Recent huge junp in frame rates?

[plainsman]

I don't know what to attribute the recent huge jump in frame rates in MSTS. I am now getting 38-59 FPS where before was 18-42 FPS. I did upgrade the driver, Vista did update a few times, and NVidia updated the GeForce PhysX driver?:confused::)

[chucksc]

I don't know what to attribute the recent huge jump in frame rates in MSTS. I am now getting 38-59 FPS where before was 18-42 FPS. I did upgrade the driver, Vista did update a few times, and NVidia updated the GeForce PhysX driver?:confused::)
geforce physx driver is my guess....

I saw something similar...

[djt1]

NVidia updated the GeForce PhysX driver?:confused::)

geforce physx driver is my guess....


Nvidia’s PhysX software that is now included with new GeForce driver releases (the latest is 178.24) does nothing for MSTS.

[chucksc]

But 178.24 seems to.....

[djt1]

But 178.24 seems to.....

Chuck,

Something else with the 178.24’s could be affecting the performance. What drivers were you using before and how did you install them?

[wacampbell]

I can confirm a similar improvement. I did some careful measurements before moving from 162.22 drivers to the new 178.24 drivers. I made sure the graphic quality settings were the same before and after. At the test location I chose on the L&PS route I saw frame rates increase from 26 FPS to 39 FPS. Also, I noticed my NVIDIA control panel has a new option to allow me to run MSTS in fullscreen mode ( not windowed) on my widescreen monitor without stretching. I know this wasn't there before. Some very nice improvements.

[djt1]

I did some careful measurements before moving from 162.22 drivers to the new 178.24 drivers.

Going from the 162.22’s to the 178.24’s is a big jump in driver revisions. What else has changed with your system from the 162.22 install? How did you install the 178.24’s?

[plainsman]

I went from 169.25 to 178.13. I used the NVidia panel to uninstall old driver, ran CCleaner and Cyberscrub, loaded the new driver with NVidia installer and went back and set my MSTS to it's dedicated settings. As you can see from the attachment in the first post, the settings are not downgraded, and I am running 1600 resolution in 32bit mode. I am pleased for a 8600GTS/512!

[chucksc]

Previous WHQL drivers 177.41 (???????)

Video Card is a eVGA GTX260

[djt1]

I went from 169.25 to 178.13. I used the NVidia panel to uninstall old driver, ran CCleaner and Cyberscrub, loaded the new driver with NVidia installer and went back and set my MSTS to it's dedicated settings.

There’s been some talk in hardware forums that this driver has some aniso mip filter optimization improvements, so that could be the reason for the performance improvement. Some have also complained that this optimization has caused some image quality degradation. I’m about to do an install of the 178.24’s on a clean OS shortly to see if I get any improvement over the 178.13’s.

As far as the PhysX software is concerned, the latest version was also included in the 178.13’s, so there’s no change as far as that’s concerned. I would say it’s highly unlikely that a CPU bound game (MSTS) that was released from 2001 that uses a DirectX 7 engine is going benefit from the PhysX software. The whole point of the PhysX software is to move the particle effect physics work load over to the GPU and utilize the video card better. The MSTS engine was never written to properly utilize the GPU for graphics let alone particle effect physics.

[jtr1962]

I updated to these drivers after reading this thread and I'm not noticing any huge jump in framerates. Maybe it's slightly better, but hard to tell. Then again, my card is a 128MB GeForce 6200. I don't think the PhysX improvements would even apply to that card.

[djt1]

I updated to these drivers after reading this thread and I'm not noticing any huge jump in framerates.

I installed the new 178.24’s on a fresh Vista 64/SP1 OS yesterday. With MSTS I haven’t noticed anything different from the 178.13’s I had previously.

With RailSim I have noticed a frame rate jump from the 178.13’s. The only thing that makes me wonder is the fact that I also experienced a healthy frame rate increase in RailSim with my ATI setup with the new Catalyst 8.10’s, also on a fresh Vista 64/SP1 OS.

With this in mind I don’t know if it’s the drivers that have improved performance or possibly the Windows updates from the last few weeks.




Nvidia Gaming:

ASUS RAMPAGE FORMULA (Intel X48 chipset) BIOS 410
Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 w/Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme
OCZ Titanium XTC 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
EVGA GTX 280 FTW (178.24 Drivers)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
2x Western Digital Raptor 74GB (RAID 0) - Vista Ultimate 64 Bit/SP1
SILVERSTONE 1200Watt DA
SILVERSTONE TJ09-B



ATI Gaming:

ASUS Rampage Extreme BIOS 0501
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 w/Thermalright True Black Ultra-120 eXtreme
OCZ Intel Extreme Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
ATI 4870X2 (Catalyst 8.10)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
2x Western Digital Raptor 74GB (RAID 0) - Vista Ultimate 64 Bit/SP1
PC Power & Cooling T1KWSR 1000W
LIAN LI PC-A70B

[longiron]

From Nvidia re: vista x64 with the 178.24 drivers

Includes several 3D application performance improvements. The following are examples of improvements measured with v178.24 WHQL versus v175.19 WHQL driver:
Single GPU increases up to 11% in 3DMark Vantage (performance preset)
Single GPU increases up to 11% in Assassin's Creed DX10
Single GPU increases up to 15% in Bioshock DX10
Single GPU increases up to 15% in Call of Duty 4
Single GPU increases up to 8% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

While not up to Plainsman's experience, clearly Nvidia is working to optimize their drivers with Vista OS, leaving XP behind.

[plainsman]

Keep in mind, I was updating from older drivers still, 169.25. Nvidia states 175.19 has considerable performance improvements over older versions, so I got two generations of improvement. Also note, 178.13 and 178.24 have the same performance rating specs. The improvement would be from older drivers than 177.x. Also note this only applies to 8 and 9 series cards (260 and 280 never had older driver support).

[wacampbell]

> Keep in mind, I was updating from older drivers still, 169.25.


And I was updating from 162.22 - also a big jump to 178.24.

[djt1]

Nvidia has finally released the new 180 series drivers.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_180.42_beta.html

[chucksc]

I updated to these drivers after reading this thread and I'm not noticing any huge jump in framerates. Maybe it's slightly better, but hard to tell. Then again, my card is a 128MB GeForce 6200. I don't think the PhysX improvements would even apply to that card.
Must be a Geforce 8x, 9x or 200 series card for the driver improvements to work....