Just wanted to say that I replaced my old video card (nVidia 5900FX) with this card and have noticed amazing improvements. Not ready to put my rig to rest I took the advice of a forum member and upgrded my video card.I now fly FS9 with sliders full right including 3d clouds. I have my frames locked at 20 and get 13-18 at addon sceneries like KSEA and KPDX or geo renders fields.If I do away with 3d clouds notice that the FPS are almost always locked at 18-20.For me flying in a 172 is very acceptable and enjoy the added clouds.Just wanted to share incase anyone was on the fence about keeping there AGP mobo only systems longer but wanted some of the new card benefits.

That's good to hear GAFlyer! It's always good to get a nice FS boost from a system upgrade. What are the rest of your system specs, so that we can put this all into perspective?Gary

Processor/CPU: Intel P4 3.2GHZ 512K 800FSB SOCKET 478 RETAIL CPUMoBo: ASUS P4C800-E DELUXE 800FSB MULTI-RAID LAN Chipset: Intel 875P Chipset w/ 800 MHz FSB Memory:2 x Kingston 512MB PC3200 NONECC DDRAM Memory =1024MBHard Drive: Seagate Serial 160GB 7200RPM S-ATASound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS PlatinumOperating System: Microsoft Windows XP ProI remember when I did aqua mark on my first computer it was a slide show. Then on my last video card with this rig I think it was some where between 20-40 was the score. If it wasnt too much of an ordeal I would put the old card back in and run a test but..On this card I scored a 61FPS overall average. What a difference.All in all this is still a great rig. I'm only lacking a better FSB and another gig of ram, otherwise this is still a great and stable system. With this new card I have no pressing desire to upgrade until DX10 and Vista are well underway and not brand new.Thanks to this card I was able to upgrade my system and make use of what makes the 7950 card impressive.

Just ran some test and found that no longer do visuals or my video card provide low frames but its my cpu. Frames dont change if any (at least where I have it locked) when I adjust weather or scenery sliders but do when I change AI traffic. I cant wait to try FSX on this system. If I have to keep AI low to have great visuals then I'm cool with that.

I read that the 7800GS requires more power.....did you have to upgrade your power supply also?

I have a 600W PSU... so no.

The 7800 series cards (like many others today) have their own dedicated power connector, so you just have to make sure your power supply has one of these connectors. Most decent p/s's do have them.RhettAMD 3700+, eVGA 7800GT 256, ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, etc. etc.

I have just changed my video card from ATI 9800 pro (good card) to the Gainward golden sample. It is a very big improvement.I have an AMD 3000 and 2x512mg of matched ram.With this set up I can get smooth good results with the 2nd FSX demo.Most sliders set well over to the right and frame rates set at 20mainly staying around there -sometimes dropping to min. 12.I have just recieved my new CPU and AMD 3800+ venice and2x1gb Kingston matched ram so I am hoping for even better results.By the way the golden sample package includes an adaptor with the special connector on so any psu can be used.David