Hardware Guide for X3

[Doug Park]

We don't consider the desktop management options of video cards when we make our recommendations. Use of one of these systems is not supported by or tested by us.

Our recommendations on video cards lean toward Nividia because they have fewer compatibility issues with OpenGL in general than ATI. However, ATI cards are still a good choice so if the use of the supplied desktop management software is an important consideration to you, then that may make ATI a better choice for you.

[Ray C]

Thanks for that, Doug

Ray C

[BuildingDesign]

BTW: let me sate my experience was a few months ago with Vista not win7. Drivers change and NVidia's policy may change?? I was surprised to read Ray got Nview working at all with his GTX so who knows what will happen even as soon as tommorrow? So do your homework.

I didn't even get an acknowledgement that Nvidia even received my emails so who knows?? I might also be able to have another look at Ultramon once I go to win7 as well.
I dunno if ART, being a software developer, may have a contact that they could get an answer from on Nvidia's position in this matter but I certainly got no joy??

[Brian Batson]

Ray......... I have used dual monitors exclusively for years and nview was a real time saver for window management. On my last hardware upgrade I found that nview was not an option. What I do now and actually prefer to nview is simply open chief on the left monitor, hit shift f6 to put the drawing window in its own window, stretch chief across the right monitor (the drawing window will stay on the left screen). Now you can open any other view in another window and hit shift f6 and the two windows will fill the two monitors. The currently active screen will always fill the left monitor when you shftF6 so you can easily move windows from one screen to the other. Maybe this will help....

[Ray C]

Ray......... I have used dual monitors exclusively for years and nview was a real time saver for window management. On my last hardware upgrade I found that nview was not an option. What I do now and actually prefer to nview is simply open chief on the left monitor, hit shift f6 to put the drawing window in its own window, stretch chief across the right monitor (the drawing window will stay on the left screen). Now you can open any other view in another window and hit shift f6 and the two windows will fill the two monitors. The currently active screen will always fill the left monitor when you shftF6 so you can easily move windows from one screen to the other. Maybe this will help....

Thanks for that
It's just not the same though :-(

Ray

[vintage58]

I am working on the specs for a new computer for X3. There is very little talk of AMD 1090T 6 core. All that I read on other sites say it is a great gaming cpu and will be better in the future as software takes advantage of the 6 cores. The price is very low, so has anybody considered this?

[Larry Kumpost]

I am working on the specs for a new computer for X3. There is very little talk of AMD 1090T 6 core. All that I read on other sites say it is a great gaming cpu and will be better in the future as software takes advantage of the 6 cores. The price is very low, so has anybody considered this?

I must start by saying I am in the same boat, trying to figure out the best bang for the buck in getting a new system. I will say that I have had very good service from my current (old) AMD dual core, which runs X3 OK except for a graphic driver glitch when I zoom in or out in 3D views.

What I am hearing in this thread is that, while Doug Park said the more cores the better, in addition to how the program uses the additional cores, how the system is set up to utilize those cores will make a difference. This may, however, be more of a factor in notebooks where they are trying to keep the power requirements and excess heat down so they run at a slower speed until the demand is higher. Question is, what triggers the use of additional cores and higher speed? Based on what I have heard here, you want a system where the CPU runs over 2 Ghz at the low end.

Short version is be careful of systems that have a CPU that run at a range from 1.66 to 2.8 Ghz or you may be stuck running at the lower speed for most things in Chief.

Perhaps others have more/better information on this issue.

[Nuieve]

So, does X3 support 6-core processors or not? I mean does it actually use all 6 of them or just 4? From my limited knowledge of PC, software MUST be designed to utilize a certain number of cores. So X3 either knows how to work with 6-core CPUs or it doesn't, in which case buying Phenom X6 for X3 will be a waste of money. Any official word on it?

It would be very nice if someone benchmarked various PCs doing the same scene/rendering. Would be interesting to know what to spend money on - good CPU or good videocard.

[lbuttery]

I remember seeing posts by someone from CA stating "the more cores the better"

while Chief may only use X cores you would usually have other software running and the OS itself etc

might be a good idea to call tech support on Tuesday to discuss

Lew

[kiwideziner]

for my two cents worth I would go 4 cores and get a faster speed for similar money.

[Doug Park]

Chief supports 6 and more cores. Some algorithms, such as ray tracing scale well to as many cores as you can buy. Others don't scale as well so as more cores are added some things will speed up better than others.

[eighkhigh]

Tale of Two HP Laptops...

X3 on Laptop #1 -- Screamin'. Awesome. Makes me dizzy.
X3 on Laptop #2 -- 1' 45" to launch X3 to get to the Options screen. Freezes for 30" before it even thinks it can look at a 3D perspective.

CA support said: "ATI Mobility Radeon is a chipset and won't work well with X3." Great...

I'm confused as I see no such warnings on the forums. I'm about to dump Laptop #2. Any counter arguements saying Laptop#2 should work just fine?
Thanks, Mark

LAPTOP#1 -- HP dv7t. Intel i7 quad; 6Gb RAM; NVidea GeForce w/ 1G video ram.

LAPTOP #2 -- HP dv6z. AMD Phenom quadcore @ 2GHz; 6Gb RAM; ATI Mobility Radeon HD5650 w/ 1G video RAM.

[Marc Kleinmann]

I'm looking at the HP DV7 4080 model which has the i7 with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650. I've read here that someone had an issue with this card on a HP Laptop, but w an AMD processor. So are there Known issues with the ATI cards and X3 or was this just a single strange occurance? Anybody running X3 on this particular Latop model by any chance? Thx for your input.

[marty]

I havent had any issues with the ATI card in my laptop and my main system has an ATI 5700 which works well. Both have intel processors though.

[Doug Park]

Launch time depends on a lot of factors as follows:

1) The program and dlls need to be loaded. The first time they are loaded DLLs are read from disk and cached in memory by the OS. Amount of memory and speed of the disk can make a big difference for this part.

2) Libraries are loaded. Again on the first launch the OS will cache portions of the library file in memory so it will be faster later. Memory and disk speed are important factors. Size of your library is also important. If on one system the library has much fewer items the time to load will be less.

3) We try to ping our server to validate your right to use Chief. This normally is very fast, less than a second, but under the right circumstances it can take quite a few seconds for the network connection to time out. A good connection or clear disconnection from the network make this fast.

4) CPU speed. There is a fair amount of processing that occurs but this is normally a small percentage of the actual launch time which is mostly limited by disk speed.


I don't have any experience with the recent AMD processors. Just because something has i7 on the cover is also not a guarantee of good performance. There are several flavors of this processor, some of which are targeted to low cost systems.

The lower power mobile cards usually exhibit much worse performance regardless of vendor so you have to be careful of what you buy.

Unfortunately, the specs on computers can be very hard to decipher so some research needs to be done before your purchase. When buying a laptop I would tend to look at laptops that are designed as gaming computers. These will generally have the better video cards and faster CPUs and will usually be somewhat more expensive.

When you get into the lower cost systems a lot more care about what you buy is required so you don't end up with a lemon.