Hi Guys, The Inquirer website says unless you are prepared to over-clock your core 2 duo CPU, you can forget about substantial performance increases with the new G80 DX10 card.: "G80, Geforce 8800 GTX is very CPU dependent. Unless you overclock your CPU, you won't get the right performance delta. If you test 3Dmark06 with a 1000MHz overclocked Core 2 Quad or Duo you get 11300 marks. When you test an 8800GTX on a non-overclocked CPU at 2.66GHz you score about 8000+ with 3Dmark06, almost identical to our score with 7950 GX2, the two GPU card. We are sure that this is just the case for 3Dmark and that games will benefit more. Don't say that we haven't warned you - you will need a faster CPU to push this card to its limits".See the full story at: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35436This means that the new nVidia G80 DX10 cards may not be any faster than the previous generation of cards unless you have a very fast CPU. Those banking on DX10 to drag FSX into faster frame rate territory may be disappointed. But we will only know when someone actually tries it! Cheers,Noel.

Keep in mind that FSX cannot use both GPUs in the 7950 GX2. Having said that, you should get twise as many fps in FSX with that DX10 card. So, how much is it, a $700 card?Anyway, with FSX the way it is. A 7800GT will be enough if you OC a C2D to 3.5GHz or above

In Australia, the cheapest card is the Nvidia 8800GTS 640MB PCI-E x16 video card, 2x DVI, video out - no ETA yet, Australian $737.00 or roughly US$565.00. The second, the Nvidia 8800GTX 768mb PCI-E x16 video card, 2x DVI, video out - no ETA yet costs between $990.00 and $999.00 Australian - or US$760 in American dollar. The most expensive one is the Asus Nvidia 8800GTX 768mb PCI-E x16 video card, 2x DVI, video out - no ETA yet listed for $1160 Australian, or around an US$892.

That is not that bad. However, I still have to look at the performance with FSX before I can make a purchase.BTW. You have exactly the same system as I have, except my is an AMD. What is your FR when everything is max out (no mods) over New York City, with the exception of water at mid 1x and traffics turned off? I get between 7 and 9. On the same place, FS9 gives 15 fps with the Aerosoft NYC addon, which as 3 times more buildings and trees. The point I am trying to make is that our gfx cards are totally capable of running FSX in full detail except water (of course). Further more, if FSX support dual card rendering, this new DX10 is not necessary at all.

I think 3dmark2006 is a DX9 application, right? so this doesn't really say anything about vista DX10 driver / hardware performance, or apps designed for DX10. It suggests no reason to buy the 8800 unless you are going to vista.scott s..

>I think 3dmark2006 is a DX9 application, right? so this>doesn't really say anything about vista DX10 driver / hardware>performance, or apps designed for DX10. It suggests no reason>to buy the 8800 unless you are going to vista.>>scott s.>.>I struggle to believe there is still this much confusion over DX10 and FSX when so much information has been posted in these forums.There are no benchmarks for the performance of DX10 cards with DX10 games becasuse there are no DX10 cards, or DX10 games. Or Vista. FSX is and remains a DX9 game. Anyone who is daft enough to spend that kind of money for a GC for FSX when FSX doesn't support it deserves nothing more than pity.The hardware under DX10 is structured specifically to suit the new API, and there are several pointers that the initial DX10 cards will NOT OFFER ANY INCREASE IN PERFORMANCE over current top-of-the-range DX9 cards.So you spend your hundred and hundreds of dollars - and hundreds more on Vista, and throw some more hundreds at more RAM and YOU STILL HAVE NO GUARANTEES THAT FSX WILL EVEN RUN, LET ALONE WORK BETTER.For now, DX10 is completely irrelevant to simmers. Discussions about CPU's, RAM, power supplies, and costs are interesting only as theoretical notion. Only a simpleton or a developer (that's not suggesting they are the same!) will buy a DX10 card at initial release. Only one has any reason or a `need`. And as for the benefits of the API - see the Crysis video I linked to for a summary: Frankly, nice lighting. That's it. Allcott

>"G80, Geforce 8800 GTX is very CPU dependent. Unless you>overclock your CPU, you won't get the right performance delta.>If you test 3Dmark06 with a 1000MHz overclocked Core 2 Quad or>Duo you get 11300 marks. When you test an 8800GTX on a>non-overclocked CPU at 2.66GHz you score about 8000+ with>3Dmark06, almost identical to our score with 7950 GX2, the two>GPU card. We are sure that this is just the case for 3Dmark>and that games will benefit more. Don't say that we haven't>warned you - you will need a faster CPU to push this card to>its limits".Shows that the 3Dmark06 test is cpu limited."DX10 cards require overclocked CPUs!?" is totally incorrect and misleading.

