After upgrading my FSX rig from a souped up Q9550 with a cranked up GTX275 to the i7 platform, I have felt that the GTX275 video card became a bottleneck, even though it is really fast and stable when overclocked. After reading about how the new Catalyst 10.3 has been such a great success so far, and being unimpressed with the Nvidia Fermi release, I switched uniforms in the middle of the night, and ordered a Gigabyte HD5870.What that means is that I will be a noob lost in the ATI wilderness I have not been a part of for the past 7 or 8 rebuilds. Here is hoping it is true that recent cures have really fixed earlier ills of vertical sync and AA problems in FSX. Having to learn how to set things up without Nhancer and green orientated tweaks is a bit nervewracking. I guess that is where you guys will hopefully come in, to take me by the hand and keep me from falling into a ditch somewhere! :( StephenPS: Besides, Team Red reminds me of those wonderful Olympic gold metal hockey champions! :(

BLASPHEMERRRRR :( Just kidding :( Wish you the best of luck with your new setup. And I hope you

I did the same, just ordered a XFX 5870 which will be here on Tuesday :D

Keep us informed on how it goes. I have a GTX 275 too and I am looking to upgrade. Was waiting to see the release of fermi. Now that we know, I am finding that the new nvidia are way too power hungry and running way too hot to my taste. So I am leaning towards a 5870 too. I'm a little bit concerned about the v-sync issues with the ATI drivers, actually that's the only thing that kept me from ordering the 5870. cheers

Hi, I have both , the GTX285 and the Radeon HD5870. I , re-install the Radeon , twice a month (with every new beta driver or official one).A few hours later, I come back to the GTX285. If you only use FS, then the GTX, at least in my experience, is better than the Radeon, without fps drops in dense clouds from the exterior view (it happens with latest Catalyst, too). Sometimes takes more time to find the issue, but unfortunately ,always comes back. If you play some other games, then the Radeon is superb.Best.Miquel.

nVidia dropped the ball on this one. I'd had five straight nVidia cards until this product cycle, beginning with a Riva TNT all the way back in 1998. Now I have a Radeon 5770--was going to pick up a GTX275 until it dropped out of circulation last fall, and FS9/FSX aren't the only 3D intensive programs I use. It isn't/wasn't intended to be a long term solution, but I'm still running a native 1280x1024 LCD monitor and anything more is excessive--I was waiting to see what the new nVidia cards brought to the table before I splurged on a new monitor and a higher end card. However, the new parts are a disappointment (very late, expensive, hot, loud, and power hungry). It will apparently take a refresh to really bring the GF100 architecture into its own, assuming there's a lot of untapped potential there yet. Actually, the GTX470 might be worth a look if the price comes down into the $200 range...I really do miss nVidia drivers.Anyhow, I like this card a lot--it's actually fairly quick, and it's extraordinarily power efficient. Unless a major price war brings the 5850 into the low $200 range, I'll probably just hang onto it until next fall when the next product cycle begins. I don't like the drivers (yes, I suffer from the vsync problem in Vista--and severe artifacts in Win XP with FSX), but hopefully that will be sorted out at some point.