hey guys, iv decided to get rid of my amd phenom ii 965 seup and change it to an i7 980x rig in an attempt to finaly max out fsx, iv got an ati 5870 atm, but was considering a change to the gtx 480. im wondering which of the 2 cards provides the better image quality in fsx. with the 5870 iv always had flickering issues, terain and scenery not blending in, and sometimes i couldnt even get catalyst to force higher AA and AF. havent used an nvidia so can anyone please share any experineces to hekp me guide which one of the 2 cards has better image quality, NOT performance. my systems to change to is here:http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/7040/pci7.jpgthanks guys.Kaveesh

nvidia all the wayATI are not as good on FSX i would always go with nvidia

Nvidia by far because of the combined AA mode and vsync.

I have an ATI card in my main FSX desktop PC. It will not be replaced by another one. NVidia is the better choice.Al

Whereas I have been using ATi for years and never had a problem, they just work right out of the box, no need for additional progs like nhancer etc and the majority of vid problems on FS fora seem to relate to nVidia! A couple of examples below from this weekend with my ATi 4870x2:http://www.casey.tgis.co.uk/vatsim/ctp1.jpghttp://www.casey.tgis.co.uk/vatsim/ctp1.jpgand another with scenery:http://www.casey.tgis.co.uk/vatsim/spit2.jpgI have never felt the need to change. YMMV of course!

I just switched from a 4870 Bill, there's really no comparison in the image quality. The ATI driver simply doesn't have the AA capabilities the Nvidia one does. Nvidia's combined mode totally eliminates the shimmering that you see on the ATI from autogen and stuff like that. The ATI hardware is great, it's just the driver support for FS that's lacking. They actually told me they wouldn't make any fixes for FSX because they don't think enough people play it.

this has been beaten to depth and answers vary depending who you ask ...http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=274925

thanks guys, nvidia it is looks like ill grab that evga gtx 480, hope the i7 980x cuts it if that rig is not enough for fsx then i dont what ever will.Kaveesh

Just thought I would add a little non-FSX info.Adobe is about to release their CS5 line (12 April) and Premiere and After Effects have been completely revamped to use the new "Adobe Mercury Playback Engine". This is only accelerated by NVIDIA using CUDA technology. ATI users will have to render in CPU alone and will miss the benefits of the new engine which is a day and night difference. Finally an easy solution to edit raw AVCHD files for those of us recording True High Def :) (1920x1080P)Of course their are other hefty system requirements such as it will only run on a 64bit OS (about time) and minimum video card recommended is a GTX280 (The prefered is the Quardro series, ewwww $1,400.00).Anwyho, thought that might make you feel even better about your decision Kaveesh, should you already or in the future indulge in video editing :(

I spent $4000 on an FSX computer (see below) with an ATI 4870 and just cannot get FSX to perform. I'm not sure I'll blame it solely on the video card but I simply cannot get planes like the JS41 to have than 12-15 FPS with medium sliders. I find myself flying FS9 almost solely because I can run it at 80-100+ FPS with maxed sliders (making it look better than FSX anyway). Spent $200 to order 6 more GB of RAM this week too, we'll see how that goes with FSX.

I spent $4000 on an FSX computer (see below) with an ATI 4870 and just cannot get FSX to perform. I'm not sure I'll blame it solely on the video card but I simply cannot get planes like the JS41 to have than 12-15 FPS with medium sliders. I find myself flying FS9 almost solely because I can run it at 80-100+ FPS with maxed sliders (making it look better than FSX anyway). Spent $200 to order 6 more GB of RAM this week too, we'll see how that goes with FSX.

I can't believe you can't get your PC to run FSX well. I have a i7 920 overclocked and it runs FSX good with settings per NickN. I get great performance. Now at high traffic and payware airports it drops and can stutter, but shut AI off and its good to go. You might want to look into you settings and tweak them a bit.

Yeah sounds like somethings up with your rig. Did you buy it pre-built such as a Dell, or HP? Do you my chance know what your memory timings are? I also have an i7 920 overclocked and it runs FSX great with settings per DanP, hehe sry Christopher, just a little humor there, well plus it's mostly true :(How do other games run? I imagine with that rig you're taking in some newer titles that make you feel a little good about your comp. I hope :)I know absolutely nothing about ATI, I can barely spell it, but may be able to toss you some ideas.

Yep, spent quite a while researching tweaks and have gotten into my fsx.cfg file pretty good. Have used a variety of guids but mostly stuck to a guide Flight1 published in their forums. I bought the computer (mostly) assembled by stealthmachines.com. couldn't be happier with performance on other games. I'll just put it this way: I'm able to run the Sims 3 in high definition AND FS9 simultaneously (not that I want to, I accidentally opened both once). Other games like Call of Duty and some computer graphics programs I use run just fine too. My rig just does not like FSX, the 12-15 FPS is in full screen too. I would love to fly in windowed mode so I can switch between charts and flying easily; right now I get maybe 10-12 FPS average in windowed mode. I sometimes see as high as 20 externally at cruise but throw in weather and that quickly goes down. I usually fly online so AI is off for me.I still dream of the day where I can fly gorgeous VFR flights as FSX intended,, or the JS41 without fighting the computer. (Or not to mention a PMDG 777 someday). So if anyone has some ideas outside of the tweaking guides posted in forums, I would be forever grateful so I can use this computer for one of the main reasons I bought it. I also plan on upgrading to Win7 this weekend when I double my RAM to 12 GB

my only advice is follow nicks guide to tweaking fsx. Turn off hyper threading in the bios, update to latest video drivers and start with a clean fsx.cfg file. If you are upgrading make sure it is a x64 version of Windows.

Yep it'll be x64 Win7, like I have with Vista. My drivers are up to date as well, and Ill look at the bios but anything with bios edits makes me hesitate a bit.