GTX670 for the win

[chris k]

I have seen xplaneuser's videos (our aussie linux friend) made using his GTX680 and started drooling since last week. =)

 

 

Hence  - I have picked one up for the 'pro; un-boxing and hookup will be friday night; and will attempt to make mincemeat out of our XP10 photo-scenery.

 

FWIW, GTX670s are now selling under $399 in Australia. To any Sydneysiders on the list - head to Ti Computers in Crows Nest.

 

- CK.

Edited December 12, 2012 by chris k

[karingka]

Sweet Chris! 

 

An early Christmas present for yourself, I see!

[Simmo W]

Ooh you're going to love that card Chris! Expect an easy 30% improvement in fps, though I'm only guessing, you might already have a 660 in there. Doubt it though!

[Cameron]

Hence  - I have picked one up for the 'pro; un-boxing and hookup will be friday night; and will attempt to make mincemeat out of our XP10 photo-scenery.

Amazing card..I have it, and love it!

[chris k]

Ooh you're going to love that card Chris! Expect an easy 30% improvement in fps, though I'm only guessing, you might already have a 660 in there. Doubt it though!

Thanks mateus, Simon, Cameron for the words of encouragement. =)

As to Simon' query: I am currently using a Toaster (AMD 5770), which is an upgrade from my previous Videocard, which was a Potato. (AMD 4870)

Note those cards bench-out at approximately the same rendering power, with the Toaster having 1gb VRAM vs the Potato with only 512, which was my only reason for swapping the card with another Pro I have access to. Neither card performs any better than something from 2009 or so.......

Which is why I'm rather excited to take this leap of at least 2 generations of card technology & performance.

[Simmo W]

Hehe, I guessed so. I always use the toaster or my fave, the kettle analogy. You'll definitely see a difference then!

[woweezowee]

Too bad 10.6. has no drivers for those newer cards.

[chris k]

1st boot:

 

 

 

Woot.

 

Now installing nvidia's 10.8.2 updated drivers:

 

http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-304.00.05f02-driver.html

[chris k]

As suspected, this card is eating HDR 8xSSAA+FXAA for lunch.

 

27 FPS in non-HDR

30 FPS in HDR 8x

 

Go figure =)

 

- CK.

[Simmo W]

Ha, great to see you enjoying yourself! Don't fly too long though, you won't go back to scenery work.

[chris k]

Wow - It feels like I installed a new space heater under my desk. =)

[chris k]

Hah - finally found a scene that finally crushed the card @ extreme + 8xSSAA HDR + Water + Clouds + Shadows

 

http://206.80.253.132/~chrisk/KPHL/732_312.png

 

although stats reveal that I'm object/CPU bound...

 

Still Looks fantastic

 

- CK.

[Simmo W]

I rarely set clouds above 10% but shadows n HDR can be pretty high. Give that a go. Also I find max objects can make the world look too much like the surface of the Death Star

[chris k]

 

 

 

Water Reflections -> Complete... For the Win.

 

As suspected Simmo - Im now CPU bound. Had to cut down the objects/trees.

 

I also opened a bug with Ben! I found out that if X-Plane detects any nVidia card under MacOSX - it disables hardware instancing!.. since the 320M/330M is software emulated; Ben threw 'em all into the same category (unsupported/emulated, so XP disables the call) Unfortunately, he needs to *actually* check if the card is a Fermi or Kepler based card. (and turn it on) heh.

 

... Which explains the poor "number of objects" performance, regardless of HDR, Shadows, Water, etc...

 

Mac OS X 10.8.2 CPU type: 1801080018 (unknown PowerPC) CPU speed (mhz): 2925 Bus speed (mhz): 4800 RAM (MB): 12288

Disabling instancing for DX10 NV hw - it is software emulated.

OpenGL Vendor    : NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL Render    : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 OpenGL Engine
OpenGL Version   : 2.1 NVIDIA-8.1.0 (210/0)................GLSL Version     :1.20/120
first-gen shaders: 0 (16/4096/124/16/16/4096/4096)
This video card is: DX10 - No instancing (found glMapBufferRange)

 

Ok enuff playing. It works.

