ATI 9800XP incredibly disapointed

[Guest Raffael]

Thanks for the fast answer!Does it matter (or better: hoe much does it matter) if the 9800Pro has 128 or 256 md ram? The reason I'm asking:128 mb costs ~270

[Guest Buck Bolduc]

RyanI beleive your correct about the ATI Radion 9800 Pro. I looked arround a lot to check it out with simmers. I just ordered one for $229.00 from New Egg, they recently dropped the price, hell of a deal!I build a LOT of machines. In MHO the best bang for your dollar/moneyright now is the AMD Athlon64 3000. I dont want to get into a big discussion over Intel vs AMD, they both have some strong suites.I think I'm going to build a Athlon64-3400 on a MSI Neo Fsr2 mobo with 2Gb ram and tranfer the ATI 9800 pro and all the rest (drives etc.) over to it. If it dont run PMDG well I give up.I'm now running the Asus A7v-333 mobo w/Athlon 2600xp/266, I know the memmory is faster than the chip. It runs the sim OK. It's the video that sucks (Nvidea Ti-4200).The thing I notice most with the Athlon64 proccs, are the smoothnes when running fs9, big difference.Regards

[Guest Buck Bolduc]

RyanYour right again.My A7v-333 mobo/chipset only supports AGP4x, thus my need to ugrade.As I stated I build/repair machines all the time.One problem with many on-line ordered machines i.e. Gateway, Dell and the rest is they build em to meet certain price points for competetive reasons. Most wont have a problem until they try to play high power games like flight sims or Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon etc., or add HD's, and other devices...then instability...not enough power. The 430 watt Antec True Power is a really good choice. It's not rated combined. The 12, 5, and 3.3 volt rails are not dependent on one another and put out a guareteed amount of current for each rail. If your system is really loaded go for the 460 watt.I'v seen too many people pay big bucks thinking they got something decent and then learned it had a PSU just big enough to run what the machine came with, dont add anything...you'll be stuck.Regards

[Tabs 2,790]

From what I've seen, the 256MB Radeon 9800 Pro has almost ZERO advantage over the 128MB version unless you are running insanely high resolutions in excess of 1600X1200. Get the 128MB version, I'm sure it'll be fine...I concur on the Athlon 64s too - I almost got one, but I wanted to wait until the motherboards reached at least second generation maturity. It's amazing that these CPU run a full Ghz less in true clock speed than the P4's and that they're still beating them in benchmarks - imagine what would happen if AMD suddenly figured out how to get em up to the same clock rate as the P4s - Intel would be finished.

[Guest vspeed]

So it cant go up to 8x agp? Hmm. Well thats a drag!! But at least I have SOME agp this time around. I am still puzzled at how it shut itself off. I wonder if a game did that or something. Not sure. But that should NEVER turn off, in my opinion, without your input. I have a 160 Watt power supply, I just found out. Not enough power I think. I will get the one you mentioned. I am trying to get my home built one fixed up and running. Only thing, is it had the same Mobo this one does. So maybe I can start from scratch on the home made one, and get a new Mobo and power supply. Actually, DUH now that I think of it, I can probably slap that power unit in this one. Its a 350, or 300, one of those. Just to see if this one runs better. Thanks for that suggestion. Now, with a reinstall of a power supply, I just disconnect the old one, and put the new one in right? Paying attention to where stuff plugs in. I am pretty computer savvy, but not enough!! Thanks againBy the way the sim is now getting 60 FPS in the air, and I loaded the default flight with the clouds moving. Its in there, I think its called "preset weather flights" in the startup menu. Anyway it drops you at Meigs. I fired up the DC3. On the ground I was getting 30 FPS. Looking out the window at chicago it dropped to 26. Outside view around 50-60, with clouds. However, I loaded a payware one, and it hurt it. Went down to 15 cockpit view and outside was 35-40. Still good though for my older card. Cant wait to get this other one back tested. I know now it probably wasnt the card. So, looking forward to it. Josh

[Tabs 2,790]

