I thought I would see what the current thinking is on this subject. I am considering upgrading from the 128mb ATI 9800 Pro card. I will most likely be upgrading my entire system when FSX and Vista are established in about a year, but I would like a newer card for the interim period. My current system, as described below, is 3 years old and I am getting the 'itch'.I would really appreciate any suggestions as to which would be the preffered video card to purchase at this time.Thanks a lot,Howard

I was just about to make the same post Howard. I'm in the same boat. My 9800 Pro is dying and I need to upgrade the whole system. But, like you, I don't want to do that until FSX/Vista have been released. I read somewhere there is an AGP version of the 7800 but I'm two years out-of-date on video card performance. Hopefully someone will come along and bail us out.DougP4 3.2E @ 3.680 (1.385 vCore - 230 FSB)Asus P4C800-E Deluxe (BIOS 1019)2 x 512MB Corsair TWINX CXM3700 (3-4-4-8)5 x 300GB WD HDD'sHercules 9800 Pro (128MB @ 410/360)Enermax 431W PSU

Hi Doug and Howard, it's hard to tell without a mention of the resolution in use. @ 1152x or lower it wouldn't be worth it IMHO. If the hardware is going south it's obviously another story. But then again, it will depend most which res you're using. Hope this adds to thoughts, good luck and kind regards Jaap

Hi Jaap,I typically run at 1280x1024.Thanks a lot,Howard

Thanks Jaap. I run about half the time on 1280x960x32 and the other half on 1024x728x32. My problem is that the card is, indeed, going south. It's been OC'd to the max for years and I'm starting to get artifacting even with the clocks set back to the defaults. I'm tempted to just put in another 9800 Pro to get by, but if there is a better alternative I'd probably go for it (especially if it's an ATI alternative :-) ). Any ideas?Doug

I built a system 6 weeks ago based on an X2 4800/X1900 XT. It was difficult to tell if it was any faster (in MSFS) than the system in my sig. Alot of money, though, and he'll be simming happy for a while.The only real advantages of a video card faster than a 9800 Pro is eye candy and the ability to run higher resolutions. Newer generation cards will be able to run higher levels of AA and AF and possibly do so at a higher res. I believe you'd be hard pressed to see much, if any, performance gain.That being said, if something like an 850 XT AGP can be found at a good price...Cheers,Greg

Ahhh, at least one of you is operating a good - almost - old fashion CRT... :-) Unfortunately - and as you probably know - it's getting hard to find decently priced and yet powerful AGP GPUs. For example the Geforce 7800GS; ca 350-400$ could maybe be considered highway robbery? :-) Ofcourse, Doom3 players will like a 7800, but FS doesn't take advantage of its features. Ati's X800 or X850-series are good performers at higher resolutions and less expensive than Nvidia's current AGP flagship. You can't do much wrong with them. It's a shame there aren't any X1600-XTs for AGP. X1600-pros are available but they perform 'far below' XT levels (GDDR3(XT) vs GDDR2(pro) = ca 30%). Looking for a one on one 9800pro replacement, I'ld nevertheless go for a X1600-pro. Having said all of this, one will not notice a huge difference between a 9800 and i.e. a X850pro. FS' framerates will hardly rise for example (because we're usually more CPU-challenged than anything else). If they do, it's limited and in relation to the oncard memory clock speeds. What the b.m. example card should provide, is less dips and more flexibility regarding settings. In general and as far as I would dare to judge, @ 1280x a 256MB card is more suited than 128MB. Both of you have decent CPUs which would scale well with stronger GPUs. Following, is a link to RojakPot which lists the technical data of Radeons (at the bottom there's a link to the same 'in Geforce'): http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88&pgno=0Hope this adds to thoughts and that the link works. Pls feel free if you have further question. Good luck and kind regards Jaap Uppps, didn't see Greg posted already. Well, look-alike messages I guess... :-) Greg, was the X1900 very noisy? I'm curious... Hope you received my note regarding those missing files and what it turned out to be. :-) Thanks again

Thanks guys. Really helpful information. I've never had a framerate problem and the eye-candy is only an issue when the cloud cover gets really tough. So...I just ordered another ATI 9800 Pro. US$107 shipping included...what a deal. That will work fine for the next year or so until the dust settles and we know, exactly, what-is-what with FSX and also, hopefully, with Vista (I still can't believe it's 40% larger than XP - yeech).Doug

...was the X1900 very noisy?Oh yes, Jaap! When we got in sim the fan cranked right up to high RPM and started whining. Was quite a surprise from what I'm use to with the Arctic Cooling Silencers I've been using the past couple of years.The card offered nice IQ. Unlike the older cards it can take advantage of the HG AF optimizations of the latest drivers, but I simply couldn't see much difference between HQ AF enabled or disabled. To me the card wasn't worth $500+US for this sim. Others may feel differently. I'll stick with my 850 XT flashed to PE. Does the job just fine at 1280 x 1024 on my system.Greg