OK I had an old ATI 4870 card and it never really let me down. Eventually though I thought I'd best progress to a DX11 card so on a budget bought a 6850 even though as I said the 4870 never seemed to struggle. Now on a few games now I'm not sure if it's me or not but my old 4870 seemed alot faster than this 6850..It's the first time I've ever upgraded and been disappointed with the results.

DSW World in the SU25t seemed to chug along in pretty low unit missions (take out the SA11 mission) jerky take off etc...yet I'm sure my old 4870 could happily play DCS Black Shark and DCS A10C.

I'm not certain if my card is faulty or there is little difference between the two cards or I'm expecting too much from it. I do have 8 gig ram but only a quad core AMD @3.2.

On another point why can't I control the SU25t properly..it constantly wants to level out it feels..I try and put the nose down and it fights me to go back up and then level out..obviously some setting (I do put it on auto pilot just after take off..not sure if that efefcts something when I turn it off.

Hi Wodin,
I felt the same after a video card upgrade and returned it for an exchange only to get the same results. So I did some experimentation and settled on these settings -


There is a way to limit your framerate, say to ~30. I may not have that limited anymore - there have been updates since I wrote down these settings.

Dialing down the MSAA made a big difference to improve performance.

WC

What does the 'scenes' setting actually do?

Scenes controls detail level/density. The higher the setting, the more objects (trees, buildings) are drawn. For example on Low you might only get objects around airbases, on Medium, buildings and some forest all around, on High, buildings and full forests.

DCSW taxes the GPU more than DCS A-10C / KA-50 Standalones.

My brother's system struggles in DCSW too, which is why he wont play it. and he runs a XFX 6850.

the 6850s just seem weak, originally he had a 5830, and it plowed along, then died, RMA replaced it with a 6850.

Scenes controls alot of "behind the scenes" settings. object LOD being one of them.

ie, you can put scenes on LOW, and MAX out the rest, or put scenes on HIGH and put the rest on low.

I think for my brother's system, we have almost everything on med, Scenes on LOW. MSAA 2x, Displays 256

Newer video cards have more powerful shaders. However, to balance that the "old school" way of pushing polygons lost some power. If DCS is still far more "old school" than shader-based, it's no surprise that a top-end older card could outperform a newer mid-range card.




The Jedi Master

You'd be surprised what some of these new shooters look like with no active shaders, just straight polygon and diffuse textures.

no bump shaders, reflection/refraction shaders, no lighting shaders, no specular shaders, no soft shadow shaders, no tessellation.

I waited a year or so to upgrade aswell..so it really is disappointing it's not my imagination.

Thanks for the advice.

Any thoughts on my SU25T control issue..

Nothing good to say about a 4870 card and DCS here and I don't miss mine one bit. Going to a 7970 was a big help for me, even on my 3.2 Gig system.

How are your settings in CCC?

You can also consider trying SoftTH. It may help even when using a single monitor.

I am not familiar with the SU-25, but it sounds like a altitude AP or something is enabled.

Best of luck to you.

Thanks mate..well I loved my old 4870...but I think the last ED game I really played on it was Flaming Cliffs 2 and BS 1...

When the 5series was out I was considering a 5870? I think it was...then the six series came out and the 6850 dropped to under a £100 so bought it after checking reviews (it was a choice between it and a GT560 I think). It's the first card I've ever regretted.

I'm only at a res of 1440x900 aswell due to me having a poor old 19inch monitor:(.

Again thanks for the advice.