Gentlemen:I currently use the PMDG MD-11 and 747, both under FS-X, and I am planning on purchasing a new video card for my Windows 7 PC. My choices are an nVidia GTX285 or ATI Radeon HD5870 card and I was hoping that some of you out there could share your thoughts on one verus the other as these two seem to be the flavors of the moment...Thanks!Phil

Phil,Considering they are similarly priced, I'd recommend the GTX285. As I mentioned in the "My new rig" post, so far nVidia seem to have better drivers. If you do a bit of research you'll see some complaints about the ATI cards in FSX. In other games, the ATI cards seem to perform just as well, however. I wouldn't just go on my recommendation, though. Wait on someone with that card to give you their opinions, but the GTX285 in any case is an extremely powerful card.Good luck!

Wait a few weeks and see what happens with the new Nvidia cards would be my recommendations. They launch next week and I'm sure a few simmers will take the plunge and be guinea pigs. Doesn't make much sense to buy a 285 right now when the new cards will likely be the same price (and will cause the 285's price to drop).

I agree with both Andrew and Ryan. Personally I have not so great memories of ATI cards and my last one was a lonnng time ago which was the "Rage Fury", yep, long time ago. But from what I've read and seen of the two listed, I too would have to recommend the 285 regardless.I think the smartest move of course is do like Ryan said and wait for a while. The new cards will bring the prices down on existing I'm sure. It doesn't always happen right away and have seen it take over a month for prices to change, but it will happen. Not sure if places like newegg and zipzoomfly wait to sell there original stock 1st before lowering the price but I guess that would make sense if they already paid current list for them.But yeah, wait and see. As far as guinea pigs go, I may be one :( and will let you know. Of course it won't have any difference on FSX but would like to rerun through Assassins Creed 2 with settings maxed on a new one and see if I can shake the jitters. Same as Bad Company 2, they run great on my rig but not as perfect as I would prefer, so will be watching these new cards pretty closely,,, and impatiently I might add.

If ATI fixed the FSX issues with their driver I'd have no problem recommending them, the 5850 and 5870 are absolute beasts in any game aside from FS. If I was going just on normal mainstream gaming and not simming, I'd tell people to buy a 5850 over the Nvidia cards.

I had thought about checking out one of those cards from a friends shop (free test) but kept putting it off and now he's closing his doors. The issues I actually always had with ATI cards (again, this is about 10 years ago) was in FS. The gauges looked terrible and I could never read the fonts. I had the same issue was with Falcon and the hud always looking like crap. I imagine they at least fixed those problems by now, or would hope so at least. Back then too their drivers were a pain, much more complicated to install a new driver than nvidia's. I built 3 systems (over time) and each time went with ATI as my first attempt always with problems. I guess I could just be incredibly unlucky 3 times in a row haha, but my feeling on ATI, are only comparable to that of an ex wife that took you to the cleaners :(

Yeah - the problems are nothing like that. 10 years is a long time in the computer world.The issues are a lack of transparency AA for the trees and other alpha-test objects, a lack of anything similar to Nvidia's combined AA mode, lack of a Negative LOD bias clamp, and the fact that vsync doesn't work even in fullscreen mode.

Yeah - the problems are nothing like that. 10 years is a long time in the computer world.The issues are a lack of transparency AA for the trees and other alpha-test objects, a lack of anything similar to Nvidia's combined AA mode, lack of a Negative LOD bias clamp, and the fact that vsync doesn't work even in fullscreen mode.

I'm not much of a gamer outside of simming and I've sworn off ATI forever. I just had too many problems, especially with the "All in Wonder" cards a few years back. Tons of driver problems, random crashes, etc. As you say 10 years may be an eon in the computer world, but it isn't such a long time in my memory. I've been happy with the Nvidia's I've been using more recently, so I'll stick with those. As always, YMMV.

I will say that I NEVER had crashing issues or anything like that with the 4870 I had prior to this 260. (They haven't made All-Wonder cards and that crap for many years now) Nvidia just had a driver last month literally fry a bunch of people's cards too when they released it (WHQL certified and all) with a bug in it that disabled the card's fan.

Since we're discussing pc's now, I'm planning to buy a new one this week. So far I have put together the following:CPU - i7 Quad Core 860MB - ASUS P7P55-M P55 S1156 ATX DDR3HD - WD 500GB 7200 32mbRAM - DDRAM3 3072MB PC1600 G.Skill 3GBNQ CL9.0Graphic - ASUS ENGTX260/HTDP/896M/A PCI-E 896MB DDR3Power - Netzteil ANKERMANN 750W ATX 140mm SATA/PCI-E CordCPU Cooler - K

Hi John, I would recommend making yourself a new post, it