>LOL, the only one I see speculating is you. You give us list>of games that you

What or who told you were not saturating the bandwidth reserved on the card from the rendering engine with high FSX settings?The core speed, the memory amount the memory bus ability, pixel pipes and MT/s all add up to FSX goodness. A percentage of the bus and resources are used by the FSX rendering engine for each part of the scene. If your card bus is smaller, that

In that, your saturated on a GT..>heck, on high settings you are even saturated on a>GTX/Ultra/280 but much less. I dont see use getting over the>hill and rolling down the mountain for a bit longer yet.I am leaning towards a GTX. But dang it, I want the ATI IQ! I have to say this about nV IQ: it's certainly decent. It's just not as razor sharp n squeaky clean. QX9650 w/ Retail HSF|ASUS P5E3 Premium WiFi|4GB Muskin Ascent 7-6-6-18 1T DDR3-1600|EVGA 8800GT|Seagate SATA 2 x 2|Seagate Cheetah 15K.x|XP Pro SP2|Vista 64--maybe never to be installed

I know you do and I understand whyIf I thought you would be completely pleased I would say grab that x2 but I just cant say that yet or give you well documented data to make a truly good decision around it.As soon as I can I will but I know you are under the gunRight now its too soon to tell and I do think it will come down to drivers and what they manage to trim out of the card

Tech specs are really important but they are no substitute for your personal subjective preferences, especially in dealing with tradeoffs (FPS vs. IQ. vs. $$$ vs. noise vs. ego kick from having the card with the highest 3DWhatever benchmark numbers vs. personal time spent on OC-ing and fine-tuning your PC).So if you really want the 4870X2, go and grab one for yourself and try it out and see how pleased you are with performance according to what is important to you and according to the way you fly in FSX.Then if you subjectively feel the 4870X2 does not meet your expectations, you can always return it and try the next card on your list.Bear in mind, though, that drivers keep improving, so "the card that best meets your needs" is a bit of a moving target. For example, the 4870X2 sports a 5 GBPS "direct connect" between the 2 GPUs (bypassing the PCI bridge) but I have read (and I don't remember where) that ATI has not implemented that feature in their driver yet (and may never do!). Likely this feature will have nil effect on FSX FPS. In this respect the potential for ATI driver improvement is larger than for the Nvidia series because the R770 GPU is newer, but this must be reality-checked against the manufacturer's past history of actual driver improvements.Then once you settle on a particular card, make sure you let us know how you navigated your personal subjective decision tree to optimise your satisfaction from using FSX! We will all benefit from this both when our preferences are similar to yours as when they are not, because we all have to go through similar processes in deciding which video card to get.Cheers,- jahman.

Thank you kindly Nick and Jahman. I'm hanging on a little longer to see if the next driver offers anything. I think at that point I will have to consider picking up the X2 Jahman, as you say, I can always remove it. I'm actually not sure it will fit in my case either.QX9650 w/ Retail HSF|ASUS P5E3 Premium WiFi|4GB Muskin Ascent 7-6-6-18 1T DDR3-1600|EVGA 8800GT|Seagate SATA 2 x 2|Seagate Cheetah 15K.x|XP Pro SP2|Vista 64--maybe never to be installed

>Thank you kindly Nick and Jahman. I'm hanging on a little>longer to see if the next driver offers anything. I think at>that point I will have to consider picking up the X2 Jahman,>as you say, I can always remove it. I'm actually not sure it>will fit in my case either.>>QX9650 w/ Retail HSF|ASUS P5E3 Premium WiFi|4GB Muskin Ascent>7-6-6-18 1T DDR3-1600|EVGA 8800GT|Seagate SATA 2 x 2|Seagate>Cheetah 15K.x|XP Pro SP2|Vista 64--maybe never to be>installedNoelWhat Jahman says is very trueAs an engineer, and I think you are too as I recall, I tend to lean on the side of caution and look for numbers before I commit to making suggestionsPlease know that my first and only concern is your satisfaction and in that I will alway try to weigh the facts over the speculationI think there is a lot to say for what Jahman has posted.. I too many times just go for it. Like he says, return it if its not to your liking. Strictly from the hardware specs the x2 is there in many respects and the driver is the key to the card and he is correct, this is a card that may, or may not pan out so retuning it may be a problem if you wait too long.at the same time I would not place the single core in that race. The specs just are not there as compared to Nvidia.Do know that card will not exceed the 280 in perf for FSX. It lacks the memory buss speed and that can not be corrected in driver. If they can correct driver issue and get it speaking to FSX from both sides of the coin on that card the ATi method may then match the 280 (in FSX) but it will not overtake it, that much is for sureGood luck with what you decide and I do hope it complements what you have.. and more

I recently bought a new system with HD4800I am new to FSX but used to FS2OO4I am very happy with the performance and run at 22-24 fps with settings at : Anisotropic filtering, Anti-aliasing, Global texture-High, Scenery complexity-dense, Autogen density-dense, weather- medium high.There are still some blurries when turning fast but I haven' finished playing with settings. An excellent site I came across for tweaks is http://www.highflightsimulations.com/fsxcfg.htmlFS2004 runs flat out.Hope this is helpful to those puzzling over what to buy.Intel Core Quad CPU Q9450 @ 2.66 GHzRAM 4 GBATI Radeon HD 4800 512mbVista Home PremiumSamsung 24in monitor 1920*1200FSX Acceleration