I have today replaced my Nvidia 32Mb TNT2 Graphics card with a GeForce 4 64Mb MX440 in the hope of an improvement to Flightsim. However, I am disappointed with the results. I can see no improvement in frame rates apart from the lights on the plane that flash faster. I am using the PSS Airbus and I still get stutters when I taxy at my home airport of East Midlands (GB Airports scenery). Also, my computer now takes slightly longer to boot up. Are there any settings like th BIOS settings I should change or is this as good as it gets?regardsRossNottingham,EnglandWin98AMD 900Mhz512Mb RAM

MX cards are not made for performance. If you wanted performance, you shouldn't have bought a MX...especially at only 64MB. Geforce 3s are faster than the Geforce 4 MX series. Also, you're CPU will be holding you back. 900MHz is pretty slow by today's standards.Matt

Ross,I think you can ignore that last post. I'm sure you can expect better performance than you are currently getting. I used to have a GeForce2GTS 32MB card on a 440BX MoBo with a PIII800E cpu and 512MB PC100 ram. FS2002 performance was pretty good in most situations with the frame rate locked at 18fps.The key to getting the best performance from any system is to ensure all your drivers are up to date..... and that includes the MoBo drivers.Mike :-wave

hi Ross,well i have a P3 800 Gforce 2 MX 64meg card with 256meg of SD Ram, on an asus P3V4X,i tell you just using the default aircraft i get bad stutters, if i were you i would consider upgrading your whole system to a P4 2gig with a Gforce 3 card you will be surprised at the performance,i intend to upgrade as well sometime in the near future

I'm not saying he shouldn't have gotten anything going from a TNT2 to a G4...he should have gotten some increase. However, if he was really looking for performance, an MX-series card is a waste of money.Matt

Ross - Unfortunately, I think what you have is about as good as it's going to get as far as framerates are concerned. The real bottleneck is the CPU being a bit on the slow side for a complex aircraft or scenery. The MX cards are not very good performers but I don't think a switch to a GF4Ti is going to make any noticeable difference in the framerate either. It's probable that the CPU was not pushing the old TNT to it's capacity and, if so, a change in the video card isn't going to increase the framerate much, if at all. With FS2002 the CPU speed needs to be up around 2.5Ghz before there are enough cycles to begin to push a modern video card. It's just the CPU-bound nature of the beast.Trip

All I can say to the last post is b/s..I am running a: PII 350393 MB RAMGeForce MX400 64MB30 G HDWin 98Omega driversFS2002 runs just fine with sliders pretty much maxed out!Frame Rates set to 14FPS I average 7-10 at Meigs and 12-14 elsewhere!Give me a 900MHz Processor and I doubt I could better it!Secret is to unload any unnecessary processes (I use enditall)Also get 'Adaware' (http://www.lavasoftusa.com) and see if there is a bunch of spyware slowing down your PC!Also go to http://grc.com and check your PC's vulnerability to attack from scanners! Last one I cleaned up had 62 occurrences of spyware servers sat there draining the processor!Ah well.....

Ross,I agree with the posts that suggest a Geforce 4 MX won't give you great improvements, both because you are CPU limited, and because the MX version isn't as great a perfomer as the Geforce 4 name implies. However, that being said, I would expect some improvement. The only time I ever experienced bad stuttering was when I turned the AGP memory aperature down to 32 as an experiment. Bumping it up to 128 virtually eliminated the problem for me. Perhaps it will help you as well (it's a setting you will find in your BIOS). There is much debate on the value of this particular tweak, but it may be worth a shot for you.

Thank you for sharing your in-depth understanding of the subject at hand. And you accuse me of BS'ing?...sigh

Thanks guys. Certainly some varied opinions. Maybe I am setting my sights too high. The GB Airports East Midlands scenery is very demanding on the PC and I get around 10-15 fps whereas in the air I get sometimes in excess of 20 fps with no stutters. Combine this with the PSS Airbus panel and I think that it is really making the system sweat. I will stick with it and adjust the AGP aperture settings and report back with the results.I know I probably need a better CPU but one thing at a time. In the past few months I have upgraded the RAM from 64Mb to 256Mb which made a massive difference. I then went up to 512Mb. I have now replaced the Graphics Card. Next will be to upgrade to Windows 2000 XP Pro and then it will be the CPU. After that probably a summons from the bank manager!!!Thanks for the replies .. off to do some airtests! :-wave RossNottingham, England

Can someone tell me where I can find enditall?EdBTW I would avoid MX cards IMHO

What is the difference between a normal GeForce card and a MX card? The box for the MX card promotes that it "delivers nearly 2x the memory bandwidth of GeForce3 to ensure fluid frame rates for the latest 3D and 2D games and applications"I have changed the AGP aperture setting to 64Mb and there is an improvement so I have to say I am happy with the new card. Thanks again for all your views and advice.regardsRossNottingham,England

GeForce4 MX's are bascally overclocked GeForce2's. It's a fairly 'sneaking' marketing strategy from nVidia. I'd recommend returning the card and getting a GeForce3 Ti500 or and GeForce4 Ti4200, both of which can be found at the same price or cheaper than the GeForce4 MX line of cards.Ryan-Flightpro08 :-coolVATSIM Pilot/ControllerZLA ARTCC Controller 1 (C-1)SAN TRACON Lead [link:www.taxiwaysigns.com]Taxiwaysigns.com Scenery Designer-----------------------------My "Home Made" System Specs:Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz ProcessorTurbo Gamer ATX Mid-Tower with 420W Power SupplyEPoX 4G4A Motherboard with Intel 845G ChipsetVisiontek XTASY GeForce4 128MB Ti4600 (Det 40.41 Drivers)512MB PC2100 DDR RAM40GB Matrox 7200RPM Hard DriveWindows XP Home Edition*No CPU or GPU Overclocking*3dMark2001SE Score: 11298

Geforce 4 MX440: Memory: 400MHz, Core: 270MHz, Memory Bandwidth: 6.4 GB/sGeforce 4 Ti4400: Memory: 550MHz, Core: 275MHz, Memory Bandwidth: 8.7 GB/sThese numbers vary from card to card, but should be pretty close.Average scores in 3DMark 2001:MX440: 6691My Geforce 3: 8403Ti4400: 11356Big difference between them.Hope this made some sense! :-)Matt

900 mhz is slow?..#####!Damn i just bought this thing just over a yr ago!Anyways i am running MS2K2 on a P3 866mhz with a Gforce2 400MX 64MB card on WindowsMEw 384MB ram and it runs fine! :)=Swiv=