Video Cards and drivers (sigh)

[ChrisJake 0]

folks...sorry to beat a dead horse, but when searching for these topics there is WAAAYYY too much to read while here at work! (shhh)....so i figured i'd drop a couple of quick questions here....i've upgrade to XP with a clean, full install...installed a WD 100g HD, re-installed FS2002, now i'm ready to upgrade my GeForce 2 MX/400 32mb card. i want to go to the GeForce 128mb ti series...here's question #1.....what is the difference between ti4200 and ti4400 (other than about $70)?? is it ok to go with the 4200?...and....now that i'm on XP, what is the general concensus on which drivers to use? i'm currently using the 21.83 set.thanks all....i apologize for throwing more video question out there.chris

[Guest]

The 4200 is basically a 4400 with lower clock speeds. The 4400 has a much longer board and more capacitors to handle the higher clocks. Basically you can overclock a 4200 to above 4400 speeds with little to no problem. Compared to the 4400, the 4200 is 97% of the performance for 70% of the price. Make your own call :)I am running drivers 40.41 on my Ti4200 on XP with zero problems that I have found. Been working great since they came out for me. Note, this is running dual monitors as well.

[Guest]

Hi Chris,I upgraded my video card also when I went to XP. I am currently running XP Pro with SP1.The major difference between a GF 4 TI 4200 and the 4600 is that the 4600 is running at a higher clockrate for the memory and usually comes with 128 MB of RAM whereas the 4200 runs at a slower rate and usually comes with 64 MB Ram, but there are also versions out there that have 128 MB ram. This means that the 4200 can draw slightly less polygons per second than the 4600 (I think it is about 10-15% less).The 4200 is substantially cheaper than the 4600 therefore the more economic purchase.If you are considering upgrading your videao card with a focus un running FS2K2 then the 4200 is the better choice for the simple reason that you will not have a significant difference in FPS (virtually none) between the two cards but the image quality is the same but comes with the TI 4200 at a much cheaper price. This is because MSFS is very CPU and Memory intensive so the graphic card plays a minor role.The upgrade to a GF 4 is still worth it since the graphics look a lot nicer and are much crisper than with a GF 2 or 3 for example.Concerning drivers I am running the current reference drivers from NVIDIA (29.41 if I am not wrong) and don't experience any kind of problems and with all settings maxed out in MSFS with my PIV 1.7 256 DDR MB machine I get almost anywhere 21 FPS (locked to 21), only exceptions are when there is a lot of clouds and AI traffic or in extremely dense scenery, then frame rates go down to round about 12 to 16, which is still sufficient to have a good flight experience.Hope that helps

[Guest]

Hey Ralph, can I ask you a question? Ok I just did ;-) But seriously, I'm running FS2002 with Win XP Home and Have nothing but problems. Serious stutters with video and sound, it's too the point that I don't even want to fly it anymore. Did you do any tweaks to your system? I ask because I'm running almost the same setup only with P4 2.4, but only 256 DDR as you are running. I'm getting more ram, but am concerened that this problem runs deeper than just ram as my frame rates are always at least 25 FPS, but I still get this serious stuttering, esp. when changing views, it can take up to a minute for the view to switch, than I get this damn stuttering with video and sound. I've done a clean reinstall, defrag, tweak this tweak that, but still no luck. My other game "Delta Force" runs with no problems at all so I don't think it's a hardware issue and FS2002 ran flawlessly on my old Celeron 500mhz with 256 megs of SDRAM.Do you think it's XP related??? Man, I should just install Win 98 again or 2000pro ;-)))

[Guest]

Fred,Course you can ask a question, that's what forums are for. I might try to answer it.I am running XP Pro with SP1 installed. But when I first installed FS2k2 I too suffered from stutters and long break when changing views. I had this problem however with the drivers supplied by my card manufacturer (Creative) so i decided to uninstall the Creative drivers for the GF and install NVIDIA reference drivers and the problem was almost cured.I then reinstalled Direct X 8.1 and also the drivers for the sound card and no more stutters or anything like this.Hope that helps

[Guest]

well, I'm running the beta 40.72 drivers from nvidia, have tried several with the same results. I'm plane ole AC97 onboard sound right now, do you think that could be the issue?Maybe I'll go back to the 29.41 drivers or whatever the latest Certified drivers are for my video card, then try reinstalling direct x.thanks again!

[Guest]

Fred,It could indeed be an issue. I had two different motherboards before running on a Win98SE setup with the onboard AC97. On both I had to reduce sound hardware acceleration in order to reduce stutters.On my first board it went away, on the second however it did not, which I found most strange but then that's what happened.If you want to test if the soundboard is at the core of the problem I suggest you disable the soundcard through your BIOS and try without it. If your problems go away then you know its either a driver issue of the soundcard or indeed a hardware issue.I personally would recommend buying a soundcard in any event because the sound quality even with a cheap card is usually a lot better than with onboard sound (my experience). To remedy the problem I have had with the second mobo I bought a cheap Soundblaster PCI (was about 60 Euros at the time as an OEM version and have had no problems since.Hope that helps