Not to obsessively keep this thread alive, but I've made some interesting observations after the upgrade and I was wondering if anybody else has seen the same.
Like I said, the new card obviously kicks some serious behind compared to the old one, I won't go further into that. My observations are about the reliability of the internal FPS function in the sim itself.
I first had a "what?" moment when I returned to Wilhelmshaven and noticed a "drop" to about 30 fps while seeing nothing that would indicate such a drop when looking around, panning, zooming, doing anything I could think of that would normally (with the old 260) make things slow down and become a bit "jerky." This was still with everything cranked up which I never could with the old one.
I thought nothing of it initially, docked, saved, did the usual in between patrol things, then shut down. Then I loaded it back up and saw that the sim was reporting 28-32 fps in the bunker. That's fine, but it was no better than what I got with the 260 and, even more interesting, my mouse lag was gone and everything was smooth as silk, even though the sim insisted that I was doing no better than before. Oh well, I thought, who cares as long as it play well, but I was still mystified. So I started out a new patrol, left the pen and, once I'd gotten over how beautiful everything looked with everything turned up to max (which is something considering how beautiful this sim looks at the moderate settings I was using before), I noted that it was still reporting "low" fps in the 30 range. I left the pen and it dropped even lower, but performance wise it was perfect. Everything smooth, no tears when panning, no problems at all and the mouse was moving swiftly without lag. Now believe me, I KNOW the difference between 25 and 60 fps, but it was behaving like 60 while reporting 25. Later on, it "dropped even lower, all the way down to 20, but it was still behaving as if it was really running 60-70.
So now I was REALLY curious. I went into the settings and turned off everything, everything that you can turn off and on on the fly without a restart, anyway, particularly the shadows which is a REAL fps killer. It didn't register at all on the internal CTRL+F8 fps counter. Still "stuck at 20-25" with behavior like I was running more like 70.
So I cranked up the setting even further. Everything that I could turn on, shadows cranked to max, every single environmental effect there, and the only effect on the sim was that I almost fainted with admiration at how beautiful it looked but the fps didn't budge an inch even though everything was still running as smooth as silk.
So I'm wondering if that internal fps thingy is really reporting what you're seeing. Funny thing is, when I was on the old 260, I could see the result of my changes immediately. Now I can't.
It's not a "problem", as such, far from it, who cares about the number that the sim churns out as long as everything works like a wonder? I'm just curious and wondering if anybody has seen anything like it. The only thing that I changed other than the card was finally going from VGA to DVI when I put the new card in. I'm wondering if that messes up the way the sim "measures" fps. I know that when the new card went in nVidia Control Panel has it set to HD instead of just the plain old PC 1920x1080. I suppose I could try to switch back to the old DVI to VGA adapter and set the resolution to the old option, but really, why do so? It's working perfectly, I'm just curious is all.
And now I'll stop babbling about my silly card
Bottom line is I'm happy, very happy, I'm just wondering if anybody has seen anything like this just to confirm that I'm not going completely and utterly crazy which, knowing me, is a distinct possibility.
EDIT: And as a reassurance to people who upgrade like I did but take their data from the internal fps counter and might think that they just blew a chunk load of money on nothing at all. It's a field of interest of mine too, which is why I've wasted time on finding out how our eyes and brains process images and, combined with my passion for computers, made me interested in just where the "cut-off point" is where further improvements really don't matter because our brains don't notice anyway, such as the "30 fps" rule. If you see a difference between, say, 40 and 90 fps it's not because you're actually seeing it because your brain can't process the difference (much like going to 16.7 million colors on your computer display quality is pointless as your brain can't tell the difference between that many colors anyway), it's because your eyes and brains pick up on the brief drop below 30 fps while you're panning or zooming, even though you may not pick up on it by looking at the fps counter.