>I have a strong feeling that as the drivers mature, it will>really excel.>Sure performance will most likely get better with future driver releases; just don

NaaaaaaWe wont know anything until July/AugustThat ATi card due out on the 25th is not the one to compete with the 280. The 4780 wont be here until August but we should start seeing numbers in July.I just dont see any reason to trade a G80 for anything until at least then.. and I would still wait a bit longer too.ATi is finished with single core cards now.. from now on its all multi-core with them and as I suspected they are focusing on the entertainment market with AMD. AMD's best bet big money is getting their proc married to their GPU and not worry about the processor and card race

>>I have a strong feeling that as the drivers mature, it will>>really excel.>>>>Sure performance will most likely get better with future>driver releases; just don

This and the news (such as it is) on the CPU front all suggest that 2008 is a year of transition to different technologies and manufacturing processes. That would not be so bad, if we could look forward to 2009 as a year of progress. Getting some decent competition back into the market at the high end is what we really need. And it might actually be good for competition if Nvidia have wrong-footed themselves with this one.Tim

>I am aware of that but as of right now, I am being plagued>with the micro-stuttering associated with SLI cards. That is>the biggest drawback associated with SLI solutions and the>9800 GX2 is no exception.The

>>I am aware of that but as of right now, I am being plagued>>with the micro-stuttering associated with SLI cards. That is>>the biggest drawback associated with SLI solutions and the>>9800 GX2 is no exception.>>>The

>And I am not the only one, as I have visited various gaming>forums and it seems that this is one of the inherited problems>with SLI configurations.I started to experiment with SLI back in 2005 when the 7800 GTX

Last year my curiosity got the better of me, too, and I bought the same EVGA ultra card that I see you have already got. I was pleasantly surprised by the improvement on my 8800GTS.I hope you'll let the rest of us know what difference you notice with your GTX280 when it arrives.TimPS: Sorry, this is a reply to the wrong post.

I read a review of the 280/260 yesterday at Guru3D comparing it to the 9800 and several other cards. Interesting to read but the problem is I have a tough time relating to any of the results as I don't run any other software games besides FSX which they never use to test with.I'm certainly no expert on the benchmarking business but when I read their reviews on any hardware related topic I come away with the feeling that their summaries of any hardware are "reasonably" fairly balanced, not too much axe grinding (maybe that's the impression I get compared to some other sites reviews). But again as I haven't got a clue about the technical side I could be very wrong.Any thoughts on that site as a fair source of info?

>I read a review of the 280/260 yesterday at Guru3D comparing>it to the 9800 and several other cards. Interesting to read>but the problem is I have a tough time relating to any of the>results as I don't run any other software games besides FSX>which they never use to test with.>>I'm certainly no expert on the benchmarking business but when>I read their reviews on any hardware related topic I come away>with the feeling that their summaries of any hardware are>"reasonably" fairly balanced, not too much axe grinding (maybe>that's the impression I get compared to some other sites>reviews). But again as I haven't got a clue about the>technical side I could be very wrong.>>Any thoughts on that site as a fair source of info?Also I see in the review that they only deal with the detail setting.So what about all the other fsx option settings? They all will have an affect too.

>Last year my curiosity got the better of me, too, and I>bought the same EVGA ultra card that I see you have already>got. I was pleasantly surprised by the improvement on my>8800GTS.>>I hope you'll let the rest of us know what difference you>notice with your GTX280 when it arrives.Tim,Here are some results of the GTX 280

Thanks: that's an interesting article. Assuming the new 177.65 driver is better than the version used by Tom's Hardware, I wonder whether FSX will be most like Quake 4, where the difference between the GTX280 and the 8800GTX seems only to kick in with high anti-aliasing settings; or Bioshock, which gets nearly twice the performance out of a GTX280 even without anti-aliasing. Keep us posted.Tim