Simviation Forum - Ideal Computer for CFS3

May 12^th, 2005 at 7:53am

IndioBlack Offline
Colonel
Fox-Four

Posts: 266

I'm just thinking of getting a dedicated Computer for CFS3 and a handful of other Flight Sims.
Who is flying with all graphics settings maxed out and experiencing no stutter?
Then please tell me what your system specs are.

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Reply #1 - May 15^th, 2005 at 9:25am

bzhyoyo Offline
Colonel
Breizh atao feal!
Paris

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I don't run cfs3 on all fives but I know what I would do if I were you :
- take the most powerful CPU you can : an AMD64 seems the way to go currently.
- have at least 1024Mo of RAM and a mobo that can handle more in case you want to go up to 2Go.
- finally choose a GPU (preferably Nvidia because ATI drivers after cat 3.9 have issues with reflective textures in cfs3) that will allow you the eye-candy (6600 or 6800 depending on your budget).

Anyway there would still be some minor tweaking to do to smooth things even more : the way cfs3 settings are shipped stock can be much improved (compositeterrainbudgets.xml and preload.xml and effects.xml have a big influence and modded ones are already available).

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Reply #2 - May 15^th, 2005 at 12:59pm

IndioBlack Offline
Colonel
Fox-Four

Posts: 266

Thanks. I have the general tweak list, so I know to apply those.
I'll take your advice on the 1Gb and the Nvidia 6800 card. I'm just still unsure about AMD cards, being used to Pentiums for so long,but I hear what you're saying.

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Reply #3 - May 26^th, 2005 at 7:53pm

4_Series_Scania Offline
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He who laughs last, thinks
slowest.
Stoke on Trent England U.K.

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I upgraded my PC many many times until CFS3 ran well.

Started off with a p3 667 & a GeForce MX..... Not good! Roll Eyes

Then tried a 1.7ghz Celeron, 256MB RAM Geforce MX, Pants, swapped the Geforce MX for a Geforce FX5600 and, yes, it was awful!

Replaced the Celeron 1.7 for a Pentium 4 1.8 result? - STILL , crap was the only word for it!

Started to take things personally, swapped motherboard for newer model, that took my new 2.6 800fsb p4! plus, 512MB PC400 RAM - Nice little setup I thought....

CFS3 thought different! - Dire! Roll Eyes

Finally, I swapped my GeForce FX for my 6800LE.
My sig says it all, CFS3 happyness at last.

In short, The GeForce 6 series is what CFS3 needed years back, shame its taken so long for the hardware to catch it up! Roll Eyes

Posting drivel here since Jan 31st, 2002. - That long!

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Reply #4 - May 27^th, 2005 at 7:09am

alx Offline
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alx - Whitewasher
Livorno, Italy

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Here is the final solution:

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050526_155843.html

Gygabyte announced a Motherboard with FOUR pc-express slots.
One of these and four nVidia GT6800 ultra .....

You need only to be very very very rich.... 8)

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Reply #5 - May 29^th, 2005 at 1:36pm

GunnerMan Offline
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Not the trees!
In The Cockpit

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Ok whats the point f 4 video cards, sli suports only 2 so unless he wanted expensive dual monitors. Anyways I was an Intel guy to and bought AMD system and theres no going back.

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Reply #6 - May 29^th, 2005 at 2:17pm

IndioBlack Offline
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Fox-Four

Posts: 266

Thanks guys. Dual Monitors are not practical for my situation, so I won't go there.
I'm going for a big AMD as suggested and 256 Nvidia 6800 GT something-or-other, plus 1024 ram with room for more.
I'll let you know how I get on.

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Reply #7 - May 31^st, 2005 at 3:39pm

GunnerMan Offline
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In The Cockpit

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That will be a sweet setup. Will max cfs3. If you need more advanced info on any devices if you want to get into overclocking or the egde of performance ask us.

