I purchased a Geforce Ultra Gainward 256 Video Card and had it installed today with the 66.81 drivers. Although the frame frates are good the image quality is not. I have never seen so much shimmering especially in the trees, buildings, and Runways. Has anybody any idea's what I can do to improve image quality?Also I am not sure hgow I should set the display settings. My resolution is set at 1280 x 1024Any help would be greatly appreciated.Best Wishes and many thanks,Chris

Chris I have the same problem were you able to solve yoursRegardsJohan

Shimmering trees is solved by lowering the mip map settings. I use mip map 4 in the Fs 2004 control panel. The shimmering actually has nothing to do with nVidia it was just as bad on my old Radeons when having it to 8.Otherwise you can try using official drivers. Some beta drivers released after 3DMARK05 suffer from bad image quality to boost speed.

Hi Johan,These are the changes I amde after visiting PMDG Site and an email sent to the PC Pilots of Ireland Forum; ...........Just read your fascinating article on your Meigs test with your new AMD 64 3400. I thought I would just update you on my system, which maybe of interest to you. I changed my FX 5950 video card to an Nvidia Geforce 6800 Ultra, which proves your point that updating just the Video card is not enough to increase Frame Rates, as Frame Rate increases are CPU dependant. Many maybe thinking why update my video card especially as the 5950 is a superb card? Well my eyesight needs high refresh rates, and the 6800 Ultra allows me to fly at 1600 x 1200 at refresh rates of 120 MHz at a constant and fluid rate, which is fantastic!! My 5950 struggled to give anything over 100 MHz, and flying was a bit of a stop start affair at Flytampa's KMIA / KSFO. Now I get frame rates of between 25 and 33 with the sliders set to maximum, and traffic at 75% at all complex airports made by Simflyers and Flytampa's without exception! At the Meigs test I reported FPS in the range of 70 at 1024 x 768 resolution, under the same test conditions I now get an average of 76 without traffic, dropping down to 63 with AI traffic at 100% (FStraffic 2004). Although the frame rates drop dramatically down when I switch to 1600 x 1200 x 32 bit to around 40 with Traffic at 100%. I am delighted with this because I get a) High refresh rates, :( little if any shimmering, c) Fluid and constant Frame rates, d) Quality images are very sharp, e) No waiting for texture build up !! However to achieve this I have had to take on board both George's and John's tweaks, and also some advice from the forums at PMDG, which has had a significant impact upon Frame Rates and fluidity. This tweak seems to have had the biggest impact thus far: Locate FS9.cfg:"C:Documents and SettingsChrisApplication DataMicrosoftFS9FS9.CFG" I've have now added the following lines: (Thanks Nick for explaining how this works!) [DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra.0]Mode=1600x1200x32TextureAGP=0TriLinear=1AntiAlias=1MipBias=8UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=0TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400 (Standard setting is set to 40 so increase it to any figure up to 400!) Check to make sure no duplicate entries exist mine had references to three different Video Cards!) This has increased the framerates an amazing 100%, using all maximum settings, at 1600 x 1200 x 32 bit, Traffic at 100%, Visibility 40 Miles, Clouds set to few; From 14 FPS at Leeds Bradford (UK2000 Scenery) to 31 Min FPS, KORD (Simflyers( from 8 FPS to 21), On a slightly different note, I have an Nvidia FX5950 Card for sale or part ex for FS9 Scenery, my email address is [email protected] if this is of any interest to you. This is a fantastic card, because of poor eyesight I had to increase refresh rates, beyond that available on the 5950 and the 6800 Ultra allows me to do that nicely with decent frame rates! (Now that I have found this Cure to poor frame rates!) Interestingly I have noticed that the shimmering experienced by myself and many others has now disappeared, by switching resolution to 1600 x 1200 ! Thanks to George for a very interesting article! I hope this helps. Happy New Year ! Best Wishes to all,Chris.J.HickmanEGBB

Hi Chris!"(...) updating just the Video card is not enough to increase Frame Rates, as Frame Rate increases are CPU dependant (...)"Yes and no (grin)! The "no" here means that the video card has its own function in increasing frame rates. I noticed this two times before, and today was the third time: I got rid of my GeForce 4 TI 4400 and bought a GeForce 6800, the "plain" version with 128 MB DDR. Instead of running in 1280x960 with the lock at 26 fps (rarely going below), I now run in 1600x1200 with the lock at 26 fps (rarely going below, and usually having a LOT to spare). Both before and after I used/use AA 2xQ and Ani 8x, which looked kind of insufficient (but was the max she could handle) with the old card/resolution, but now looks perfect with the new card/resolution. With my old card the higher resolution (all other things being equal) would result in frame rates below 20; with the new card in the higher resulution (all other things being equal) I have not only a much better picture, but also an improvement in frame rates of about 10 fps. Well... eh... I certainly DO call that an increase!Be well!Jaap Verduijn.

Hi. I'm getting ready to do some flight simming again now that I am getting a new computer. The Dell 8300 (specs below) has a 256MB Geforce 6800 video card. Since I have been away for awhile, I have not been keeping up with the various drivers. I'll have to wait to see what drivers shipped with the new system, but was wondering what are the current recommended drivers for the 256MB Geforce 6800?Thanks for any advice,Steve J.Dell 8300 P4, 550 (3.4G),HT,1MB1 GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz256GB NVidia Geforce 6800250GB Serial ATA, 7200SB Audigy 2ZS (Edit add: P.S. Also, what is the current tweaking program recommended for the Geforce cards? Previously I used the Riva Tuner for my Ti4200.)

I use the Gainward Expert driver, not Nvidia's based on the 66.97. FPS and Image quality. Quite Good,.ChrisEGBB