I just bought this thing. It was supposed to be a nice upgrade from my 128mg Nvidia 5600 FX Ultra. But...I took a %30 performance hit! Not an improvement. I'm really frustrated.I clean installed the drivers and made sure to manually purge the old entries from the registry.I got the new 5.5's then I got the 5.4 omegas. Still everything shows an average fps hit of 15 fps in the exact same settings I was using before. I had previously heard that ATI cards did a better job with the clouds than nvidia's so I switched. I have to tell you, I'm not impressed at all.Does anyone have an idea why this newer card would perform worse than my previous card?Dell4550, 3.06ghz, 1024 Ram, latest Bios, soundblaster pro, fsautostart, and all the other little tricks installed.

Sounds like your motherboard chipset drivers have been trashed. Reinstall them and then reboot. You may then have to reinstall the video card drivers.Greg

Alright, I'll give that a try and get back to you guys. Thanks.

OK, did that, no effect. Maybe a single FPS improvement. Here's an interesting tidbit: It doesn't matter what settings I have on my video card (ie I max out everything or I minimalize every setting)FS performs the same. You'd think that I'd get a perfomance hit or boost depending on which way I went. But that's not the case, it still turcks on at the same FPS. Go figure....Any other hints that I should consider?As I said, this is my first experience with ATI cards, this certainly seems strange.:>

Hmmm... while the X700 isn't the best choice in gaming cards (8 pipelines and 128bit interface) it shouldn't be giving you the performance hit that you're seeing.To be thorough download Drivercleaner to make sure any leftover nVidia stuff is cleaned away. See the Readme and follow the cleaning directions to the letter. Drivercleaner will give you a good registry to start with.Before going into Safe Mode to do the cleaning do the Uninstall of the video card as I suggested in my previous post. Follow Drivercleaner's instructions of uninstalling the ATI drivers using Wondows' Add/Remove. Use Drivercleaner in Safe Mode. When you reboot cancel the video driver install and first reinstall the chipset drivers. Reboot and then install DirectX. Reboot and install the video drivers.FYI don't allow Windows to go through it's install routine of the video drivers. Cancel the routine and then click on the driver .exe to install the drivers. I use the Omega drivers and they work just fine.After you've gone thru all the installs (sorry, seems time consuming but it's the best way make sure everything is right with all the drivers and DirectX) you can check to see how it all went. Click on Start>Run and then type "dxdiag" (without the quotes). Wait for the DirectX Diagnostic page to stabilize and then click on the "Display" tab. If the chipset drivers and DirectX are right the three functions in the "DirectX Features Box" will all be enabled.I'll standby for your results,Greg

Again, thanks Greg. I'll get on that tonight and get back with you. You've been lots of help.;>

OK, did all that. I get the same results. For some reason, it just can't make over 30 fps at startup in Seattle in 2d panel mode. When I switch to VC, I get slightly better FPS. Perhaps I haven't tweaked it all I can, but the 9550 card that I tried last week (a much weaker card) gave me a solid 42fps in this same scenario at Seattle. So, here we are.You say this isn't a very good gaming card. I can still return it to the store and get something else. But I can't spend over $200 US on the thing. Do you have a better mid-range suggestion?Any additional suggestions would be great.Thanks a lot Greg.

Ok then, what motherboard are you using? Is it an AGP or PCIe board? Is the X700 a PCIe or AGP?Perplexing that the 9550 would give you almost 50% more performance than the X700 at the same settings and testing conditions. Something is definately amiss.Greg

I agree, something just ain't right. I am using an Intel AGP motherboard and the card is the AGP version. The PCI version was more expensive and that's how I spotted the difference. This is out of a Dell Dimension 4550 that I bought 2 years ago. I recently (2months ago) upgraded the CPU to a 3.06 chip from the 2.53 dinosaur that it was.Looking down at the floor in VC I can get about 200 FPS, but when I look out the windscreen, I get 32 max.

This 9800 Pro is a great deal right now (free FedEx and no CA sales tax to you). The core and memory clocks are just a tad slower than the X700, and they both have 8 pixel pipelines. But the 9800 Pro has a 256bit memory interface vs. 128bit for the X700. And the 9800 Pro is a proven performer in this sim (many of us have done alot of virtual flying with that card).Still... I'm curious what's up with that X700.Greg

Yeah, I think it's time to box the card back up and return it to the store. It's sad, I was really looking forward to moving up to an ATI card. I think I'm better off with what I had before.Greg, you've been great. Thanks for the assist.

Here's an interesting breakthru:I adjusted my FS9.cfg settings. In the brackets where it displayed my video card, ie Display, I changed the setting to something like "display.device.Radeon drivers on Win_XP."When I did that, I got 10 fps back in all settings. That's strange. Is there any reason for this?

That is indeed interesting. Might be time to let the sim rebuild the FS9.cfg file. I try to keep mine as clean as possible, but I usually rebuild it every couple of months (I install video drivers almost as often as most folks change their clothes :-) ).Keep us posted on how you get along. Me thinks there's something here we can all learn from.Greg