Hardware Orbiter 2010 and win7 requirements

[Gazza]

Hi all

I recently installed orbiter 2010 on my wife's computer with these specs:

NVIDIA GeForce 7025/nForce 630a chipset
AMD Athlon II X3 250 Triple Core processor running at 3.1 GHz
2GB DDR3
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium x64

My own PC which is temporary unavailable had these specs:

AMD Athlon II X2 6000
2GB DDR2
Geforce 9800 GTX+
Microsoft WindowsXP 32bit

I've never used Win7 until now but the FPS on my wifes machine is quite low.

I have a very strong feeling it's the onboard geforce chip that seems to be the cause of the problem but i've been out the hardware scene for a few years and would like some opinions on the win7 machine.

Thanks

 

[Mantis]

Onbaord graphics adapters with shared memory never perform as well as separate graphic cards with dedicated memory. The difference can be quite profound. When I buy a computer, I specifically exclude all machines that have onboard video with shared memory.

 

[Quintuss]

Isnt 2gb of ram too little for Win7?

Edit. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/system-requirements. I though so.

 

[PeterRoss]

I have GeForce GT210 and I've never had a decent framerate under Win7, that's why I have WinXP installed as second OS for running Orbiter.

The only way to have a playable framerate under Win7 I've found is to use D3D9 graphics client by jarmonik, but it have its drawbacks.

 

[Mantis]

I have GeForce GT210 and I've never had a decent framerate under Win7, that's why I have WinXP installed as second OS for running Orbiter.

The only way to have a playable framerate under Win7 I've found is to use D3D9 graphics client by jarmonik, but it have its drawbacks.

I have an ATI Mobility Radeon (laptop) HD 5870 with 1GB of dedicated RAM and I get phenominal frame rates at full screen 1920x1080 using Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit. Windows 7 definitely isn't the issue.

 

[Gazza]

Isnt 2gb of ram too little for Win7?

It performs ok for the task it was meant for however i needed to install orbiter 2010 to test out a new update to STS Payloads and realize how slow the FPS were. Im new to Win7 but i found this app with the following infomation :

Processor          6.8
Memory (RAM)       5.5
Graphics           3.7
Gaming graphics    3.3
Primary hard disk  3.9
 
Base score         3.3
Determined by lowest subscore

I take it a score of 10.0 is the bees knees of machines?

and yes, adding another 2gb of ram shouldn't hurt my bank balance.

Thanks

 

[PeterRoss]

I have an ATI Mobility Radeon (laptop) HD 5870 with 1GB of dedicated RAM and I get phenominal frame rates at full screen 1920x1080 using Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit. Windows 7 definitely isn't the issue.

Yes, I know, I've seen many posts here about big framerates under Win7 and I don't understand what's the problem with my system here. I have Pentium Dual-Core E6500 3GHz 2GB DDR2 RAM GeForce GT220 (yes, I've been wrong telling I have GT210 on the first place) with Windows 7 Enterprise Edition. I have had the same bad results with Win7 Ultimate.

Some ground bases rich with objects like Widewake or Greg Burch's equatorial bases or Kulch's SRC drops my framerate into miserable 3-6 fps. Turning Planetarium Mode on also brings some bad results. Energia with custom HUD enabled lowers framerate drastically too.

P.S. I'm getting these results with VistaBoost enabled and Aero and Gadgets disabled.

 

[Mantis]

It performs ok for the task it was meant for however i needed to install orbiter 2010 to test out a new update to STS Payloads and realize how slow the FPS were. Im new to Win7 but i found this app with the following infomation :

Processor          6.8
Memory (RAM)       5.5
Graphics           3.7
Gaming graphics    3.3
Primary hard disk  3.9
 
Base score         3.3
Determined by lowest subscore

I take it a score of 10.0 is the bees knees of machines?

and yes, adding another 2gb of ram shouldn't hurt my bank balance.

Thanks

Is that from the Windows experience Index? In that case, the maximum value used to be 5.9. They appear to have upped it though. My base score is 5.9 and my sub scores are:

Processor 7.0
Memory (RAM) 7.4
Graphics 6.0
Gaming graphics 6.0
Primary hard disk 5.9

 

[Gazza]

Is that from the Windows experience Index? In that case, the maximum value used to be 5.9. They appear to have upped it though. My base score is 5.9 and my sub scores are:

Processor 7.0
Memory (RAM) 7.4
Graphics 6.0
Gaming graphics 6.0
Primary hard disk 5.9

Yes. Infact my primary hard disk should of read 5.9 not 3.9.
Looking at your graphic/gaming index score , i see why my FPS are quite low.

Thanks

 

[jarmonik]

The inline d3d7 engine is running very badly on my Win 7 / DX11 computer. The DX7 is simply too old and drivers are bad.

 

[Hielor]

Isnt 2gb of ram too little for Win7?

Edit. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/system-requirements. I though so.

No, 2GB is plenty unless you're wanting to run all L14 textures.

It is true that Orbiter (with the default DX7 client) will usually see much better performance on XP than on Win7. If you're interested in the details, see http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=7356 .

Other than "installing a new OS," I'd recommend you look into using OGLA or the DX9 client if you're having performance issues on Win7.

