Graphic Cards Compatible With Flexsim

I hope you guys can improve your compatibility/performance with the major manufacturers (ATi, Nvidia and Intel) since many students like me can't afford a extra high end graphics card for the sole purpose of running flexsim. Also, this problem was not well documented in the readme/help file which cause me to take some time to fix my problems. Maybe you guys can at least make this page more prominent because I'm sure that a lot of people besides me are facing this problem. Lastly, I hope my test results prove to be useful for many Ati users out there, I'll be adding in results of my old Redeon 9600 soon.


My desktop specs are as follows:
Core2Duo 6300
ATi Redeon X1950 Pro


Tested using official Catalyst driver 7.11-8.5
Compatibility mode off
- Only 7.11 works perfectly without compatibility mode. All newer versions exhibit artifacts and distortions.
- Apparently, the same artifacts were observed through all the newer catalyst, therefore I think if you guys manage to solve the bugs in 7.12, it should work fine all the way to 8.5.
- Strangely the "high performance" setting runs slower than "best quality".

Compatibility mode on
- Runs fine on all drivers but extremely laggy



Tested using Omega driver based on catalyst 7.12
Compatibility mode off
- Similar distortion problems as with catalyst 7.12

Compatibility mode on
- Runs fine but extremely laggy




Laptop specs as follows:
Thinkpad T61
Core2Duo 7300
Intel X3100

Tested using latest drivers from lenovo (as of 21 July 2008)
Compatibility mode off
- All objects displayed correctly with no artifacts but unable to click and select any of them.

Compatibility mode on
- Runs fine but extremely laggy

You could try dropping the hardware acceleration gradually if you have mouse problems. Run desk.cpl and go to the settings tab, then click the advanced button and go to the troubleshoot tab. There you will find a slider which can be adjusted to disable certain accelerations. We've had some success on some non-nVidia machines with this method - albeit trial and error.

Hi Jason

I've haven pains trying to make ATI cards working properly with Flexsim. Here and there I encountered problems as mentioned in your post. And from version to version Flexsim may break compatibility with ATI cards as I noticed the latest Flexsim version won't work but previous version of Flexsim works fine using same graphic drivers and settings.

I am thinking to change my ATI card (a fine FireGL V3400) to a NVidia card although I agree with you Flexism should not rule out major video card vendors like ATI. I also find sometimes ATI card has hard time with AC3D program, which is used by many Flexsim modelers for creating 3D objects.

As a small tip, you may try to change all 3D settings in Catalyst Control Center to "Use application settings". That solves my compatibility problem of ATI card with Flexsim v4.32, although the graphic quality is not very good.

Hello,

Does anyone have any Flexsim experience with: NVIDIA QUADRO FX 360M 512MB Turbo Cache Memory (256 dedicated)?


Thanks in advance.

Hi Goksin,

I have been using a DELL Precision M4300 since February and that one have a Quadro FX 360M graphic card.

It have work good for me, I am using High Quality for Flexsim.
Have not seen any problems.

Lars-Olof

I am thinking to replace the ATI card with NVidia card on my desktop. I am thinking NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX or GeForce 9800 GX2. Anyone has experience with these two cards? What is your suggestion? Thanks.

Has anyone experience of the Nvidia Geforce 9500M GS?

I bought a new laptop with a decent but ATI graphics card, just before starting to use Flexsim - I've given up runing even medium sized models so it's time to buy another laptop!!

Obviusly I'm slightly paranoid that the next laptop runs Flexsim well.

Cheers

Kenny

There are some tips in this post for making Flexsim working with ATI cards. Do you use ATI Catalyst Control Center? I found that if I change all 3D setting options to "Use application settings", at least I can run and edit model smoothly even the graphic is not very good. Another thing I found is the latest ATI driver may not work good for Flexsim. So you can also try old ATI drivers.

Thanks Alan,

I got an Asus gaming laptop - G1S / Core2Duo T7500 / 4GB Ram / Nvidia G8600M GS / Vista Ultimate / 1680x1080 screen

- WOW! What a difference to ATI-based Laptop - Toshiba A200 / Core2Duo / 3GB Ram / ATI Mobility Radion HD 2600 / Vista Home ATI

The Asus runs smoothly in best qual and full screen. The Tosh couldn't even see some 3D models on high comp.


FYI -
According to the guy in the shop, the 9 series is pretty much the same as the 8 series but uses less power and it's the second number that indicates the power of the card. The benchmark results tend to agree.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-...ist.844.0.html

Kenny

Is anyone currently using or have the ability to test any ATI graphics cards in the Mobility Radeon HD line-up with Flexsim?

Mobility Radeon HD 2600, 2700, 3650, 3670, 3850, or 3870 ?

