Video Cards

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Allen
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Video Cards

Post by Allen » Mon Oct 19, 2020 5:46 pm

Anyone who can help please!

Is there a maximum amount of GPU video memory that Condor can support?
This is specifically in connection with multi-monitor applications - I appreciate that only one video card is supported, but is there also a maximum amount of video RAM that can be used, or can a card with 16GB of video RAM be fully utilised?

Many thanks,

Allen

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wickid
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Re: Video Cards

Post by wickid » Mon Oct 19, 2020 6:21 pm

I think it is 3GB, but that should be plenty. Condor rarely uses more then 1,5 GB
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Allen
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Re: Video Cards

Post by Allen » Mon Oct 19, 2020 11:35 pm

Thanks Wickid,

But does the 'rarely uses more than 1.5GB' relate to just one monitor?
What if you are using the maximum of 5 monitors? Does the amount of video RAM used change?

Best wishes,

Allen

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wickid
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Re: Video Cards

Post by wickid » Mon Oct 19, 2020 11:52 pm

I've not had issues running 3 screens with Arc Alpin and maxed out settings. Have not heard others have issues either with running out of VRAM on high-end systems.
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Allen
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Re: Video Cards

Post by Allen » Tue Oct 20, 2020 10:46 pm

Hi Wickid

I'm getting the dreaded 'man at work' roadworks sign using a Matrox C680 4GB card with 5 screens, all settings 'maxed out' when using the SouthEast UK3 scenery, and the FPS rate drops to a very low figure - especially when flying from the Long Mynd - and on many other locations.

Hence asking if an 8GB card would improve things - or is there a maximum that Condor can use? I don't want to spend money (lots!) and then find that there is a 32 bit software limitation!

Thanks for any help,

Allen

k6chris
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Re: Video Cards

Post by k6chris » Tue Oct 20, 2020 10:59 pm

Have you tried using Windows Task Manager to see if the bottleneck is memory, CPU or GPU?

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wickid
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Re: Video Cards

Post by wickid » Tue Oct 20, 2020 11:50 pm

Allen wrote:
Tue Oct 20, 2020 10:46 pm
Hi Wickid

I'm getting the dreaded 'man at work' roadworks sign using a Matrox C680 4GB card with 5 screens, all settings 'maxed out' when using the SouthEast UK3 scenery, and the FPS rate drops to a very low figure - especially when flying from the Long Mynd - and on many other locations.

Hence asking if an 8GB card would improve things - or is there a maximum that Condor can use? I don't want to spend money (lots!) and then find that there is a 32 bit software limitation!

Thanks for any help,

Allen
Condor is 32 bits. It has the high memory flag enabled for RAM afaik. But the VRAM is limited to 3 GB.
PH-1504, KOE

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Paul_UK
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Re: Video Cards

Post by Paul_UK » Wed Oct 21, 2020 9:51 pm

When I look up the Matrox card it's performance is pretty poor. Compared to an Nvidia 1050 it's G3D score is very low. An Nvidia 1050 scores 5439 and the Matrox only 1904. You should however see reasonable results but you may struggle with maxxed out settings, particularly high levels of anti-aliasing. Combine that with HD textures in some addon sceneries and you could face issues. Here is a snippet from the system requirements for Condor2

A dedicated graphics card with 1 GB memory. The graphics card should have benchmark (www.videocardbenchmark.net) result of 1000 minimum, 4000 is very good and 8000 perfect.

It isn't just about the amount of ram your GPU has either. Yes VRAM is good to have but there is far more wizardry at work on a graphics card than purely the amount of ram it has.

Also be aware that some addon sceneries can cause a little slow down in places. I think Andy has optimised the SE UK scenery now as there used to be some areas that caused issues, stuttering etc. This was to do with the way buildings etc were put into the scenery I think. As said I believe this has been rectified, I don't have any issues with SE UK scenery anyway. When the scenery / weather updates within Condor whilst flying it'll put a large strain on your PC's resources. If it is an aging PC you may find at these points in time you see the slow down sign appear. What are your full system specs out of interest?
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Allen
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Re: Video Cards

Post by Allen » Thu Oct 22, 2020 9:06 pm

Hi Paul,

I appreciate your comments and guidance on the video specifications - but one of the essential aspects of our system is the ability for the video card to drive 5 projectors, hence a comparison to the Nvidia 1050 isn't really relevant.

