Hi folks,There is loads of information on this forum and others about these new cards with FSX but I am an FS9 / 2D panel luddite so I thought I'd post my questions separately... I'd also appreciate hearing other peoples experiences with these cards and FS9.I have a system with a C2D E8600 @ 4.33GHz and 4GB fast DDR3 with a GTX280 running (a fully tricked out) FS9 on XP64 in a dual-screen (2 x 28" 1920x1200) setup through a digital DualHead2Go. Most of the time my performance is good but I do sometimes have issues with dropping FPS and decreased smoothness and I'm pretty sure this is due to the large screen resolution I'm using (3840x1200 overall), and the fact that at zoom 50%, the amount of scenery etc to be rendered is very large! At some point in the future (Q4 2010?) I'll probably upgrade the PC to an overclocked i7 or i9 with Win7-64, but for now, I'm thinking of getting a GTX470 or GTX480. My expectations in doing this would be to get a modest increase in average FPS (I'm sure I'll always be able to find places with enough AI / high-res clouds etc to get FPS<20) and the ability to run at slightly higher AA settings (I am plagued by moire / flickering with this resolution through the DH2G)...So, what I'd like to know is:> Does FS9 run well with these cards under XP64 yet? - I know there were issues with drivers at first...> Can I use the card's native dual-screen support to achieve a fullscreen view over my two screens (thus cutting out the DH2G) through DVI / VGA connections? This was advertised early on but then I hear rumours that it wasn't included in the first driver releases.> If no to the above, is the DH2G useable with the card + XP64? - Again, I see there have been issues early on...Cheers for any info,Geoff

The only question I can answer first hand is the 480 does not work with XP 64 and FSX, not sure about fs9, There are a few xp 64 users that told me this before I got my 480, and I can confirm that they were spot on. So far my experience with the 480 has not been a good one, tried it on XP 64, W7 and now on Vista. But others have had a great experience with the 480 & 470, I think its just hit and miss right now with this card.

The only question I can answer first hand is the 480 does not work with XP 64 and FSX, not sure about fs9, There are a few xp 64 users that told me this before I got my 480, and I can confirm that they were spot on. So far my experience with the 480 has not been a good one, tried it on XP 64, W7 and now on Vista. But others have had a great experience with the 480 & 470, I think its just hit and miss right now with this card.

Thanks for the reply. I think I'm going to order a GTX470 today and might try and get a waterblock as well so that I can put it in my cooling loop... Not sure of brand yet, I like EVGA but think that as they offer a SC version, these good overclockers were probably skimmed from the stock already and the non SC might have very little OC potential. Perhaps I'll save a bit of cash just now and just get an 'own brand' card from Novatech or Scan - at least I know they have excellent customer service in case it doesn't play nice! Will report back here with the results...Geoff

I'm using an eVGA 480 Superclocked now, and it just tears up FS9. 16xQ AA looks nice and smooth...not a hint of shimmer, and it'll do that holding frames in the high 40s with the i7 at 4.4GHz. It'll do 16xQ in the mid 50s with the i7 clocked at 4.7 Ghz (on water with two cores shut down).Two thumbs up...best video card I've had to date, and I've gone through a bunch of 'em.CheersBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

Initial report is as follows: Novatech GTX470 card arrived today - turned out to be re-boxed Inno3D offering and is (I'm pretty sure a reference design one so will be able to waterblock it later)...Uninstalled the drivers from my old GTX280 and did a thorough clean-out with driver sweeper. Then installed the new card and started up. All looked fine on my extended desktop with the DH2G once the drivers were installed (197.75 from Nvidia site - ignored the bundeled disks). Set up nHancer settings as per Nick's guide and fired up FS9 (having first deleted the [display device] setting in the .cfg of course).It works. I have the display set to 3840x1200 and the sim has not crashed and the BSOD I have been reading about has not happened. I am seeing an FPS increase of about 20-25% in the areas where I knew I was GPU-limited before. This is obviously very good, however, there does seem to be a problem somewhere: when I have changed views a couple of times, I am getting flashing of the FPS etc overlay and also the FPS is dropping to ~10FPS. This seems to be 'solved' be changing to the desktop and then back to FS, but then it will do it again after a few minutes so hardly ideal... Anyone seen similar / know a fix? Things on my list to try:-> Disable enbseries bloom effect-> Reinstall / rebuild nHancer profile (just did it by import this time)-> Try running FS9 in windowed mode (yuk!)-> See if there are any updates for the DH2G software-> Wait for nVidia to fix their buggy drivers (remember similar fun when I had a very early AGP 7950GT card)The watercooling parts should arrive tomorrow so then I'll have a bit of fun seeing if I can overclock the card a bit... I tried a 10% OC on air (tested with furmark) and there was an small FPS improvement in FS9, but the card fan was very loud and then my FPS drop / flashing problem kicked in anyway... Geoff

After an evening of playing around and trying different settings, the GTX470 is back in it's box and I'm running the GTX280 again...I can answer my own initial questions now:> Does FS9 run well with these cards under XP64 yet? - I know there were issues with drivers at first...No it does not! Initially it runs ok and things look good, but then there is lots of distortion / flickering and the frames go through the floor! At least it doesn't BSOD.> Can I use the card's native dual-screen support to achieve a fullscreen view over my two screens (thus cutting out the DH2G) through DVI / VGA connections? This was advertised early on but then I hear rumours that it wasn't included in the first driver releases.Yes I can! The 470 will happily output to 2 x 1920 x 1200 in 'span' mode using nView in XP64. Actually, with the 197.45 driver, I can do this with my GTX280, which means that I have removed my DUalHead2Go from the equation and actually now have superior image quality and slightly better FPS than I had before! (Perhaps this has been true for a while, but when I last checked about a year ago, the overall 3840x1200 was not possible without the Matrox)> If no to the above, is the DH2G useable with the card + XP64? - Again, I see there have been issues early on...The card can be used with a DualHead2Go and there are no (extra) issues in doing so - ie. when the drivers are fixed, the DH2G will be useable.So... slightly frustrating but at least I come out of the experience with better FPS and IQ, even though that's nothing to do with my new hardware! The new card will just have to sit on the shelf and wait until the XP64 drivers get fixed (or until I upgrade my OS - not anytime soon!)Geoff

XP64 is a niche O.S. You can't reasonably expect hardware vendors to support it.