I find Kenny's story interesting because the two graphics cards he compared are supposed to be direct competitors. Does anyone know a technical reason why Flexsim always seems to run better with Nvidia?

Is it the shader speed and memory speed that make the difference?
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mob...00.3771.0.html

Kris

I got my Nvidia Geforce 9800 GX2 (the highest end Geforce card in the market now) working finally. It requires a lot of power and I have to replace my old one in order to make it work. Also the motherboard BIOS needs to be refreshed with the newest driver to be compatible with this new card. I also have the lastest graphic driver downloaded from the Nvidia website.

I do get better quality and performance than my old ATI FireGL 3400 card. However, it is not better than NVIDIA Quado FX 3500 card on my other computer. When I open a big model (say with more than 500 objects under the model tree), pan and zoom operation is not smooth. I expected a better result.

Hi Kris - I'm happy to test/compare your models using both laptops mentioned above (ATI HD 2600 & Nvidia G8600M GS)

Won't be till end of October though as I'll be at Flexsimposium and then a wee holiday in Hawaii on the way back to Melbourne.

Kenny

Originally Posted by Nico Zahn

Hi,
I am mostly working on Desktop with a Nvidia 7900 GTX Card. Also this card has some 512MB of memory I experience some delays (in big modells with a lot of drawings) when clicking in the model space(sometimes it takes up to 5s). Once it snapped in I can move around quiete smoothly.

It seems the Geforece 9800 GX2 (a very powerful graphic card) has the same issue although the delay is only 1 or 2 seconds but it makes you not comfortable. Anybody has solved the issue? I've tried to download the newest driver and adjusted a couple of settings but got no changes.

The slowness in clicking in the model is caused because many OpenGL graphics drivers don't provide hardware acceleration when drawing in GL_SELECT mode (GL_SELECT mode is used to figure out where the mouse is clicking), so when you click, the processor is doing all the work as opposed to the graphics card, hence the slow-down. It is dependent mostly on the graphics card/driver configuration, so you can try installing older drivers to see if it fixes the issue, but it's really just trial-and-error.

In doing further research on this problem, it appears that the GL_SELECT mode is a "legacy" technology, and that OpenGL plans to phase it out with its next major version in favor of other, developer-implemented picking models. We therefore plan on re-implementing the selection mechanism in Flexsim for the next major release (5.0).

The NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GT in my laptop works fine, no problems at all.


System: Laptop from Cyber Sytem, Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 @ 2.53GHz with 4GB, Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit and NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GT with 512MB

Originally Posted by Kenny Macleod

I got an Asus gaming laptop - G1S / Core2Duo T7500 / 4GB Ram / Nvidia G8600M GS / Vista Ultimate / 1680x1080 screen

- WOW! What a difference to ATI-based Laptop - Toshiba A200 / Core2Duo / 3GB Ram / ATI Mobility Radion HD 2600 / Vista Home ATI

The Asus runs smoothly in best qual and full screen. The Tosh couldn't even see some 3D models on high comp.

After such a promissing start - Although still WAY better that my previous laptop, i often can't see 3D images - eg the ASRS demo sometime shows me the 3D pallets and scenery. I might see the 3D images after a reboot and on high compatibility but i can't garantee it.

Can anyone suggest how i might tune the system to work better with Flexsim?

Thanks

Kenny

Kenny,

I am not sure if this might be your problem, but I figured out that after install the v4.50beta and switch between the two Flexsim Versions I need to compile the entire session, before starting to work with it.

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9950 @ 2.83 GHz
4,00 GB RAM
Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit
nVidia Geforce 9800M GTX 1GB

Looks like Flexsim works fine on my above system.

Thanks Tom - I'm just using the the old version and the 3D objects often just don't appear - eg - i rarely see he 3D graphics in that presentation model you sent me. Even the Flexsim rendering on your spinning 3D boxes is usually missing.

I'll install Visual Studio Express and try compiling; however as it is an intermittent thing, I suspect it's a graphics card issue.

Kenny

We are using the HP Elitebook 8730W with the NVidia Quadro FX 2700M. Performance is definitely better than the ATI cards available from HP but there are still issues.
If you run in dual monitor mode, Flexsim will eventually start showing the background through windows. The only solution is to stop and restart Flexsim. It seems to occur faster the higher you have the the external monitor resolution set. Going to single display on the lapto seems to eliminate it. I suspect it may be due to the system running out of video memory. We are using the version with 512M VRam. Things might be better with 1G VRam

I have the Quadro FX 2500M and I have experienced the same issues as mentioned (background coming through in the windows). You don't have to restart flexsim, if you recompile (F2 shortcut key) it is also over.

After I installed the latest drivers (about a year ago there was a new update for my card) most of the problems where gone, especially the background problem was solved. So try getting the latest driver and recompile instead of restarting (saves at least some time)

Steven