Find the bottleneck

[stoppingby4now]

Yeah the new autoconfigure game profiles and autoupdate drivers features could be really nice if they do it right.

I've seen autoupdate capability in the latter 200 series drivers' date=' but I don't know if it works. I never install that feature.[/quote']This is new software that is gonna use a new nvidia cloud database to store all game info and all hardware info and autoconfigure your game profiles and drivers to get max quality from each game you have installed on your specific system according to your full hardware specs. Still pie in the sky' date=' but at least they are trying something new.[/quote']Ahh, hadn't heard of that. I can see the appeal of that as you wouldn't need to wait for new drivers to get new game support.

[Besidilo]

Yeah the new autoconfigure game profiles and autoupdate drivers features could be really nice if they do it right.

I've seen autoupdate capability in the latter 200 series drivers' date=' but I don't know if it works. I never install that feature.[/quote']This is new software that is gonna use a new nvidia cloud database to store all game info and all hardware info and autoconfigure your game profiles and drivers to get max quality from each game you have installed on your specific system according to your full hardware specs. Still pie in the sky' date=' but at least they are trying something new.[/quote']Ahh, hadn't heard of that. I can see the appeal of that as you wouldn't need to wait for new drivers to get new game support.

Yes, you would. That software has nothing do with new drivers' support for recent games.

[stoppingby4now]

Yeah the new autoconfigure game profiles and autoupdate drivers features could be really nice if they do it right.

I've seen autoupdate capability in the latter 200 series drivers' date=' but I don't know if it works. I never install that feature.[/quote']This is new software that is gonna use a new nvidia cloud database to store all game info and all hardware info and autoconfigure your game profiles and drivers to get max quality from each game you have installed on your specific system according to your full hardware specs. Still pie in the sky' date=' but at least they are trying something new.[/quote']Ahh, hadn't heard of that. I can see the appeal of that as you wouldn't need to wait for new drivers to get new game support.

Yes, you would. That software has nothing do with new drivers' support for recent games.

You don't need recent drivers to support most new games, but you want them for the optimizations and official profile support. If they do this right, there is nothing stopping them from being able to provide intermediary profiles for new games before a new driver is released. I just watched the key note speech with Jen-Hsun Huang, and he subtly hinted at this capability.

[Besidilo]

You don't need recent drivers to support most new games, but you want them for the optimizations and official profile support.

 

Optimisations and SLI profiles is what driver's support is about.

[stoppingby4now]

You don't need recent drivers to support most new games' date=' but you want them for the optimizations and official profile support.[/quote']Optimisations and SLI profiles is what driver's support is about.

I'm not disputing that, but there are games that don't need updates to work well. All I'm saying is that there is no technical reason that limits them from being able produce profiles that don't require a new driver. And in the other cases, a temporary profile can help to improve your experience until a new driver is released, and then it can all be magically updated.

 

They have a chance to be brilliant at this.

[Bealdwine]

In relation to the OP I found this from HiAlgoBoost on his mod forum quite interesting:

 

The best way to tell if you are CPU or GPU limited - is to compare fps for the same scene, at different resolutions. The GPU load is in general proportional to the area of the screen (number of pixels), CPU load is constant. So the time it takes to render 1 frame is T[sec] = C + G*(WxH). So if you have several points known (2 are enough) you can solve for C and G. 1/C will be the theoretical maximal fps for your system.

 

In other words - in a system that is heavily CPU limited, decreasing the resolution will not affect the framerate. In the heavily GPU limited systems, the fps would go up by a factor of x9 ( 3 times 3 ). On a typical system, and depending on a scene - I have found that this factor is (more realistically) - x4 - x5. Hope this clears things a bit.

 

[Neovalen]

In relation to the OP I found this from HiAlgoBoost on his mod forum quite interesting:

The best way to tell if you are CPU or GPU limited - is to compare fps for the same scene, at different resolutions. The GPU load is in general proportional to the area of the screen (number of pixels), CPU load is constant. So the time it takes to render 1 frame is T[sec] = C + G*(WxH). So if you have several points known (2 are enough) you can solve for C and G. 1/C will be the theoretical maximal fps for your system.In other words - in a system that is heavily CPU limited, decreasing the resolution will not affect the framerate. In the heavily GPU limited systems, the fps would go up by a factor of x9 ( 3 times 3 ). On a typical system, and depending on a scene - I have found that this factor is (more realistically) - x4 - x5. Hope this clears things a bit.

 

Based on my results it's definitely GPU limited both in speed and VRAM. Now I just need to decide what to do about it.

Upgrading my video card requires me to swap up motherboards if I want the full effect due to changes in PCI-E Bandwidth( Link ), however I could use my current system in a reduced capacity.

 

I either:

a) Live with it until the "full" Nvidia cards come out in August and upgrade my entire system then.

b) Do a minor upgrade now just to get a slightly better framerate/higher VRAM and upgrade again later.

 

I'm fairly sure now is not the right time to do a full computer upgrade.

[frihyland]

Oh thats nice and mathy , he doesn't have a formula to compute VRAM use at different resolutions does he?

[Bealdwine]

Oh thats nice and mathy , he doesn't have a formula to compute VRAM use at different resolutions does he?

 

Not that I noticed, but you could read through his thread (only 37 or so pages ;) ) or PM him.

 

A warning on his mods boost method tho'. It's intended for really underpowered systems with a GPU bottleneck as it dynamically alters resolution during movement among other things - a very clever system but one that drastically reduces graphic quality at times.