The vidcard results

[Chris_CYWG 0]

I'm not going to bother posting images since they don't do justice... but for anyone having any performance doubts in mind about upgrading the videocard, let me tell you its worth it.My system was as follows:AMD TBird 1200 running 1400GF2 Ultra 64MBAbit KT7A Mobo512MB PC133 Ram3D score 4353Immediatley changing the Vidcard to a Leadtek GF4 4200 128MB popped my 3D score up to 8000 with 30.XX drivers.Today I installed XP and the 40.41 drivers, it further increased my 3D score to 8845 points, and boosted my fps to 26 from 21 sitting on the ground at Meigs during day with sliders cranked in the 172. The blurries are gone and its all good!!Chris

[Guest JonP01]

>but for anyone having any performance doubts in >mind about upgrading the videocard, let me tell you its >worth it. >>Chris The only performance doubts I have about getting a new video card is scraping the money together for one. As good as my Geforce 4 is, I have my eyes on the upcoming Radeon (after the original 9700 Pro) or the NV30. Once I put together my Athlon 2000+ system it became pretty clear to me (and not just in FS2002) that the video card was pinning the performance back. As good as the Geforce 4 is, it's performance still takes a big hit when the image enhancing features are activated.

[Chris_CYWG 0]

I totally agree with you. I was looking at waiting until Christmas as well, but I figured I was probably gonna get a good bang for my buck now without leaving too big of a hole in the pocket :) Besides the Leadtek 4200 has some pretty nice overclocking capabilities, doesn't fall too far off a 4600 from what I hear if you go for it.Chris

[Guest PhilC]

Just to throw in my 2 cents...I had an ATI Radeon 32 DDR card and, because I'm one of the few who has always had good luck with ATI, I scraped together the money and bought a 9700 Pro. I could never get it to work in my PC. The monitor went into sleep mode as soon as XP started up.I returned the card and purchased a Gainward GeForce4 Ti4200 128Mb Golden Sample card. It installed without a hitch and overclocks beautifully.I did not get a noticable increase in frame rate but, man, does everything look better. I was able to run a lot of the sliders up and maintain a reasonable fps. No flashing textures, quicker screen draws (for example, when changing views), no stutters and no blurries. It was worth it for me and I saved a few bucks. The only thing that really drags the fps down is if I enable Water Detail AND Reflections. Runs fine with Detail only.I still get better framerates and smoother graphics with AGP Texturing disabled in DXDiag.My PC specs now:Dell Dimension PIII, 1 GHz512 Mb RDRAMGainward NVidia GeForce4 Ti4200 128Mb Golden Sample30.82 Video DriversSB Live! soundWindows XP Pro w/SP1MSFS2002 Pro Full Install

[Guest JonP01]

I actually held off buying my new mainboard until I was able to confirm other users had been able to get the 9700 Pro to work in it. Come early next year I'd like to be able to choose between Nvidia and ATi if possible.btw Phil,I spend a whole day reading about user's problems with the 9700 Pro. Unless the internet is filled with liars, ATi have already RMA'd many cards and replaced them another 9700 Pro that has an updated stepping.