Forums | MacLife

Mr. T wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//////////////////////////////////////////////  Dad's Machine ////////////////////////////////////////////
______________________________________________________________________________
My Dad's machine is going to be similar to mine, but with no preconditions on the GPU.  The only thing he cares about is FSX.  FSX needs to not suck, which is a problem, because FSX has some serious issues.  For example, if you lower the settings in FSX enough to make it run as fast as FS2004, it looks substantially worse.  That's just bad programming.  Another major problem is GPU scaling -- FSX doesn't know what to do with multiple GPUs.  This, unfortunately, seems to be at odds with ATI's current focus.  I'm inclined to believe that a monster single-core solution from NVIDIA might be a better choice for FSX, though I've been having trouble locating evidence (benchmarks) to validate this theory.

If anybody could shed some light on this mystery, that would be awesome!!

Games aren't like apps in being multithreaded or not, hence able/unable to use multicore CPUs, re: graphics. It's basically a matter of driver support for SLI/Crossfire.

This thread seems to indicate that SLI works. I haven't found anything about CF. (Be careful; another thread contains erroneous info on shader models).

One issue is that MGS has short-sightedly closed the studio and ended their longest-running game series (FS went back to the PC gaming Neolithic). Lower than expected sales and the series' ending may have put FS-X on the slow track for CF profiling/support. Haven't heard that it doesn't work, tho, either.

Last edited by Bat (2009-05-21 9:58 pm)

SLI is almost never worth it.
In your current situation, keep in mind that the opportunity cost of adding another card is actually more like $140, not just the 80 bucks for the new card.

Instead of paying that much you're probably better off with a new 4770 or a second hand 4870, depending on your monitor and what games you like to play. Additionally, the Radeon will suck up less power and make less heat/noise.

~Coxy wrote:

keep in mind that the opportunity cost of adding another card is actually more like $140

What do you mean?

Instead of paying that much you're probably better off with a new 4770 or a second hand 4870, depending on your monitor and what games you like to play. Additionally, the Radeon will suck up less power and make less heat/noise.

The 4870 isn't quite as fast as a pair of 8800GT's.  Before I realized that SLI is supported on the X58, I was leaning towards a 4850x2 which is faster, but not $160 faster (difference between the 4850x2 and a second 8800GT).  My res is 1920x1200.

Bat wrote:

Also, what OS is Dad running, etc.?

Primarily Windows, but OS X compatibility is also important.  The 4870 and 4850 seem to be supported; the X2 variants work with a little tweaking (only one core, obviously).  In a couple of weeks, when the 285 rolls out on real macs, the same driver should work for us as well.

Oh, right: Vista

Argg... that's just nasty!!! Literally

Two Radeon HD 4770s in CrossFire are downright nasty. At a $220 price point, they blow right past ATI’s Radeon HD 4890 at $250. ... Two Radeon HD 4770s are unbeatable at $220. Almost across the board, in every single benchmark, a pair of 4770s is able to oust the Radeon HD 4890. Moreover, the 4770s use less power under load, run cooler, and, if our samples were any indication, overclock like mad. Need I even mention the two cards keeping pace with the GTX 280—a $305+ board?

BUT, I don't think the 4770 works in OS X, so I must try extra hard to pretend it doesn't exist.

Bat wrote:

Too bad about Dad, FSX, CF and your hazzing an 8800 already

Yeah, Dad's probably going to end up with a card that is NOT the best overall, but happens to excel at FSX.  As much as I dislike NV for all the smurf they've been pulling lately (locking down SLI / releasing chips with known faults) NV seems to be the best fit for FSX (as far as I can tell).

As for me, I'm glad that NV finally opened up SLI (presumably out of necessity, as they had no competing chipset for the i7).  I can get the performance I'm after for $80 instead of $220.  Am I willing to put up with NV for another few years to save a bunch of cash -- You betcha!  What would stop me from doing this?  If it fails miserably with some modern games, or if it's going to blow up, etc.  Basically, I'm looking for the "catch."  At this point, I think it's safe to assume that there isn't anything I would consider a deal breaker.

Bat wrote:

I'm looking seriously at it. They note as did I that it's currently almost unobtainable- very popular.

Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades

Last edited by Mr. T (2009-05-23 12:31 am)

Mr. T wrote:

~Coxy wrote:

keep in mind that the opportunity cost of adding another card is actually more like $140

What do you mean?

Instead of paying that much you're probably better off with a new 4770 or a second hand 4870, depending on your monitor and what games you like to play. Additionally, the Radeon will suck up less power and make less heat/noise.

The 4870 isn't quite as fast as a pair of 8800GT's.  Before I realized that SLI is supported on the X58, I was leaning towards a 4850x2 which is faster, but not $160 faster (difference between the 4850x2 and a second 8800GT).  My res is 1920x1200.