XP64 is a niche O.S. You can't reasonably expect hardware vendors to support it.

True, to a certain extent, but then they have effectively indicated support for it by releasing drivers. they should either support an OS or not at all... There are plenty of reports that this driver is nor good on XP64 in a whole range of applications, so there are plenty of customers who are waiting for a fix. I'm fairly sure there will be working drivers for XP64 eventually, but I accept that (as a niche OS user) this will not be their priority.Geoff

I'm using an eVGA 480 Superclocked now, and it just tears up FS9. 16xQ AA looks nice and smooth...not a hint of shimmer, and it'll do that holding frames in the high 40s with the i7 at 4.4GHz. It'll do 16xQ in the mid 50s with the i7 clocked at 4.7 Ghz (on water with two cores shut down).Two thumbs up...best video card I've had to date, and I've gone through a bunch of 'em.CheersBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

Bob,How is this card in windowed mode? I have the 285 gtx 2gb and it is just terrible in windowed mode.(looks gagged no matter the settings or nhancer setting)

True, to a certain extent, but then they have effectively indicated support for it by releasing drivers. they should either support an OS or not at all... There are plenty of reports that this driver is nor good on XP64 in a whole range of applications, so there are plenty of customers who are waiting for a fix. I'm fairly sure there will be working drivers for XP64 eventually, but I accept that (as a niche OS user) this will not be their priority.Geoff

It's not "true to a certain extent", it is entirely accurate. XP64 has < 1% market share. No hardware vendor in their right mind would waste valuable development resources to continue support for it. Even XP 32 is on the way out and will lose support eventually.

It's not "true to a certain extent", it is entirely accurate. XP64 has < 1% market share. No hardware vendor in their right mind would waste valuable development resources to continue support for it. Even XP 32 is on the way out and will lose support eventually.

So in that case, why bother to release a driver at all? Clearly they feel it's worthwhile and have some (not much) development going on for the OS - surely they will only annoy customers by releasing something they know doesn't work..? Plenty of competetive (not to mention cheaper) options from the 'other' manufacturer!I'm all for development and improvement and no doubt will be switching to Windows 7 x64 sometime... but meanwhile I will see how long I can keep my current system going, after all, I have spent the time to set it up how I like it (and after seeing the 'joys' of Vista, I will be honest and say that I was somewhat hesitant in case this new windows version was also bug-ridden...)

Bob,How is this card in windowed mode? I have the 285 gtx 2gb and it is just terrible in windowed mode.(looks gagged no matter the settings or nhancer setting)

Good, except that there's no way I know of to get vSync to work in FS9 windowed mode. At 45 fps, it's not a huge issue.CheersBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

So in that case, why bother to release a driver at all? Clearly they feel it's worthwhile and have some (not much) development going on for the OS - surely they will only annoy customers by releasing something they know doesn't work..? Plenty of competetive (not to mention cheaper) options from the 'other' manufacturer!I'm all for development and improvement and no doubt will be switching to Windows 7 x64 sometime... but meanwhile I will see how long I can keep my current system going, after all, I have spent the time to set it up how I like it (and after seeing the 'joys' of Vista, I will be honest and say that I was somewhat hesitant in case this new windows version was also bug-ridden...)

I doubt much work was done on the XP64-specific code in the drivers...the new ones (and the ones to come) probably just include whatever legacy code that has been embedded in there for some time, without a lot of effort to adapt the old code to the newest hardware.I think the only compelling reason we had to stick with XP64 was the disappearing texture bug, which seems to have been eradicated with the HIGHMEMFIX setting and some new understanding of how FS uses frame vertex buffers. It was always the red-haired b*stard stepchild of operating systems, not much unlike the FrankenWindows ME mess some of the other old-timers here may remember.I'm still on Vista64 here, and with HIGHMEMFIX there's no benefit I can see to having an already orphaned, never fully-supported OS to add to the other ever present challenges to keeping FS running in top form.CheersBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

A related question now then: If I moved to Windows7, I know that I would not be able to have my dual-screen setup working in fullscreen with nView since the 'span' view is not supported. So, I could go back to the DulaHead2Go option but what are the other options? Does anyone know if fullscreen spanning of a 3d game (ie FS9) will work in Windows 7 x64 with UltraMon or DisplayFusion?Geoff

I'm using an eVGA 480 Superclocked now, and it just tears up FS9. 16xQ AA looks nice and smooth...not a hint of shimmer, and it'll do that holding frames in the high 40s with the i7 at 4.4GHz. It'll do 16xQ in the mid 50s with the i7 clocked at 4.7 Ghz (on water with two cores shut down).Two thumbs up...best video card I've had to date, and I've gone through a bunch of 'em.CheersBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

Have you noticed any difference in FSX's performance and quality having shut down two cores?