All the reviews agree, huh? That's interesting, since there's not a single review that has tested FSX... Like I said, I'm glad you like your card, but you don't really have any basis for your comments RE: GTX 4xx cards. Users here that have a GTX 470 or 480 say they're the bee's knees for FSX.

Well perhaps you will agree that FSX is heavily CPU based and I am using this as a basis for my assumption that a new very expensive very very hot very very very power hungry card such as this is not going to make FSX suddenly double it's framerates. I still stand by my assumption that every reviewer has stated that the card is not a "must have" purchase in it's current state and that a revision will make it more so.I have used NVIDIA cards since FS2004 and always found them to be better with Flight Sim than ATI but no longer. I urge anyone looking to upgrade now to go for the Saphire Vapor 5870 for the Ultimate FSX Experience. Low power requirements, cooler running and fantastic graphics!!

I have had both a 5970 and 5870 2gb in my core i7 triplehead rig for a while this year, and the image quality was not acceptable. Screen tearing, and lower AA. Also the card dropped frames in clouds like crazy.I took then out, sold them on ebay and went back to a GTX 285 2gb.Eyefinity was nice and works as advertised, no changing around the refresh rates etc, but I can't agree that the new 5xxx cards for FSX are the way to go.

Your assumption remains an assumption. User tests here have demonstrated that the GTX 4xx series currently offers the most performance for FSX. Reviewers aren't testing FSX, so their conclusions have little bearing on GTX 4xx as a GPU for FSX. The only legitimate down sides are cost, power consumption, heat, noise, and availability (though this seems to not be as much of an issue right now). When looking solely at the performance, GTX 4xx is as good as it gets.

I have the GTX 470 and think it's great. It's also mostly silent as well. You have to realize that some of the reviewers that are supposedly professional, are sometimes ati a really excited user. Plus there was some confusion about them testing with grueling synthetic benches that are unlike real world gaming. And there isn't a thing wrong with ati, but these people got their ati months back and liked it. So now they took it from the point of view that the nvidia had better be way better or they'd pan it. But instead it was only a little faster so they were let down, kind of like bogbrain was. The reviews saying it's not a "must have" could have also said the same thing about the ati had the nvidia been first. In fact they would have really put the ati down because it was somewhat slower in some tests. And had nvidia been first, people would have just used them. Then 6 months later, ati would show up with a slower card and no one would care. They say, "but look it uses less electric" and they'd get laughed at and be called tree huggers. -- And it depends on what models you compare, but I've seen videos on youtube comparing the two and the ati where the ati was falling to say 10 fps and skipping, while the nvidia was up around 17 to 19. Again, it depends on the demo, but with all the positive things about it, I'd prefer the 470. The only thing that would turn me away would be noise and heat, which have been over rated.. Since those are not happening to me, I can't see any reason to leave this card.Also the heat and electric issue is pretty much a lie. Yes, the truth is it uses more electric and creates more heat than ati, but it's not something worth mentioning. I mean the min requirement on ati is like 500, but gtx is like 550. Big deal. I have an i7 overclocked to 3.8ghz with a 470 and it's doing great on a 600watt psu. I figured out the difference in electric used for fun. If you played like 4 hours of games a day, meaning you have no life, in one year the gtx cards would cost you like $4 more than the ati cards would, lol.In FSX, as someone pointed out, my temps rarely get over 70, but depending on what patch level I'm on I've seen 74. The fans never increase beyond 44%. The frame rate increase is awesome, but it does depend on where you fly. In crowded places I get like 25 to 30fps, worst case. But often I see like 60fps. And sometimes I get like 80 or 90fps. Most games I play, the card is usually never over 80c, but Crysis was the hottest and got it 82c. At that temp the fan was never over 60% and mostly around 55% and I couldn't really hear it over the case fan. If I leaned down and turned off all game sound I could barely hear a little more woosh, but it's not noisy at all. Now if someone would run synthetic benchmarks and get it hotter in maybe a poorly ventilated case, or maybe manually set up the fan over 85% then yes, it's loud. But that isn't happening in my games. And I hate fan noise, but there really isn't much of anything most of the time. That said, I love this card. Given the new games coming out 4th quarter like Crysis 2 and others, and given this has the cool physx and extra features I wouldn't want anything but this card. Put it this way. I was going to return it if it sucked and it's not going back :-)

Another happy GTX 470 user here, no heat issues and they overclock like hell. Running 750Mhz core, 1500Mhz shader, and 1700Mhz memory clock on stock voltage. And I think the pricing is fair as well, I paid $370 for my EVGA GTX 470, the PNY was available for $350. This was at Fry's Electronics.

