Please choose and WHY?

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Got two machines here - one has ATI(Wife's) - other has Nvidia(mine)- tried FS9 on both - and prefer results on Nvidia- nothing really specific but just seems smoother.Dave

I use both, got a G4 4600 in my design rig and a Radeon 9800 pro in the gaming one, both do great. I find the he Radeon cuts thru the heavy weather and clouds more than the Nvidia did (granted a bit more power), but I like the IQ better in the G4. From what I have read and heard the NVidia has better future support for newer games and DX9C, but I am sure ATI can't be far behind.Bottom line, money to blow, the FX6800 ultra, budget, get the Radeon X800, both fast cards.Keep in mind that the PCI Express slots are supposed to phase out the AGP slot, something to think about if thinking of future upgrades.Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/PBTMCa.jpgCalVirAir International VACalVirAir International

Cirrus,I had a Ti4600 and changed to a Radeon 9800 Pro and haven't looked back. I was told image quality would be inferior with the Radeon but I haven't noticed. Where the Radeon scores is in AA and AF. I don't use AA but I have set AF to 8X and the difference in medium distance scenery is remarkable. Where it was a blurry mush with the Ti4600 with AF at the default it became detailed with the Radeon at 8X. Both cards with take 8X AF but the difference is that frame rates will drop sharply with the Ti4600 but will remain high with the Radeon.Hope that helps.

Choose your weapon :-) http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/dis...ds-2004_40.htmlI stay with ATI simply because I like their drivers better. I grew weary of different games getting FUBAR'd from different iterations of nVidia video drivers. And ATI cards still cut thru FS coulds better than the nVidia cards.Greg

If you read latest review/comparison of Nvidia 6800GT and ATI X800Pro on www.hardocp.com then you will see both cards being practically equal (at least in FS9). But ATI card seems to have slightly better water reflections - which I value highly - so I picked the ATI card. But your personal preferences may lead you in a different direction.Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

Sorry, Looks like NVidia wins in FS9. Comparing the Nvidia 6800XT vs the ATI Radeon X800Pro.

"Sorry, Looks like NVidia wins in FS9. Comparing the Nvidia 6800XT vs the ATI Radeon X800Pro."Don't know what a 6800XT is... but to each his own. Anybody buying either brand of the latest gen video cards will get alot of bang for the buck.Greg

>Sorry, Looks like NVidia wins in FS9. Comparing the Nvidia>6800XT vs the ATI Radeon X800Pro.It is rather simplistic statement. First, there is no such card 6800XT. There is 6800GT and 6800Ultra. And then you should compare cards in the same price category. And then any performance comparison should be accompanied by careful quality comparison. The latter can be subjective so what "wins" is for one may be "loose" for another. Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

I didn't mean the XT. I meant the GT. It's hard keeping all these cards' "letter names" right. I seem to like the GT's performance over the Radeon X800 Pro. Those are the 2 cards I'm comparing. Why THESE 2 cards? I think paying in the $600+ range for the higher level X800 or the Nvidia Ultra is "too much $ for too little gain". Again, only my opinion.

"I seem to like the GT's performance over the Radeon X800 Pro."You might want to look at those graphs again, Stan. Specifically, the last one showing 1600 x 1200 and 4AA 8/16AF (where most of us want to use this sim).Bottom line... when the demand is thrown at the video card, the ATI cards come out ahead.Cheers,Greg

Had Both Nvidia and ATI cards of the same generation (Geforce FX and ATI 9XXpro series) Essentialy The Geforce does give better Image quality in my opinion especially with their full scene Anti Aliasing (It gets the jaggies out of aircraft cheatines) HOWEVER !!!... Turn AA on in a Geforce FX series and your asking for a slow sim... ATI manages frame rates with AA and AF much better than the Geforces at the moment so thats what i kept for my system build.. (although the 6800GT looks real darned good right now) Im waiting to see what pans out but a purchace right now would be for ATI.. (if your primarily a Flight simmer) (Doom 3 is another story).

Hi Guys,I have a Nvidia eVGA e-GeFORCE 6800 Ultra Extreme Edition and this card smokes, I now run FS2004 at a res of 2048x1536x32. At simflyers KLAX airport I get 23+ FPS.Antialiasing: 2XQAnisotropic Filtering: 16XMipmaps: TrilinearNvidia "ALL THE WAY"Mike

Videocard and CPU discussions tend to get very emotional for some reason :) This is just my opinion:For last generation (Radeon 9x00, GeforceFX 5xx0), ATI is better. Their cards offer suprior anisotropic filtering (up to 16x) with only a small performance hit (I still use 8x in current games on my 2-year old 9700 Pro). FSAA is also arguably better - they only offer MSAA where as Nvidia also offer the older SSAA method that can be more effective but also eats up a lot of FPS (clouds and FSAA on Nvidia cards anyone?). Comparing ATI MSAA to Nvidia MSAA, ATI provides better quality thanks to their superior sampling patterns and new temporal AA (not applicable to FS9 though unless you get the sim to run at 60 FPS). Also, the ATI cards are just plain faster. Look at those graphs again. FS9 at 1280x1024 no AA or AF... The entire Radeon line is CPU limited at this resolution. Of the last generation Geforce cards, only the 5950 Ultra manages to remain CPU limited. Same thing at 1600x1200, only the 9600 XT is CPU limited, no card of thelast-generation GeforceFX lineup is fast enough to keep up with the CPU. The whole GeforceFX line is essentially based on the flawed, underperforming NV30 (5800 series). They managed to eek out some extra performance, mostly through driver hacks but the basic design is flawed.For next-generation, Nvidia have done their homework though. The 6800 series look very impressive. It depends on how much meaning those Doom3 benchmarks have. It could be meaningful, or it might simply be a case of Nvidia giving Carmack lots of money for his optimizing the engine for the Geforce cards :)