Here you a couple of reviews.http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTM3LDc=http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/200310...38-nv36-40.htmlDifferents results, but useful.Regards.

Thanks for posting those links. The 9800XT is out of my price league but the first review muddies the waters doesn't it? After reading other reviews and seeing several screen shots of AF I now know why so many recommend the 9800 Pro. The improved texture quality makes it a winner. My Ti4600 doesn't handle AF at all well.Cheers,

RayThe Pro with only 128mb of memory goes for about half of what the XT goes for here in the states--mail order. The XT can be as much as $460 and the Pro in the $230-250 range US$$$.Looking at the fps in COF you'd only loose about 3-4,I could live with that and save a couple of hundred. I've also used Nvidia for years,got a bad taste of ATI back in the Mach64 days. But...they've come along way since then and seem to be kicking butt on Nvidia on most every new release.David

Hi David,I agree completely about the performance / price difference not being worth it. Same with processors really.The improved image quality that the 9800 Pro will give me over my Ti4600 makes the change necessary. Until I did some research on AF I hadn't appreciated the big diference it makes to the visuals and to have this with little reduction in frame rates is very welcome. I often wondered why lots of people recommended ATI - now I know.Thanks,

Hi Ray,Very interested to read your post. I had the same dilemma, and I am afriad I am going to upset the applecart now. I switched from an Nvidia 4600 Ti video card (superb card, in terms of Image quality in 2002). Last month I bourght a new system (AMD FX-51 3200 with 256 MB ATI radeon 9800XT Card). I must admit the frame rates are very impressive in 2002, ranging from 55-75+ (see my previous posts in this forum).I dont fly 2004 becuase I can't fly the superb PIC B767. However, and this is a real bug bear for me, the image quality is not half as good as the Nvidia cards. I have witten to ATI at: [email protected], and they were hoping to resolve these issues in the 3.10 drivers, which unfortunately they didn't.The problems are:Blurry textures, shimerring buildings, Shimeering letters on the side of A/C by way of example all POSKY B747/B767 and default A/C. These are the only ones I fly, so I can't comment on others. If you load a POSKY BA B767-336ER the British Airways letters shimmer terribly when you move away from the A/C. Never had these problems with Nvidia.So the bottom line is if you want a sharp crisp image go for Nvidia, if you want high Frame rates go for ATI.Serach te forums for 9800XT and you'll find I'm not the only person with these problems.I hope this helps.Best Wishes,ChrisEGBBUK

Hi Bob,Blimey! That's done it! ;-) as a matter of interest have you tried the Omega drivers? These are provided free and you can choose between performance and quality. I'm running the quality version and it is much better than the default nVidia ones.Why not try those and see how you feel about them? Unfortunately I also fly the Posky 767 BA using the 767PIC AIR file in FS2004 using Project Magenta software so I could end up in the same boat as you.You can download the Omega's here... www.omegacorner.comAs a matter of interest did you fit the Ti4600 in the new system and do a direct comparison of frame rates with the 9800XT? I'll read your other comments in the meantime.Cheers,

I use a Geforce FX5200 card. It's relatively cheap and equal in power to the higher level Geforce 4 TI cards. I have heard good things about the FX5600 on other Flight Simulator forums. You don't want to blow your budget on a high end card. Remember that todays top of the line often become tomorrows garbage; or to put it more simply, there's always an even better one on a truck somewhere. So don't waste your money to find out that it's worthless a month from now.The FX cards are fully DirectX 9 accelerateld and offer a good balance of preformance and speed. The Geforce 4 series are lagging behind with older more expensive chipsets so they're out of the question. They also don't offer DX9 acceleration.There seems to be an even wider array of FX cards than I've seen. In Canada, I've only seen the FX5200, 5600, and 5800. These other cards must be net or computer manufacturer exclusive.When it comes to computer parts, I'm not very patriotic. I love stuff that's Made in the USA. Canada's ATI has a lot to offer in their Radeon series but I've had troubles with them before. If your looking for the real good deals on cards. Try eBay's "Buy It Now" eTailers. That's where I got my FX5200 for about $60-70 US (I forget exactly what I paid but it was in that range). The prices have slipped since then but I got mine not long after they came out.

