Graphic Cards Compatible With Flexsim

Hi Phil

Currently I'm working with the latest driver suite from Dell.
From the AMD (ATI) website you cannot download the driver directly, for the FirePro the ATI website link you to the Dell or HP website, the two brand that install the FirePro M8900 (my card model).

From you OpenGL experience you never experienced problem with the GL_SELECT mode?

Any suggestion is appreciated.

Thanks
Luciano.


P.S.: to be honest I bought the my new Dell with the ATI excatly to verify how FirePro work with Flexsim!

We had problems with GL_SELECT in version 4, particularly with ATI cards because they often don't support GL_SELECT. Because of this, we implemented two new selection mechanisms for version 5. We default to using occlusion queries for selection, and change to use different mechanisms based on what extensions the card says are available.

Are you having issues with Flexsim5 or 4?

Hi Phil,

My issues are with Flexsim 5.12

I'm thinking about buying a Nvidia GeForce videocard for a PC.
I've been using laptops since FlexSim Version 1 (actually FlexSim Beta) with very good results but I would like to test something more powerful without the thermal limits the laptops impose, sometimes throttling the GPU (GPU is the Graphic Processing Unit or videocard) or the processor to prevent heat damage on the internal laptop components.
Well, I have three questions; hopefully someone could help me decide about what would be more convenient.

1) SLI?

A long time ago (maybe 6 years or more) I tested with Ben Wilson help FlexSim on SLI using 2 separate videocards working together in order to increase the performance. SLI works with games but we didn't find any advantage with FlexSim of having more than one videocard.
Have any of you recently tested FlexSim with 2 GPUs (SLI), or the 3 GPUs (3-Way SLI) or even 4 GPUs (Quad-SLI)? Have you seen any performance over a single videocard solution? Actually SLI can be found on some laptops.

2) Dual Solutions?

There is a GeForce GTX 690, but this is a dual solution with basically two GTX 680's on the same card. This is an internal SLI but I’m afraid that buying a 690 would end in FlexSim just using one 680 of the 2 this card has inside…
For games, of course the GTX 690 has a better performance than the 680 GTX. But I don’t game and all that matters to me is how it behaves in FlexSim. Does any of you have any clue about that?
Actually Coca-Cola Mexico has a GTX 690 for FlexSim, an according to them it runs huge FlexSim models perfectly fine, but I’m not sure if there are benefiting from the dual solutions of this card or somehow FlexSim is only using a single GPU inside.

3) Single Solution, the safe bet?

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 is the fastest single GPU so far, but according to some leaks tomorrow (February 19 2013), a new GeForce GTX Titan will be officially presented which will be the fastest single videocard, surpassing a GTX 680 by 35% on some leaked benchmarks.
Should I stick with a Single Solutions GPU for FlexSim?

Thanks, any comments would be highly apreciatted.
Jorge.

I think Flexsim may benefit from SLI when you start changing the nVidia 3D settings to use antialiasing and other hardware acceleration features that specifically have SLI options. I've not done a rigorous test to prove that but that's the impression it gives.

If you're thinking of investing that sort of money you may be better off considering a Quadro which over the years has suggested benefits from:
1) Accelerating multiple OpenGL windows at once
2) Maintaining acceleration when tool windows are placed over the 3D view
3) Stereo 3D in windowed openGL (quad-buffered).

In my experience, Quadros are hit-or-miss with FlexSim. Sometimes the right combination of card and driver will work wonderfully, and sometimes a nice Quadro card is easily outperformed by a mediocre Geforce card using FlexSim.

For the safest bet, I would go with Geforce. If you want to do stereo-3d (in the next release), you will need a Quadro or FireFL card though (and a 3d screen).

I haven't tested, seen, or heard any information regarding SLI performance with FlexSim, but I suspect that SLI won't improve FlexSim's draw speed very much right now based on the information in Nvidia's SLI FAQ: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/sli/faq#s1

"Why don't all games see performance increases?