 

[blixel]

The inline d3d7 engine is running very badly on my Win 7 / DX11 computer. The DX7 is simply too old and drivers are bad.

This is the same as I'm seeing on my Windows 7 system. If I run Orbiter.exe, I get frame rates as low as the single digits at times. Running orbiter_ng.exe with the D3D9Client module enabled, I get frame rates in the hundreds.

Unfortunately D3D9Client crashes a lot ... but Orbiter.exe is excruciating ... so I deal with the frequent crashes instead.

 

[n122vu]

I've never had a problem with framerates in the DX7 inline client under Windows 7. Even with onboard graphics on a laptop, I'm getting 40 fps these days. I see at the most about a 5% increase in performance with the DX9 client on both my laptop and my desktop.

My desktop PC specs are nothing to sneeze at either:
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ @2.3Ghz
4GB DDR2 667
MSI nVidia NX8600GT OC 256MB
Win7 Home Premium 64-bit
160GB Maxtor SATA 3.0Gbps

 

[blixel]

Weird. As you can see in these screenshots, the difference on my system is dramatic. Almost an 800% increase in frame rate.

Orbiter.exe

orbiter_ng.exe with D3D9Client module

Here is a copy/paste of my system specs:


• Windows 7 Pro 64-bit SP1
• Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-720QM Processor (1.6GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB) (TURBO MODE, the i7-720QM goes up to 2.8Ghz)
• 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• 320GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
• 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 230M
• 17.3" diagonal HD+ High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1600 x 900)
• FREE Upgrade to Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer
• Webcam
• Intel Wireless-N Mini-card

 

[Hielor]

Weird. As you can see in these screenshots, the difference on my system is dramatic. Almost an 800% increase in frame rate.

There's nothing weird about it--if you read my previous post and follow the link there, you can get the technical details as to why this occurs:

It is true that Orbiter (with the default DX7 client) will usually see much better performance on XP than on Win7. If you're interested in the details, see http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=7356 .

 

[blixel]

There's nothing weird about it--if you read my previous post and follow the link there, you can get the technical details as to why this occurs:

My "weird" remark was in regards to n122vu's comment wherein he said, "I see at the most about a 5% increase in performance with the DX9 client..."

I thought it was weird that he only saw a 5% increase.

 

[jarmonik]

The GDI is a killer. By default, there is no GDI access into the backbuffer in the D3D9Client and the SketchPad is DirectX accelerated when drawing into the backbuffer (i.e. the HUD). This is one thing that is responsible about the better framerates under the D3D9Client and missing of the warning text "Orbiter shutdown mode..." in the screenshot. Displaying that text will cost a lot of framerate and that is why it's recommended to use SketchPad instead of GDI.

 

[xlns]

It performs ok for the task it was meant for however i needed to install orbiter 2010 to test out a new update to STS Payloads and realize how slow the FPS were. Im new to Win7 but i found this app with the following infomation :

Processor          6.8
Memory (RAM)       5.5
Graphics           3.7
Gaming graphics    3.3
Primary hard disk  3.9
 
Base score         3.3
Determined by lowest subscore

I take it a score of 10.0 is the bees knees of machines?

and yes, adding another 2gb of ram shouldn't hurt my bank balance.

Thanks

Hello!

I have a HP laptop with Win7 Starter OS with same performance index as you:

Processor Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU T4500 @ 2.30GHz 5,6
Memory (RAM) 2,00 GB 5,5
Graphics Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family 3,5
Gaming graphics 796 MB Total available graphics memory 3,3
Primary hard disk 90GB Free (117GB Total) 5,6

And Orbiter2010p2 runs just fine @1366x768x32 ... FPS do drop somewhat when I'm close to ISS with L14 Earth in the back, but not so bad to distract my mind from the game. Like, it "twitches" every now and then, but not bad, as I said.

 

[francisdrake]

Try Vistaboost

"Vista enables ClearType font smoothing by default, which causes an Orbiter framerate hit compared to XP. VistaBoost is a plug-in module for Orbiter that automatically disables font smoothing when Orbiter launches and restores font smoothing to its previous setting when Orbiter terminates. If you have a fast video card, VistaBoost can improve your Orbiter framerate under Vista by 60% or more."

The same applies for Win 7. Vistaboost runs here as well.
http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=7852

 

[PeterRoss]

"Vista enables ClearType font smoothing by default, which causes an Orbiter framerate hit compared to XP. VistaBoost is a plug-in module for Orbiter that automatically disables font smoothing when Orbiter launches and restores font smoothing to its previous setting when Orbiter terminates. If you have a fast video card, VistaBoost can improve your Orbiter framerate under Vista by 60% or more."

The same applies for Win 7. Vistaboost runs here as well.
http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=7852

Tried. It makes fps difference of just a few percents with my GeForce GT220. Looks like it's not very 'fast' video card after all (in fact it's a low-end hardware, I think). Funny thing here is that most of new games with modern graphics are working fine with it.

Yeah, I've heard Hielor and jarmonik, but I'm still agree with blixel - it's weird that there are such a big difference with different computers. Is it all about videocards?