People: Is the nforce 2 dual channel chipset really any faster than the Via KT333 in FS9? I have an A7V8X with a Radeon 9800 and Barton 2500 oc'd to 2.08 and 2 512 PC2700 @ 180 (360) FSB, and I only get 12,000+ 3Dmark 2001. I have nothing running in the background, so can it be the chipset? Kdub

Hi,I had pretty much the same system; A7V8X with 9700 Pro & TBred 2400; upgraded to a NF2 board (Epox 8RDA+) and saw a very noticeable boost in FS performance, at the time FS2002. The VIA chip was left in the dust by the NForce2...indeed, that board still lingers in the closet and I have since gone up another notch to the NForce 2 Ultra. Best,

Hi Guys -- I purchased the A7V8X back in November of 2002, along with a TBred 2800 (which I got in Feb 03) and a Nvidia 4200 128mb. A few months back, I installed the 9800 Pro and got about half the frames per second that I did with my 4200. I tried everything I could think of to help the problem except to download a more recent BIOs upgrade. I even completely reinstalled Windows to identify just the 9800Pro because I knew others mentioned that old drivers can cause problems when upgrading from a Nvidia to ATI card. I finally gave up and theorized that there must have been something in particular that a A7V8X (KT400) and the ATI cards had problems with. Did either of you guys update your ATI cards from other, older Nvidia cards to see improvement once you did the upgrade? Is a BIOs upgrade the answer to my problem?Thanks,Robb

Robb: As a matter of fact, I went from the Ti4200 to the 9800 Pro on the A7. The frames at low resolutions, like 800X600, were about the same. Anything above 800X600, and especially above 1280X, were about twice as fast with the 9800. I'm not kidding. At 1600X1200, I went from about 8 to 15. So something is wrong. Do you have the latest Via 4in1 drivers, and are you using a whole lot of AA and AF? Even so, I used a 9500 Pro for about a year, and got better frames than the Ti, at least at the higher resolutions. Keith

Thanks for the response Keith! I has the 9800 Pro for about three days. I did not use any AA or AF during the period of time I tried it. I stay at 1600x1200. I used the latest 4in1 drivers from the normal Windows update site. I got the motherboard not too long after it was released, and I did not update the BIOs when I tired to update to the 9800Pro. That was the only thing maybe I probably should have done. I could be wrong. I just assumed there was a problem between the 9800Pro and the KT-400 chipset, so I took it back and put back in my 4200ti. Maybe the particular 9800Pro card I got was flawed. Any other suggestions?Robb

Athlon XP 2800 (2250Mhz) OCd (2400Mhz)1Gb of 3200 SDRAMASUS KT400 WD Special Edition 80Gb (8meg cache)128Mb Nvidia 4200tiAnyone?Thanks!Robb