I am presently in a flight at 6,000 ft over the Caribbean, from Barbados to Martinique. I'm about 20 minutes away from landing under A.T.C.I would like to nominate this driver suite as a TURNING POINT and MILESTONE in driver architecture. What is this driver, even as beta?......well it's the BP=0 tweak in the form of a driver suite!!!!I have totally removed BP=x in my config as you don't need it. I have absolute smoothness, no jitters, stutters...and this is with a massive compound cloud scenario (just fire up ASX and fly between my islands at 13:37 EST to see what I am talking about!) to boot.You know...you get each and every driver upgrade, and perhaps there is a tweak here...a tweak there, but nothing to write home about. Not so, this driver. The ocean below me is REAL! I mean, real.....the sparkle upon the water, the ocean swells in animation, the haze...HOLY S! It used to be like a white paste smeared upon the scene. I think people know what I am trying to describe. But now....with the clarity and scenery rendition out to the horizon (I am running back at stock 4.5 on my LOD), the haze looks like whatever you'd see in the real world of aviation. WOW!I pity anybody that does not have an nVidia product that can be run by this beta driver. I don't know what AMD is putting out, but if you own an nVidia card and do not run this driver...you are loosing out in the tenth degree.1. Smoothness of animation2. Clear, precise and NO BLURRY scenery of any form of land class3. Rock solid performance to date.Fantastic, nVidia....fantastic. Address the issues with your GUI, and you will run away with the lead with this and up and coming driver suites. What the heck did you guys and gals DO?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Lovin' it....and back to land in Martinique.

Are you running anything like REX/GEX/UTX? Also do you have any PMDG or CS aircraft? If you do, can you takeoff from KLAX and make a turn back over Los Angeles around 3-4000 feet and let me know how the smoothness and texture loading is for you? This area, although not to bad on fps, seems to be a very good test for smoothness and texture loading. New York on the other hand is a good area to test fps.

Are you running anything like REX/GEX/UTX? Also do you have any PMDG or CS aircraft? If you do, can you takeoff from KLAX and make a turn back over Los Angeles around 3-4000 feet and let me know how the smoothness and texture loading is for you? This area, although not to bad on fps, seems to be a very good test for smoothness and texture loading. New York on the other hand is a good area to test fps.

Hi Shane, I am running with REX/GEX/UTX, and have all of them totally up to date. I do not own any PMDG, but run with Carenado G.A.'s. All my Heavy Iron is stock or free ware. I will take up whatever I have in Heavy cat and do KLAX as soon as I land in Martinique. I using an Carenado amphib at the moment.Believe me though, it's not only that I am keeping my 30's locked in FPS, but the big news with this release is BP=0 smoothness or better, (with no artifact or crap-out issues whatsoever) and texture rendering. Totally life-like now. Like I typed, this is a MILESTONE driver suite release!Post Edit: Shane, I just took off from the active at KLAX, and using an FSX 737, with a northeast sweep over the city, I had frame rates of between 18-30, and there was just a very, very small hint of micro stutter. Nothing to even put you out on. The main thing I was enjoying, was the crisp, clearly defined graphics, with clarity miles out to the San Andrea's! The micro stutter is only barely masking pure smoothness, in this scenario. Hope this helps.Mitch

This driver is a double step forward when Nicks "19" edit to his tweak is applied. However, I think I just found a glitch. In multiplayer the higher settings don't seem to apply at all but is really rough and jaggy when in full screen. Has anyone else tried it?Stephen

Stephen,How have you been?Try again with your new gtx 480. See if that fixes the issue.

Stephen,How have you been?Try again with your new gtx 480. See if that fixes the issue.

Hi There,I am well and enjoying life. It may be another week or so before the new GTX 480 arrives back here, but to be sure that will be one of the first things I will do. How do you like your setup now?Stephen

Hi Shane, I am running with REX/GEX/UTX, and have all of them totally up to date. I do not own any PMDG, but run with Carenado G.A.'s. All my Heavy Iron is stock or free ware. I will take up whatever I have in Heavy cat and do KLAX as soon as I land in Martinique. I using an Carenado amphib at the moment.Believe me though, it's not only that I am keeping my 30's locked in FPS, but the big news with this release is BP=0 smoothness or better, (with no artifact or crap-out issues whatsoever) and texture rendering. Totally life-like now. Like I typed, this is a MILESTONE driver suite release!Post Edit: Shane, I just took off from the active at KLAX, and using an FSX 737, with a northeast sweep over the city, I had frame rates of between 18-30, and there was just a very, very small hint of micro stutter. Nothing to even put you out on. The main thing I was enjoying, was the crisp, clearly defined graphics, with clarity miles out to the San Andrea's! The micro stutter is only barely masking pure smoothness, in this scenario. Hope this helps.Mitch

Thanks for following up, that describes my experience as well. With a 120 texture bandwidth mult and a 100MB bufferpool, it seems that I can eek out just a little bit more smoothness. A takeoff from KLAX from 25R in the PMDG MD-11 (right side wing view of the airport) with a following turn back to the East and over LA is my test scenario. I am also using UT2 @ 75% with GEX/UTX/REX while testing.

