I have just started upgrading my system. I installed a new ASUS motherboard, an I7-930 2.8GHZ CPU, 6GB of Mushkin Red line memory, I overclocked the system to run at a clock speed of 4.01 ghz. and it ran at below 72 degrees C. I run FS9 with every scenery imaginable, complete WOAI AI, plus many of my own creation. I have all sliders to the left, and it ran at around 45-50 FPS. Issues still left:Sometimes when turning my FPS stutters down to around 10-14 for a couple of seconds and then back to 50. I believe its the speed of the Hard disk, I will install a Velociraptor drive to cut the reading speed.I currently have a GE Force 8800 GTS and if I move the sliders to the left on the tab settings/displays/hardware the image looks worstI am referring to the Global Max Texture and Mip Mapping Quality they are at Medium and 4 respectively, if I increase it it looks like it sharpen the terrain but also got a lot of texture flickering.My question to you guys is: Is it worth it to pay for the difference ($120) between the Nvidia 260 and the 470?ThanksJuan

The speed of your hard drive does not affect your frame rate unless you don't have enough RAM. If you buy a hard drive before getting a faster graphics card you are wasting your money. Either card you listed will be significantly faster than the card you have now. If I were in your shoes I'd buy the 470.

Try FPSLimiter, or ingame FPS limiter

Thanks for the advice I will go with the 470.JuanThanks Dario, I do use the FS frame limiter and I keep it at 51 FPS. It does run at 49 to 50 almost everywhere. With aerosoft mega scenery Paris and Frankfut and with full load of WOAI planes drops to about 28-32 fps. The stuttering appears usually when turning on outside view, and it drops to 10-11 for a couple of seconds and then back up to the upper range.Juan

Thanks for the advice I will go with the 470.JuanThanks Dario, I do use the FS frame limiter and I keep it at 51 FPS. It does run at 49 to 50 almost everywhere. With aerosoft mega scenery Paris and Frankfut and with full load of WOAI planes drops to about 28-32 fps. The stuttering appears usually when turning on outside view, and it drops to 10-11 for a couple of seconds and then back up to the upper range.Juan

51 is a very high FPS lock. You are asking your system to do a huge amount of work. I would lock it at 30 and see if that helps you.

470 is a much better card than the 260 is. I'm thinking about making that very upgrade myself. (possibly tonight, we'll see)

it's obviously a much better card, but do you really think FSX will take advantage of it Ryan? please report back what you see if you do the upgrade

470 without a doubt. Set up with the bufferpool tweaks the card is amazing. Flying around KSEA, all sliders to the right (except 75% MTX AI and Water Low 2X) with GEX REX and FPS Limiter I can hit 30-40 in the default 737 and 20-30 in CS 727. It's was pretty cloudy in Seattle too! It's not perfect, sometime there are small stutters (as there were with the 275), and NickN full set of nHancer type tweaks are too much for it at 2560x1600.For me it's been an incredible leap forward, I never thought I'd be able to over fly the forests to the west and the city center with little FPS loss.My best purchase since the i7 920.Simon

470 without a doubt. Set up with the bufferpool tweaks the card is amazing. Flying around KSEA, all sliders to the right (except 75% MTX AI and Water Low 2X) with GEX REX and FPS Limiter I can hit 30-40 in the default 737 and 20-30 in CS 727. It's was pretty cloudy in Seattle too! It's not perfect, sometime there are small stutters (as there were with the 275), and NickN full set of nHancer type tweaks are too much for it at 2560x1600.For me it's been an incredible leap forward, I never thought I'd be able to over fly the forests to the west and the city center with little FPS loss.My best purchase since the i7 920.Simon

Simon, I'm really glad to hear that you like it and it is performing as you had hoped. Really, I think the 470 GTX is as good as the 480 GTX in FSX for nearly all measurable purposes. Perhaps it will take a 6 core@6ghz to make the 480 GTX pull it's own weight equal to how well the 470 GTX does in FSX, watt for watt, degree for degree and dollar for dollar. I like the 480 GTX, but the 470 GTX is my favorite. Wish I had kept it and bought a solid state drive instead of the extra $$$ it took for me to buy the 480 through the EVGA Step-up Program, by the time I paid for shipping the 470 to me in the first place, then sending it back to EVGA in California, and then paying for the shipping of the 480 back to me in Canada, plus taxes and more taxes etc. etc. Then again, I would never have known that, and would never have been satisfied otherwise, so.....enjoy! You bought the right video card, and so did I, twice...Stephen

it's obviously a much better card, but do you really think FSX will take advantage of it Ryan? please report back what you see if you do the upgrade

Dazz, I guess you still don't believe what many are posting. FSX DOES take advantage of the 400 series cards. Frame rates are better, smoothness is better, more AA, and the drivers are being optimized for the 400 series cards. You're a hard sell my friend :(