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Reply #8 - Jun 8^th, 2005 at 12:24pm

Smoke2much Offline
Colonel
The Unrepentant Heretic
Sittingbourne, Kent,

Posts: 3879

I have a Pentium IV 3.4 GHz
1024 MB DDR RAM
Some sort of ATI thingy and I get 40 FPS + in most situations with 5's across the board and the occasional stutter. With clouds and effects at 1 it is truly awesome and stutter free. As was said above it is a great game, it's just a pity it has taken a while for the hardware to catch up.

Will

Who switched the lights off? I can't see a thing....... Hold on, my eyes were closed. Oops, my bad...............&&

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Reply #9 - Jun 12^th, 2005 at 8:38pm

4_Series_Scania Offline
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He who laughs last, thinks
slowest.
Stoke on Trent England U.K.

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Quote:

I have a Pentium IV 3.4 GHz
1024 MB DDR RAM
Some sort of ATI thingy and I get 40 FPS + in most situations with 5's across the board and the occasional stutter. With clouds and effects at 1 it is truly awesome and stutter free. As was said above it is a great game, it's just a pity it has taken a while for the hardware to catch up.

Will

I must find myself one of those "ATI thingy's" sounds like a pretty good card! Tongue

Posting drivel here since Jan 31st, 2002. - That long!

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Reply #10 - Jun 28^th, 2005 at 5:07pm

IndioBlack Offline
Colonel
Fox-Four

Posts: 266

Okay, I got the Computer built for me. It's an NForce4 motherboard, 1 Gig of memory with an AMD64 processor (equivalent to a Pentium 4 3.2, I think), and a 256 mb Geforce 6800 GT graphics card.

I couldn't get CFS3 to run. It just froze on the screen after the movie and before the options tabs come up.
After some hair-tearing, I went into set-up and did all those tweaks you're supposed to do for low-end machines, and that got it going. It was the dual-pass render that was causing the freeze, I believe, because once I'd unticked it, I could get the game to run.

However, after a few minutes stutter-free and awesome flight, I now get elongated flashing black-triangles hurtling at me from all directions, and the only way I can lose them is to exit to the desktop. So I guess something is wrong with the graphics card, and I'm going to have to get the computer-builder in to fix it.

I'll let you know how I go on later.

By the way, STRIKE FIGHTERS worked beautifully, but now the black triangles seem to have migrated there too, so I'm not exactly deliriously happy yet.

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Reply #11 - Jun 29^th, 2005 at 4:06am

bzhyoyo Offline
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surely drivers related.

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Reply #12 - Jun 29^th, 2005 at 7:41am

chuckcrc Offline
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Simpit builder
Australia

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I bought a AMD 64 3400+ Skt 754 and it runs CFS3 with an ATI 9600XT at about 55fps, but this is on a Asus mobo k8v-x.

I first had a Gigabyte mobo which would run ok on low level graphic applications but as soon as I ran CFS3 (cfs2 was ok ) the game /pc locked up at the selection screen as soon as you moved the mouse around to select a flight/option etc.

A mate of mine who builds pc for a part job had said (start of the year ) that he had returned a number of Gigabyte mobo'ds with this problem, it seems Gigabyte and Socket 754 are not a good combination.

Usually Gigabyte are very good boards and I 'm sure this is a one off glich, but this is what I experienced and I've had no trouble with my Asus mobo .

cheers
chuck

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Reply #13 - Jul 10^th, 2005 at 4:50pm

IndioBlack Offline
Colonel
Fox-Four

Posts: 266

I was getting 54 fps with everything at max before the graphics glitches ruined everything.
Turns out that the problem is the heat generated by the Nvidia 256 mb 6800 GT graphics card. We're now investigating ways of cooling it. Apparently all the hot stuff is on the underside of the card, so when it gets warm, the heat rises and causes problems. Amazing that nobody saw that coming!
Obviously someone needs to design a motherboard where the graphics card sits vertically, rather than horizontally.
Thank goodness the only other card in the machine is the Soundblaster. If worst comes to worst. I'll have that hiked out and rely on the motherboard Avance Audio.

Let you know how we go.

