FS2004 and NVIDIA Card question for Microsoft

[Guest]

How many of you have an AMD XP 2100 or higher, an NVIDIA FX4200 with drivers greater than 44.03, and a system that gives VERY POOR FRAME RATES AND CRASHES LEADING TO REBOOTS?There was a time when MSFlightSimulator was the defacto program to demonstrate that a manufacturers PC was to the highest standard. PC shops used to have it running on each PC at exhibitions, in the shop, even giving it away with PCs sold.Oh dear what happened?It now appears that even if you have a decent PC, a reasonable and very widespread graphics card, with industry standard drivers, MSFS2004 either struggles or completely crashes the machine.I have tried every trick and fix including; operating system reinstalls both windows2000 and XP, every NVIDIA driver from 30.82 to 45.24, multiple reinstalls of FS2004, memory upgrades and downgrades, but the same problems exist.1. FS 2004 gives poor frame rates on all NVIDIA drivers past 30.82 (7

[Guest Fortress]

Unless your Q is FX4200-specific, I can't agree with:>1. FS 2004 gives poor frame rates on all NVIDIA drivers past 30.82 (7

[Guest RichD]

I have a Ti4200 and it works great. I have the frame rates locked at 26 and it stays there in fair weather. If I fly in heavy weather then the frame rate drops to 18 or 19. FS9 runs as smooth as a babies bottom. I do not use FSAA because that will cut my frame rates in half. I am using the 43.51 drivers and they are rock solid.Richard

[Muklum 28]

I also have had repeated crashes and reboots with all nvidia drivers (even WHQL certified) later than 44.03, but:1. I have an AMD 1900+ and a GeForce3 Ti500 card;2. none of the crashes occurred from FS9 - in fact my system rarely stayed alive long enough for me to start up any application, and often crashed even before WinXP had finished loading;3. with my 1900+ and the Ti500 running on Omega 44.03, I have good fluidity in FS9 with fps locked at 20; the figure rarely drops below 15 even in cloudy conditions or in the vicinity of airports(though I must admit I don't fly in the highly detailed areas of the US that seem to cause a severe hit on fps), and the display settings I use still give me better graphics than I had in FS2002.Dugald

[Guest]

I see you are the unfortunate owner of the combo of a Via chipset, Nvidia and soundblaster. For some reason this combo don't like FS9. See my post and maybe it will clear things up. http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...d=137970&page=2Tim

[Guest simnut]

I am running an Athlon 2800xp, 512m ddr3200 ram, Ti4200 128m video card and am also getting a solid 25, even 30 fps. It will dip down to 20 or so if I get severe cloud cover, but that's not a big deal. I have all my sliders maxed with the exception of mipmapping (4). I DO NOT use AA within FS, but I have it set within my video card settings (I can adjust how much AA I want to use). I have heard it more than once that this version runs better with video card set AA as opposed to application setting.There are too many people running FS2004 successfully with similar setups, and this tells me tooo much blame is put on FS and not enough on OS/driver/hardware settings, settings which can vary from system to system. FS is a graphically intense piece of software, and the equipment running it has to be finely tuned. Just my 2 cents worth...Harry

[Mike S KPDX 597]

you and I have identical systems except I use the on board sound chips and I have had no problems.

[Guest simnut]

I also use the onboard sound, Nforce, and have no problems.Harry

[Guest Hugo]

Ray, maybe you should give this tip a try. I had crashing problems too and this patch almost eliminated them all. Tks again Tim for this linkHugo

[Guest daveg4otu]

I have a Ti4200/128mb .AMD 2000XP.512mbDDRAM.ECS K7S5A V3.1 mobo with AC97 onboard sound and the AGP116 chipset drivers. and have no problems with FS9 in either WinME or WinXP(The PC is dual boot with a copy of FS9 on each OS).XP is using the 44.03 Nvidia drivers and ME uses 43.45 .The ME copy is locked at 25 fps and runs mostly aound 17-20 on the ground and 22-25 in the air,while the XP copy is locked at 30 fps and apart from take off/approaches(15-20fps) spends most of the time at 30fps.Both copies have been used for online(Vatsim) flying in varying weather conditions,day,night etc.The visual settings are at default in ME(after experimenting this is the smoothest) but pretty much maxed in XP(except the 3D clouds).In 23 days of use I have had one system crash (in XP)but otherweise all fine.The only other thing I did notice was when trying out some 2k2 aircraft in FS9 that with a few(about 1 in 3) of them the fps suffered about a 30% drop when in the cockpit view.So ,I've got to say that I'm well satisfied both with FS9 and the Ti4200.I dont honestly believe that the Video cards are at fault in most casesDave

[Guest wathomas777]

Maybe I am just Lucky.Bought a Compaq 2400+ Athlon with 128Meg Ram (upgraded to 640 Meg), and added a cheap FX5200 to replace my PCI MX420.I can't complain a bit.I have the newest drivers (45.23's I believe), and I do have to work around the AA bug that plagues the XP's. I usually fly in full screen and make adjustments in windowed mode.I use Quincrux AA within the driver, and 2X Anis with 100% 3d Clouds and Maximum cloud density.I have 60 mile vis and cloud vis at 50miles. I am using FSW cloud fix and lowered Autogen textures to help.I have Dense Autogen with Very Dense complexity 75% Mesh complexity and 100% Traffic with Ultimate Traffic installed.I rarely drop below 15FPS even in heavy clouds, and If I REALLY need some frames back I drop AA alltogether and get 5 to 8 frames back.I rarely have to take those measures, since the Sim still retains good smoothness all the way down to 10FPS.For 80 bucks the 5200FX is one heck of a card, and I know it's the low end of the FX line, but it has awesome video quality and I am quite happy with it. I am suprised at the increase.