My local PC hardware store would not agree I'm a hard sell haha. I have literaly wasted hundreds of euros in stupid component "upgrades": got me this x6 to replace my 3 month old x4 just because it didn't overclock too well, added 4Gb of RAM, replaced my 5770 for the 260 just when it was working fine with the new drivers and *******' tweaks...What I'm trying to say is that if any of you think I'm implying your fermi purchase was a waste of money, I'm not because 1.- I'm in no position to talk about wasting money :( and 2.- I can't say the 400 series are not the way to go because I simply don't know.The reason why I'm sceptical is that I read other posts, like that one from *******, where he said that there was not a single frame gain with the 480, and if the system is stable with a 200 series, then the upgrade is pointless. But that was before the new drivers and as you mentioned it's more about smoothness than raw FPS.Beleive me, I wouldn't mind getting me a 470 right away, but I thought I had to stop it somewhere and make sure I actually do some proper research before I go buying random stuff that did not help in the end.I apologise if any of my posts came out like my intent was to make you guys look as you where not telling the truth, I swear that's not the case, I'm just trying to figure out what to do and really appreciate your input.As a matter of fact, I'm seriously considering the upgrade now

My local PC hardware store would not agree I'm a hard sell haha. I have literaly wasted hundreds of euros in stupid component "upgrades": got me this x6 to replace my 3 month old x4 just because it didn't overclock too well, added 4Gb of RAM, replaced my 5770 for the 260 just when it was working fine with the new drivers and *******' tweaks...What I'm trying to say is that if any of you think I'm implying your fermi purchase was a waste of money, I'm not because 1.- I'm in no position to talk about wasting money :( and 2.- I can't say the 400 series are not the way to go because I simply don't know.The reason why I'm sceptical is that I read other posts, like that one from *******, where he said that there was not a single frame gain with the 480, and if the system is stable with a 200 series, then the upgrade is pointless. But that was before the new drivers and as you mentioned it's more about smoothness than raw FPS.Beleive me, I wouldn't mind getting me a 470 right away, but I thought I had to stop it somewhere and make sure I actually do some proper research before I go buying random stuff that did not help in the end.I apologise if any of my posts came out like my intent was to make you guys look as you where not telling the truth, I swear that's not the case, I'm just trying to figure out what to do and really appreciate your input.As a matter of fact, I'm seriously considering the upgrade now

No worries my friend and you tell the truth. I have been there and done that (the chronic slippery slope of upgrades). I did the 260, then the 275 and finally the 480. IF (that

The post I was talking about is #11 here http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtop...=fermi&st=0Nevertheless ******* seems delighted with the card overall.I only play FSX and of course I don't expect it to take full advantage of such great cards, but I don't really care. A slight improvement would be enough to prove the upgrade worthwhile for me. Just an extra 2-3 FPS or the equivalent in smoothness and I'm in. It's a significant boost anyway when all I see is mid 10s/low 20s depending on the airport, let alone the improved IQ with it's better AA capabilities and stuff.I wonder if the next generations of CPU (hope the bulldozer comes out for AM3) will be able to squeeze our cards and let them show their full power

The post I was talking about is #11 here http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtop...=fermi&st=0Nevertheless ******* seems delighted with the card overall.I only play FSX and of course I don't expect it to take full advantage of such great cards, but I don't really care. A slight improvement would be enough to prove the upgrade worthwhile for me. Just an extra 2-3 FPS or the equivalent in smoothness and I'm in. It's a significant boost anyway when all I see is mid 10s/low 20s depending on the airport, let alone the improved IQ with it's better AA capabilities and stuff.I wonder if the next generations of CPU (hope the bulldozer comes out for AM3) will be able to squeeze our cards and let them show their full power

I don't know anything about the AMD world since leaving it when the Intel Core2 came out. Have you come across anyone with a similar cpu config that has the 400 series card? The increase in performance assumes the cpu can utilize it and the i7 can as many of us have found out. Can you purchase one and return it if it does not measure up to your expectations. (Some outlets have a 14 day straight return policy). I was able to return the 260 card. (have to eat the 275 unless I can unload it).Pure speculation on my part but I suspect the cpu clock speed required to enable FSX to push the 480 is a "long" ways away. It seems that concurrent processing (multiple cores) is the way of scaling output instead of brute speed which as we know has a practical voltage/temperature ceiling.[start Dream]... MS was to do a FSX-XI. 1 core for weather, 1 core for traffic, 1 core for aircraft, 1 core for scenery, 1 core for auto gen, 1 core to supervise the multiple GPU cores etc etc etc.[/End Dream]

Yep, you are probably right. Aparently 5GHz is more or less where the ceiling will be, at least that's what I've read.We can only hope the newest architectures make up for the lack of extra speed a bit, unless your FSX-XI dream comes true which would be definitely cool :)Unfortunately I don't know anyone with an AMD CPU + fermi card combo, so I'll ask if I can order one, test it and RMA it if it doesn't work better in my particular system as you suggested

I don't know anything about the AMD world since leaving it when the Intel Core2 came out. Have you come across anyone with a similar cpu config that has the 400 series card? The increase in performance assumes the cpu can utilize it and the i7 can as many of us have found out. Can you purchase one and return it if it does not measure up to your expectations. (Some outlets have a 14 day straight return policy). I was able to return the 260 card. (have to eat the 275 unless I can unload it).Pure speculation on my part but I suspect the cpu clock speed required to enable FSX to push the 480 is a "long" ways away. It seems that concurrent processing (multiple cores) is the way of scaling output instead of brute speed which as we know has a practical voltage/temperature ceiling.[start Dream]... MS was to do a FSX-XI. 1 core for weather, 1 core for traffic, 1 core for aircraft, 1 core for scenery, 1 core for auto gen, 1 core to supervise the multiple GPU cores etc etc etc.[/End Dream]