My Revelation! The Ti4200

[Hornit 3]

I reinstalled the sim today. Thought that might solve some issues I was having....nope not it. So I thought long and hard and did a few clean up things, drivers, defrag etc, (did that last night too :) ) I figured there is no reason to reformat if everything else is doing well. I put all my video tweaks back to defaults and started from scratch. What I have discovered is that the GF 4 Ti 4200 can't hack it with any kind of Anti Aliasing enabled for this sim. I think it might have something to do with this being a DX9 game and the 4200 aint a DX9 card, plain and simple. I can do 2XFSAA if I want, but why when it pretty much cuts performance in half. I'd like to run around 30 fps with some decent autogen and weather, not the whole ball of wax mind you, just enough to be happy with the obvious improvements. So I turned OFF ANTI ALIASING and Viola! A joyously smooth experience here now. The places I flew before where I knew I got stutter just glide right on by! I do get some minor frame rate hits at the heavy detail areas and If I crank the autogen and cloud layers of course, but at meduim to slightly higher settings this thing is cranking out really great frame rates with almost ZERO stutter now. So my advice to all you GF4 ti 4200 users is this, TURN IT OFF! I had seen this before, but I guess I am spoiled and did not want to accept it. Turns out this was it, I have a beautiful sim now and can run in the mid twenties and even a good bit higher in non detailed areas with no stutter at all. I use 1280x1024 and 32 bit and its great. I'd go higher but Im still on a 17 inch monitor. Just for grins I took the Extra up above some stratus and took a look at the moon through some high cirrus, with no ground in sight( I know its cheesy!) I get 120-130fps if I unleash the frame rate slider. Im lucky to get about 60 or so If AA is on, thats enough of a result for me! So bring on a few jaggies!, Ill take it to enjoy a smooth flying experience! I will just have to wait until I get a card that can handle doing it all in this sim, this one wont so I ain't gonna sweat it any more!Hornit

[Guest jason2112]

Same experience here, and AA made my FS2004 unstable, too! Only 4x AA works stable for me, 2x and Quicunx produced sim and OS crashes. At the moment I'm still fooling around with the sliders (read something about slideritis on another thread, so right ;)), and found that on my system (AthlonXP 2400+, Ti4200) a resolution of 1280x1024x32 with 4x AA and most sliders at 3/4 gives a nice image and bearable FPS. But 1600x1200x32 with most sliders maxed and no AA looks good as well, I have not yet decided which I like better.Just my 2c (EUR),VOlker :]

[Chris Willis 8]

Hi, 2x and Quicunx produced sim and OS crashes. `It`s the driver, this happend to me with one unnoficial driver. not the official one, never crash most of drivers only *some* drivers.The AA have been talked alot before. You can turn off the AA and increase the resolution of fs2004 to have better grahics.Never Enable AA inside fs2004, only from external, 4x with gforce will eat performance specialy with Clouds.ThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs

[Guest jason2112]

Until yesterday I ran a Detonator 44.67 that I think was WHQL certified. Then I installed a 45.24 from Guru3D. No big difference, 2x and Quicunx still causing problems, 4x works just fine.I guess I read that this is a known problem, and that a new driver might solve it. There's so much talk going on about sliders, FPS and drivers at the moment ... ;->Need to go flying!VOlker :]

[Hornit 3]

4X FSAA might work fine, but you have to back off on a lot of things, especially things like extended terrain and also def terrain radius in the config, its just not worth the huge frame rate hit with it on IMHO. My two cents. :)Hornit

[Guest LSangiovanni LIML]

Hey!!!!!1Why not to go back to oldest 30.82 WHQL?Got an extra 8-10 fps versus most of newer stuff (44.03, 45.20, 45.23); now most of the time 25-30fps :-coolASUS GeForce4 TI4200 here AA=0 Aniso=4x 1280x960x32BTW did you OClocked your video card? Mine runs pretty stable with core@275 memory@530.Luigi ;-)

[Hollywood 1]

today or tomorrow i should be getting my Ti4200 toocool to read that stuff, i probably can save me a lot of work to test it myselfcheers

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

I'd sugggest taking Luigi's advice!The 30.82 drivers work best on my Ti4200 as well!!25 fps steady most places on a P4 2.4 with WinXP.1280x960x32, 2xAA, 4xAF.Water effects=low, Ground shadows=off.

[Hornit 3]

I wil be trying the 30.82's, have them right here in my saved folder! :) I still think even 2xfsaa may be too much for them though. I'll give them a shot. Hornit

[Guest jason2112]

I just tried 30.82, and indeed 2x AA seemed to work just fine. I made a flight from KSEA via KBFI to KRNT in a heavy thunderstorm, and everything was quite fluid. I guess I'll keep them :)As we all know it's very hard to do benchmarks in FS, and what counts is the personal impression of fluidity and image quality. I'm quite content at the moment, so thank you very much for your help, everybody!VOlker :]

[Guest RichD]

Welcome to the club. I did the same thing you did several days ago and it has been smooth sailing since then. If you look at the benchmarks posted on the Web you will find that the 4200 is a great card that can run with the best of them until you turn on AA. It will outperform the FX5600 and the Ati 9600 until you set the AA and then it all goes south for this card. I don't know if you can run 1600x1200 but you should give it a try if your monitor will support it. I found that the FPS hit was very small the scenery looks outstanding at that Res. Smooth flying from now on.Richard

[Carob 2]

Where can I find these 30.82 drivers?

[Carob 2]

I found them.

[Guest Hugo]

Where? :-)Hugo

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Hornit...Oddly, AA isn't causing me that many issues, but I only use it in the lower resolutions. In Auckland with the fps slider unlimited, a light cumulus deck, and the airport in the background (no Autogen, AI or shadows though), I was getting 30-35 fps....pretty good for a poor man's cpu...I found the airport performance at Auckland better than I've seen in some of the stateside airports....equal to FS2002's Sky Harbor, which is about equal in detail to Auckland. Interesting, since it still has taxiway signs and the like...-Johnp.s. I've been running with the 30.82 drivers since day one (w the 4200, that is)