nVidia Cards

[Guest Fltsim Phil]

I am in the process of upgrading my video card. I currently have a GeForce Ti4600. Can some kind soul explain the difference between the nVidia GeForce 5900, 5900 Ultra and 5950 chipsets?? Assuming all 3 cards had 256mb RAM, would there be a significant performance advantage for FS9 between these 3 choices??Thanks!Flightsim Phil

[Guest 747-400F]

not really belive it or not lol i had a 64mb Ti4200 and got a new pc and it had an FX5600 256DDR in it and the fps are not all that good at all if your after a new card i would go for a 9600XT or 9600PRO or if u have the money 9800PRO iam going out this afternoon to replace my FX with a Radeon 9600PRO regards

[Guest ccgr]

The Ti4200 and FX 5600 are pretty much on par. By going with a 5900 you'll see a boost.

[Guest Glenn]

If I may jump in here with a question on this.I'm thinking of switching from the ATI 9800 Pro 256 to a comparable NVidia, primarily because of ATI-FS problems, or at least, what I believe to be problems related to the ATI-FS interaction, along with a number of other video issues and not the best support from ATI on them. I previously owned an NVidia TI4400 and was extremely happy with its trouble-free operation. I'd like your guys opinion on what I'm seeing, and to find out if those with the NVidia are having the same issues in FS9 as I though.We all know about the flickering problem (which ATI still hasn't addressed, the latter being part of the reason I'm thinking of switching), so I won't go over old ground there. However, on a flight in FS9 last night (certainly not the first time for this issue though), I did about 130 nm in the clouds in a Twin Otter to a relatively remote airport in Canada (i.e. no enhancements, single runway, few buildings). As I started my approach underneath the clouds, I went into a rhythmic stop-go-stop-go pattern with about a 1 second period to it. I know this has been noticed by others before, but I'd be interested to know if this is an issue just with ATI cards, or if this can happen with the NVidia ones as well. It seems to happen on overcast days particularly. The "stutters" remained throughout another circuit, when I finally shut the thing down. Given the rough air, those stutters made the approach very close to impossible (the rough air I can deal with, but not in combo with serious stuttering). My fps' were good at 14 to 34 on approach, so that doesn't seem to be an issue. I've done all the other tweaks known to man and beast, including running in Windows XP Classic mode with everything else turned off, and I have a very high end machine, so at least with this question, I'm concentrating strictly on the video card. If it turns out not to be the case, then I'll start looking elsewhere, but in all honesty, I've been tweaking since August and I've about had enough of tweaking and not really flying :-). So, with respect to the video card only, any comments or ideas please? I do know that Radeon does have somewhat nicer graphics, but that doesn't do me any good if the sim becomes unflyable as a result :-).Thanks for your time guys.Glenn

[Guest FPSFREAK]

Glenn,Download the Omega 2496b drivers from WWW.Omegacorner.Com and put an end to all the issues you are having with your current Radeon card. As far as going over to the Dark Side ;) You'll experience the same issues and at times more with the latest FX line as they to have issues with FS that still aren't fixed. Not to mention a slight drop in performance. Probably not visually discernible but still there.Have you removed the side of your case and made sure your CPU fan was functioning? What you describe can also be blamed on heat as an issue. Not just your VC. When was the last time you blew the dust off the inside of your machine? Dust traps heat. Do you experience the stuttering or lock ups in other games that stress the CPU as much as FS does? Think twice before getting rid of your current card. When running the latest Omega's you'll be making a lateral switch as far as performance with a definite drop in visual quality. The latest bench's prove this out.Bobby

[Guest Glenn]

OK, now the Omega drivers are probably the one thing I HAVEN'T tried :-). Thanks for this - I'll have a go with those and see what happens.Yeah, the unit is only 3 months old, and I blew out the dust a couple of days ago. I also have a total of 4 heavy duty fans and a 330 W power supply, all with monitoring sensors attached, and they're all good. I normally run about 30 to 35 degrees C on the various boards so I am good that way. I do have one other game (not much of a gamer I'm afraid :-) ) that occasionally locks up for some unknown reason, but I also have a video display corruption that occasionally happens on boot up. It's easy to fix with a reboot, and maybe these Omega drivers would fix that too, not sure. I'll give it a try tonight though and see what happens.Thanks very much again for the assist. I'll let you know.Glenn

