Hi.is anyone running any of the new ATI cards, such as the X850 / X850 Platinum.I wondered if they are any good, ie, is it worth the money up-grading from a Hercules 3D Prophet 9800Pro 125mb to one of these.I have heard so many conflicting reports that I am totaly confused now.would I actualy see any significant improvements in FS9 etc,I read that FS9 was only written to be able to handle 125 at the most.you can see from my sig at the bottom what the rest of my system specs are.thanks for any comments.

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Hi Steve,Since your motherboard has only an AGP slot, the new X850 cards cannot be considered. The next choice would bt the X800 XT-PE... if you can find one! Your best bet (given your neck of the woods :-) ) might be the X800 XT. They should be reasonably easy for you to find where you live.Good luck,Greg

oh dear, PCI Express means a Motherboard up-grade too, then there's the question, will my P4 still fit the board, and the RAM too. . . oh well,seems ironic that we were once all PCI based, then we went to AGP for faster and better performance, now were going back on ourselves once more !thanks for replying Greg.

Yes, you will see a difference!I was running an ATI 9800 PRO in my P4 3GHz PC. I managed to find an ATI X800XT PE. The FPS didn't go up a great deal, but I can now run in Activesky weather at 100% cloud density, 50 mile draw distance in complete smoothness. The 9800 PRO would stutter badly with several cloud layers over KSEA.I have just flown the Real Air Spitfire over KSEA, 100% clouds, 50 miles cloud draw, Scenery and autogen at max, FS Water at a steady 26 FPS and completely smooth. Flight was take off to 3000ft, circuit and land.FPS unlimited will go between 20-46 FPS very smooth.Ray Keattch.

Ray wrote: >>Yes, you will see a difference!<< I'll add: ...@ 1600x resolutions. If you're operating 1280x, anything greater than a X800pro is overkill IMHO. Good luck and kind regards Jaap PS: Thanks a lot for your feedback in the other thread, Ray. I really appreciated it. Your sons have a great dad!

I got much better performance after upgrading from a 9700 Pro 128MB to the X800XT 256MB. However since I upgraded from the AthlonXP 2400+ to an Athlon64 3500+ at the same time it's hard to tell how much of the improvement can attributed to the videocard.Two things are definitely faster due to the videocard:-Bumpmapped shiny water (Water effects at high) - using 16X AF and High water details on the 9700 would cause stutters and low framerate. Even with 8x it wasn't great (:)Surprisingly, I find myself using the same settings on the X800XT as I did on 9700 Pro: 1280x1024x32, 4x AA, 8X AF. This results in smooth framerates under all conditions (unless I'm heavily CPU limited - happens e.g. at KLAX where I only get 26-28 FPS) and I can't really tell the difference between 4x/8x and 6x/16x unless I compare screenshots side by side.So if you have problems with any of those two features the newer videocard would definitely help.Don't waste your money on the X850XT-PE though. It's only slightly faster than the rest and uses a bulky double-slot cooler. If you have a PCI-e slot get the X800XL when it comes out. Otherwise, try to find an X800XT (non-PE) or as a last resort, get the X800Pro or 6800GT even.