GeForceFX 5900 Ultra Experience...

[Guest]

Hello all...I just wanted to save all of you elite simmers some grief. I was using a Radeon 9700 Pro for a couple of months now and really loved the PERFECT lines in FS2002 with 8x FSAA and 16X AF turned on. I have an Athlon XP 2700+ processor with a gig of PC3200 ram on an Nforce2 mobo. I run FS with all the sliders maxed and get decent frames most of the time (JFK really taxes things and chokes out the system with the radeon card). So... I purchased an Athlon XP 3200+ Barton processor and a GeForce 5900 Ultra to "help" things out a little. Bad news... the ultra performs 10 FPS less than the radeon did in ALL areas and the image quality even with 8X FSAA and 8X AF really does not compare to the radeon. Jaggies are VERY prevalent with the ultra card which you could simply not see with the Radeon. I put the Radeon back in and it was PERFECT again. With the new processor and the Radeon flying into JFK is somewhat better now (10-18 FPS). I am not impressed with the Ultra and will probably be unloading it for a nominal fee. This is only my experience so take it or leave it...AK Air~

[Guest]

Uhh.. 8x AA?I thought the 5900 could only have 4x aa...And you lucky sob :(I have a 1.4 ghz Tbird and a 9500 Pro (which is an awesome card).I want a 2800+ :)But a 5900? Man...... You lucky.

[jamiee 0]

Yeah I saw this one comming. Altho the the graphic quality of the 5900 (or lack of it) doesn't suprise me, the performance does atleast a little. Especially compared to the R9700 PRO.I must say I love my 9700 Pro, but a 9800Pro wouldn't be bad :)Here's My system :---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WinXP Pro- Antec 1080 Performance Plus w/430W Antec PSU- A7N8X-DX Rev 2.00 (UBER 1005 BIOS w/ SATA)- AMD Barton 2500+ (Currently O/C'ed to 2.26Ghz)( 10.5 x 215FSB)- Thermalright SLK800- YS Tech TMD fan- OCZ 1Gb RAM (2 x 256Mb PC3500 NON-EL & 1 x 512Mb PC3500 EL)- ATI R9700Pro - SB Audigy2- Nvidia networking (onboard)- Maxtor Diamond Max 9 80Gig SATA x 2 (RAID 0)- IBM 60GXP 40Gig (Primarly Master)- LiteOn 48/12/48 (Secondary Master)- Pioneer 16x DVD (Secondary Slave)- Iomega Zip 100Mb USB- 1.44 Floppy- Canon 8000F Scanner- Epson Stylus 800 printer- Samsung 900NF 19" Monitor- Logitech Z-680 Spkrs.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Guest]

Man you guys are lucky :(This is a system I'm thinking of getting:----------------------------------------------WinXP Home-AMD ATHLON XP 2800+ 512K 333FSB BARTON RETAIL BOX *3YR MFR. WARRANTY*-VANTEC AEROFLOW SOCKETA CPU COOLER TMD 5600RPM-SOLTEK 75FRN2-L NFORCE2 SOCKETA DUAL DDR AGP8X 5PCI ATA133 SOUND LAN-2x SAMSUNG 512MB PC2700 DDR333 184PIN OEM-MAXTOR DIAMONDMAX PLUS 9 120GB 7200RPM 2MB 8.5MS ATA133 QUIET-1.44 MB High Density Floppy Drive-AOC 19IN 9GLR .25MM 1600X1200@75HZ OSD-LOGITECH ELITE KEYBOARD BLACK MULTILINGUAL USB PS/2-NCI SL-9030KL 17IN ATX 10 DRIVE BAYS 300W P4 READY W/ FRONT USB & SOUND-CREATIVE SOUNDBLASTER AUDIGY 2 PCI 24-BIT W/ SB1394 OEM-SONY 52X CD-ROM EIDE INT OEM-SONY CRX220E1 52X/24X/52X E-IDE INT CD-RW W/ SW OEM-CREATIVE INSPIRE 5200 5.1 6PC SPEAKERS BLACK-D-LINK DFE-530TX FAST PCI 10/100 NIC card-ATI Radeon 9500 Pro-Enermax 430 Watt PSU---------------------------------------------Like it? :-)Awesome systems guys :D

