G4 TI4600 vs. ATI Radeon 9700 for FS2K2

[Guest Astrojet 112]

I know the Radeon has not been released yet, but do any of you guys in the know care to venture a guess as to how much of a performance /visual improvement we would see in FS2K2 with the 9700 over the G4ti4600?Thanks,AstroI am ready to upgrade NOW :)

[John_Tavendale 453]

Astro,As far as simming goes; the Radeon has never competed with Nvidia's line of GF Cards, and it probably never will, this release included.If you want something now that will perform with excellence in MSFS, go got the GF4. You won't be dissapointed ;)

[MartijnPleines 0]

There's a very interesting piece about this at www.tomshardware.comLooks like we have several weeks if not months to wait until we can pick up the new Radeons in a store...and then, a few weeks or perhaps months later, there will be a new nVidia chip...but, depending on what you have now, they (both ATI & nVidia) may be worth the wait. I know I will be holding on to my GF3 for some time yet.

[Guest gasebah]

Hmmm, form what I read at www.tomshardware.com the Radeon should be considerable superior in FSAA, AF and high resolutions. And that is what FS2002 is all about. I guess I have to leave it out though as my GF4Ti4600 is only 2,5 month old.Alex

[Guest Panman]

Oh God, not another Nvidiot vs Atimbecile thread again.Goto www.rage3d.com and check the link there, has links to Anands, Tom's and two other reviews. All of them proclaiming that it gave the GF4 TI 4600 an asskicking - and with incomplete drivers/specs.pAnmAn------

[Guest flightpro08]

I personally upgraded recently from an ATI RADEON 64MB DDR VIVO to a GeForce4 128MB Ti4600. The main reason for doing this was to just flat out get away from ATI. I didn't care much for ATI because of their terrible driver support/lack of driver progress. I'd say go for the GF4 or wait for the new nVidia chipset, you won't be disipointed with either one I'm sure. :DRyan-Flightpro08 :-coolTaxiwaysigns.com

[JimmiG 244]

The R9700 sure looks impressive. With its extremely fast AF and FSAA, you should be able to use full 4X FSAA (possibly 6X FSAA), and max anisotropic filtering with reasonable performance even at 1600x1200 in FS2002. This card will be out within 30 days according to Anandtech.I'll probably get one to replace my Ti500. I'm glad I skipped the Ti4600 now :) Newer cards will come out and will of course be faster, but the jump won't be as big as Ti4600-R9700. Until the next generation of cards come out next year, we will probably only see minor improvements from

[Guest PaulL01]

>I know the Radeon has not been released yet, but do any of >you guys in the know care to venture a guess as to how much >of a performance /visual improvement we would see in FS2K2 >with the 9700 over the G4ti4600? >>Thanks, >>Astro >>I am ready to upgrade NOW :) Since Fs2k2 is mainly CPU bound about the only improvement to expect is better Antialiasing and Anisotropic filtering performance which it would seem they have achieved and is something to look forward to, however I along with another poster here are not thrilled with ATI's poor driver support for it's own card's and am much more excited about NV's new card that will effectively leap frog the ATI.Interesting though that this card uses more power than can be provided through the AGP 2.0 port so that it gets its very own power connector!

[Guest Sabadin]

Have those bashing ATI for drivers used or seen the new catalyst drivers released a while back? I can honestly say it appears that the driver problem is quickly vanishing. As all the articles have reported little in the way of trouble using incomplete drivers on test cards I seriously doubt they will be an issue. Face it, until the NV35 is released in November the Radeon 9700 is the new top card.

[Guest flightpro08]

When I had my ATI card, I tried every driver in the book and none of them came close to any det driver I've used. Dets are so much easier to install and uninstall and are constantly being improved on. Though, just my opinion, don't mean to start any kinda of flame war :DRyan-Flightpro08 :-coolTaxiwaysigns.com

[Guest Sabadin]

Thats a shame you feel that way. I just replaced my GF3Ti200 with a Radeon 8500LE. The new drivers installed with ease and work extremely well. Ati has finally established themselves as a true contender.(the drivers that shipped with the card though....lets not get into it lol)

[Guest SlimDady]

from all the info I have seen it looks like the radeon will beat the gf4 for a while. Better anti aliasing, more performance. 8x AGP..But a while after nvidia is planing on updating their gf4 to keep up with the new radeon. Like the GF 4 pro or somthing.For now i think the radeon will be the fastest. Im sure it will e less money toobut myself like the nvidia cards so ill stick with them.