I tested the same flights twice again in DX9. All others parameters were the same except bloom that was turned off.I'm puzzled by the results. Not much difference in the numbers also while flying I could not notice any difference myself. Unmodified FSX.CFGMin FPS: 14Max FPS: 63Average FPS: 40BP=0 FSX.CFGMin FPS: 17Max FPS: 63Average FPS: 42I did some flying around KSEA all sliders maxed out with both config and could not see any performance difference too.Anyways, the sim feel so much better with the 470 compared to the GTX275 so I guess tweaking is less of an issue now.cheersMarc

One thing I don't get by looking at these numbers is if this new BP=0 is supposed to be the "key" to finally make FSX make better use of the GFX card instead of relaying so hard on the CPU shouldn't the difference be bigger considering the power in today's GFX cards?I have very mixed feelings right now if I should go for a 480 card or not...some people say they see very little difference compared to cards like the 285 while others like Marc say FSX feels so much better using a 4 series card compared to a 2 series card...hmm...quite a huge price tag but still if the money will result in a noticable improvement in FSX I might find it worth it.Guess I'll just have to sleep on it and see if I decide to pick up the 480 tomorrow or if I stick to my 285, very tempting it is knowing I have that 480 just waiting for me to pick it up :(

One thing I don't get by looking at these numbers is if this new BP=0 is supposed to be the "key" to finally make FSX make better use of the GFX card instead of relaying so hard on the CPU shouldn't the difference be bigger considering the power in today's GFX cards?I have very mixed feelings right now if I should go for a 480 card or not...some people say they see very little difference compared to cards like the 285 while others like Marc say FSX feels so much better using a 4 series card compared to a 2 series card...hmm...quite a huge price tag but still if the money will result in a noticable improvement in FSX I might find it worth it.Guess I'll just have to sleep on it and see if I decide to pick up the 480 tomorrow or if I stick to my 285, very tempting it is knowing I have that 480 just waiting for me to pick it up :(

If you are satisfied with your sim performance for say, the next year or so, I say wait for the GTX 485 and probably a lower price, or if they activate all the shader cores, maybe a GTX 512 will hit the market.

If you are satisfied with your sim performance for say, the next year or so, I say wait for the GTX 485 and probably a lower price, or if they activate all the shader cores, maybe a GTX 512 will hit the market.

Well...can't say I'm really not satisfied with my current performance but one thing that would be great is if I could once and for all get rid of the stuttering that is always there more or less looking at the terrain below while flying. Guess like so many have already pointed out, it's not actually the FPS that is the most important but rather that you want a flying experience that feels "smooth".I guess it's very likely we will see new and improved models like a 475 and 485 but is this something that has been announced in any way somewhere or is it just qualified quessing? Right now I feel that if a new GFX card would get rid of the micro stuttering or at least decrease it to a minimum I say it's worth the money even if even better cards arrive in about a year but if I buy a new card and still have this micro stuttering and sometimes when panning fast around also these artifacts and graphical glitches then I would of course consider it as wasted money.Will continue to read comments and I'm also looking forward to some promised input in another thread over in the Hardware forum before I decide what I will do.Thanks alot for trying to help with good tips and input!

Hi Richard-I've had my EVGA GTX480 in my box for a few days now. A few notables are...Is it better than my 'old' GTX285-yes.Does the price difference between the two equal better-no.Am I going to keep it? Yes.You might want to wait on moving on this until the newer model comes out that people have been referring to.Mark

Hi Richard-I've had my EVGA GTX480 in my box for a few days now. A few notables are...Is it better than my 'old' GTX285-yes.Does the price difference between the two equal better-no.Am I going to keep it? Yes.You might want to wait on moving on this until the newer model comes out that people have been referring to.Mark

Thanks for your input Mark!When you say the new card is better than the 285 could you please let me know in what way you find it better...increased FPS, a more smooth FSX with less/no stuttering or in what way is it better in your experience compared to your old card? And how big is the difference, easily or barely noticable?