 

- CK.

Edited December 16, 2012 by chris k

[Gjalp]

Show off......and here I am puttering away with an nVidia GTX260 with 800+ Mb's of ram.......I need a 670

 

Slainte,

 

Andy

NZCH

[Simmo W]

Dear God, you poor man. I'm emailing our government, I think we've identified a new measure of 'poverty' :-)

[chris k]

#firstworldproblems =)

 

- CK.

[Gjalp]

Now I feel like one of those orphaned kids...."for just a dollar a day you to can help little Andy achieve his dream of getting a GTX670".......

 

 

Andy

NZCH

[Simmo W]

That's funny! Nvidia should do an advert based on it, 'give that they may fly'

[chris k]

>> http://developer.x-plane.com/2012/12/looking-for-a-tester-for-macwin-nvidia-testing/

 

Hah! This is the direct result of a series of tests and email exchanges between Ben and myself over the past few days.

 

Turns out (so far)

 

1. Apple Native Drivers are *faster* than Nvidias updated OSX 10.8.2 drivers (posted above) (go figure)

 

2. No Instancing is *faster* than Hardware Instancing. (go figure)

 

He needs me to test the exact same setup but in Win7x64 - which I'm about to bootcamp the 'pro to make work. (need to dissolve my HW RAID-5 first..)

 

We'll keep you posted!
 

- CK

[chris k]

Yep - Applies drivers are better than nVidias Drivers under OSX

 

Yep - AMD cards are just generally much better than an Nvidia Card under OSX

 

AMD 4870HDFRAMERATE TEST: time=93.1, frames=2844, fps=30.54GPU LOAD: time=93.1, wait=9.9, load=10.6%670 Apple NoInstanceFRAMERATE TEST: time=93.0, frames=2479, fps=26.66GPU LOAD: time=93.0, wait=2.1, load=2.3%GPU Driver Version: 8.0.61 295.30.20f02670 Apple InstanceFRAMERATE TEST: time=93.4, frames=2123, fps=22.72GPU LOAD: time=93.4, wait=2.0, load=2.1%GPU Driver Version: 8.0.61 295.30.20f02670 nVidia NoInstanceFRAMERATE TEST: time=93.1, frames=2417, fps=25.97GPU LOAD: time=93.1, wait=2.1, load=2.2%GPU Driver Version: 1.3.4.0 (304.00.05f02)670 nVidia InstanceFRAMERATE TEST: time=93.3, frames=2084, fps=22.33GPU LOAD: time=93.3, wait=1.9, load=2.1%GPU Driver Version: 1.3.4.0 (304.00.05f02)__________________________________________________test 5 670 nVidia NoInstanceFRAMERATE TEST: time=92.7, frames=4020, fps=43.35GPU LOAD: time=92.7, wait=1.5, load=1.6%GPU Driver Version: 1.3.4.0 (304.00.05f02)test 5 670 nVidia InstanceFRAMERATE TEST: time=92.8, frames=4029, fps=43.44GPU LOAD: time=92.8, wait=1.5, load=1.6%GPU Driver Version: 1.3.4.0 (304.00.05f02)__________________________________________________test 3 nVidia NoInstanceFRAMERATE TEST: time=107.1, frames=1885, fps=17.59GPU LOAD: time=107.1, wait=0.8, load=0.8%GPU Driver Version: 1.3.4.0 (304.00.05f02)test 3 nVidia InstanceFRAMERATE TEST: time=107.7, frames=1886, fps=17.51GPU LOAD: time=107.7, wait=0.9, load=0.8%GPU Driver Version: 1.3.4.0 (304.00.05f02)test 3 appleFRAMERATE TEST: time=103.9, frames=1892, fps=18.22GPU LOAD: time=103.9, wait=0.6, load=0.6%GPU Driver Version: 8.0.61 295.30.20f02test 3 apple instanceFRAMERATE TEST: time=106.6, frames=1895, fps=17.77GPU LOAD: time=106.6, wait=0.9, load=0.8%GPU Driver Version: 8.0.61 295.30.20f02

Edited December 19, 2012 by chris k