Out of Pod Experience

nVidia 650 would be just about perfect for you.

I also found this review/comparison between a 660 and a 9800gt, which is close, but not the same as the 650, but is interesting reading from a technical standpoint, speaking about the 9800gt.

but yeah, looking at the stats, I think the 650 is cats whiskers for you.

AK

Thank you very much for the replies guys. Picked this one -

http://www.dabs.com/products/zotac-geforce-gtx-650-1071-mhz-2gb-pci-express-3-0-hdmi-890Z.html?q=650&src=16

Just need to check that my monitors will support the DVI leads. I know one will but I don't know about the other, can you tell me why there are 2 different types of DVI socket on the board instead of 2 the same??

Thanks

Pred

This.

Also, the site Akita linked is far better than Dabs.com for buying stuff in the UK.

I've been using Scan for 10 years and have built 30+ systems in that time for myself, friends and family. I've only ever had one return due to a manufacturer's defect and it was sorted within 48 hours.

I'm in the market for a new card too, how about the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, or is that outdated already?

if you go that way, take the MSI twin frozr and possibly the 2Gb version. Tbh I didn't read any review about the 650 and how much it is better than the 560Ti but if you can find an MSI 560Ti at a good price you could get a really good deal.

btw: 560Ti 1Gb can run 2 clients on 2 monitors at 1920x1080 flawlessly, the 2Gb version could be good for more than 2 clients or for other games more ram-demanding than eve (almost anyone since EVE is actually a dx9 game, while all these cards support dx11 already)

In any case if the price difference isn't remarkable, I'd go for a 650. It's a Kepler card, a complete new world.

call me crazy but wouldn't a 6670 work in his case.

Check this out.

http://www.ebuyer.com/398334-point-of-view-gt-440-2048mb-vga-dvi-hdmi-pci-e-graphics-card-vga-440-c2-2048

Not sure why people are suggesting these powerhouse cards for (not powerhouse in power consumption).
I have a xfx nvidia geforce 250 gts and it runs 4 windows of eve at max settings with ~210 fps in station.

The one I linked should be way more than enough for your needs and at a fair price.

Edit: spelling and grammar.

There is a detail that I missed out. I'm running on a 15" CRT (Long story don't ask) I still have 4 windows open running at the same time. I alt tab between them and NO, thay are not minimized and running in the background. I just re-checked my fps meter and you're right, I'm not getting ~200+ fps. Its more like ~160 fps in station which is still awesome. I have windows and EVE running that is it. I go through and turn off all unneccesary programs and windows apps. Now I also have the fan on the VC OCed to max rpms all the time. But the rest is still stock.

Now you also have to take into consideration the rest of the system as well. If the FSB, pci bus and south bridge bandwidth sucks then it doesn't matter how good of a card you put in it. It will always be bottle-necked. Predsaki has already stated that he would only be able to use about 80% of the card anyways due to other limiting factors. If he wants to dump around 120 on a new vga and only get around 60% ~ 80% usage out of the card that's fine. I just don't see a reason why waste the extra money on something you can't even use due to limiting factors. I say get a way cheaper card at only a slight performance decrease compared to an awesome card and use 100% and it would still do better on that system.

One of the major bottleneck points is the HDD. It doesn't matter how fast the system is if it takes forever to pull the data from the drive. My fps increased by ~30% across the board for all games after i switched to a SSD. Best investment ever.

But hey, I could be wrong and maybe I'm just overthinking from an IT/engineering aspect (No certs, IT degree, self taught and how my brain works) Ultimately he will need to upgrade his system.