Applications which tax the GPU will see tremendous performance improvements of up to 2x with SLI technology when using two graphics cards. Most of today's hottest games and as well as next-generation games fall into this category. However, some applications, typically older generation applications, are limited by factors other than the GPU's processing power.

The most common limitation is the CPU. If an application becomes CPU bound, no additional graphics power can improve performance. This situation is most common at low screen resolutions like 1024x768 with no additional functionality turned on. Turning on antialiasing and anisotropic filtering or switching to higher resolutions can often move the processing requirements back to the GPU.

For CPU-bound applications, NVIDIA offers a new SLI rendering mode called SLI Antialiasing. This rendering mode allows you to enable SLI8x, SLI16x, or SLI32x (for quad SLI only) antialiasing and enhance the visual quality of any gaming application."

I believe FlexSim's draw code is often more bound by the CPU (traversing the objects in the tree) than the GPU (drawing the polygons in display lists). Jason may be right that SLI antialiasing may improve the look, but it also might make selection in FlexSim behave unpredictably because we haven't done any tests on SLI setups.

Thank you very much Jason and Phil for your comments related to GeForce, Quadro and SLI on FlexSim.

What would be the best way to test a GeForce and a Quadro videocard with FlexSim?

Maybe running FRAPS (there's a paid and a free version on fraps.com) in order to measure the frames per second on graphical model with lots of polygons ?

Maybe with FRAPS but not running the model so it's not CPU bounded and just running some Fly Paths on the 3D view?

Does any of you have a "slow" model so we can test it on different computers and we can share the FRAPS results indicating the screen resolution?

Thanks!

Also, if you decide to consider a Quadro, nVidia are releasing new cards on March the 8th.

for(int r=1; r<=1000; r++)
	setloc(createinstance(node("/Processor",library()),model()),uniform(-100,100),uniform(-100,100),0);

Execute that and then zoom, pan, and rotate the model around. It should be smooth. If it isn't, then you could probably be getting better performance on a different graphics card or different drivers.

You can use FRAPS to quantify the performance if you want. You can also mess around with how many processors you create and how big the 3d View is.

If a few thousand processors slow the 3d view down enough to irritate you when working, then you might want to consider a different graphics card.

This isn't the most scientific test, but I've seen some mediocre geforce and radeon cards outperform certain quadros in this simple test. The graphics card drivers can also make a big difference on this simple test.

If you add this code at the bottom, the script window shows you
the number of objects in your model. But this is only useful if you run the script more than once

return content(model());

My 2,5 year old EliteBook has it's limit about 20000 - 25000 processors.

I am using Dell XPS 14.. With Nvidia GT 630M.. works fine.. I would love to know if anyone has tried using flexsim on any of the macs (of course with windows on it..!!)

I used a MacBook Pro 2011 with windows 7 for a long while.

All in all, it worked fine, but the ATI graphics card in the MacBook had a somewhat buggy behavior. As with other ATI based systems I have tried, it seemed like there was a problem detecting the mouse position relative to objects in the model. This resulted in objects being moved when I was trying to drag the view.

I see that the newest MacBooks use NVIDIA graphics, so You should not experience that problem on those.

I hope this helps.

/Christian

Do you use MacBook Pro with both Mac OS and Windows 7 (for example 'Parallels') or only WIndows 7?

I want to know what you mean.

I use Windows 7 in Boot Camp - so I am booting Windows up without any virtualization.

Any idea if flexsim will work with Intel 5000 graphics that are going to be launched with the haswell processors. Flexsim's inability to perform on integrated graphics means I can never buy a 13 inch mac..!!

Hi,

I had the same problem with the Flexsim 7 Beta, Windows 7 Enterprise and a Nvidia Quattro FX550.

Originally Posted by Steven Hamoen

I have the Quadro FX 2500M and I have experienced the same issues as mentioned (background coming through in the windows). [...]

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

The problem disappeared as soon as I have changed the windows desktop style to a standard aero style. The problem occurred again with the classic windows XP style.
Any changes to Flexsim compatibility graphic setting, color depth, graphic card settings have not had an positive effect.

Jörg