160 Watts??!! I honestly have no idea how your system is even running man! That is nowhere near enough power for that CPU and definitely not for the video card - that card requires tons of very clean power, and I'll guarantee it's not getting it. Chances are also good that the power supply is non standard in size and that you won't just be able to put a good one in place of it. I think you're looking at basically building a new system man. If you decide to do that, email me at TabsAZ@aol.com and I'll tell you exactly what to get - I work at a computer parts store during the week, so I've gotten pretty fast at putting together a parts list for custom systems [;)]

[Guest Raffael]

Thanks for all your input!Talking to people could obvously have saved me a lot of money (e.g. I wouldn't have bought the 9800SE then).Thanks a lot again,Raffael

[Guest Buck Bolduc]

RyanI noticed you stated that you worked in a computer store. Have you guy's had any problems with Asus mobo's. I had quite a few DOA's from em lately. I used em allmost exclusively but for the A64 I usually use and recommend MSI Neo. I'v built 34 A64-3200's 4 FX-51's and 2 A64-3400's. The FX51's are fast but too expensive for the difference between it and the A64-3400.The MSI Neo mobo has been perfect. No problems whatsoever for a rev. 1.0 PCB. After installing the "COOL & QUIET" feature I allmost had a stroke when I saw the HS Fan stopped. I grabbed/moved the mouse and it spun up. With the rig I'm using now I gotta turn the sound up load enough to blow everyone out of the house, so my 737 can drown out the fans/noise.Gotta build a new one!Regards

[Tabs 2,790]

Buck,I've personally had problems with both ASUS and MSI.MSI - My first Athlon system used the MSI KT133 board (I forget the name, it was well before they started calling every single board "X+Neo" though hehe) and I had two of them die on me one right after another by going into what looking like some kind of suspend/power save mode despite that stuff being completely disabled in the BIOS and in Windows (I think I was running 98SE or 2000 at that point). RMA'ed the first one, took forever and MSI's people were really difficult to deal with. After the second one died I said screw it and went to the store that I now work at and bought an ASUS A7V - and...ASUS - That A7V I had lasted about a year before it too died. Never really figured out what caused it - I was at the point of needing an upgrade and didn't bother with RMA'ing the board. I experienced more issues with ASUS boards though back about a two years ago when my best friend upgraded his aging system to an XP1800+ with an ASUS A7V333. The system was very eratic, refused to boot a lot, spontaneous shut-downs, CPU speed being incorrectly reported despite the correct settings, stop errors during XP setup etc... He RMA'ed the board, the CPU and the memory, bought a new high quality PSU and still it did the exact same stuff. I was completely baffled. He went to Fry's up in Phoenix and got a Soyo Dragon (the KT333 one) and everything worked great - he's still running it right now actually. The last experience I had with ASUS was in building my brother's system he took with him to college last fall. I decided to use the Nvidia nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset that had just come out due to the rave reviews and the great on-board sound chip it has. Everyone was raving about the A7N8X and I decided that the problems my friend had with ASUS were a fluke and since this was a whole different chipset made by a different company that we'd be fine. The system consisted of the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe, an XP3000+, 1GB of Corsair XMS PC3200, and a Radeon 9700 Pro AIW. Right off the bat we were getting spontaneous reboots, XP stop errors etc - I couldn't believe it. I finally decided to get to the bottom of and posted the problems to the nforcershq.com forums. A cool guy messaged me on AIM about 20 minutes later who had the exact same hardware config and had experienced and more importantly solved the problems. It was all in the BIOS memory timings and vDIMM voltage settings. Once I set them to what he'd foudn to be the "more correct" values that what are set in the auto "by SPD" mode, the system worked flawlessly and has ever since.I used a SOYO K7V Dragon in the new system I built after that and it worked very well up until my recent upgrade last month. It was having major issues with the Radeon 9800 I bought, but I guess that's asking too much out of a 2+ year old board. ;)As far as what I've seen at the store - we probably get an equal number of ASUS and MSI boards back (those are really the only two brands we sell except for a few budget Biostar models) The ones I've seen come back most are the VIA KT600 Athlon XP boards, the KT6-DL and the A7V600. I haven't really seen any of the nForce 2 based boards (the A7N8X or the K7N2-DL) come back.As to what my preference would be now - I'd pick ASUS over MSI if those were the only two choices I had. I have a new favorite though - Abit. I absolutely love the board I have in my new system - the NF7-S 2.0. It's about as souped up as an nForce2 board is ever gonna get and the overclocking features you get with it are awesome - no trouble at all running a 2500+ at 3200+ speeds here and I'll be able to get even higher once I get a better heatsink. They've gotten very good reviews on their flagship P4 and Athlon 64 boards too. I'm really finding less issues to contend with with the Nvidia chipset vs the VIA ones I had - there was always some new glitch or problem with the VIA ones - plus this board supports dual-channel DDR which no VIA chipset can do... :D As for the A64 - personally I'm going to wait until the motherboard chipsets and the pin format changes are at least into the second generation - the nForce3 is having quite a few problems with memory bandwidth right now and the K8T800, while getting generally good reviews worries me because as I said, something always seems to come up with early generation VIA chipsets...