[Guest JonP01]

Certainly the pre-release info on the various hardware sites does seem very promising. I think most of us agree that the key to FS2002 is being able to wind the resolution, texture sizes, anisotropic filtering and FSAA right up. Being able to do this produces perhaps one of the most visually realistic games ever produced.I can't help thinking back to one month ago, however, when the Matrox Parhelia was supposed to do everything that ATI is now promising. And we all know what happened there. So I guess the question is: will this card live up to it's claims, or is it another Parhelia? At least the 3D Mark scores quoted by Tom's Hardware do seem to indicate it is unlikely the card will be slow. If I attempt to extrapolate those scores into something meaningful to my setup, I can't discount the possibility I could run FS2002 at the same speed as with my current Geforce 3 Ti200, but with 8 x aniso and 4x FSAA.I think the power connector feature is very attractive. I have always had reservations about the Geforce 4 series - with so many transistors packed into so little running on a .15 micron die and powered only by the AGP port. If you read in many technical forums, there are a lot of users who have trouble running Geforce 4 cards, even with upgraded power supplies. I can't help wondering if these Geforce 4 cards are putting too much strain on the mainboard power circuitry. Perhaps the ATI will be more user friendly in this respect.I think in any case, it is worth waiting the few short months so that we can all see the ATI versus the new NV30 head to head. I think in the end, if there is not much in it, I would still go for the Nvidia card. However I will be mindful of whether my mainboard can supply enough current to the Nvidia card if that card does not have a power connector. Hopefully the reduced die size will make for a card more easily integrated into the majority of existing systems.

[Guest PaulL01]

Hi Jon,>Certainly the pre-release info on the various hardware sites >does seem very promising. I think most of us agree that the >key to FS2002 is being able to wind the resolution, texture >sizes, anisotropic filtering and FSAA right up. Being able >to do this produces perhaps one of the most visually >realistic games ever produced. For sure!>I can't help thinking back to one month ago, however, when >the Matrox Parhelia was supposed to do everything that ATI >is now promising. And we all know what happened there. So I >guess the question is: will this card live up to it's >claims, or is it another Parhelia? At least the 3D Mark >scores quoted by Tom's Hardware do seem to indicate it is >unlikely the card will be slow. If I attempt to extrapolate >those scores into something meaningful to my setup, I can't >discount the possibility I could run FS2002 at the same >speed as with my current Geforce 3 Ti200, but with 8 x aniso >and 4x FSAA. yeah the AA 3dmark score were very good, but Fs2k2 will still need a good CPU to begin with so once we are over the 3-3.5 gig hurdle and run an 8x AGP board with one of these new cards I think AA x4 and decent AF will become a reality for running FS2k2 with no major perfromance concerns as we are already close to that now. :)>I think the power connector feature is very attractive. I >have always had reservations about the Geforce 4 series - >with so many transistors packed into so little running on a >.15 micron die and powered only by the AGP port. If you read >in many technical forums, there are a lot of users who have >trouble running Geforce 4 cards, even with upgraded power >supplies. I can't help wondering if these Geforce 4 cards >are putting too much strain on the mainboard power >circuitry. Perhaps the ATI will be more user friendly in >this respect. The GF4 meet the power specs of the AGP 2.0 specs so that is not the problem, bad PS are, no matter if they have enough power or not if they run "dirty" and spike you will get hardware problems (GF4).>I think in any case, it is worth waiting the few short >months so that we can all see the ATI versus the new NV30 >head to head. I think in the end, if there is not much in >it, I would still go for the Nvidia card. However I will be >mindful of whether my mainboard can supply enough current to >the Nvidia card if that card does not have a power >connector. Hopefully the reduced die size will make for a >card more easily integrated into the majority of existing >systems. Well said Jon, on the other hand with GF4TI4200s going for less than $150 at BBuy,(always buy behind the curve ;))

[Guest georgi55]

Oh no...I've owned 4 Nvidia and 1 ATi cards so far and the only time I had problems was with ATi...I will never buy thier cards again....NEVER!!!(I got the ATI RADEON 64MB DDR for $300 back 2 years ago)