Hi There,I am well and enjoying life. It may be another week or so before the new GTX 480 arrives back here, but to be sure that will be one of the first things I will do. How do you like your setup now?Stephen

I love it! I'm limited only by what my CPU can handle. It could be years before we see a CPU that can go fast enough to run FSX at 40+ fps at every scenery, with every plane, and at Extreme settings.Seattle with very dense AG: 20s. Not bad. I know that new drivers will help increase fps in these densely populated areas.Let's just wait and see.

Yes, but this thread was moved from the main FSX forum.

Ah! I slapped me self three times. lol

Thanks for following up, that describes my experience as well. With a 120 texture bandwidth mult and a 100MB bufferpool, it seems that I can eek out just a little bit more smoothness. A takeoff from KLAX from 25R in the PMDG MD-11 (right side wing view of the airport) with a following turn back to the East and over LA is my test scenario. I am also using UT2 @ 75% with GEX/UTX/REX while testing.

-------------------------------------------I need to add that I also use all the time, My Traffic X at 50 percent of both Commercial and G.A., and Audio Environment.I'm running presently TBM at stock, LOD at stock, and no BP, which actually means a BP of 1000000 (stock).

Will this new driver be beneficial to me and my dated but dependable 8800GT card? Or is this really only for the newer Nvidia cards?

Will this new driver be beneficial to me and my dated but dependable 8800GT card? Or is this really only for the newer Nvidia cards?

Works nicely on my 9600GT... which is basically a repackaged 8800GT..

I'd be very happy to join this party where new drivers made a huge difference in smoothness & Co. But I can't :( Before I was using 182.50 (on Win7 64bit, yes) and didn't have a single stutter most of the time, smooth, I forgot about tweaking and stutters.. only one problem.. areas with huge amounts of trees made my FPS drop from 30 (locked@30) to 20 instantly. But was still very flyable, pause here and there but no micro-stutters. Of course, because so many here saw this epic difference in smoothness and crispness I had to try these new drivers.. wouldn't you?The good news is that I don't get any FPS drop in tree areas any more... 30@30, way to go! But now, c'mon dude, I'm getting miro-stutters on every turn, pan,... everywhere (even in the desert). I tired all the tweaks - only TMB makes a slight difference, other tweaks no.I reverted back to 182.50.. smoothness all the way (but 20FSP in large tree areas). I read a few more posts.. I went back to 257.15 (micro-stuters but no FPS loss at all).. I'm confused :( I have my PC & FSX & Nvidia profile set up per NickN guide.

Works nicely on my 9600GT... which is basically a repackaged 8800GT..

Thank you, Bert. I will definitely give them a shot, along with Nick's tweaks.

Are you running anything like REX/GEX/UTX? Also do you have any PMDG or CS aircraft? If you do, can you takeoff from KLAX and make a turn back over Los Angeles around 3-4000 feet and let me know how the smoothness and texture loading is for you? This area, although not to bad on fps, seems to be a very good test for smoothness and texture loading. New York on the other hand is a good area to test fps.

Just finished some test flights with the new beta 257.15 drivers + NickN Nahancer cheater fix. I am finding a significant jump in performance, smoothness, stability and enjoyment with my lowly 275 card! Using REX2, UT2 (75%), MegaScenaryEarth central CA. Landing at KSFO (with ATC vectors) with the PMDG 747-400-8's crisp crisp VC with the photo scenery and the REX2 sky+water is truely a major major deal! At this point, I have removed the HiMem/BP related tweaks and don't seem to need them (less is more?). (Note: I suspect UT2, unthrottled, was responsible for some of my system crashes. I needed to turn the spawned traffic level way way down which seemed to help).Here is a question perhaps you folks can help answer. Should I go ahead and press the "check-out" button on the new EVGA GTX480oc card. I mean I'm happy now right? Sort of. I would like to see the photo scenery distant textures a bit clearer and my FPS could be a bit higher in some dense situations. Perhaps the 480 would allow more traffic load? Can any one that has moved from a 275/285 to the 480 comment?

Here is a question perhaps you folks can help answer. Should I go ahead and press the "check-out" button on the new EVGA GTX480oc card. I mean I'm happy now right? Sort of. I would like to see the photo scenery distant textures a bit clearer and my FPS could be a bit higher in some dense situations. Perhaps the 480 would allow more traffic load? Can any one that has moved from a 275/285 to the 480 comment?

Push it Scott, push, push, push it! I went from a GTX 275 to a GTX 470 and now using EVGA step-up for a GTX 480! PUSH IT!Stephen

Thank you, Bert. I will definitely give them a shot, along with Nick's tweaks.

For the record, I used the driver rollback feature to revert to 182.50.The visuals are the same (I compared screenshots) and I do believe thaton my card, at least, performance is still better...