177.79 beta driver seems good so far

[jdk2 1]

I can confirm that the flashing runway textures of previous drivers in DX10 mode are gone with these new drivers.Unfortunately, there are some strange artifacts in the display with these new drivers in DX9. It almost looks like the old ATI cards circa X800XT with temporal AA enabled which caused dark spikes to flash about randomly in the scenery. There is also some strange texture flashes periodically when panning quickly in an outside view.Regards,Jim Karn

[Guest Antarius]

I did more testing on this. I jumped randomly through airports. About 1 from 10 airports had flickering textures. Others were crystally clear. I don't know why this is happening, but before I had flickering everywhere.

[Guest firehawk44]

"did more testing on this. I jumped randomly through airports. About 1 from 10 airports had flickering textures. Others were crystally clear. I don't know why this is happening, but before I had flickering everywhere."My test airport has always been the default, Friday's Harbor. Ugly flickering mess there. I have never seen flickering at KLAX, for one, and some other airports I can't recall right now. It's strange you saw the flickering "everywhere" before this driver and now it's only at a few airports. IMHO, this problem will never be fixed with FSX.Jim

[Guest Antarius]

May be you are right. I didn't pay much attention to DX10 before yesterday. In 175.16 dx10 would crash frequently. In 175.19 I never could even start it. I alway was getting "driver stopped resopnding". 177.79 is finally running with no problems. But the first screenshot I showed here is from tutorial mission, and I remember for sure I had flickering in there. Now I don't.I did a small test. A 2 minute flight in mountains. I used fraps for measuring.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg 5771, 120000, 34, 60, 48.092 <- dx10 3112, 120000, 16, 37, 25.933 <- dx9I am confused now. I always read dx10 is slower.

[tfm 169]

I installed these tonight and I agree with the OP: give them a try. In my machine, it's as if Nvidia has finally unlocked a bolted door in terms of smoothness under DX9. I've even tried the DX10 mode and had some pretty promising results here, too: the taxiway flickering that I remember from when I last tried DX 10 seems to have gone away, and the framerates are a bit better than with DX9.Tim

[Guest firehawk44]

"I am confused now. I always read dx10 is slower."I was always informed DX10 was faster for FSX DX10 Preview enabled. If you do a search here or on Phil Taylor's blog, I think you'll see that. Your benchmark shows it too. Glad to see you're getting it all worked out.Jim

[Guest firehawk44]

"the taxiway flickering that I remember from when I last tried DX 10 seems to have gone away"Just remember the flickering is not everywhere, just at certain airports, like Friday's Harbor.Jim

[Guest Antarius]

>I was always informed DX10 was faster for FSX DX10 Preview>enabled. If you do a search here or on Phil Taylor's blog, I>think you'll see that. Your benchmark shows it too. Glad to>see you're getting it all worked out.Benchmark here http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...&topic_id=31320 stated "SP2 DX10 is 25% slower than SP2 DX9". This is what made me confused.

[Guest firehawk44]

"Benchmark stated "SP2 DX10 is 25% slower than SP2 DX9". This is what made me confused."As I understand those benchmarks, they were:a. completed in Nov 2007b. used Vista 64 OSBack in Nov 2007, Vista 64 was having its issues with getting good WHQL drivers for system hardware. Heck, they were having issues with the Vista32 OS! Vista64 was pretty new and video card makers like Nvidia had major issues with getting decent drivers even for the Vista32 OS. Vista 32/64, DX10, and hardware drivers have gotten much better since then and everything is more stable (the new Nvidia beta drivers are a prime example of how great things are getting!). My FPS have increased substantially since Nov 07 and my FPS get better every time I upgrade to a newer driver, both for the video card AND the sound card. You are also going on the benchmark of ONE individual. How was his system set up? Most importantly, how can you really run a valid benchmark on FSX? It's sort of like the political world where pollsters can make the polls state about anything they want it to say. Therefore, I go on the advice of tech experts assigned to Microsoft's ACES Team when I make my simple statement that FSX is faster with DX10 Preview enabled. They were the ones who programmed FSX. I have met a few of them and they are very smart people. And I go by technicians at Nvidia and ATI who have indicated they have substantially improved their drivers for games. Look at the ads on their respective websites and look at all the favorable comments being made in their forums and those at other tech sites such as Guru3d.com! I also visit a lot of FS forums and tech sites and read about the latest and greatest. So you have to be very careful what you see and read on these forums and do more research when you see something that is confusing or doesn't make sense to you. I am going to continue to believe FSX is faster with DX10 enabled; you can continue to believe the Nov07 benchmarks...V/RJim

