Question for video card gurus

[FlyVFR 58]

I was just wondering how my EVGA 9800GX2 video card holds up to the newer GTX series cards. It was a very high end card when I bought it in April 2008 (over $600). Just curious to see what kind of improvements I would get since it is over 2 years old. The rest of my rig is a E6850 Core 2 Duo with OCZ 4gb ram, ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP mobo, WD Caviar Black HDD. I know I need to do a complete rig upgrade since its been 2 years but I was just curious as to how my video card is holding up.Thanks

[thefsxflyer 1]

For FSX, just fine! FSX is a CPU intensive game so getting a better GPU probably won't affect your game too much.

[Tabs 2,790]

It will be absolutely crushed in benchmarks and GPU limited games by something like the GTX460 honestly. This is why it's really not the best idea to buy the top of the line card - you pay $500-700 for it and it gets completely killed by the $200 mainstream part 2 years later.For FSX, it's debatable - you'll see an improvement (especially at higher resolutions and if you're using the UsePools=0 or RejectThreshold tweaks) but it likely won't be as much as you might hope for. If you play other games besides FSX, absolutely go for it and upgrade, it'll be a huge improvement.

[Barthandelus 1]

I have the 460 as my previous card's (260) fan died and i was due an upgrade anyway.On the 260, i got excellent performance. With the 460, although still very very good, not much improvement in FSX. As Ryan says, you certainly dont need a huge GPU for FSX. I paid about £170 for the 460.Im interested what the tweaks are that you mentioned, Ryan? I have two 1920x1080 screens.At the end of the day, for best performace with FSX, you are looking at CPU and/or memory upgrade. Looking at your specs, 4GB sounds about right. I use W7 x64, and my memory usage (i have 8GB) sits around 4GB, sometimes over depending on local scenery, traffic (the biggest FPS killer in FSX), addons, etc. So i would leave that. How fast is your CPU? Is it clocked? Personally, i would looks at that before anything else. But instead of a new graphics card, consider the new I7 CPU's. You might find you will need a new mobo and memory, tho.

[Turbine777 13]

I agree with all the above, but as Ryan said it will burry it in newer titles since the card is DX11 hard coded. There are many things the newer cards have that are better than the 200 series but not model for model. I'm not surprised you don't see much improvement with the 460 over the 260 since the 460 really isn't a huge improvement.My GTX295 blows away the 480 in most benchmarks, but then again the 480 does beat it in others. Comparing the two isn't really the same though since it's two totally different things. 295= 2 GPUs, 480=1. I'm holding out for the 595 personally but I'm silly like that, I agree with Ryan on it not being the the best idea to buy the top of the line card, well at least for advice for others. I play all the latest titles so I try to justify my foolish spending differently :(