ATI 9700 All in wonder Pro ..jury is still out

[Guest]

I purchased the ATI Radeon All in Wonder 9700 Pro yesterday. I installed the card last night and anxiously entered fs2k2. The card I had previously was the Nvidia TI-200. I expected a huge difference in video quality and framerate. I have yet to notice any difference of video quality, the frame rates are still in the 7-12 range. I have been experimenting with different display settings and I have yet to reach any conclusions. Are there any 9700 Pro users out there that have suggestions? I did download DirectX 9.0 and that did not seem to improve the situation. I downloaded the latest Catalyst drivers from ATI also. I Suppose this card is near the top of AGP cards out there but I am not having any luck yet.Jon

[John_Tavendale 453]

whats the rest of your system specs?Did you get rid of all the Nvidia drivers?

[Guest SlimDady]

Make sure you a runing in agp 8x if your mobo can support it.Also Increase your apature sizeif you have not done so already

[Guest]

I don't where people get this idea that a new video card with supposedly better AA alogorithms and such is going to look THAT MUCH better. Fact of the matter is you need to crank your FS settings like texture sizes and aircraft sizes through the roof. The trick for visual quality is increase the resolution of your textures. Other tweaks inlcude the use of 8X anistropic filtering and also setting trillinear filtering in FS. 4X AA works nicely on my 9500 Pro, 6X is just a hint too much for me. Screen resolution can help too =D. Put that core and memory speed to work!-Matt

[Guest]

>whats the rest of your system specs? >>Did you get rid of all the Nvidia drivers? The rest of the specs are P4 1.5 GHZ512 meg RAMWhere do I increase the aperture size? thanksJon

[Guest FPSFREAK]

Like the above post asked, what are your current system specs?. Sometimes, depending on the CPU and memory you are running the card w you may not see that big of a difference. I do know that any system w a 9700 should be able to push more than 7-12 FPS.Are you running the latest chipset drivers for your MB?. Do you have the latest bios for your motherboard installed? Video drivers, unlike bios updates and chipset updates dont always follow the rule of the latest being the fastest. Search around for what people are using. I'm currently running my rig w DX9 installed along w the latest Omega series drivers. Avg FPS w all sliders maxxed is 25-35 w 6XAA and 16X AF enable. 6 lights and Bi-linear filtering.Contrary to popular belief enabling 8X AGP can, depending on the application, actually cause a drop in framerate. There is not a single application out right now, even FS2K2 w all sliders maxxed, that can fill the AGP bus's bandwidth.The 9700 is not a cure all for an ailing sub 1 Ghz CPU and or PC100 memory. ( No offense to those that have it ). The cpu is as much a factor as the video card is as far as rendering performance goes. It's like throwing a 700 HP Big block in a Vega. If your not running a big enough tire and have the chassis set up right..Well it's basically as useless as T**'s on a bull.Lets see those specs so we can help....Bobby

[Guest SlimDady]

Still i think he shoul dbe pulling better fps

[crvm 0]

It will pull better frames rates at HIGHER res! But it's very true that your CPU is the most important factor as regards to FS2002. Throw that ATI 9700 in with a P4 3 gig or a AMD 2700-3000XP and welcome to a whole new world.Best Wishes, Randy J. Smith [h3]" A little learning is a dangerous thing"[/h3]AMD XP 2100 |MUNCHKIN 512 DDR RAM |ECS[/b ][i] K7S5A MB[/i] |GF3 64 MEG |WIN XP PRO |MITSUBISHI DIAMOND PLUS 91 19"

[Guest Bigshot]

How does it do with other games. Same thing?? Did you rename the main FS2002 cfg file and let the sim build a new one. Could be a variety of things causing the grief. You're definitely CPU bound. The card likes big CPUs. Could be that you didn't get rid of all the Nvidia drivers. Are you experiencing any crashes. I'd suggest you go over to www.rage3d.com and do a search and ask questions. I've seen some posts over there where folks stated problems similar to yours.Here's some CPU scaling numbers using an AMD and the 9700 Pro. Note that the processor size makes a hugh difference in every benchmark: http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/ath...700/default.asp FPSFREAK: Why are you running bilinear filtering?? Switch it back to Trilinear. Big difference in the quality of your textures. Also, max out your lighting. I don't think that makes any difference in performance with the card; but both have nice eye candy features when maxed out.

[Guest FPSFREAK]

Big, as usual right again !! Just when I think this thing cant possible look any better....BAM!! LOLThanks again.Bobby

[Guest FPSFREAK]

Randy,Where did you find that "MUNCHKIN" Memory LOL. Does it come in a smaller package..LOLJust bustin' em bud. Saw that and had a good laugh ;)Bobby

[Guest]

"Hi Jon",I tried for ages with the same problem, got loads of advice (all very helpful), but in the end, this is what I did (I know it`s a lot of work, but it was well worth it).Re-format hard drive.Re-install WinXP Pro (with SP1).Install DX9.Install latest Omega drivers (based on 3.1).Install rest of software & FS.I`m now happy, FS2002 is a joy to use.Hope this helps. Rob

[Guest]

>Install latest Omega drivers (based on 3.1). Where do I get the Omega drivers? I have been going to the ati website and downloading from there.. I can put in another hard drive and format reload, install dx9, omega and see if there is an improvement. I am going to take the following suggestions first.Download latest motherboard drivers for my moboUpdate my BIOSRename the fs2002.cfg and have it build a new one2nd resort will be to buy a 2.4 or 3ghz processor and MB as I have a 1.5GHz right now.I did uninstall the nvidia drivers via the control panel. I like these forums, many suggestions come.Jon

[Guest ront1]

Hi Jon Follow this link and get this little driver cleaner program that works for both Nvidia and ATI. It is a good program for getting rid of all drivers.Ronhttp://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/

[Guest]

Ok to update those that are interested.. I have obtained better frame rates. I am now getting 11-17 fps instead of 7-12. Of course this goes into the 20's when im at a crusing altitude. Maybe someone should create a standard for framerate comparison.. Say Runway such and such and this airport with these exact settings... Anyway thanks to the group for their suggestions. This is exactly what I did to obtain the increase..Updated my p4b motherboard bios to the latest 1012 verMy intel chipset drivers were already the latestI went into my BIOS and change the aperture size to 128 (there is an option for 256 but I figured i should match the video card memory???)I downloaded the latest 9700 All in wonder Pro driver from ati.comI renamed my fs2002.cfg and had it build a new one.I changed my screeen resolution to 1280x1024x32 and maxed out most settings.. if I lower my screen resolution will that increase or decrease frame rate... I will find out soon.Thanks again to the group.Jon