WOW! Nvidia GTX 970!

[roger-wilco-66]

I just have to express my surprise.
So I went and bought a Gainward GTX 970 Phantom card and installed it.
I knew, of course, that changing from my GTX 660 to the GTX 970 would add a few frames per second, but the difference I see is flabbergasting.

This card virtually runs circles around the old GTX660. On my JFAR airfield, which is demanding with over 400 scenery objects, many of them unusually complex with large texture maps and so on, my GTX660 struggled with 20-30 frames /s and frequent stutters (hdd accesses, I guess the 2GB weren't enough and textures had to be swapped in and out). All that at a considerably reduced quality setting on the sliders, expecially shadows.

Now, with the GTX970, ___with all sliders maxed___, even shadows, I get a minimum of 60 fps without any stuttering! Beyond the airfield the fps jumps quickly at over 100 when I don't lock it. All this with a crisp and beautiful depiction on top. That upgrade was worth every dime.

Other nice features of that card are a prettly low energy consumption, and it is very quiet due to it's huge cooler. It is designed to run cool without fans during normal operation, and even as they turn under load they are hardly audible.

Cheers,
Mark

[CG_1976]

Does that particular Nvidia card work with W8.1 and the UEFI??

[Daube]

Sorry to ask, but what is a UEFI ?

[roger-wilco-66]

UEFI is a new Bios interface that replaces the old MS Bios interface.

I run Win7 64bit so I can't give any "been there" testimonial, but I would suppose the Gainward GTX970 Phantom card is UEFI compatible as it is mentioned in the feature list.


Cheers,
Mark

[CG_1976]

Sorry to ask, but what is a UEFI ?

Well every time I put a W8.1 Nvidia card in this W8.1 machine it don't recognize the Card no video signal lol. But I toss in my ATI card which is W8.1 and UEFI Bio's certified it works. I'm still confused although lol as to what this UEFI and Nvida issue Vs ATI UEFI certified. Attn SOH Tech need help un confusing.

[roger-wilco-66]

That does not sound like a OS related problem. If the card does not get recognized by the UEFI (BIOS) or the system doesn't boot, there is a mismatch between the card firmware and the mainboard firmware. When several UEFI capable addon cards don't function, I'd opt for the UEFI bios on the mainboard as being the culprit. A UEFI mainboard bios update, if there are updates available, could fix this.

You also could revert back to the classic BIOS function, if the mainboard supports this. I'd be careful with that though, because I don't know how far the OS / Chipset drivers / tools are dependent on the UEFI interface in your specific configuration.


Best,
Mark

[flaviossa]

Nice to see that people are enjoying P3D with new nvidia cards. I upgraded mine too to 2x980gtx SLI. But still don´t have a sli profile for p3d. Well, let´s wait and see.
For the other question, my two gtx980 worked out of the box in win 8.1 Pro without any problems. They´re EVGA brand. I´m using a ASUS Rampage Black Edition witch is UEFI enabled (2 x 64Mb UEFI AMI BIOS).

[findus]

Now, with the GTX970, ___with all sliders maxed___, even shadows, I get a minimum of 60 fps without any stuttering! Beyond the airfield the fps jumps quickly at over 100 when I don't lock it. All this with a crisp and beautiful depiction on top. That upgrade was worth every dime.

Other nice features of that card are a prettly low energy consumption, and it is very quiet due to it's huge cooler. It is designed to run cool without fans during normal operation, and even as they turn under load they are hardly audible.

Cheers,
Mark

Thx for the HU. Have you any information about the fps with really a lot of clouds?

[spatialpro]

This is a VERY interesting thread!

I've been running a single 980 GTX for a year now. Do you think I'd get more bang-for-the-buck out of getting another one (to run SLI, using either nVidia Experience settings, or a SLI profile in P3D when such a thing arrives) or starting again with a new 970 GTX?????

Andy

[Naismith]

I just have to express my surprise.
So I went and bought a Gainward GTX 970 Phantom card and installed it.
I knew, of course, that changing from my GTX 660 to the GTX 970 would add a few frames per second, but the difference I see is flabbergasting.

Mark

I only just upgrade to a GTX660

[roger-wilco-66]

I only just upgrade to a GTX660

Way to go :-) The GTX 660 with 2 GB wasn't so bad, in my eyes. The only thing that really could bog it down was a heavy scenery with a lot of high poly objects and the shaders massivly turned on. As soon as one relaxed the shading it was quite OK.

I never upgrade to the next higher chip generation and the top models. I always skip one generation and stay one step under the top model for economic reasons. For me, if staying on top all the time, the marginal benefit is just not worth the extra investment. Mileage varies, of course, that's just my opinion from experiences of say, the last ten years.


Cheers,
Mark

[roger-wilco-66]

> Nice to see that people are enjoying P3D with new nvidia cards. I upgraded mine too to 2x980gtx SLI.
> But still don´t have a sli profile for p3d. Well, let´s wait and see.
> For the other question, my two gtx980 worked out of the box in win 8.1 Pro without any problems. They´re EVGA brand.
> I´m using a ASUS Rampage Black Edition witch is UEFI enabled (2 x 64Mb UEFI AMI BIOS).