[Guest Antarius]

>and do more research when you see something that is confusing or doesn't make sense to youThank you for your answer. I have vists x64 sp1. 177.79 are the first drivers that works stable with fsx dx10. I did my benchmarks today and had increases in fps everywhere. In big cities 10%+? other arese 30%+. All I can say is I like it a lot. =)

[Guest firehawk44]

"177.79 are the first drivers that works stable with fsx dx10. I did my benchmarks today and had increases in fps everywhere."Antarius: Great! Watch for a final release of the beta's next Tuesday - http://www.guru3d.com/article/physx-by-nvidia-review/Best regards,Jim

[sargeski 16]

>"177.79 are the first drivers that works stable with fsx>dx10. I did my benchmarks today and had increases in fps>everywhere.">>Antarius: Great! Watch for a final release of the beta's>next Tuesday ->http://www.guru3d.com/article/physx-by-nvidia-review/>>Best regards,>JimI would really like to know how you guys are seeing a framerate increase at all with DX10 preview enabled. I have from the very day SP2 was released up until this very date, with each and every NVIDIA driver released to date, experienced nothing but a performance decrease with DX10 preview enabled in FSX and its to the tune 25% (and can be much greater depending on the area). Keep in mind I am making NO adjustments to my sliders between DX10 preview and DX9 mode, the settings are one for one.The other thing I have noticed between DX10 preview and DX9 mode that has been consistent since day one of SP2 is that the DX10 preview mode constantly stutters and there is no amount of tweaking that will cure it. It does appear that the strides have been made in the visual quality area with the drivers but there are still issues.The differences of running FSX between DX10 preview ad DX9 are great (at least in my case). DX9 performs better and hands down wins in the department of visual quality and fluidity.The other thing that has remained constant since day one of SP2 is there are those of us that have a performance gain and those of use who have a performance decrease and to date nobody has expalined this disparity.I will be stickng with DX9 mode for FSX.

[Guest firehawk44]

"would really like to know how you guys are seeing a framerate increase at all with DX10 preview enabled."I don't run that FPS thingy everytime I fly, maybe that's why it seems better for me. I look at how smooth the sim seems to be operating and how clear the graphics inside and outside the aircraft appear to be. If it's a slideshow, I turn the sliders down and/or remove some eyecandy. Sure, I see a stutter once in a while but it doesn't bother me. But, to answer your question technically, it could be your Vista 64 OS and/or the drivers for Vista 64 hardware. I read recently that Microsoft is just beginning to feel like Vista 64 is getting better and more stable - http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=506. I believe you'll be seeing the differences soon.Best regards,Jim

[sargeski 16]

>But, to answer your question technically, it could be your>Vista 64 OS and/or the drivers for Vista 64 hardware. I read>recently that Microsoft is just beginning to feel like Vista>64 is getting better and more stable -Jim,As much as I would like it to be, Vista64 is not the reason. Vista64 has been the most stable platform to date for FSX for me. I had the exact same issues with FSX DX10 preview in Vista32 and also experienced the same DX10 preview performance on two different machines. So, its not a Vista64 specific issue. A DX10 or FSX DX10 preview issue??? Most definitely. If DX10 had been fully and properly implemented into FSX and DX10 from the OS level 100% functional, I honestly don't think it would be called DX10 Preview.

[Guest Antarius]

>>I would really like to know how you guys are seeing a framerate >>increase at all with DX10 preview enabledMy specs are Intel C2D 3.16 overclocked to 3.8, 8 GB DDR2, X48 motherboard, 8800GTX 768 mb.Here is the place I ran testDX9 - http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/7426/dx9ke1.jpgDX10 - http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/4447/dx10ts4.jpgLook at fps in left corner.10m mesh, lots of autoen trees, lakes and rivers. Frames are set to unlimited.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg6967, 120000, 38, 74, 58.058 80.200 <-dx10The numbers are telling everything.