[Guest MIKE737]

I've just replaced my creative 4200TI 64mb by a PNY FX 5800 128mb and I can notice a huge improvement concerning graphics and frame rate( in FS2004 ). In FS2002 no real improvement , it seems like the 4200 ti perfroms better than the 5800 , especially with heavy clouds .Regards

[Guest FPSFREAK]

Glenn,The new Omega's really bring out the best in both FS9 and the ATI cards. You really should try them.Another thing to remember is to make sure your running the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard also. These can make a big difference in both performance and stability.Another thing to consider being as you state the machine also locks at other times is a 330Watt PS is really borderline for 4 "Heavy Duty" fans, your current setup and a 9800. This is a major issue with stability sometimes.Keep in touch.Bobby

[Guest Glenn]

W O W!!! OK, I installed the Omega drivers you suggested. Now, I've only done one flight, but basically I put myself in a situation where even with a high end system in FS9, I could easily have expected stutters and crappy frame rates. Instead I got a totally smooth flight and easily the best trip in FS9 I've had since I got it back in August. The difference is amazing, and even the flickers are gone which is a bonus as far as I'm concerned. As I said, this is only one flight, but I was running a Twin Otter that is hard on frame rates (but a really, really nice machine - Eric Dante's re-done for FS9), at night, in heavy clouds with 1700 ovcst and 2.5 mi vis in snow at the destination airport, with only an NDB approach to work with. I expected when I broke out of the overcast and saw the runway lights that this thing would slow to a crawl as I had my resolution now set to 1600 x 1280 x 32 (for the last flight that I ran into so much trouble with, I had it set to 1152 x whatever). I only quickly turned my frame rate counter on when I was bopping in and out of the cloud tops as this is where FS9 seems to give a great deal of grief, but they were pretty steady between 23 and 28 fps all the way, which I was happily surprised at (normally I leave that thing off - it only means something when you are starting to crawl anyway). The circling approach that meant a lot of head-swinging was dead smooth though, which I've never had under those conditions.Bottom line is, preliminary results are WAAAY better than I expected, so thank you VERY much for this suggestion! It was a gem and unless something changes, I'll stick with these from here on.Glenn :-)

[Guest Glenn]

Thank you for this. I'm going to file this one away in my "remember just in case" file :-). Seems like Bobby's suggestion worked extremely well for me, at least in the beginning, so I will stay with the ATI for now.Appreciate the info here :-).Glenn

[Guest FPSFREAK]

Glenn,They are sweet. :) Glad I could help. I stubled upon the Omega's about a year ago when I had an issue with UT2K3. Have never gone back since than. I will say though that initial reports show the latest 3.9 Cat drivers have fixed all the issues that we had with FS9. Although the Cat drivers offer a very small performance improvement over the Omega's, I like the visual quality with the Omega's much better.Glad i could help.Bobby

[Guest Glenn]

Ahh, interesting. I may give the 3.9's a try, but in reading the "fixed in this release" doc, it didn't mention much about FS9. I take it you have info that goes beyond that doc? I'd be interested to know, if you can spare the time. As I say though, I may have a quick look at them and see if they work any better, but I won't hesitate to go back if they aren't.Thanks again Bobby.Glenn

[Guest FPSFREAK]

Like I said I swear by the Omegas. Haven't tried the Cat 3.9's but from the posts on this forum they seem very good with all issues resolved.Glad I could help.Bobby

[Guest Glenn]

Yeah, as I said, I may try the 3.9's, but won't hesitate to go back to the Omegas, but we'll see.Have you noticed that some of the files and folder names are in blue, and others in black after loading the Omega's? I suspect it is done on purpose, but I haven't figured out when you get which. Any ideas on this one?Thanks,Glenn

[Guest FPSFREAK]

Glenn,If your running XP and have it set to show hidden files and folders, it will show system files as Blue folders.Bobby