The main motherboard / computer is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6GHz (Coffee Lake) Socket LGA1151
Samsung 1TB 860 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 64 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-76E1T0B/EU)
Asus Prime Z390-P Intel Z390 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
MEMORY RAM:TeamGroup Elite Plus 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C19 2666MHz
GRAPHICS CARD: C680-E4GBF C680 - PCIe x16, 4GB, GDDR5. 6 x Mini DisplayPort outputs.

The 5 screens are all using 4:3 ratio, 1024 x 769

So, all verging on the 'high spec', but the problem does appear to be with the graphics. If I reduce the settings of the video resolution within Condor, then yes, the problem 'goes away' - but, it would be nice to have the maximum resolutions always available!

So, is there any video card that can accomplish what is required for a 5 screen system - or will Condor one day be able (like Prepare3d) to support two video cards?

Many thanks,

Allen

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wickid
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Re: Video Cards

Post by wickid » Thu Oct 22, 2020 9:28 pm

Allen wrote:
Thu Oct 22, 2020 9:06 pm
Hi Paul,

I appreciate your comments and guidance on the video specifications - but one of the essential aspects of our system is the ability for the video card to drive 5 projectors, hence a comparison to the Nvidia 1050 isn't really relevant.

The main motherboard / computer is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6GHz (Coffee Lake) Socket LGA1151
Samsung 1TB 860 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 64 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-76E1T0B/EU)
Asus Prime Z390-P Intel Z390 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
MEMORY RAM:TeamGroup Elite Plus 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C19 2666MHz
GRAPHICS CARD: C680-E4GBF C680 - PCIe x16, 4GB, GDDR5. 6 x Mini DisplayPort outputs.

The 5 screens are all using 4:3 ratio, 1024 x 769

So, all verging on the 'high spec', but the problem does appear to be with the graphics. If I reduce the settings of the video resolution within Condor, then yes, the problem 'goes away' - but, it would be nice to have the maximum resolutions always available!

So, is there any video card that can accomplish what is required for a 5 screen system - or will Condor one day be able (like Prepare3d) to support two video cards?

Many thanks,

Allen
I used a AMD Radeon HD5870 Eyefinity 6 card to drive a 5 screen setup with Condor (3 external views @ 1024x768 and 2 instrument panels) and I'm getting satisfactory framerates. However the card is pretty old now. 2240 benchmark, which is not that great and only slightly better than your Matrox.

Maybe a Radeon HD 7870 Eyefinity 6 fulfills your needs... It has a benchmark of 4646. Not many cards are laid out for more than 3 monitors, nor does windows natively support more than 3...


I will warn you... It is a pain in the backside to set up
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Paul_UK
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Re: Video Cards

Post by Paul_UK » Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:00 pm

I was only comparing ref performance to a well known card on the market.

Overall display resolution is 5120x768 which as you say your current GPU is more than likely struggling with.

So you will need to find settings you can lower to provide the visuals you require but not hit your system.

I'm not up to speed on the settings you can alter for your graphics card so it is hard to recommend what to set in the GPU control panel. For sure set V-sync to on in your GPU control panel if possible, if not within the sim itself. No one likes screen tearing.

I would try setting MSAA to 2x (reduces jaggy edges) This may be the big hitter, it does require GPU power but having a little will make things look much nicer to the eye.

Visible distance - Medium or High
Tree density - I'd lower this the most though I'm unsure of performance gain in doing this.
I have canopy reflections off, they annoy me. Unsure if there is any gain in turning them off
Objects level of detail - Lower this until things look ugly to you.
Texture quality - I'd try to keep this one as high as poss myself

In your GPU control panel set Anistropic filtering to 8x and see how it goes. Start lowering this too much and textures lose depth. I'm unsure which setting in the sims control panel has effect over anistropic filtering. I always set it through my GPU control panel.
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2019 - Get up to speed and aim for a 300km task?! maybe.....