My system:
MB: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX
Pro: Phenom II x4 965 Black
Mem: AMD 4gb DDR3 1333
VGA: xfx nvidia 250 gts 1gb 256bit x1
HDD: Kingston 64gb SSD
PSU: Apevia 680w

I know you're thinking there is no reason for me to even post but I jsut want to point out that your overall system does make a difference. I'm not hardcore and I only upgrade about once every 2-3 years with a 200-250 pounds range as long as I'm working and I'm covered in everything else. Seeing as he has a 9800gt, I would presume he has a PCI-Express 2.0 slot. It also has a 256bit interface. I personnally don't see where he would see a performance decrease in this area here if he upgrades but the rest would be a major role. I would need to know more about his system so i can get down to the numbers and see where we could cut corners. If his system is 5+ yrs old, I would suggest upgrading over time within the next yr.

FYI, the 9800gt, 250gts and the 330gts are just relabeled 8800gt according to wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_9_Series#GeForce_9800_GT

Also the monitor plays an important role. Especially resolution and refresh rate. anything passed 60fps on a 60Hz monitor is a waste. The monitor can not keep up to even project those frames beyond 60. Now, 120Hz is a different story. In terms of resolution, Higher equals more work for the vga not necessarily better graphics. This whole "HD" fad is a load of bullocks. It's just higher resolutions and there is nothing fancy about it. Computer monitors have been doing 2560x1600 resolutions for yrs and no one called it HD. Stick 1920x1080 on a TV and it's HD now. It's all just a marketing scheme. now up the refresh rate to 120Hz and ill take that monitor over one with a higher resolution everytime.


EDIT: btw, on a single client running "fullHD" on a 50" 60Hz 1080p LCD TV with max settings and AA, I'm getting roughly ~200fps in station. It's all about how you run your system and how you optimize.

Then I am guessing you are running in fullscreen mode.
In that case, the rest might as well be minimized, they don't really use much of the GPU in that state.
Even in windowed mode, with the focus out from the window, it already gets shifted to a much lower priority... with fullscreen alt-tabbing, it's as if they're barely there in comparison (you still feel them, but far less).
Keep a FPS monitor open on each of them, and see the FPS jump down while they are not on display, and jump back up as you alt-tab back to them.


He was concerned that he might get some bottleneck on his machine with an expensive card, and he was asking us if he would (he wouldn't, unless he goes into large fleet combat situations).


For EVE, after the grid has loaded, if you still have any free RAM remaining (so nothing uses the swap file), HDD/SSD performance is pretty much meaningless. Depending on OS version, loaded services and apps, 4 GB might be barely enough or way too much.
With Win7-64bit with default services and 4 EVE instances, 4 GB will most likely start chewing the swap file. You would probably have gotten much of the same performance upgrade by just adding more RAM to your machine.
Now, don't get me wrong, a SSD is great in general (especially for office type work, not only gaming), but for many simultaneous EVE clients, more RAM is usually a better answer (almost same improvement at a fraction of the price).



That's not just awesome, it's unbelievable. As in, I have a bit of difficulty believing you. The difference between a clean OS install pruned to the max running EVE, and a chock-full-of-semi-junk system running EVE should be nowhere near that huge, yet you are getting a performance out of your hardware which should be borderline impossible on factory settings, and very difficult even if the board was pretty seriously factory overclocked,

Can you please post a few screenshots on the big screen you can use in 1080p ?
Preferably one of the ESC menu showing all the graphics options (and as much of the next view as possible via blurry transparency), and one with the FPS monitor open clearly showing your claimed huge FPS ?
And what drivers are you using ? What settings do you use in your drivers ? Fiddling JUST with the driver settings and nothing else can actually improve my FPS by almost 50% while only sacrificing minimal visual quality, but it's there and able to be seen if you look closely.
Also, what station, what ship in hangar, how far away from it is the camera, and where is it pointing ? I generally talk FPS for any frigate in a Caldari station on the default camera position. That also can mean up to almost 10% FPS difference easily, as weird as it sounds.
Or maybe it''s a seriously factory-overclocked 250 GTS. Do you have GPU-Z ? Can you post a screenshot of the video card data too ?

There's some option, situation or circumstance you have to be missing, that FPS is just too much for max image quality on what hardware you say you have, and no amount of optimization without sacrificing image quality should be able to make that happen.

