Hello Simmers,I just purchased a new Dell 8250 3.06GHz with a Radeon 9700 pro card,I previously have been using the Geforce card along with Riva-Tuner to tweak my LOD values etc.Now I am lost with this new Radeon Card, what settings are you guys using for FS2002 and how do you change the LOD values.Thanks for any help you can give me.-Paul

Go to www.rage3d.com for driver install suggestions and other information. Go to www.hardocp.com & www.anandtech.com for a review of the 9800 Pro/9700 Pro/GFFX Ultra comparisons up this morning. Run FS2002 at 16zx12x32 4xAA & 16xAF (preformance) with HQ Textures and Quality Mipmaps. Vsync on Application Preference and Truform Off. Or if a lower resolution, then 6xAA with other settings the same as above.

Hey Mark,Im having better luck with the 3.1 drivers, the 2.5's always appeared to cause a dll crash, and it was at no given time, the sim would run great then all of a sudden it would freeze and then the cdrom would start to spin up and then I would get that error message. Also one quick question, should fast writes be turned off or on?Thanks,Asus P4T533P4 2.89700 Pro

It's nice to hear positive info about the radeon 9700. How about the drivers? It was my understanding that there were problems with drivers after they first released the card.Thanks for the info

Driver problems is a myth. There aren't any. Some hardware problems when the 9700 Pro was released which were corrected with later driver releases for hardware specific issues. I'm still running the CD6166 drivers from last September. They work perfectly for me and I'm not ready to mess with em' till I see some DX9 sims. Then I've have to change to DX9 drivers. Read the conclusion over at driverheaven: Very good review. http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r350/index8.htm

Tell meis running flight sim @ 1600 res over 1280 that much better with a radeon 9700pro?What am I losing or missing running at 1280 besides a slight increase in performance?

Hello BoDEAN.Well, after I started flying FS at 16x12 (hundreds), it is just impossible for me to go back. First of all, even if you don't use AA, the jaggies are minimized.Second, the textures just look soooooo good.Basically, it is a much, much better quality of image presented. Makes a big difference to me. And I am serious when I say I can't get back to lower resolutions. For me it would be like going back to FS2000 :-).

I am flying at 1600 x 1200 x 32 w/ 2xAA, 16xAF (perf). The thing I am quite happy with the 2XAA seems good enough without oversoftening edges.There are some tweaks to improve on how the sim handles textures:[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=4.800000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1//TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=2.500000TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.500000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.000000//TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=2Stuff in front of the // marks were the default settings.I am extremely pleased with the 9700 Pro and FS2002. Too good to be true, although I have to give plenty of credit to the rest of the parts in this racehorse :()Noel

I agree. I run 16x12x32 res with 4xAA & 16xAF (performance) with textures on high quality; but I turned the mipmap down one notch from high quality to quality simply because I had some noise in the tree tops. That seemed to have taken care of that problem. I've also run 1280x1024x32 with 6xAA and don't mind that res either. The textures are; however, much clearer at 16x12x32, especially the distant textures. The 9700 Pro seems to handle either res well, so I go with the best.You guys taken a jet (like the T38) down on the deck and opened her up to mach 1+ and discovered that the textures keep right up with the mach speed. Try it with clouds on with the bases set at 2000'. Quite a visual ride. That shows the power of this card.