[Guest]

Welp...I fixed the performance issue with the ultra and it performs a bit better than the Radeon now... but the image quality still gets smoked by the Radeon. It's weird though as I have screenies that I took from Quake3 Arena and Unreal Tournament 2003 and can't tell the difference between the cards. I am, however, running OpenGL for the latter two games. Is there just an issue with DirectX? I wouldn't think so as the API's generally do the same hardware calls for FSAA and Anistropic Filtering. I dunno... freakin' weird. I guess I live with the extra FPS and the decreased visual quality in FS. Bums me out though as FS is really the only thing I do anymore. I don't play any other games much. Oh... by the way... Q3Arena at 1600X1200 with everything maxed out still getting 86 FPS on average with the 5900 Ultra and it looks incredible. I just wish FS responded that way! Ugh...My system:Athlon XP 3200+ Barton 400Mhz FSB1GB Corsair PC3200 (dual channel) @ 400Mhz with heat spreaderstwo 120 GB Seagate SATA drives running RAID 0 GeForceFX 5900 Ultra 256MBAntec TruePower 550W PSASUS A78NX Deluxe Rev. 1.4 1004 Uber Bios SATA enhancedPioneer DVD-RWLite-On 52X CD RomSony 21" LCD Flat Panel DisplayCH Products Yoke and Pedals

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Just curious if you've added a driver validate entry for the Ultra. I believe this is required in FS2002 for the finer features of the card to work. If you haven't, at bootup, you should see a device ID associated with the vid card. Make note of the ID, then open FS2002's display.cfg. Look for any section with with the Driver Validate entry, and copy the entry and edit it for your card's device ID and description, then start MSFS.Perhaps this is what you already did to improve performance... -John

[gosta 0]

Hi John,is there another way to get the device ID, or a way to pause the boot-up process? On my system, the screen just quickly flashes before Windows starts, so there's no way I can make a note of anything it says :).Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg

[michal 44]

>I fixed the performance issue with the ultra and it performs a>bit better than the Radeon now... how much better, could you possibly quantify it ?thanks.Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I'm running Windows 98...as soon as the splash screen appears at bootup, I press esc, and I can see the device ID's from the post screen....-John

[HawaiianCondor 0]

Yes I also installed the GEForce FX5900 Ultra (not an inexpensive card) into my system. I'm not overwhelmed by the performance increases, I am seeing somewhat better frame rates and a bit better visual quality than I did with the GEForce TI4400 card that I used before. I have some visual artifacts including a distorted horizon when flying FS2002 over the ocean, looks like I'm approaching a mountainous coast at the horizon in all directions. I have not upgraded to DirectX9 thought, because I've heard rumours that causes SB not to run in 2002. Guess I'll have to in a couple weeks when FS2004 comes out.My system is 2.4GHZ, Winxp Pro with 1024MB RAM and the Nvidia 44.03 drivers.Any other experiences with the FS5900?regards,

[McDaniel 48]

Hi there i had the chance to test both cards the 5900 Ultra and the Radeon 9800 Pro, i must say normally i am a nvidia fan but the picture quality is much better with the radeon, and the frame hit on the ultra with AA8x and AF 8 is heavy and still looks way bader then radeon, the 5900 went back to the store, but also the radeon 128mb went back, i think i will buy the Radeon Pro 9800 256 mb.Just my 2centsGreetsMcDaniel

[michal 44]

>also the radeon 128mb went back, i think i will buy the Radeon>Pro 9800 256 mb.>Not sure a sensible decision unless you have $$ to blow. Tomshardware has an article on this video RAM issue - it looks like 128MB is plenty unless you have some monster monitor and want to use extreme anti-alising settings and even then you buy very liitle of extra performance.Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

[Guest N405WN]

Hawaiian Condor, Squawkbox works perfectly with directx9. It's 8.2 that has problems with SB.