[Guest Ray CYYZ]

Have to agree with your there. All board makers have had there lemons. All have had their "all-star" boards too. It really comes down to doing your homework and watching the hardware forums to see the realities vs the claims. Performance numbers no longer mean anything since the companies routinely slit auto-overlocking routines into the bios now that are not documented resulting in board x running faster then board y only to get caught and have the board decerified by Intel (not that you can trust Intel as far as you can throw them, Remember RAMBUS?)All you can do is watch out for revision 0 boards and stear clear. Asus, having gotten caught dirty quite a few times seems to have stopped shipping them, but always keep your eyes out for soldered on blue trace wires when you look at the board for after-the-fact engineering patches.I'm happy with my ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, but it is by no means a cheap board.Ray

[Guest joshranwest]

Cool I will keep you in mind. My other power supply is only 180 watts, it says max 300, but I dont know what that means. So I will contact you about it soon! ThanksJosh

[Guest benw]

I have a Dell Dimension 8300 with a P4 3.06, 1 GB of RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro card. I bought the PC just as FS9 was coming out so I took the opportunity to buy the Dell by justifying to myself that a P4 3.06 with that kind of spec would run like a dream. It's not a cheap PC by any means and although I'm very happy with it in every other way you can't imagine my disappointment when I loaded up FS9 and it looked horrid. Jaggies, sparkles, flickers and 'moire' everywhere. I was gutted. Since then I've tried everything to sort it out and even went back to FS2002 in disgust once or twice. I downloaded the latest ATI drivers a few weeks ago and it made not a bit of difference. I'd almost given up until I read this thread and went through the whole thing again, step by step. The one thing I hadn't done was delete the FS9 Config file! Duh.. Restarted FS9, hey presto...all sorted. There's still the tiniest hint of shimmer very occasionally but I can live with that.One bit of advice though, don't change the AGP Aperture on a Dell Dimension 8300...it does very bad things. Very baaaaad!

[Guest Buck Bolduc]

RyanWell I went and did it.I ordered a combo from Monarch Comp.Got myself a MSI Neo, A64-3400, and 1Gb Corsair Pc-3200 XMS LLP (512x2) memmory. I'll wait until I set up the A64 before installing the Radion 9800Pro. Why go thru the hassels for a few days.A guy wants the A7v-333/266, 2600xp, setup. I'll pickup a case with a decent PSU for him. He dont like my humongus server cases, I love em.This new rig should handle the flight sims. It cost me $821.00 for the works.Regards

[Tabs 2,790]

Buck, congrats! In my eyes that's probably the best gaming system money can buy right now and it'll only get better when the 64 bit software comes out! Let me know how it performs in FS...

[Guest sj3]

Josh: Check out http://www17.tomshardware.com/howto/20030609/. It's about power supplies and an overview of what the numbers mean. It's not too complicated and should prove eye-opening. Also, when you hook the new one up, I strongly advise you print out a diagram of your motherboard. If you don't have one already, you can find one at the manufacturer's web site. You will need to pay attention to how you route all the wires and there are a lot of them, but they're not all hooked up to something. Be careful to keep the main bundles from blocking airflow to the cpu fan and the fan on the video card. Be patient and methodical and you should be fine.