But in case that' huge FPS is what you're actually getting at max possible detail, both in drivers and EVE, and with a normal camera view... congratulations, you are one both really lucky and insanely thorough guy.

Please also see yesterday's edits with regards to drivers, their settings and other parameters.
With significantly older drivers and maxed-out image quality and responsiveness settings on default hangar view plus highest AA in-game setting (enhanced by driver settings) in 1080p, I could drop as low as 100 FPS.
But with the newest drivers on minimal DRIVER settings, zooming out in hangar view and disabling AA altogether (but not altering anything else ingame) I could climb to around 270 FPS in the same resolution.
That's without changing the video card frequencies at all, and it's a huge difference.

...

By the way, keeping the pagefile on the SSD when you have pretty heavy pagefile activity is a surefire way to make your SSD croak much earlier than it could last for.
Before even considering letting the pagefile on the SSD, you should make sure you have enough system RAM so that pagefile access would be fairly infrequent (and in small doses).
For Win7-64bit, even if kept very clean and tidy, four EVE instances with just 4GB of RAM is a bit low, you'll almost surely have some significant pagefile activity.

The oldest SSDs were SLC (single layer cell), holding 1 bit per cell.
SLCs are pretty solid, for up to 100k erase/write cycles, and still fairly reliable even afterwards.
They didn't really need to use complicated wear leveling schemes because of that, yet some basic version of it was still useful.
But SLC storage is fairly expensive, so the market spoke, and MLCs soon started being used.

Slightly newer and more affordable SSDs have MLC (multi-layer cells) that hold 2 bits per cell.
This obviously means cheaper per-GB prices, but it comes at the cost of reducing the reliability to at most 10k erase/write cycles (and you usually want to use at least a 1-bit ECC, just in case, thus slightly reducing the price advantage).
After about 10k cycles, the data is no longer reliably stored (unless you use multi-bit ECC, which brings the cost advantage down a bit further), and 10k writes can happen pretty fast in some locations if you don't employ wear leveling.
At least newer SSD models have pretty decent wear leveling and TRIM support (the OS also needs to support TRIM, but Win7 does that natively already), but heavy-duty pagefile usage can still quickly wear down the drive.

Some of the newest and cheapest SSDs use TLCs (triple-layer cells), which store 3 bits per cell.
Their cost per GB is obviously even lower, but that comes with a further reduction in expected life, down to a mere 5k erase/write cycles. And the need for ECC bits is even stronger.
Needles to say, heavy-duty pagefile usage will fairly quickly cream the SSD's reliability if you're using a TLC drive, regardless of wear leveling. Unless your drive is at least twice as large compared to a similarly priced MLC (seldom the case), it will fail faster due to that constant rewriting, even if the wear leveling does a perfect job in both cases.
Also, TLC has slightly slower access times compared to MLC, but it still beats HDDs out of the water by orders of magnitude.

TLCs are good for data you often read but seldom write, and you should avoid putting your swap file on them. Very nice for installed games and such.
MLCs are acceptable for swap file usage, but only with ample extra system RAM. Fairly decent for OS drive.
SLCs are the way to go if you can afford them. Best used as SSD cache drives due to their reliability, and awesome for swap files (a lot more system RAM to begin with is still always a better and cheaper first choice though).

P.S. An ideal compromise between cost, reliability and storage space would be something like this : 3 drives - a small SLC SSD, a large MLC/TLC SSD, and a huge HDD (or even several huge HDDs).
The small SLC SSD would be for the pagefile first and foremost, and also maybe as a SSD cache partition for the huge and slow HDD (mostly keep less frequently used games and your media files on the HDD, but all installed games could go in there as well).
The reasonably large MLC (or even TLC) would be for the OS and frequently used apps/games (or just your frequently used online games, for single-player games, the HDD is good enough when paired with the SLC SSD as cache).