Yeah thats true about the ATI vs nVidia argument. I was thinking about something NickN had said in the quotes below about ATI cards, that's why I mentioned it."ATi cards are trash for FSX. They are shader engine cards and although they may crush nvidia in shader based games like Crysis, Nvidia will crush ATI in FSX when heavy weather and scenery are around. FSX is not a shader engine game.. its actually old triangle rendering tech. The best cards for FSX are the 8800GTX 768, Ultra 768 and the 280. With the 8800GTS 640 bringing up the rear followed by the 8800GT last"Hopefully yours will work out better than most. Good luck and let us know how it works out. :(

Mike, Would you be using the video out on your 4890?.....HDMI and Component.....for anything. I do lots of video capture. I am thinking about the 4890, right now I have the HD2900 which is still serving me well.Thanks.Abe

I dunno how bad ATI could actually be.. lets see besides the 4890 being the first DDR5 card, ATI was the first to implement an accelerated memory controller, found in today's xbox360 and i7(QPI-technology) and AM3 chips. Not only that they were the first to the shader... And now your suppose to believe NickN opinion over actual hardware specs. The guy has no idea what he's talking about. Shader based games? Please the only shader based effects I've seen is dirt flying from the car tires in a racing game. Even if you had 4 shaders on your card that would be overkill.

And now your suppose to believe NickN opinion over actual hardware specs. The guy has no idea what he's talking about.

I wouldn't go that far but I would also do research myself and use him as an additional source. I'm an Nividia fan myself but have heard good things about the latest ATI cards with FSX. In the past, ATI cards were pretty junky with FSX...38xx and lower at the time.

Mike, Would you be using the video out on your 4890?.....HDMI and Component.....for anything. I do lots of video capture. I am thinking about the 4890, right now I have the HD2900 which is still serving me well.Thanks.Abe

Abe - I'll be using the 4890 for gaming only (FSX). My old PC with the 3890 card will be using video out HDMI to HD flat panel TV (40"). Going to use my old media center as a TiVo recorder. Haven't hooked it up yet, however, still a few days away.

OK - after a little bump, the new PC is up and running!! Couldn't get it to boot at first as I had failed to plug in the EATX 8 pin power plug which I though was for backup power only. Duh. The PC lights up like a x-mas tree when I turn it on because of all the LED lights thru the clear side of the case. Looks pretty cool. Booted up at 3.2GHz for the CPU and 1333MHz for the memory. I installed Vista Home Premium 64-bit on a separate 35GB partition. FSX and all associated FlightSim programs (add-ons, etc) will go on the 245GB partition. Curious to see if it really makes a difference putting FSX on its own partition (I've heard that it's better).The BIOS on the ASUS Crosshair III Formula mobo is awesome and I have found it easy to work with so far. Installed updated drivers from the ASUS setup disk and got the LAN working for Internet access with no problem. Will install the latest video card drivers and update Vista today. Then will do a clean install of FSX, Acceleration, FS Genesis mesh (whole world), GEX (USA & Canada), ASX, X Graphics, and my addon aircraft. Testing will begin right after everything is installed. I intend to run tests at default speeds and then test at OC speeds for comparison.

And now your suppose to believe NickN opinion over actual hardware specs.

I don't have to take anyone's

I don't have to take anyone's

The 4870 X2 is a dual GPU card isn't it? Not sure you can make the comparison with a single GPU 4890 vs the dual GPU 4870X2 for FSX. I have heard that FSX does not like dual GPU cards although I cannot personally confirm this from experience. Just an observation.

Simple, disable Catalyst AI, now you

Abe - I'll be using the 4890 for gaming only (FSX). My old PC with the 3890 card will beusing video out HDMI to HD flat panel TV (40"). Going to use my old media center as a TiVo recorder. Haven't hooked it up yet, however, still a few days away.Mike Lanza DVFC

Thanks Mike. I would be very much interested with your TIVO recorder setup. Please post here or in a new thread. I am still toying with the 4890 and the GTX285(which does not have HDMI nor Components).Abe

Ahh you realize that whether it's on the same die, same card, or connected via SLi, it makes NO DIFFERENCE! Well actually it does, SLi offers much higher clockspeeds than the other two options. If FSX can't use more than 16 raster operators, who cares if you have 32 or 64 of them. Bottom line the correct graphics card for FSX would always be the one that offers the better/faster Anti-Aliasing... ie the 4890 at the moment. Or you could use a real flight simulator like x-plane and turn off AA altogether just like every other game out there.

