Tried it too - No noticeable differance in performance or quality, although in 3DMark03, i've gained an extra 1000 marks. Radeon X800XT PE. :)

>>I've been working with PCs for>>more than 20 years and am completely familiar with what>>drivers do and don't do so you can ix-nay the tech 101 stuff.>>>But thx anyway. Cheers. :)>>If that was truly the case I don't think we would be having>this little conversation.>ah, I see. So now you're calling me a liar. Go job, carry on.:-roll As far as how I'm measuring the miniscule performance gains I'm talking about, it's a totally unscientific impression I have that things seem to be operating in a slightly better way in terms of textures loading. I don't know how I can be any less emphatic about what I'm talking about and I'm real darn sorry if the suggestion offends you so much that you need to resort to accusing people of being liars and so forth.

"Not a theory my Boy, but do you have any idea how many times just simply reinstalling your current driver or version of DX can improve things? why is that do you think? Have an Idea and I bet you can find the reason for some having found "differences", but whatever..."It's a hell of a long time since anyone called me " my boy"....... ah well....Seriously Paul, are you really saying that the driver development for such as the T14200 stopped a long time ago and therefore nobody using such cards will see any diferences( perceived or otherwise) by updating their drivers /DX version etc? in other words we( the "older card" users ) have all been wasting our time everytime we update the GPU drivers etc?Like ZZ above I've been playing around with computers and electronics of one kind or another for a good number of years and one thing I have learnt is that nothing's certain.Dave

My personal experience with DX 9.0C with a GF FX5900 Ultra and a Radeon 9800XT in FS2004:None improvements neither quality nor fps in both, in fact a little more stuttering in the take off roll.Maybe it

"are you really saying that the driver development for such as the T14200 stopped a long time ago and therefore nobody using such cards will see any diferences( perceived or otherwise) by updating their drivers /DX version etc? in other words we( the "older card" users ) have all been wasting our time everytime we update the GPU drivers etc?"Sounds about right. In the early stages, when a GPU is totally new some performance can be gained through updated drivers as the driver programmers themselves learn more about the GPU architexture and what is the best/fastest way to do things. The Geforce2 got the "Detonator3 series" of drivers which improved performance significantly, and the performance of the Radeon 8500 was also improved significantly due to new and improved drivers.Over time however, dimmishing returns are expected. There's still some benefit of running the latest drivers since they often fix game-specific issues and bugs which could affect image quality and performance even on the older cards.

One thing I've noticed about the 60 series forceware drivers (with my GF4Ti4200) is that I can turn on 2x fsaa and 2x aniso and still see framerates in the 20-30 range in most circumstances. I found previously with the older drivers that turning on fsaa at all absolutely killed the framerates in FS9.

>Over time however, dimmishing returns are expected. There's>still some benefit of running the latest drivers since they>often fix game-specific issues and bugs which could affect>image quality and performance even on the older cards.OK - I think most people will agree with the "diminishing returns" statement , but ,from the way Paul wrote - it's all a waste of time anyway- which is IMHO - total garbage.OK - it's often " perceived " performance improvements we're talking about- does it really matter?As long as the user thinks it's better - surely that's the whole object of the exercise.For example - getting away from FS and computers for a minute............. I'm sure most people have at some time or other visited a friends house and been shown proudly their brand new 500 channel- umpty-ump inch- super all around 20 channel ultra high fidelity sound television. Been asked -" don't you think thats a fantastic picture?" and quietly thought to themselves " My God - how the hell can they watch that thing?"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.Dave

>>>Over time however, dimmishing returns are expected. There's>>still some benefit of running the latest drivers since they>>often fix game-specific issues and bugs which could affect>>image quality and performance even on the older cards.>>OK - I think most people will agree with the "diminishing>returns" statement , but ,from the way Paul wrote - it's all>a waste of time anyway- which is IMHO - total garbage.>>OK - it's often " perceived " performance improvements we're>talking about- does it really matter?As long as the user>thinks it's better - surely that's the whole object of the>exercise.>>For example - getting away from FS and computers for a>minute............. I'm sure most people have at some time or>other visited a friends house and been shown proudly their>brand new 500 channel- umpty-ump inch- super all around 20>channel ultra high fidelity sound television. Been asked -">don't you think thats a fantastic picture?" and quietly>thought to themselves " My God - how the hell can they watch>that thing?">>>Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.>>>DaveDave and All, I apologize for being so ornery, I am right in the middle of moving and been up all night (and this is how I relax?).Thing is every actual improvement does really add-up, significantly.By just actually knowing what drivers do what, memory timings, trimming down certain resource hungry OS bits one can come away with the same performance of those that upgrade to the next size up CPU but don

I'll leave all the leaf raking, yard mowing and alpha blitting to you graphics hardware geniuses...all i know is that on my T-4200SE...the sim works better.Eric

I agree with pretty much everything you say there. I'm generally inclined to be suspicious of claims of performance improvements with drivers and so forth and I stuck with the 45.23 drivers for a long time becuase newer drivers didn't do anything for me. I tried the omega drivers a couple of times but found that like you say, any performance increases were counter-balanced by IQ decreases so I always gave them a pass. But I did notice improvements with the newest forceware drivers for whatever reason (with no noticeable loss in IQ) so I've been using them now for a while and am pleasantly surprised by them.

>Dave and All, I apologize for being so ornery, I am right in>the middle of moving and been up all night (and this is how I>relax?).> Apology accepted here Paul but really no apology neccessary , - me , I just love a good arguement.I think all of us on here are probably nuts in some small way anyway- there must be better ways of spending our time.Cheers Dave

< leaf raking, yard mowing >Delegate mate.........I look after the PCs(hers as well as mine)- she mows the lawnDave

.>>there must be better ways of spending our time.>>Cheers>> Dave>I don't know Dave. I took a short flight this morning from winnipeg to Morden in my newly acquired Piper Archer (the DF one) and boy, was it pleasant. One thing about this sim is that its given me an appreciation of the appeal of GA flying for rw pilots. I'm not a pilot myself, but thx to FS9, I can certainly understand why someone would want to spend time tooling around in the wild blue yonder. :)

Paul, you act like an engineer. The calculations are absolute.I downloaded 9.0C and made no other changes. There is no question that changing views is more fluid and quicker than before. I fly this computer almost daily and think I know how it acts. I have hundreds of logged hours on FS9 with my setup and normally fly complicated a/c (PMDG 737NG) with graphics setting relativelly high and real weather. In addition, last night, I changed from a frame rate of 20 to 24 and there is no loss of smoothness even at Heathrow running Ultimate Traffic at 100%.My machine is a 2500 Barton, 9600XT video, meg of 3200 memory. No overclocking. Unless you have tried the new DirectX and seen no difference, you should do no posting.

I never said it was for larger cards "only".Other than that, we agree totaly.bt