http://reviews.cnet.com/ATI_Radeon_X800_XT...661.html?tag=fr Now if the early buyers report the same, I'm just gonna have to go out and spend some money. Hot Dam n!!Test:Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 We use Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2004, a demanding DX9-based game, to measure a graphics card's 3D graphics gaming performance. To measure the frame rate at which the game plays back, we use Fraps, a shareware utility that measures frame rates, takes screen shots, and captures video from DirectX and OpenGL games.Flight Simulator 2004 contains a plethora of settings. The settings we use to utilize the game as a benchmark are as follows: Weather: Rate at which weather changes over time: None Traffic: Air traffic density: 0% Sound: All sounds disabled Realism: Display flying tips: Disabled Display/Scenery: Terrain mesh complexity: 100; Terrain texture size: high; Terrain detail: land & water; Water effects: low; Dawn/dusk texture blending: enabled; Extended terrain textures: enabled; Special effects detail: high; Scenery complexity: extremely dense; Autogen density: extremely dense; Add-on dynamic scenery: extremely dense; Ground scenery casts shadows: enabled; Sun glare: enabled; Lens flare: enabled Display/Aircraft: Virtual cockpit gauge quality: high; Reflections: enabled; Aircraft cast shadows: enabled; Landing lights: enabled Display/Weather: Sight Distance: 150mi; Cloud draw distance: 80mi; 3D cloud percentage: 100; Detailed clouds: enabled; Cloud coverage density: maximum Display/Hardware: Target frame rate: unlimited; Render to texture: enabled; Transform and lighting: enabled; Antialiasing: disabled; Filtering: trilinear; MIP mapping quality: 4; Hardware-rendered lights: 8; Global max texture size: massive We create a flight with the following parameters: Selected aircraft: Bell 206B Jet Ranger Selected location: La Guardia Selected weather: Weather theme: Cold fronts Selected time and season: 9/7/2003 7:25 PM Click to enlarge We then select the flight, which positions the Bell 206B Jet Ranger helicopter on the tarmac at La Guardia airport at dusk. We press the S key three times in succession to set the game camera to the Spot view, then press the 3 key on the numeric pad (with Num Lock engaged) to position the game camera to the right of and behind the helicopter. We then press F4 to engage full throttle, which makes the helicopter take off and gain altitude. As soon as the helicopter takes off, we start logging the game's frame rate using Frap's benchmarking utility. We measure the frame rate for exactly 2 minutes. Fraps reports the average frame rate of game playback for those 2 minutes. We run the test a minimum of three times and take the average of the three test runs. Flight Simulator 2004 performance is reported in frames per second (fps); a higher frame rate is better. Depending on the type of card being tested and the performance comparisons we are making, we run these tests at different resolutions and different antialiasing and anisotropic-filtering settings. Each graphics card review indicates the resolutions and settings at which we ran the tests. These tests are run with antialiasing and anisotropic-filtering settings selected via the graphics card's driver interface. Futuremark's

And where do you see this "double" ??Michael J.

"And where do you see this "double" ??"At 1200 x 1600 the X800 XT Platinum is more than twice as fast as the 9800 XT in FS9. These new cards are indeed impressive!Greg

Yes, all three of the new cards are running about double the 9800XT frames at 1600x1200x32 4xAA & 8xAF. Course, you have to keep in mind that the tests were done without any AI running. That's the Processor killer in FS2004. Kill your processor and you kill the graphics. I'm glad they tested it without AI so we can see just what the new cards can do without that huge CPU limitation.

"Course, you have to keep in mind that the tests were done without any AI running."Sound, too, was disabled during the testing you linked to. All graphics tests should be made with sound disabled (not just within the game, but within Windows). It can be quite frustrating when folks are having problems with FS, and then post a test scenario they would like others to try but things like sound and AI are not mentioned. Just proves how difficult it can be to benchmark this sim, especially considering all the different PC platforms it's run on.I digress... these new cards are gonna be blistering. I'm a bit concerned about the power requirements of the 6800, but we'll see how that works out. Either way the consumer is the big winner. Thankfully, the days of nVidia feeding us small improvements in technology (for big $) seem to be behind us for now.Free market competition is good! :-)Greg

Well cnet is not the best source for reliable info on these cards performance. there is specialized hardware sites that do it much better and know much more about what they indead are reviewing."Unequivocally the most powerful graphics card on the market, ATI's Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition hands Nvidia's new card a stunning defeat."I am wondering if that reviewer is a fanATIc by heart? I haven

"there is specialized hardware sites that do it much better and know much more about what they indead are reviewing."And many have proven to be no more objective about what they are reviewing than Cap Mason over at Flightsim.Let's face it... it's easy to skew any review. Many who are into it for self-enrichment have proven that. In the end it's up to the consumer to evalute the reviews for what they are and then make informed decisions.One thing for sure... these new cards will be FAST!Greg

>I am wondering if that reviewer is a fanATIc by heart? I>haven

>Tom's Hardware and HardOCP.com both reached similar>conclusions and both are highly respected hardware enthusiast>sites...They both reached conclusion that ATI card is either a 'top performer' or a 'better value'. I agree that phrase 'stunning defeat' is way too strong here. Michael J.

"I agree that phrase 'stunning defeat' is way too strong here. "But it has great shock value. :-) Greg

Although it seems that X800 has some great improvement on some games, like UT2003, but on the FS, which is more CPU intensive than maybe some other games, it definitely doesn't double them, rather you can see improvement on the AA and AF side, which IS the very important part of FS world.

Yes of course it doesn

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 (in fps)1,600x1,200 with 4X Antialiasing and 8X Anisotropic filtering Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra (Beta ForceWare 60.72 driver) 27.7 fps 81 percent increase over the 9800XTATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition (Beta Catalyst 4.5 driver)34.6 fps 126 percent increase over the 9800XTATI Radeon X800 Pro (Beta Catalyst 4.5 driver)26.4 fps 72 percent increase over the 9800XTATI Radeon 9800 XT (Beta Catalyst 4.5 driver)15.3 fpsClose enough!!

Yes, this is what bothers me about those benchmarks - they are done in 1600x1200 resolution. Sorry but I doubt too many people use this resolution with MSFS since you could throw in clouds, heavy cockpit and bring the system to its knees. *IF* on the other hand the frame rates were even 50% higher in something like 1048x768 that would be much more impressive to me.Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

Concerning AA and AF, I cannot imagine to fly without AF @ 16! If I'm landing at any lower setting, I notice the kinda of a "line" on the runway moving towards the end of the runway, like the runway is being "discovered". Blurry textures become non-blurry, very weird. And changes in terrain section have no effect on this... And I noticed if I push AF to 16x, this thing disappeares. I'll post once screenshots in one separate post, but I think you know what I'm talking about...