I only bought this thing out of curiosity and because nobody else had actually bothered to do a head-to-head comparison. As you say, it needs more testing. If you already own a 285, then personally I wouldn't bother with the 5870 UNLESS you only use the default aircraft.Tim

Tim, You got on this really quick and I didn't think someone would have tested the card with FSX so soon after it was released. I really look forward to seeing more of your results because, as mentioned before, I'm ready to make the switch as soon as there is more to go off of. Keep doing what you're doing and post the results. I'm really interested in how it performs when you push the system with heavy addons (scenery & aircraft), weather, and faster flying over dense areas. The ONLY way to know is to throw it on there and run it under different conditions. Even on different systems (I hope more folks test this card soon). I'm glad to see you realize you can't judge overall performance by a single test. Anybody who jumps to conclusions that NOW is the time to dump their nVidia GTX285 card to get the 5870 should be very cautious and just wait a while. -jk

, did you do a fresh OS install after you installed the 5870? What drivers did you use, RC6 or 7?

Nvidia drivers: 191.07ATI drivers: Not familiar with the sequencing but the "Driver packaging version" in the CCC "Information Centre" says 8.66-090910a-088431E.I did not do a fresh install: I just uninstalled the GTX 285 using the Device Manager, cleaned the system using Driver Sweeper (from Guru3d), added the 5870, installed the ATI driver package - and voila.Tim

ATI drivers: Not familiar with the sequencing but the "Driver packaging version" in the CCC "Information Centre" says 8.66-090910a-088431E.

Catalyst 9.10 pre-release. Basically "beta".

Open up Catalyst Control. Shouild list the driver version under the "information center'tab. Mine reads Driver Packaging Version 8.65-090813a-087739C-ATI Catalyst

HIS is a great vendor. I've owned a couple cards from them over the years. Right up there with BFG, XFX, EVGA for quality and support. Other good options for ATi cards are Visiontek and Powercolor because of their lifetime warranties. Depending on when you're ready to buy you may want to hold off for Asus or Gigabyte boards though, since they both offer extreme overclocking options. Asus has their "TOP" line with voltage tweaking software that has already pushed Radeon 5850/5870 cards to over 1GHz GPU clockspeed with stock cooling. Gigabyte has their "Super Overclock" line which features cherry picked chips that have gone through additional qualification at the factory to be certified to run at the highest factory overclocked levels in the industry.

Are these boards not available yet? Do you know when they are supposed to hit the market? I was planning on a Asus P6T Deluxe V2. Of course, the HIS card is currently out of stock at Newegg. I plan to build the system just after Windows 7 is released.

Are these boards not available yet? Do you know when they are supposed to hit the market? I was planning on a Asus P6T Deluxe V2. Of course, the HIS card is currently out of stock at Newegg. I plan to build the system just after Windows 7 is released.

Usually the custom designs don't come out for a month or two after launch. In the case of Asus however, the ability to adjust voltage comes by way of included software. If you can find an Asus 5870 you'll have that massive o/c capability.

I've just finished a flight from EDDF to EGLL in the PMDG 747X with this new card. This is a flight with which I am very familiar, including on VATSIM.I have to admit I'm quite impressed. It's not an earth-shattering improvement on the GTX 285 but the average fps is, overall, definitely higher; the image quality is equal, to my eyes; and the smoothness at critical phases, including touchdown, is just that little bit better.The 5870 is a keeper IMHO.Tim

Nvidia drivers: 191.07ATI drivers: Not familiar with the sequencing but the "Driver packaging version" in the CCC "Information Centre" says 8.66-090910a-088431E.I did not do a fresh install: I just uninstalled the GTX 285 using the Device Manager, cleaned the system using Driver Sweeper (from Guru3d), added the 5870, installed the ATI driver package - and voila.Tim

Thanks Tim.I didn

One other observation, having spent more time with this card:Having got used to the 8x CSAA setting available from nHancer with the GTX285, I find that the ATI 5870 does not have an exact equivalent. The "super-sampling" AA setting gives superb quality with "box" x4 AA or above - but the framerate cost is too high at 1920x1080. The best compromise seems to be "box" x8 AA with the "adaptive" setting - but it's not quite to my liking: force of habit, I guess. I have also come across shimmering in one or two situations, which I didn't ever get with CSAA on the GTX285.I'm not sure that I understand the technicalities but I THINK this may reflect what Nick_N has been saying elsewhere about ATI's AA being different from Nvidia's at "core" level.All this just reinforces my earlier impression that there's no point in updating from a GTX285 (unless, like me, you're just curious). Equally, if you're still on older kit, then the GTX285 and the 5870 are pretty much on a par: the ATI has (IMHO) a slight performance advantage; the Nvidia has (IMHO) a slight image quality advantage. Let's hope we're at the beginning of an era of renewed competition between these two sloths - ahem, I mean titans - of the GPU industry.Tim

True SSAA is incredibly expensive from a performance standpoint but will clean up an entire scene as no other AA method will. Each sample of SSAA (n) causes a performance hit on the order of FPS/n. e.g. 0x SSAA yields 120 FPS, 4x SSAA would yield somewhere around 30 FPS. Have you tried the "edge detect" AA mode yet? Very nice for polygon aliasing and in conjunction with the quality adaptive AA setting should take care of any shimmering as well.

GTX 285 (factory overclocked to 702MHz): average 36.67fps , minimum 22fps , maximum 63 fps.Ati 5870 (stock clock, 850MHz): average 51.347fps , minimum 31.5fps, maximum 68.5fps.Notes:1. This is one of my "standard" tests - the same as I used for comparing different RAM speeds a while ago. It consists of running a video replay of a 190 second helicopter flight over Manhattan. Benchmarks on FRAPS. Average of 2 runs. Identical FSX settings, using the "default" AF and AA settings (ie, without nHancer or CCC tweaks).2. Main bits of the PC: i7 975 @ ~4.4GHz; 6Gb RAM @ 1866MHz 7-7-6-18 CR1.3. Light cloud cover in this test - but subjective testing shows no adverse impact in dense clouds with the 5870.4. Ati 5870 is quieter than the GTX 285.Tim

I don't mean to hijack your thread but I would like to ask what motherboard you are using?

The "super-sampling" AA setting gives superb quality with "box" x4 AA or above - but the framerate cost is too high at 1920x1080.

The super-sampling AA does clean up image quality very well with some games but I have noticed that it will also make some textures completely disappear. I never had this issue when using Nvidia

The super-sampling AA does clean up image quality very well with some games but I have noticed that it will also make some textures completely disappear. I never had this issue when using Nvidia's super sampling AA.

Give it time. There are some issues with SSAA on ATi hardware right now. These issues are caused by the driver, not by any deficiency of the hardware itself.

Give it time. There are some issues with SSAA on ATi hardware right now. These issues are caused by the driver, not by any deficiency of the hardware itself.

I agree with you there, with the Angle-Independent Anisotropic Filtering there is no

I agree with you there, with the Angle-Independent Anisotropic Filtering there is no "hardware" limitation so the image quality should get better with driver maturity. With a couple of older racing sims (GTR2, r-Factor) the way the AA is filtering track textures is terrible in comparison to the GTX 285. The performance with X-Plane is dismal also so it looks like OpenGL support needs a little work.

Re:texture filtering if you have SSAA enabled you need to apply a negative LOD bias in order to maintain texture clarity, otherwise it all tends to get blurred. For each increase in SSAA samples of 2x, you need to apply a -0.5 LOD bias to correct. Give it a shot and see if that helps.