Ever since I installed fsx I have been getting d3d9, api, and msvcr80.dll crashes, they were driving me crazy. It got to the point where I was reinstalling windows once a month, and I just couldnt use flight simulator anymore. I dont want to jynx anything but i have done about 8-9 heavy flights so far without incident, something that was unheard of for me recently. There has also been no negative performance impact from switching to ati, and the monthly driver updates are very welcome. Now Im pretty much convinced that these issues with fsx have something to do with nvidia, whether they are nviidas fault entirely I dont know, but since fsx doesnt have a benchmark and doesnt make it into reviews very much nvidia couldnt care any less about us. So basically if you have been pulling your hair out trying to fix fsx, try an ATI card, its worth it.

I switched to ATI a while ago because of the black aircraft screen and awful shimmering.Looks a treat now with my x1950 pro !

Hi,I've moved in the other direction after finding that the 3870X2 cannot efficiently process heavy cloud. The frame rates dropped quite a bit.I agree that the image quality is excellent but I wasn't prepared to take a big hit on fps in cloud. So having switched to a 8800GTX I'm very pleased with the performance.I did get a crash at the weekend but can't recall the cause. Hopefully it won't become a frequent problem as this is an established card. I also had a few crashes with the 3870X2 where the PC would reboot so there's no guarantee of a trouble-free existence.I hope you don't live to regret buying the 3870X2. I'm selling mine on eBay in the next few days.Cheers,

>Hi,>>I've moved in the other direction after finding that the>3870X2 cannot efficiently process heavy cloud. The frame rates>dropped quite a bit.>>I agree that the image quality is excellent but I wasn't>prepared to take a big hit on fps in cloud. So having switched>to a 8800GTX I'm very pleased with the performance.>>I did get a crash at the weekend but can't recall the cause.>Hopefully it won't become a frequent problem as this is an>established card. I also had a few crashes with the 3870X2>where the PC would reboot so there's no guarantee of a>trouble-free existence.>>I hope you don't live to regret buying the 3870X2. I'm selling>mine on eBay in the next few days.>>Cheers,Could the problem with your 3870X2 have been the manufacturer, rather than the type of card?

No. Search through this forum for 3870X2 and you'll find sargeski also experienced the same problem.It appears to be due to the memory bus size. The 3870X2 is 256-bit whereas the 8800GTX is 384-bit.Follow the links in my opening post here http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho..._id=38821&page= and se how TomsHardware rated it.

The 3870x2 is perfectly capable of handeling clouds, you cannot set up an ati card the way you set up an nvidia card. You must disable aa in fs, and turn aa on in ccc, only enableing 2x aa with the wide tent option, that gives 4x2 aa, using default fsx aa gives you 4x4 aa, which is not possible to use on any card. Before doing that my fps would drop from 30 don to 12 whenever I looked at a cloud, I knew something had to be up. The truth is that fsx simply will not stress the video card the way any other modern game will, it just doesnt have the neat effects like heat blur and efficient bloom that would take advantage of todays gpu power, and the memory interface isnt going to bottleneck anything in fs unless its 128bit.

> I'm selling mine on eBay in the next few days.Same here Ray. I need to get off my rear end and get mine on ebay as well.Mike,There is no combination of options in CCC that can allow the 3870X2 to give the equivalent performance of an 8800GTX. Especially in clouds. I will admit the the 3870X2 or ATI for that fact has better overall image quality. But when weighing the small gain in image quality against the huge FPS hit with the 3870X2 it was a no brainer to return to the 8800GTX.Now, I'm out $450 on brand new card I will never use at least not for FSX. Live and learn.

Mike,I performed a standard test using all possible combinations of AA and the sub-options of Box etc. I used Ray Adams' ATI Tray Tools - not CCC. No settings made any substantial difference to performance. I agree that AA X2 setting gave the best performance but there was still a considerable frame rate hit in heavy cloud.I didn't set this card up as a former nVidia owner. My previous two cards have been ATI. But when you add together the experiences here in several threads together with TomsHardware tests it's clear the 3870X2 does not perform as well as the 8800GTX or Ultra.It gives me no pleasure to say that but I'm not loyal to either ATI or nVidia. I will buy whatever card is best for FSX.Cheers,

Doesnt make sense, an 8800gtx vs. 3870/3870x2 should never cause that kind of a performance difference.

Mike,I agree. For ATIs reference card to perform so poorly against the ageing 8800 series is very disappointing. I did raise this with AMD support here http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm...4&enterthread=yPerhaps you could continue the discussion if you feel the same.Cheers,

Ray, My point is that I have not seen any performance reduction in fsx, and with a game like fsx which barely utilizes the gpu there shouldnt be that kind of performance reduction. Im sorry to hear that you arent getting good performance, and I hate to be the one to say this, but maybe it is a system config thing? I also noticed from your post that you are using cat 8.4. At this time the best driver to run a 3870 with is the 8.3 hotfix driver, the hotfix didnt make it into the 8.4's because of bad timing, so that will affect your peformance too.

Hi Mike,If you aren't suffering any performance loss in heavy cloud then great. You don't need to worry.But I tried the 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 drivers and none of them made any appreciable difference. I ran the 3DMark2006 test which all three drivers and apart from a poor performance with the original 8.3 they returned pretty much the same scores.If I had a system config problem it would surely have manifested itself after I installed the 8800GTX but performance is much improved. 3DMark06 scores are much the same as with the 3870X2 showing how little that matters for FSX.I'm happy, you're happy. I know you're overclocking your system and I'm not but I can't see that being the reason.

>I'm happy, you're happy. I know you're overclocking your>system and I'm not but I can't see that being the reason.I'm overclocking my system also and I have the same results as you Ray. So, oveclocking is definitely not the issue. I've also tried CCC, Tray Tools, and drivers 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4. In fact I have tried the 3870X2 in two seperate systems just for the heck of it. In both systems in FSX the 3870X2's performance is well below that of an 8800GTX. Put the 3870X2 into a thunderstorm situation(heavily clouded environment) in FSX and the performance is abismal (8-12 FPS on the 3870X2 and 24FPS locked on the 8800GTX).If I were to insert the 3870X2 back into my main FSX rig (in my sig) and leave FSX configured as it is right now, I will take quite a noticeable hit in performance to the tune of 6 to 10 FPS. To gain those FPS I have to reconfigure FSX (less AI and less autogen).The 3870X2 maybe equivalent to the 8800GTX in certain titles but in FSX it quite simply is not.Mike,I'm glad to hear you are happy with your card. It's also hard to for us to compare apples to apples when we are not comparing our FSX configurations. But the review by Tom's hardware is spot on to what I as well have many others have experienced first hand with this card....poor performance in FSX.http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/nvidia-gefor...ew-30590-4.htmlhttp://www.tomshardware.co.uk/nvidia-gefor...ew-30511-6.html

Hi Sarge,<>That is my main fps test. A 10,000ft thick thunderstorm cloud layer at EGLC (London City) on Rwy 28 facing towards the many buildings in the City of London.With the 3870X2 fps was 26. With the 8800GTX it's 38. The difference is remarkable and I'm amazed that Mike isn't seeing this with his system. I wonder if his lower resolution is helping in some way.

>I wonder if his lower resolution is helping in some way.Hello Ray,That definitely could explain it. I'm done doing my testing though....lol. I've put way too many hours into the 3870X2 and I'm not inclined to waste anymore.