Graphics issue and benchmark

[Devor]

I started building a dedicated gaming PC back in Jan 06. It has been up and runnig for some time with a tempory graphics card in it.

Although I had to run the game on minimal setting the graphics worked OK. Now with the new card installed I get an intermittent flickering effect with ship and station hulls. Iritatting more than game stopping.

Spec:
ASUS A8N-E Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ CPU
1x Corsair 1GB DDR 400 RAM
Maxtor 120GB IDE Harddrive
LG DVD-Rom
LG DVD+-RM/RAM
Floppy Drive/Card Reader

Original Video Card:- Sparkle Nvidia Geforce 6500 with 256MB DDR2 RAM
New Video Card:- Point of View Nvidia Geforce 7950 GX2 with 1024 MB DDR3 RAM

Opsys is Windows XP Home OEM

Apart from X3 the only other things installed are Drivers, Win Updates, Avast AV, World of Warcraft.

Any help please.

=============================================

If anyone is interested here are some benchmarks

3DMARK06................6500.........................7950
=========================================
3DMark.....................340..........................5587
SM2.0.......................158..........................3039
HDR/SM3.0................N/A..........................3174
CPU..........................864............................863


3DMARK05 ................6500.........................7950
=========================================
3DMark....................1282.......................10351
CPU.........................4044.........................4195


3DMARK03................6500.........................7950
=========================================
3DMark....................2478.......................26683
CPU...........................809..........................848


X3RollingDemo.........6500.........................7950
=========================================
xperf_####_1........15.900FPS.................46.357FPS
xperf_####_2..........8.191FPS.................45.515FPS
xperf_####_3..........8.490FPS.................42.973FPS
xperf_####_Max......8.500FPS.................42.709FPS

I have only included the text from file xperf_7950_Max.

--------------------------
X3 - Reunion
--------------------------
Game version: 1.3.0.US


Graphic card name and driver used: NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 Version [6.14.10.9127]


CPU name: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3700+ Family 7 Model 7

Video settings during benchmark:
Screen resolution: 1280 x 1024 * [32]
using shader profile: 3.0
Antialias Mode: 4x
Anisotropic Mode: 16x

Graphic & Shader settings
Texture quality: high
Shader quality: high
High quality bumpmaps: enabled
Environment map: enabled
Postprocessing: enabled
using 16bit vertex format: yes

Framerates
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scene 00 46.1 average fps 39.0 minimum fps 65.0 maximum fps
Scene 01 23.1 average fps 6.0 minimum fps 45.0 maximum fps
Scene 02 49.5 average fps 35.0 minimum fps 67.0 maximum fps
Scene 03 52.2 average fps 30.0 minimum fps 103.0 maximum fps

Overall average framerate: 42.7 fps


(c)2005 EGOSOFT
For more information http://www.egosoft.com


Thanks Devor

Signature below shows the spec of my main PC that has now been religated to do the boring things like not playing X3.

[arnak]

Hi,

Why are you still running the 1.3 version, the latest patch is 1.4.03, that should improve things quite a bit?

Arnak

[Mubata]

Benchmark version is 1.3, can't patch it. Disabling the Vertex Size Optimization may help, however it is not an available feature in the demo setup screen.

However, Arnak is right, there are many improvements since the 1.3 patch. If you have X3 installed at the moment, and patched up to 1.4.03, then try the above setting and see if you notice similar texture corruption ingame.

Also, try going to the 91.31 drivers. Looks like you are still using a beta version. While unlikely, usually best to use the WHQL for stability issues.

Edit: I would have to say that your results arn't entirely unexpected though, I have a A64 3500+ (Venice Core), NV 7800GS, and 2 Gigs of RAM. I see results that are similar to yours. I did notice that the extra RAM helped quite a bit, but X3 is very CPU intensive and that is why you are probably seeing fantastic 3DMark scores, but X3 runs as it is. 3DMark is a great GPU analysis tool, but not the best for overall sys performance.

However, I did notice that the patched game does run better for me than the demo does by far. I run with same game settings as you do, and it is very playable, even in XIs or crowded sectors. I do not get the flickering though, that could be an affectation of the drivers or the second onboard GPU on that card. You may have to play with some driver settings as well to pin down the cause of the flickering. Best of luck.

Regards,

Mubata

[Devor]

Thank you for your replys.

Sorry my fault, let me clarify. I did a complete fresh install of the opsys due to Windows having a problem. It was straight after that the benchmarks were run.

Thinking back I cannot remember seeing the graphic problem in the rolling demo. The problem is showing itself in my live installation of X3 which is ver 1.4.03.

Thanks I will look at driver updates and have a play with the graphics setting.

[Blightedmythos]

I have a 7950 and i have the same issue. I get the flickering for the first, oh, say 20 seconds when i load up a game, then its' gone for the rest of the time, so i don't mind it. But it is odd. It's something to do with the game. Don't worry about it being your hardware. Hopefully someone with the same issue can shed some light on what it is.

I have the same issue with jupiter incident. And if I turn "glow" on, i get horrible frame rates. Come to think of it, it may be on nvidia's side, and will be fixed with a driver release. The 7950 concept is pretty new, so expect it to have some bugs on older games. However my fps is screaming :-p I'd also like to add, that i've had no issues with any other game.

[viceroy]

Have you tried running the card in single core mode (I'm not sure of the exact term), but basically disabling SLI.

It might get rid of any flickering you have.