That's a monstrous installation, Flaviossa, I saw your signature. The EVGA cards are supposed to be among the fastest, also as 970 type cards. I guess, even without SLI, performance is no issue here!
I also guess you need no heater in your room during winter :-)

Cheers,
Mark

[flaviossa]

Thanks Mark. Yes, performance is very impressive in any game/simulator i use here. I decided to buy this configuration because i felt that it can go well for some years to come (If no hw fails of course). I have some trouble with older programs/games that don´t like SLI but we can allways disable it.
P3D is asking to have a SLI profile. For now, when SLI is activated, P3D has some strange side effects. But one 970 is more than enough to go well with it.

[Dimus]

That is music to my ears Mark! I am expecting my new Gigabyte 970 GTX Mini-ITX version to arrive any day now. I went for this version as it is shorter and fits my box better. I will be trading my old 460 and saw that actually consumption would be even less. This new Maxwell architecture must be working wonders.

[roger-wilco-66]

Dimus, that mini ITX card was on my list - would be great to hear how it performs ! I didn't buy it because I have no space issues in my system was inclined to the Phantom because of the silence.

Cheers,
Mark

[flaviossa]

Here when i was assembling it:


The cables are better organized now

[Naismith]

I didn't think FSX (or P3D for that matter) could benefit from SLI or its AMD equivalent. Kinda takes me back to when we could have 2 X Voodoo cards and Hard Drives were measured in Mb's and not Gb's lol. Remember them?

[n4gix]

Um, yeah I do remember way back when. I remember the PAIN of paying over $400 for a 40MB hard drive too!

Today, Tiger Direct is selling a 250GB USB stick for a pathetic $69 for goodness' sake!

[UnknownGuest12]

Originally Posted by CG_1976 Well every time I put a W8.1 Nvidia card in this W8.1 machine it don't recognize the Card no video signal lol. But I toss in my ATI card which is W8.1 and UEFI Bio's certified it works. I'm still confused although lol as to what this UEFI and Nvida issue Vs ATI UEFI certified. Attn SOH Tech need help un confusing.
Hi
When I installed my new ASUS 970, and I agree entirely with Roger-Wilco about performance, the card wasn´t recognized....just installed latest bios for my Sabertooth MB and everything was running...

[Wulf190]

I just reinstalled after completing a major system upgrade and tweaking, and I am blown away by P3D! Granted I have had 'some' exposure, but most of the sims I run are CFS2, FS9, and a little ILS'46 thrown in. Needless to say, due to the outright age of them it didn't take my old configuration much to run them. My old configuration was:

I7 930 @ 2.8 GHZ
6 GB of DDR3 1600 RAM running at 1066
1 GTX 460 GPU with a 1GB of memory

P3D was another story. Even on medium setting, overall, my system struggled to even meet the 20 FPS limit. I have to say I am impressed by how fluid P3D displays 17-20 FPS, but admittedly I am more use to 30FPS (if you were to count CFS2, the number is more like 100 plus).

Over the Christmas and New Years Holiday I bought a 500 GB SSD, a new PSU (my old one was more than 8 years old), a track IR, and a EVGA GTX970. I did a clean install of Windows 7pro, and overclocked by i7 930 to 3.63 GHZ, and tweaked my RAM speed. Now when running P3D, I am seeing around 50 FPS, which high to very high display settings. I have to say Lockheed has really done a beautiful job with this sim!

[Daube]

Ok, my experience is not going to sound so good for now.
Yesterday evening I have replaced my good old GTX 480 by a brand new GTX 970 from Asus.
My computer has an i7 960 @ 3,76 GHz, with 6 Gb of RAM and Window 7 64 bits. Windows and P3D both have their dedicated SSDs.

The installation went without problems. I updated the drivers to the latest WHQL ones, the card was recognized. I went to the NVidia Control Panel and checked the settings both for the global and the P3D profiles. I just set the DSR factor back to 2.0x with 20% smoothness, exactely like I had with the GTX 480.

I have quickly edited the P3D.cfg to remove the reference to the GTX 480 and set back the TEXTURE_BANDWITH_MULT to its original value (40 instead of 30). Also, I have deleted the shaders to force P3D to regenerate them.

I launched a flight over the Corsica photoscenery (with autogen) and the game settings were unchanged.
The result is puzzling. The FPS is the same, if not lower, than what I had with the GTX 480. Even when I set the FPS limit to "Unlimited", the FPS stay around the 20's... I don't know what is happening. It looks like my video card forgot to remove the parking brake...

[dhazelgrove]

I'm still running a 630 here. Might have to look at an upgrade.....

Dave

[Dumonceau]

I'm still running a 630 here. Might have to look at an upgrade.....

Dave

Dave,

You might want to look at the 970 I bought recently: The EVGA geforce GTX970 factory superclocked. A bity expensive, but it runs P3D damn well!!

Cheers,

Dumonceau