OK, here goes...My experience with FSX is that the program is an exercise in increments, systems and flow of data through your computer and everyone's computer is different.For me, the 480 vs. the 285 is an incremental change; most notably smoothness. I didn't say perfectly smooth. I've gone from a 8800gts to a 9800GTX to a GTX285 to my current GTX480. In every one of those upgrades, there has never been a monumental change, only incremental...When you change one thing in FSX, hardware, software, tweak, etc. your affecting everything in your computer in a systemic way. Using the term 'affecting' does not connote 'bad', but change. NickN has devoted a substantial part of his fs forum career trying to hammer this home to anyone who will listen and he is correct. ******* takes the opposite tack in that he is going whole hog on 'tweaks' which are really experiments in disguise, many of which are wildly successful. I'm using two which you may want to consider instead of spending 400 bucks on a new card. Bufferpools=0 an affinitymask=14. There was another poster here that mirrored my experience exactly-we must have similar settings and preferences.I current have a new Jetline system that is factory overclocked (3.73) with the rest of the goodies that come with it, including my 'old' GTX285. I'm coming from a home built AMD 3.2 factory overclocked dual core which after extensive tuning ran very, very well. Once again, an incremental change.Should you elect to move forward with this, understand that you may be signing up for an incremental performance boost versus a game changer that some people are claiming, perhaps rightfully so. Everyone's computer is different. I've only been working with thing for less than a week so I have a ways to go before I can really make an authoritative summary one way or the other.Good luck!Mark

Thanks Mark!I understand what you mean by incremental change, I noticed a similar change when going from my old 8800 GT to my current GTX 285. Guess I'll do some more reading and will also have a look at Nick's Win7 guide just to make sure I didn't miss anything fundamental...haven't checkit it out yet.All the best and thanks again!

Hey guys,I thought you might be interested in a FSX benchmark I did for a GTX480 review i'm working on.For this test I used the FSXmark07 tool and recorded fps using FRAPS. These are the averages of 3 runs at each setting.Using the sp2 patch with directX 10.My focus is on overclocking so these results are a little bit different to what normal reviews cover.In this case: No Overclock = stock i7 980x 6 core processor @ 3.33ghz and stock clocked GTX480 at 700/1400/1850GPU OC = GTX480 @ 850/1700/2100CPU OC = i7 980x at 5ghz (cooled by -100c cascade)CPU & GPU OC = both combined.Uploaded with ImageShack.usIt's interesting that FSX is such a cpu limited game. The graphics overclock did nothing to improve performance, but the cpu overclock makes a massive difference.Whilst a 5ghz 980x is completely unrealistic, it should give an indicator of how the game will scale with better performing future generation processors.Fans of this game wanting the best performance will really want to upgrade their systems when new generation processors come out.Cheers

great job. thanks. would be cool to have that with different GPU'shopefully the next CPU generations scale well in core speed, and not just on # of cores

Hey guys,I thought you might be interested in a FSX benchmark I did for a GTX480 review i'm working on.For this test I used the FSXmark07 tool and recorded fps using FRAPS. These are the averages of 3 runs at each setting.Using the sp2 patch with directX 10.My focus is on overclocking so these results are a little bit different to what normal reviews cover.In this case: No Overclock = stock i7 980x 6 core processor @ 3.33ghz and stock clocked GTX480 at 700/1400/1850GPU OC = GTX480 @ 850/1700/2100CPU OC = i7 980x at 5ghz (cooled by -100c cascade)CPU & GPU OC = both combined.Uploaded with ImageShack.usIt's interesting that FSX is such a cpu limited game. The graphics overclock did nothing to improve performance, but the cpu overclock makes a massive difference.Whilst a 5ghz 980x is completely unrealistic, it should give an indicator of how the game will scale with better performing future generation processors.Fans of this game wanting the best performance will really want to upgrade their systems when new generation processors come out.Cheers