BF2S Forums to i7 or not ?

twoblacklines wrote:

Will be buying bigger monitor, whatever it is will be 1080p so need to spec for that!

GC_PaNzerFIN wrote:

If you want to save up, get PII instead of the Q6700. And put the money you save to GTX 295. (GTX 275 would need SLi board, which means not nice)

edit: A rough budget would help tremendously.

i7 is the way to go IF you can afford it. But if that would mean dropping to 9800GTX for graphics, definately not.

Finray wrote:

The 4890 any good? Benchmarks?

GC_PaNzerFIN wrote:

Ioan92 wrote:

I would get a 285 instead of a 295 tbfh Panzer.

why get the least bang for buck card? GTX 295 is a lot faster and GTX 285 is way overpriced.

GC_PaNzerFIN wrote:

Ioan92 wrote:

GC_PaNzerFIN wrote:

why get the least bang for buck card? GTX 295 is a lot faster and GTX 285 is way overpriced.

Because of Microstuttering tbf

Do you even know what micro-stuttering is?

I have had 3 GTX 295s, and no micro-stuttering. I have had setups that had it and GTX 295 ftw compared to them.

And you just had to link to a pic that means absolutely nothing. Its 6 months old, there have been like handful of new drivers since that.

edit: Oh and micro-stuttering does not affect fps, its purely rendering issue. The pic couldn't be less related to MS.

Hard Forum wrote:

GPU "Microstuttering" FAQ
So everyones been posting about how an SLI or Crossfire rig, while managing to put out higher FPS than the single GPU solutions, does so while "Microstuttering". I'd like to clarify as much as I can around the issue, and hopefully you guys can help me out too. I don't have access to a multi GPU rig right now, so I'm going to go from what I learned about SLI and crossfire setups from my last rich customers dual 8800 build.

What is microstuttering?
When running two Graphics Processing units (GPUs) in tandem, via Crossfire or SLI, in Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR) mode, the two GPUs will produce frames asyncronously (for lack of a better term). Microstuttering can be expressed one way as your computer experiancing, in extreme rapid sucession, a high FPS, followed by a low FPS, followed by a high, then low, and so on.

The following is a chart of Frames VS Time, with time in nanoseconds (yeah, I have no idea why they used nanoseconds, but 100,000 [the first increment] is 0.1 seconds, or 100 miliseconds) in the Y-axis, and the frame count (NOT FPS) in the X-axis. The lower the bar, the higher the FPS.

Image taken from PC gamers hardware

As you can see, the crossfire setup, while getting out the same amount of frames (30) in less time (ie, while maintaining a higher FPS), has a certain wobble. This wobble is the phenomina known as microstuttering.

Here is another chart from anand found by Mega 666

Pulled from Anand

The Multi-GPU "Variance" is much greater than that of the Single GPU solution. The greater the difference from one variance to the next, the greater the stutter. The difference between the average variance and the variance at any one frame is the phenomina of microstuttering.

How does microstuttering impact me in game?
Microstuttering can make playing what fraps is calling a 60fps game feel identical to playing a 30 fps game (literally, this is a potential true case mathmatically).

Why does microstuttering happen?
It's a product of the failure of a multi GPU solution to syncronize properly. Frame syncronization is the act of making sure that the time between frames is identical no matter where you take a measurement. In a single GPU solution one GPU builds the image, and then sends it off to the monitor. It then builds another and sends it off as well. Thus, a single GPU solution does not suffer from microstutter. In a dual GPU solution, two GPUs build seperate images. In Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR), GPU "A" must send its image to the monitor exactly half way between the previous frame from GPU "B", and the next frame (which will be from GPU "B" as well).

Note: 20 milliseconds is .02 seconds, or 1/50th of a second.
In my example lets go with a game running at 50 FPS. A frame is built and displayed by GPU "A". Exactly 20 miliseconds (ms) later GPU "B" must have completed building and displaying its frame. Exactly 20 ms after that GPU "A" must have finished building and displaying the next frame, and so on. Each frame must be displayed in exactly 20 ms after the previous one.

I'm currently working on a flash demo to illustrate the point. When its done I'll export it to .gif and post it here... assuming [H] supports gifs lol.

Do all Multi GPU rigs experiance microstuttering?
It looks like it, yes. The extent to which might be different on one system than on another, they might even be different every time you start your machine or run the game engine.

If I notice microstuttering, can I minimize/eliminate it?
Yes. By running the game at a setting where your graphics cards are able to output more than the monitors refresh rate (that is, the maximum FPS the monitors are capible of; the pixels on your screen can only change so fast) microstuttering is eliminated completely. Most monitors have a refresh rate of 60 or 70Hz, meaning you would need 70 or 80 FPS to eliminate microstuttering. Also, running the game in Split Frame Rendering (SFR), with the top half being rendered by one card and the bottom half being rendered by the other, will eliminate microstuttering, but opens the door to tearing and a performance hit. I don't know if SFR is even still supported...

If theres any other point anyone would like me to make, by all means post it and i'll include it.

GC_PaNzerFIN wrote:

Minimum FPS has nothing to do with micro-stuttering. Its rendering issue caused by changing delay between frames.

X2s in Quadfire is pretty good in terms of MS, Single X2 is a bit worse than single GTX 295.

And so I'm too blind to see MS huh? I am one of the guys who notices even minor MS. There is MS even with one GPU (really tiny amount) if you want to be absolutely accurate.

edit: oh and you are saying that drivers don't improve minimum fps? They certainly can. In fact I have seen over 50% increases with newer drivers. Of course the release drivers are not as good as later ones.

MS is NOT about minimum fps, If exists more around 30-50fps, but MS is not the cause for that.

You should read what you copy paste....

Last edited by Ioan92 (2009-06-02 05:28:09)

GC_PaNzerFIN wrote:

MS is caused by delay between frames. Because every frame is unique and some are heavier than others to render, there is tiny change between frametimes (micro-stuttering).  Of course its so small you can't see it.

And no, you are confusing normal stutter to micro-stuttering.

GC_PaNzerFIN wrote:

Ioan92 wrote:

GC_PaNzerFIN wrote:

MS is caused by delay between frames. Because every frame is unique and some are heavier than others to render, there is tiny change between frametimes (micro-stuttering).  Of course its so small you can't see it.

And no, you are confusing normal stutter to micro-stuttering.

But isn't the delay on DGPU cards caused by the first GPU making half a frame and waiting for the second one to render the other half?

Current preference is to use AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering). GPUs do every second frame.
Sometimes the second frame is so light that it finishes right after the frame one. If the next frame is heavy, there is a long spike in delay between the next frame is rendered (object movement looks like its lagging although FPS is high)

Drykill wrote:

@anyone who cares.

DGPU's - don't knock it until you try it. To me its just like what happened with Vista, it's been hated and bashed buy a large number of people who have never tried it. Now some haters highly recommend Vista over other OS's (bar win7), hypocrites. Same thing is happening with dual GPU's, just because its new and some early models & drivers displayed signs of micro-stutter it's instantly hated by everyone. There's millions of users with SLi/crossfire and dual GPU set-ups and I bet >1% of them complain/suffer/notice micro-stutter. Hating certain technology just because everyone else does