Hi Ray,It's Chris (not Bob)! I have both the default ATI Drivers and the omegacorner drivers, I didn't realise you could download a different set of quality drivers so I will check my files. However both updates I have relate to the latest 3.10 Drivers.Going back to the quality issues, I was advised yesterday to load MSTS (train) simulator and load the editor and see the difference in screen qualiy and again I was severely disappointed with the"smudged lettering" in the editor, which I never had with the Nvidia cards. This is also an issue with FS2002 as the frame rate counter and coordinates are smudged, as are the plane idents when flying. This confirms the shimmering effects when flying 2002. It appears that I am the only one complaining to ATI about this. But I have seen similar poor image quality on PC's in PC world (when I took my disks in last week to confirm it wasn't just my system).With regards to FPS, I have gone from a maximum of 20 FPS, min 6 to 55-75+ (AMD 2100XP Geforce4 4600) to (AMD3200 FX-51).BTW New Card New system.Ray if you want to semd me your email address I will email pics to you if that helps, and I'll give you my telephone number as I only live in Bham if you want to have a look for yourself on my [email protected] hope this helps.Best Wishes,ChrisEGBB

Hi Chris,It's Chris (not Bob)!Sorry about that - must be my age :-(I didn't realise you could download a different set of quality drivers...Well they're not separate drivers - you're given the option during the install routine.I'm wondering if all these texture problems you're having aren't to do with FS2002. I haven't seen widespread complaints about these sort of problems with FS2004 which I would have expected given the number of people who must have this card. And, without wishing to cast doubts on your expertise, it could be to do with settings for AA and AF - possibly.I've contacted you privately regarding exchanging screen shots which I would be interested in although for the benefit of both of us it would be nice if we could continue some discussion on these pages.Cheers,

RayHave you heard about the Radeon cards (ie. 9700 and 9800) having problems with the antialiasing.I heard they show a lot of jaggies. Im in the same situation as you are.Im considering a GeForce FX 5900 128mb non ultra model. Nvidia cards dont show this jaggies with FS.The chip clock its 400 compare to the ultra which is 450. I heard that it can be overclocked and achieve the same level of performance as the ultra version for a lot less money. Something to think about.By the way if you do a search on Pricewatch you can find this card for less than $200Ed

Ed,I'm not aware of AA problems with the 9700 and 9800 cards. I never use that option anyway as I run at 1280*960 on a 19" CRT which is good enough not to need AA. But, I don't understand how "jaggies" can appear with one card and not another with all AA options set the same. Your best bet is to buy a good enough monitor and run at resolutions high enough not to need AA as it reduces performance quite significantly.As I'm based in the UK PriceWatch is not useful to me but thanks all the same. I'm now considering talking to a local dealer and asking him if I can load FS2004 onto one of his PCs and make a judgement on the best performance for me by swapping various nVidia and ATI cards.I'm not considering the FX5900 cards. They run extremely hot and there is such a huge variation in prices I can't see how some of them can be justified.The general consensus seems to be that ATI gives you higher frame rates but nVidia gives the best image quality. You pays your money and you takes your choice!Cheers,

I've finally found some pretty hard evidence to support the choice for my next card. This is an excellent site and gave me exactly the info I was looking for.How various cards matched up against one another with and without AA and AF. I feel the evidence now supports the 9800 Pro 128Mb card. It's possible there may be some visual artifacts that may spoil the images but these can be rectified with later driver releases. What cannot be improved is the basic performance of the chipset.Have a look at this report www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1361661,00.asp - it's made up my mind together with all the advice and help I've received here. It was tested with a P4 3.0GHz / 800FSB and 875P Intel chipset mobo - my proposed system. What I find interesting is the dramatic drop in frame rates compared to those on tomshardware which always seemed far too high.Thanks everyone.

Good for you Ray ! :-)Now go buy that thing before you read any more LOLBest,

Ray.Check out this thread. http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...topic_id=108789 The Radeons do have visual quality problems with FS as long as AA is concern. Regardless of the resolution you are running the jaggies will still shows up. I own a Sony 19" CRT running the sim @ 1024 X 768 and 1280 X 1024, but with this resolution my framerates suffer. From his screenshots you can tell that they have no jaggies problemsbut people are trying to figure out how does he do it.Ed

Hi Ed,Well, those images are outstanding proving that if the drivers and settings are okay the images will be too.BTW, if you have a CRT you should set your resolution to 1280*960 rather than 1024. Multiply 640*480 by two for the reason. Otherwise you are distorting the image and forcing more redraw calculations which impacts on frame rates.Cheers,