After years of being an NVidia user(last being a Ti-200 GF3 128mb)I had the opportunity to try switching to an ATI 9800 Pro 256mb. My system spec's. are as follows...Soltek SL-75DRV4 motherboard(VIA KT266A)1 gb of crucial/micron PC2100 DDRAMD 2400+using onboard sound(no PCI card)525watt(unknown, possibly POWMAX brand)power supply2 hard drives WD60/WD40Plextor CDRWYes, very outdated to today's standards but have served(pretty)well over the last couple of years for FS2004 until I can afford a new system. I made an extra effort to try to rid my machine of all old Nvidia drivers and such before loading up the ATI card. I have read as to the extensive problems related to power/heat/VIA chipset issues with this card though i'm sure others with more modern systems attest to not having any of these issues at all.My first impression with the new ATI card was that it proved what many have said, that being.... FS2004 is VERY cpu dependent.... and that performance issues(stutters and such)will not see much improvement by replacing other hardware. The visuals are much improved however and being able to move sliders up for more eye candy is always nice. Now to the problems....While I have been able to complete some flights I have had a problem of the video crashing out, that is a shutdown of video/monitor(to "no signal). Only way out is to reboot. I have tryed different drivers(video/VIA)and such with no luck. While it is possible, I do not believe it to be a heat/driver issue. My suspicion lies with the power supply as I don't think the one I have holds the various rail voltages very well which I know is crucial to these ATI cards. I will be replacing with an Antec or better brand name soon(advice??). In the meantime, for anyone who experienced similar problems i'd appreciate any advice as to possible other causes/fixes.Thanks

A heat issue is fairly easy to diagnose. Simply remove the left side cover of your case and use a small house fan to blow air into the open case. If the system continues to crash then you can move on to other possibilities.With regard to PSU's, it really depends upon how much money you wish to spend. A top of the line option can run upwards of $300.00US. A very nice option at a great price is the UltraX series. They are of modular design (nice for eliminating cable clutter... you use only the cables you need) and do a good job of offering clean power to the system. The only issue I've had with the one I own is that it ran hot, but the PSU does have a good exhaust fan. Very good PSU at a good price.http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ind...f0a17819455bb2fA great driver remover avavilable at this time is Driver Cleaner. Follow the Readme exactly and it will do the job of scrubbing your system of the old nVidia drivers.Cheers,Greg

Thanks Greg.I know what you mean about PSU's throwing off heat. The one i'm using is fine in the winter but summer months it's almost unusable because of the heat it throws out. I will check into the brand you mentioned. I have pretty decent cooling with 2(side/front)intake and 2(back/psu fan) exhaust fans for the case. I have downloaded some temp sensing software(how accurate???)it rarely shows the GPU above 40C. I also used Driver Cleaner for removing old drivers and such. Having a good power supply wasn't so much an issue with my past nvidia cards but from everything I've been reading lately it's almost a must when using this ATI card with older AMD cpu's as they require not only a lot of power but consistency with voltages across the rails as well. Today I tryed installing an older ATI driver and kept getting a driver error when starting up FS2004, which I was able to resolve by making FS2004 rebuild several .cfg files. I just did the driver change looking for better performance not necessarily related to my video crash problem. As far as voltage monitoring software, I have one that came with my motherboard and also downloaded Speedfan v4.22, just curious as to what would be considered exceptable voltage variations across specific rails as it might relate to power hungry hardware. Just as an example(reading from Speedfan)it shows the following...Vcore1=1.66v -12v=-12.03Vcore2=2.53v -5v=-5.36v+3.3v=3.22v +5v=4.92v+5v=4.81v vbat=3.2v+12v=12.03v