I'm trying once again to get ATI's Catalyst team to fix several long-standing issues with FS9 and FSX on their cards - these are: CCC forced AF and Adaptive AA not working Seams/tears through GDI+ gauges in FSX The heavy cloud cover performance issuesI've offered them access to any PMDG aircraft for testing fixes.I've started a thread on the AMD Game forums, which the driver team does read, so what I'd ask here is that people go and add their support to the initiative by posting in the thread so that they see it's not just one person requesting fixes here.http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm...p;enterthread=yThanks everyone, fingers crossed!EDIT:If you don't want to register on AMD's forum, at least take the time to fill out an issue report that goes to the driver team:http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D27E29B0E3

Well said!And cloud performance really, really sucks!Also I have even stopped installing driver updates after v. 9.8 as performance was truly horrible on my HD 4870. So unless thinks improve by the time the Eyefinity-6 version of the HD 5870 rolls out I will be taking a serious look at NVIDIA as it makes no sense at all to give my money to a company that has orphaned FSX, the only reaon I spend money on hardware anyway.I have also contacted ATI about FSX bugs with no success at all, not even a "thank you" automated reply.- jahman.

The best thing to do is to advice FS users to buy nVIDIA cards and avoid ATI. IMO a more feasable task.

I also responded in the thread and as I wrote, I consider going back to the old Nvidia 8800GT again since it delivers acceptable performance but looks so much better with the available drivers. In other games my 5870 works extremely well with the 9.12 drivers but I built my i7-based computer just for the sake of flightsimming. I don't fancy the idea of shelving 300 euros worth of hardware though.

RyanHave you seen my thread below but also a major issue for CCC is the lack of Vsync in FSX if running Win7/Vista. For me with Track IR it makes the game unplayable with a wiggly screen every time you pan....I have e mailed the AMD ATI Windows 7 Driver Feedback with my problem but this seems unfortunately a major issue still to be sorted. I had a Nvidia 8800GTX and after that died decided to try an ATI 5850, its a great card for other games but with FSX its a big problem...You can see the threads below.....http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=271225http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33953314http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=32829Its such a shame that a major manufacturer MS/ATI cannot sort out this issue and the only working solution is to use XP 64 bit.....I will of course add all these driver points to your thread at ATI......Hamish

I leave vsync off and just limit the framerate to whatever I want. A lot of people don't seem to be aware that vsync can make framerate variance a lot more severe because of the way it works. When vsync is on, if your framerate drops below the refresh rate (60FPS for a 60Hz LCD), the actual framerate is going to drop to exactly 1/2 that of the refresh rate. So even if the framerate would have really dropped to only say 55FPS with vsync off, you see it drop to 30. This continues downward in an iterative fashion, if something drops below 30, you're going to see 15 and so on.The general rule in gaming is that if you're going to turn vsync on, you need to be absolutely positive your system is capable of pegging the framerate at the refresh rate at all times. This is pretty easy to do with other games, but probably not with FSX because how much it jumps around. I think this is what Nick is trying to do by locking to 30 in his guide, but setting to unlimited with vsync on is going to result in jumps between 60 and 30 etc.

Very goog idea Ryan...The 1/2 fps issue, was something to suspect, because the fps , at least in my case ...go from 60 to 30, not 21 or 34...just 30 fps.Thanks again for opening a ticket to ATI.Best.Miquel Egea.

The best thing to do is to advice FS users to buy nVIDIA cards and avoid ATI. IMO a more feasable task.

noVidia is just as bad, and also many more people get the blurries with them. I have 295 and have to use nHancer. That shouldn't be necessary.

That is interesting... you leave Vsync off... so maybe because I have a Matrox Triple Head 2 Go running 3 screens 3840 x 1024 and use Track IR, I find in FSX (FS9 is fine) that whenever I pan I get quite a few wiggles across the screen, its really annoying its basically like the screen is tearing... do you not have that issue at all or are you not using Track IR (obviously with 3 screens it compounds the problem!!) I wonder whether this issue does not actually bother a lot of people....Interesting....Hamish

noVidia is just as bad, and also many more people get the blurries with them. I have 295 and have to use nHancer. That shouldn't be necessary.

Of course but at least with Nhancer you have the option of having VSync on, with ati even with ati tool tips FSX game profile made and Vsync always on checked you get the dreaded black screen every few seconds while playing FSX.... you dont get that with Nvidia....

Good initiative to post on the AMD forum. Personally I've not even cared much about the AF/shimmering/etc issues yet since the vsync problem is the real showstopper for me. Unfortunately simply limiting the FPS within FSX or using FPS limiter will not get rid of the horizontal tearing for me with the 5870. That's no different than with nvidia but then vsync forcing always worked as expected. Vsync in combination with FPS limiting (to avoid stuttering because of 30-60-30-60 fps jumping) is what have always worked perfectly for me for several years and many different hardware setups. Until I went for ATI. Too bad because Eyefinity really works well with FSX and I get pretty much the same good fps using 3 screens at 3x1920x1080 as when using a single screen.

Good luck. You know, if enough people head over to the AMD Game forums they just might pay attention to MSFS users for once.

Been dealing with GPUs for over ten years and Ive personally had issues on the driver and hardware side with both Nvidia and ATI. As others have said, its all luck of the draw.

Same here, I remember the Nvidia drivers for Vista and the horror story that was. My new ATI card isn't doing bad at all, and the new drivers (10.1) are quite a bit faster than 9.12. I consider myself lucky so far as I have had few issues. I've had cards from both manufacturers, and the hardware was always great, the drivers always problematic.It is, in my view, quite sad to see that the drivers and games are so poorly Q/A tested. Granted, there are a lot of graphical titles out there, most with their own bugs, in a sea of hardware configurations. Yet, there aren't too many choices out there as either OpenGL or DirectX are pretty standard graphical interfaces - so you'd think unit testing would be possible both on the driver end and the game end, with a better result. At least, blue screen and gross errors should come up, such as visual problems and hefty performance loss. Of course, there are web standards too and we all know how well web browsers do with standards too...The customer is invariably the one stuck trying to figure out if it's a game issue or a driver issue. This reminds me of a new car I purchased years ago which turned out to have a bad vibrating front wheel I didn't readily notice - it happened after the first tire rotation. The issue was supposedly under warranty. It quickly became my problem as the question was whether the rim was bad, or the tire. It wasn't balancing - it balanced just fine. The tire is covered by the tire company, and the car manufacturer covers the rim but not the tires. Each manufacturer, offering the warranty service only for their product separately, spent 6 months arguing that the hole was on the other end of the ship. It finally got solved (the rim was bored off-center), but I was stuck in the middle.What's happening with game manufacturers and video card drivers reminds me a lot of my wheel story - it's always the other's problem, or in a twist of fate, the paying customer's fault. This gets tiresome quickly, especially considering these things are not cheap, but there are but two choices available to us it seems, so we have to pick between two evils :)

ziporama,This thread is about looking to get ATI to fix specific bugs as discussed.Why are you writing a bout bugs in general and this and that?Have you read the title of this thread?Now do us all a favour and go to ATIs forum and add your post tohttp://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm...p;enterthread=y- jahman.

Next to Operating Systems, graphics card drivers are the most complex pieces of consumer software. As a consumer, I always want the best performance, image quality, and stability possible from my graphics card drivers. That being said, I sympathize with the dev teams that have to write graphics card drivers and constantly test for these 3 things in the latest and greatest games. No one is intentionally trying to leave their customers out in the cold, there's just more work to do than most of us can imagine.