Allen
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Re: Video Cards

Post by Allen » Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:33 pm

Thanks Paul,

Yes, the settings that you have suggested all help to avoid the lower FPS - but they all do have a visible effect on the quality of the video image.

My essential question is really about the maximum video RAM that Condor can handle, and it looks as though that I have 'hit the buffers' with what can currently be achieved using 5 screens. The card I have has 4GB - apparently Condor can only use 3GB.

I guess I will have to wait for a new version of Condor that can support more than one video card - perhaps it will be ported to 64 bit as well!

Many thanks for your advice,

Best wishes,

Allen

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wickid
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Re: Video Cards

Post by wickid » Fri Oct 23, 2020 12:07 am

Allen wrote:
Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:33 pm
Thanks Paul,

Yes, the settings that you have suggested all help to avoid the lower FPS - but they all do have a visible effect on the quality of the video image.

My essential question is really about the maximum video RAM that Condor can handle, and it looks as though that I have 'hit the buffers' with what can currently be achieved using 5 screens. The card I have has 4GB - apparently Condor can only use 3GB.

I guess I will have to wait for a new version of Condor that can support more than one video card - perhaps it will be ported to 64 bit as well!

Many thanks for your advice,

Best wishes,

Allen
It is not only the VRAM, it is the clockspeed of the card as well. You can have a large VRAM, but a slow processor in the card cannot process the large images it can store in the VRAM.

This is a gross oversimplification:

There is a bunch of textures you need to create a frame. Your processor will load these in the VRAM together with the 3D meshes of the objects it needs to draw in the 3D space. The GPU then starts to build a frame with these. If the video card has a low clock frequency it takes longer to build a frame (Low benchmark score). Also if the frame is larger (higher resolution) it takes longer to build a frame. Other factors include larger textures, number of objects in the field of view and transparency it needs to calculate.

The VRAM restrictions in condor are mostly how many textures can be loaded into the VRAM. This is usually not that many. It is usualy only about 1,5 GB in textures and mesh data. Usually if you run out of VRAM you will get a blue screen, not low frame rates. This happens when there are a lot of 3D objects and large textures in the scenery with many different textures.

That is why the 3 GB restriction is not the main problem for you. Your problem is that your video card is slow in building a frame from these textures. If you buy a faster GPU with a higher benchmark it will build the frames quicker and you will get a higher frame rate.
PH-1504, KOE

Allen
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Re: Video Cards

Post by Allen » Fri Oct 23, 2020 9:03 am

Thanks Wickid,

>> If you buy a faster GPU with a higher benchmark it will build the frames quicker and you will get a higher frame rate.<<

Unfortunately, there are very few cards available that will support 5 monitors - and they all appear to use the same GPU, so I guess I am stuck with what is available and the limitations of Condor in this mode of use.
However, Condor is a superb gliding simulator, and the 5 screens give a totally immersive experience - good enough to make several of our pilots feel air-sick!
We are developing it to be a great training facility!

Thanks for your help and guidance,

Allen

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Re: Video Cards

Post by DanD » Tue Dec 01, 2020 8:31 pm

The Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti Aorus Master, announced today, theoretically available for sale tomorrow, has "DisplayPort 1.4a x three HDMI 2.1x two, HDMI 2.0 x one (The middle HDMI output supports up to HDMI 2.0)" according to their website. 8GB of VRAM. It won't be cheap (the base founder's edition (four outputs) MSRP of $US399, or easy to find, but looks to be a solution for those with many screens. https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/ ... -8GD/sp#sp .

The ASUS ROG Strix rtx 3060 ti has five outputs, two HDMI and 3 DP. According to TechPowerUp: "According to ASUS, the RTX 3060 Ti STRIX OC will retail for $500." That's USD. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asus ... oc/39.html

Since it's pre-release, no GPU benchmarks at Passmark yet, but it seems to have 2080 Super-like performance according to YouTube reviews, which would suggest performance in the 19,000 range.

Again, neither will be easy to find, given the disaster that 2020 is for the best and shiniest GPU launches; but there is hope out there. There must be a market for it.
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