The point perhaps needs re-phrasing in more detail. There are many folks out there with systems running reasonably capable CPUs that might have thought they can upgrade their system by dropping in a G80 card, loading up Vista and the DX10 capable version of FSX (whenever it is released) and solving their frame rate problems. This seems less likely in the light of the results of these tests on actual G80 hardware.Even if 3Dmark06 does not give the same result as a benchmark based on DX10 drivers, it does suggest that in relative performance terms the potential of the DX10 cards may not be available unless it is coupled with a fast CPU. We always knew FS9 and FSX are CPU limited, so CPUs are always going to be important. These results just strengthen the case and are a warning to those upgrading to the G80 that they may well be wasting their money unless they have a very fast CPU.Agreed, this is still speculation without tests on a system actually running FSX. In fact, we may need to wait until Vista and a DX10 version of FSX are released for a definitive answer to the central question we all want an answer to: Will FSX run faster under Vista and DX10 hardware and drivers?Cheers,Noel.

The answer is probably: "Yes, but at what COST..?"My expectations are reasonable, my upgrade practices entirely sensible: If I spend to buy a new system I expect to DOUBLE the speed of the rig for the SAME PRICE as the old, plus inflation - in other words my budget for a computer has stayed static except for cost-of-living rises for the last ten years. It is a surefire way to guarantee value for money, as it means NEVER being an early adopter, having time to sit back and learn from the problems of others, and wait for the prices of the hardware to fall. For me to break that cycle, and here I am talking specifically about the OS and FSX, never mind everything else I use a computer for, I must have proof postive that FSX fps rates will increase and the visual quality will be a generation beyond what it is now. Under normal circumstances the `doubling rule` would apply to FS the same as the computer, but because of the absolutely terrible frame rates on my system without tweaking, that rule will be broken this tme round. Frames for FSX will have to AT LEAST TREBLE under a Vista upgrade for me to even think about making an OS switch, with hardware to match. That hardware does not even exist at the moment.Back in the real world, for the first time ever my employer has specified that no remote worker or employee who occasionally works from home, can install Vista as a standalone operating system to run software for work. So I have to continue to use XP as a dual boot system, which means that most of my software will continue to run under XP until XP is no longer supported. So for me, Vista is purely a flight sim upgrade, and its ridiculous expense needs to be factored into my upgrade budget.Will I go to the expense of Vista (and the risk its uncertain license policies present) without a written guarantee of massively increased performance? When all the current mutterings from the MS ACES team and beyond warns of LOWER performance with Vista under DX9, and no promises about DX10 because its too soon?Would you?To be honest, I am happy discussing DX10 until the cows come home, but I'm not going anywhere near it until the FSX patch has been issued and several months have passed to allow the upgrade costs to come down to my budget, and for all those early adopters to solve all the problems so I don't have to. And Vista to have relaxed its licensing and activation arrangments so that in upgrading to suit one MS product I don't have to spend another penny reactivating another MS product to run it. Until then, MS would need to pay me to try FSX under Vista, not the other way round.Allcott

The Inquirer gets a degree of the Captain Obvious award for that article, if you ask me. I guess it's news that the bottleneck is shifting to the CPU, but it just seems their shock and surprise at it is a little overblown. It's just like physics processors... they can set up and process a ton of objects, but it's up to the CPU and GPU to render all those accurately moving and bouncing objects in the end. A DX10 GPU will be capable of creating and rendering a zillion polygons per nanosecond, but if the CPU can't feed it the information in a timely manner, what good is it?! This doesn't phase me in the LEAST with regards to current games, because a program will have to be written to "take advantage" of the hardware - existing programs (and even programs that get DX10 performance tuning without added enhancements) will not tax the system any more than in DX9. Recall the Tom Clancy game that has PPU support - users complained because rather than getting performance enhancements with their new PPUs, they actually slowed things down because the PPU-enhanced version of the game frontloaded the environment with more objects that choked everything but the PPU! Hopefully the FSX DX10 update will not frontload the sim with MORE objects (we have enough, thankyouverymuch!) but rather optimize the software to better render what we already have. If other effects, like volumetric shadowing, can be implemented without impacting those optimizations, that should be pushed for as well. But unless I hit Powerball soon, I'll leave DX10 to the early adopters.