I am finalizing my order for a new system (P4, 3.0 GHz)and am down to deciding between the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and the nVidia GeForce 5600 video cards, or any other recommendations.I would really appreciate any advise and insight which anyone could offer, as I am really confused. I have read all I could find at Tom's Hardware, Gure 3D and Anandtech and now I am looking to those who's opinion really matters......our FlightSim community.Thanks a lot,Howard

No question about it....9800 all the way!Regards, Michaelhttp://mysite.verizon.net/res052cd/mybannercva1.jpg

One of the complaints I've heard about the Geforce FX cards it the noise. They have a huge, noisy cooling fan. The fan and shroud are so big they take up the PCI slot next to the AGP slot, effectively reducing the number of available PCI slots.Besides the noise, the performance is pretty unremarkable, according to most reviews. At the moment ATI seems to have re-gained the upper hand. I'll probably upgrade my video card later this summer, and I'm definitely leaning toward the ATI Radeon 9xxx series.Dan

Howard am really geting tired of nivida belive it or not i would go with the ati.

While I've never been much of an ATI fan, it's pretty hard to deny that they've got the best cards out on the market right now. If you can afford it, go with the new RADEON 9800, and I'm sure you won't be dissipointed. The 9700 PRO is also a great card from what I hear, and it's quite a bit less money than the 9800. Either way, you should be good to go. :-)Ryan-Flightpro08 :-cool VATSIM Pilot/ControllerZLA ARTCC Senior Controller (C-3)ASRC (Advanced Simulated Radar Client) Beta Testerhttp://vatsim.pilotmedia.fi/statusindicato...tor=OD1&a=a.jpg-----------------------------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 42.86 Drivers)512MB PC2100 DDR RAM40GB Matrox 7200RPM Hard DriveWindows XP Home Edition SP1*No CPU or GPU Overclocking*3dMark2001SE Score: 11298-----------------------------Click Here to Download my American Eagle POSKY CRJ-200!

Howard this ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is nothing but pure sugar. Texture updates are fast, image quality is ulra good, I get no problems with compatibility on anything including FS2K2, SOFII, TW2003, Links (now permanently removed as it doesn't hold a candle IMO to TW2003), Unreal II, RTCW. I highly recommend the 9700 Pro.Now, here's an interesting twist: performance differences between Radeon 9700 Pro 128mb vs 9800 Pro 128mb are not really that significant when push comes to shove. The most revealing indicator is arguably how the card performs with quality Anisotropic Filtering of say 16x, and AA of at least 4x. When you consider the cost difference, I would seriously question going with the 9800 Pro. Now here's the caveat: put 256mb of DDR ram on the 9800 Pro and now we are talking another $80 probably, but the good news is I'm *guessing* there will be some advantage when it comes to the texture frame buffering capabilities. If you've run the Falcon 50 at a high resolution you know you can get delayed loading of its huge textures when you switch between certain views. I'm thinking the 256mb of ram will alleviate this, but I'm not certain. One could also go with the 9700 Pro which I guarantee will easily make FS2002-4 fly at 1600 x 1200 x 32 x 16AF x 4AA. Then, in a year or so you could make a real jump with the R400 chip from ATI. This guy will make the upgrade worth the $$ most likely. Noel