.07 to 3.8 GHz with a very noticeable increase in performance.

Thanks for the very detailed description of what you did and the benefits, tho. I'm always looking for info on improving performance.

I tried that years ago, but could never get the CPU, memory, and graphics card timings to work together reliably. The fan noise of the graphics card in OC mode was the real show stopper however. So I gave up on OC the computer due to the excessive fan noise.

Tommy

[stansdds]

When it comes to overclocking, I do not recommend running a video card beyond the cards stated specifications. Overclocking video cards these days tends to bring very little performance gain, but lots of extra heat that the card's cooling system may not be able to handle.

[tommieboy]

When it comes to overclocking, I do not recommend running a video card beyond the cards stated specifications. Overclocking video cards these days tends to bring very little performance gain, but lots of extra heat that the card's cooling system may not be able to handle.

The original 285 GTX used all those extra power pins because it was designed to be overclocked. But I guess the increased fan noise was part of the deal. It just didn't workout in practice. I'll revisit OC the CPU this summer to see what my options are, as I'm sure there is a lot more up-to-date info out there.

Tommy