The opportunity cost thing means that you should consider the total cost of SLI.
If you have one 8800GT worth maybe $60 second hand, then the total cost of SLI 8800GTs is 80+60 = $140. If you were to buy a single card instead, the 8800GT is useless to you and you can flog it.

As far as the 4870 goes, at high res with AA and AF then it definitely will beat 2x 8800GTs in SLI. At low res with 0xAA, then the 8800GTs will probably beat it. You did say that you want to run at 1920x1200 so the 4870 is the way to go (assuming you don't Crossfire 2x 4770s instead.)

~Coxy wrote:

The opportunity cost thing means that you should consider the total cost of SLI.
If you have one 8800GT worth maybe $60 second hand, then the total cost of SLI 8800GTs is 80+60 = $140. If you were to buy a single card instead, the 8800GT is useless to you and you can flog it.

Perhaps, but selling the card involves a significant time investment.  You make a good point, though.

As far as the 4870 goes, at high res with AA and AF then it definitely will beat 2x 8800GTs in SLI. At low res with 0xAA, then the 8800GTs will probably beat it. You did say that you want to run at 1920x1200 so the 4870 is the way to go (assuming you don't Crossfire 2x 4770s instead.)

I disagree.  In Crysis @ 1920x1200, the 8800GTs scored 37.4 fps to the 4870's 29.7.  Out of the seven games tested in the article, the pair of 8800GTs was faster in five, slower in one, and tied in another.  But you're not the first person I've heard say that the 4870 is better.  If you think there's something I might be missing, let me know.

Booksley wrote:

Give your dad the 8800GT and buy yourself an 4870 or 4890.

As noted, the 4870 isn't quite fast enough.  The 4890 *would* probably be my best bet.  For one thing, ATI has better Core Image performance in OS X.  Also, the 4890 is a single-GPU card, so the lack of crossfire in AMD's OS X driver is irrelevant.  It's a nice idea, but unfortunately, the 4890 doesn't work in OS X, and there's no word on when/if it will be supported (unlike the GTX 2 series, which should be supported within the next few weeks).

Giving my 8800GT to dad is also a good idea.  For whatever reason, it's probably one of the best options available for FSX.  This comparison shows a 9800 GX2, which is essentially a pair of 8800GTs.  But the chart also shows that SLI is counter-productive in FSX, so a single 8800GT would likely be awesome in this  game.

Last edited by Mr. T (2009-05-26 1:38 am)

Ahh so this is a hackintosh project then. Sounds fun .

Almost makes me want to revisit the AMD hackintosh projects. But last I checked it was just a hassle to enable it to work. Even then, things were buggy. Think i'd much rather spring for a 4GB upgrade for my Vista install at this point then hope for Jobs to quit and a new CEO to open OSX to PCs .

I looked into doing a hackintosh with my new rig (also a Core i7), but it looks like the hardware is still too new to do easily. (especially with the vanilla kernel) After pouring over google searches, I decided that any solution would be too hacky to use as my main OS, especially with questions over drivers (especially for the motherboard), automatic updates, Time Machine etc. I decided to just use Ubuntu instead, which is fine since even though I would have preferred to use Mac OS X, I already decided that getting the hardware was more important to me, especially when I could fall back to Linux.

akb825 wrote:

I looked into doing a hackintosh with my new rig (also a Core i7), but it looks like the hardware is still too new to do easily. (especially with the vanilla kernel) After pouring over google searches, I decided that any solution would be too hacky to use as my main OS, especially with questions over drivers (especially for the motherboard), automatic updates, Time Machine etc. I decided to just use Ubuntu instead, which is fine since even though I would have preferred to use Mac OS X, I already decided that getting the hardware was more important to me, especially when I could fall back to Linux.

The vanilla kernel works with the 10.5.7 update.  Apple added i7 support because of the new X Serves (which use i7-based Xeons).  In fact, my hardware works flawlessly with a 100% vanilla installation.  In other words, I can install the OS from a retail DVD, run Software Update without worry.  Just like the real deal, but orders of magnitude better and cheaper.  Almost too good to be true -- almost.

I think it would be worth it even on somewhat less supported hardware.  My Aspire One needs patched video card drivers (they don't load from "/Extra").  So every software update, I have to copy the GMA 950 kexts back over to the Extensions folder.  But Chameleon 2.0 can automatically copy kexts to the Extensions folder when the boot caches are rebuilt.  This always happens when there is a change in the Extensions folder.  So from the user's POV, Software Update would work without issue.  It's a hack, but it's a clever one.

Now what about even less supported hardware?  As in AMD CPU + AMD video card + poorly supported motherboard -- Totally not worth it.  If that's all I had to work with, I'd go with a Windows/Fedora setup.

Yeah, AMD video cards are totally fine. AMD processors are a different story, but still perfectly usable if you don't mind doing some extra work to get it going.