Got side tracked last weekend and didn't get around to posting my results of my two 4870's in CF mode -- used only for enhanced AA support as FSX can't utilize SLI nor Crossfire.So far, I'm VERY impressed with the 4870. 3DMark06 score is 21328 on Cat 8.7 Beta drivers. Under FSX I have it locked to 30 fps at 1920 x 1080, shadows on including scenery and NO flickers, yes NONE. I have not really done any tweaking yet either in FSX.CFG or with the Cat driver settings. I'll post some screen shots tomorrow of SFO showing no flickering with scenery shadows ON and solid 30 fps along with all the graphics settings. Bare in mine these are Cat 8.7 beta drivers as there is no "official" driver for the 4870.Will post more later this week, again sorry for the delay, just swamped!!

No doubt the GTX 280 is a nice card. But it is lacking is some areas:1. No DX10.1 support2. Price3. Power consumption and heat4. Haven't solved shadow scenery flickering problem yet in FSX5. Still 65nm chipThat being said, Tri SLI numbers ($1800 GPU investment) look very good in games like Crysis, but only show performance gains when going to 2560 x 1600 screen resolution.However, I'd recommend that potential GPU buyers wait for ATI's 4870X2 single card. This is NOT a Crossfire configuration, this is 100% scalable dual GPU's on a single card. This means you'll be able to take advantage of the multi-GPUs in any game, not just games that work with Crossfire or SLI. Two of these 4870X2 will absolutely destroy GTX 280 SLI or Tri-SLI.The 4870X2 is due out sometime this month (July), but with the current success of the 4870 and no sign of the GTX 300, I'll bet ATI wait on the 4870X2 until nVidia release the GTX 300.

Have to agree with you there, I don't see any more or less risk with drivers from either nVidia or ATI??Anyone care to expand?Is this about the "compression" definition? I recall a LONG LONG time ago both companies (ATI and nVidia) were caught redefining their "Quality" settings (aka compression) to increase the performance and even special drivers that tricked 3DMark benchmarking tool.

I guess I wouldn't call it "risky" when trying new drivers, but after using ATI my whole life and only recently switching to an Nvidia board, I will say from my personal experiences that Nivida has some SERIOUS issues with their drivers and software. I've had more botched installs and driver corruption since purchasing this card than I had my whole life with ATI. And this is using WHQL signed drivers. It was only recently that I was finally able to even get the control panel to run. Just simple things like Nview not recognizing and maintaining proper resolution on my dual monitors etc etc. Also, there is huge mouse/graphics lag when I'm using the fightpanning map in FSX or design tools such as ADE or FSX Planner. It got so bad that I loaded all my design stuff on my second box with an ATI card - no issues - ever.With ATI it's load the drivers, setup ATI TRAY tools and you're done. With Nvidia it's been sometimes this works, sometimes that works......just my take.Regards, Kendall#1: [email protected]/Coolermaster HyperTX2 Gigabyte P35-DS3L 4GB Ballistix Tracers PC6400 EVGA 8800GT - 174.74 beta Seagate 250GB 7200.11 CH Yoke/Pedals/Saitek Throttle Dual Monitor: Dell 2405/1905 #2: Dell 8400 3.2 H.T. 3GB PC4200 - X800XT Diamond Xtreme/Logitech X-530's