I am still toying with the 4890 and the GTX285(which does not have HDMI nor Components).

I have my GTX 285 connected to a 32

The first FSX test for the AMD Dragon Platform PC is in! I couldn't wait to overclock the beast so there will be no default speed tests as I run OC constantly now. It was real easy with the BIOS on this ASUS board. I love it! The CPU is running at 3.81GHz and RAM is running at 1587MHz. I did not OC the video card so it is running at 925MHz on the GPU and 1050MHz on the memory as overclocked from the manufacturer.The test uses FSX plus Acceleration (no add-ons yet). There are no tweaks whatsoever to the fsx.cfg file. Clouds were set at complex for a distance of 90 miles. Light Bloom, Ground Scenery Shadows and all the extras are ON. Traffic is set at about 35% for all types. This first test is in DX9. At KHPN (my home airport) I was getting 40-75 FPS but I figured NYC would be the real test.I took off in a Bell 206 from KLGA in New York City for th test. The first picture shows my scenery settings. These are by choice and not for any performance reasons. The second picture shows me flying near the Empire State Building in fair weather getting about 27 FPS. For kicks, the third pic shows me in about the same spot in bad weather with rain and clouds and I was still pulling at least 22 FPS. The ride was very smooth indeed. Here are the pics:SETTINGS:NYC FAIR WEATHERNYC FOUL WEATHERVery pleased so far with the performance I see. Will continue to post test results after add-ons.

i am not sure about processors, but i definately know that AMD/ATI graphics card are really not good for FSX. i think you will be much better going with nvidia. but this is just a suggestion and i would love to be proved wrong as i have been considering the 4890 for a while now lol

Thats nuts...FSX cares less about a vid card....I have a full and mid size rig for FSX.. One cost 2,300 in parts and the other cost 500.00 in parts..One runs the HIS 3850 and one runs the Saffire 3850....FSX is beautiful and runs flawless..Both rigs are dual core..1) E5200 2.5 OCed to 3.32) E8600 3.33 OCed to 3.6I just built a rig for a customer with a 4890 and there is no difference at all.That was a Q9650 OCed to 3.4Many say the same as you..I have never had a problem with any ATI card running FSX other than the X2 cards...

Thats nuts...FSX cares less about a vid card....I have a full and mid size rig for FSX.. One cost 2,300 in parts and the other cost 500.00 in parts..One runs the HIS 3850 and one runs the Saffire 3850....FSX is beautiful and runs flawless..Both rigs are dual core..1) E5200 2.5 OCed to 3.32) E8600 3.33 OCed to 3.6I just built a rig for a customer with a 4890 and there is no difference at all.That was a Q9650 OCed to 3.4Many say the same as you..I have never had a problem with any ATI card running FSX other than the X2 cards...

Really, I had an ATI 3870 last year before I picked up the 4870X2, that card was hideous with FSX and heavy weather also. So are you telling us that the memory bus on a particular video card has no impact as far as performance in FSX is concerned? ASUS Rampage II Extreme (1406 BIOS) Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition w/Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RTMushkin Redline Ascent 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (6-6-5-18-1N)EVGA GTX 285 2GB FTW (186.18)Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1tyWD VelociRaptor 150GB

I have a HD 3870 in my old rig and it did a decent job for me. It would be curious to see what kind of difference it would make if I put the 3870 in my new rig. Maybe I'll do that in the future just as a goof.Compared to my old rig, I am getting about a 100% increase in performance or about double the FPS. I think that's pretty good and I guess it's about what I expected. Will finish installing my add-ons after work and post more test results tonite.