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Reply #14 - Jul 31^st, 2005 at 4:32am

IndioBlack Offline
Colonel
Fox-Four

Posts: 266

Okay, so I have my Computer running properly now. The motherboard is a 1 Gig Epox NForce 4, with AMD64 3400 and a 256 mb GeForce 6800 GT Graphics card. It runs STRIKE FIGHTERS, PACIFIC FIGHTERS, LOMAC and CFS2 beautifully with everything maxxed. In CFS2, I can have five extra windows on-screen, and the frame-rate still doesn't drop below 60.
However, it just doesn't like CFS3.
I had complete freeze-ups when I first installed and tried to play. Going into set-up and un-ticking Dual Pass render helped stop that. I then patched up, including nocd, and did the approved set-up tweaks, but I'm still getting flashing terrain graphics - tree lines behaving in a now you see them, now you don't fashion, flashing black lines etc.

However, the really bad part is that after I'd installed CFS3, I then shut down, re-started and went in to play PACIFIC FIGHTERS. Within a few seconds of starting up the engines, I suddenly got black flashing lines on the Graphics. So I uninstalled CFS3 and PACIFIC FIGHTERS played correctly again!

Is Microsoft deliberately sabotaging Flight Sims from other companies? Because it certainly works. And, by the way, these games are all segregated on different partitions.

Anyone got any suggestions? 'Cos otherwise this massive computer that I bought to play CFS3 won't be playing CFS3 at all. It will be playing PACIFIC FIGHTERS et al, instead. ???

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Reply #15 - Jul 31^st, 2005 at 11:54am

bzhyoyo Offline
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Breizh atao feal!
Paris

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Posts: 119

the usual suspects : graphic card drivers. Or DX9 : which version ?
And also the AA and FSAA settings that may conflict in cfs3.
see this thread.

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=cfs3;action=display;num=11...

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Reply #16 - Aug 1^st, 2005 at 5:24pm

IndioBlack Offline
Colonel
Fox-Four

Posts: 266

Thanks. I did all that stuff except go back to the old driver. Since it's a new computer, I just used the latest driver. Any idea which is the one I should try?

I'm on DX 9.0c

Anyway, I'll go take a look at simHQ.
Thanks

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Reply #17 - Aug 20^th, 2005 at 8:04am

IndioBlack Offline
Colonel
Fox-Four

Posts: 266

Well I now have CFS3 running. And here's how....

I went onto the PACIFIC FIGHTERS board and asked if the new Patches needed a different nocd to save wear and tear on my disks. The moderator replied with a puzzling "bye bye", which took me quite a while to realise was their arrogant, up-their-own-rectum way of teling me I'd broached an unnacceptable subject and was being banned. I mean, why shouldn't I mention patches? - they're the ones who can't write a decent game first-time round without it being infested with bugs.

Anyway, that prompted me to clear that game off my hard-drive and attempt to get CFS3 running properly.
Using the Nvidia graphics tool, I set up a specific file for CFS3 and tried changing settings to see what would work, and the thing that made it all come to life was moving graphics settings from "Quality" to "High Quality". That cured everything, along with the CFS3 untick of "Dual Pass Render" and ticking Z buffer.

I'm now running at 58 fps on a 60HZ monitor, even with serious rainfall, and most graphics settings at 5, so thanks for all your advice in helping me choose a system that would do the job.

The difference between Quality and High Quality seemed to be that the former allowed you to specify "force mip-map", whereas the latter wouldn't let you. I'm thinking that it was the "force mip-map" that was causing the problem with CFS3's own mip-mapping setting.

I'm fooling around with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering to see how best to set the visual look, and wondered if anyone had any advice here of best setting.
The one thing I do notice is a sort of shimmering effect of pixels swimming around in the mid-distance, and it would be nice to fix this.
I'm also curious about the two terrain-type settings that CFS3 has. Which one controls those dreadful buildings? They look silly at Bomber-altitudes. I'd like to get rid of those but keep the trees.
I thought I'd ask before I experimented, because now that I've got things working, I'd hate to up-tip the apple-cart by messing around too much without knowing what I'm doing.

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