upgrade to high end videocard?

I plan to upgrade my videocard from midrange (GFX 5600 256MB) to highend (GF 6800 GT or similar).

Will this have any apparent performance boost on my SL experience, or is SL more CPU/network bound?

I'm using high-end CPU and network (3GHz,1GB,2Mb DSL).

Please, anybody with any hands on experience in this, drop me a reply.

Unfortunately for you, SL is CPU-bound. There aren't a lot of chips that are likely to make much of a difference. You'd definitely get SL looking better on a 6800 though.

Under the Alt-1 menu, how many FPS are you getting?

As an indication of how heavily CPU-bound SL is, I've got a Ti4200 graphics card and an XP2000+ CPU. Recently, because of hot weather, I underclocked the CPU to half its normal speed. My framerates dropped to between half and one-third of normal.

Old video card were designed to draw as may poly gons as quickly as possible. New video card are designed to do more with the poly gons they draw. In-fact some of the new card are a little slower then the old card. Far as I know sl , at the moment dose not support any of the new card effects. But there are some aspects of the new cards that sl can use. The new generation of video card have even more memory. Sl should take advantage of this, and many of the new cards have improved bandwidth. Allowing more data to be sent, and to be sent at a faster rate. This is a very good thing for a band with intensive game like sl. But graphic card will be limited by the bus speed of the mother board, so if you have a slow buss you'll end up countering the effect of that top of the line video card.

Thanx for all the advice.

I did a little checking and found out that my system doesn't seem to be CPU bound. I have a continuous CPU load of 50%/55%. This doesn't change when I alter the resolution.
The FPS actually does. (1280x1024 = around 12 FPS when still, 16FPS when moving, 800x600 = around 20FPS when still, 30FPS when moving).

This is tested on a clean startup. So memory fragmentation hasn't been taken into account. And in an environment that is almost completely cached to my hd.
(No bandwidth issues, although the ping is around 200ms.)

On the other hand... when I change the view distance from 128 to 256, it really lowers the FPS (4/5)
Regardless of screen resolution. No apparent effect on CPU load though, although SL has become very slow.

It seems SL isn't that much CPU bound on higher end systems (3Ghz+).
Maybe with polygon setup being done by the GFX processor, like modern cards do, it's now all in the memory bandwidth between RAM and GFX card.

Catherine, did you test with a high-end system to conclude it was CPU bound? Or did you extrapolate from earlier findings on 'older' machines.

Carnildo, did you just lower CPU speed, or also motherboard clock speed (=RAM speed) as this will have a major impact on RAM -> GPU bandwidth and performance.

I am using the following system:

ASUS P4P800 motherboard supporting 800Mhz FSB
2.4Ghz Pentium 4 processor
1GB PC3200 400Mhz DDR RAM
GigaByte ATI Radeon 9600pro 128mb graphics card
3mbit cable connection

I am running SL in maximized windowed mode at 1280x1024 resolution, 150m draw distance, maxed display settings, and I consistently get between 25 and 35fps, except in highly loaded sims, where it usually drops to around 15fps.

For comparison, I run Unreal Tournament 2004 (in both online and offline play) at 1280x1024 resolution and maxed graphics settings and usually pull around 60-95fps!

The new GeForce cards are MUCH improved from the older models (I used to have a GeForce FX 5600 256 and I HATED it's lousy performance!), but IMHO the newer ATI cards still beat them consistently. I would check out some sites like www.tomshardware.com and read up on user reviews on specific brand names before making a purchasing decision. GigaByte cards had the best user reviews so I went with them.

I have heard some people are having problems with one or another of the ATI drivers but I haven't run into any problems personally... the thing runs beautifully for me right out of the box without even overclocking or anything. I also picked up a slot fan to keep things cool... a worthwhile investment of 6-8 bucks if ya ask me!

ohh and of course start at www.pricewatch.com for pricing info!

can I get a w00t???!

Good luck!

Artillo

(edited for spelling & added part about ATI issues)

You're probably CPU bound on a hyperthreading CPU. A CPU with hyperthreading is seen by Windows as two CPUs when it isn't really, so a full load is in the 50%-55% range.

I dropped the CPU multiplier from 12 to 6, while leaving the FSB at 133MHz.

I stand corrected, you're right about the multithreaded CPU showing on full load showing up as 50%. I was confused as I have seen it work at 100% too... (!?)

So with SL still CPU bound on a 3Ghz system...

So to finally have smooth control over my camera, I better spend my money on a lagless empty Sim than spend it on a big GFX card...

You'll get 100% if you've got two CPU-heavy tasks going that the CPU can interleave properly. Doesn't happen very often.