Anybody with an ATI 9800?

[Guest]

If you have an ATI 9800 have you had any problems with it and the FS2004 or FS2002? What is the performance of the card with the Flight Simulator? How good is it? How has been your experience with the card and FS2004?ThanksMarioCaracas, Venezuela

[Guest stevehow]

hi marioive got the Gigabyte 9800 pro MayaII .fantastic card ...there is a problem with flashing displays at the moment,ATi are working on that in there next driver release.. highly recommend this card.average FPS are about 18-20.but my settings are very high. best wishes steveUKathlon 3000xpgigabyte 9800 pro MayaIIgigabyte kt400 mobo1gb 333 memSB audigy2Cambridge soundworks 5.1 Fs2004mesh 100%ATC 75% ...Mytraffic1600x1200x32 resAA off..dont need it in this resolutionall weather and cloud settings Ultra high(use real weather mostly)

[Guest Glenn]

Great card! I do see some of the issues others have with FS2004, but I'm very happy with the performance of it.Glenn

[Guest JohnC]

I had a little issue with the card I bought, and the story is in the PC/MAC Hardware Forum.But I really like the card, and I see in one of these Forums where you can overclock a 9800 and basically turn it into a 9800 PRO. Just be careful here.Good luck.

[Guest JoeESSA]

Hi,I just upgraded from a GF3 Ti500 to the ATI R9800 a couple of days ago. I do get the flashing menues, but otherwise a quantum leap in terms of performance. Removed my sound issues and stutters. Great visuals and decent frames with fairly high display settings.BTW, I put the post in the FAQ section (#21 I think) about overclocking the R9800 to effectively make it into a 9800 PRO. It has worked very well for me. Standard disclaimer...Do so at your own risk...Well, OK, but there are other people who are clocking the 9800 non-pro well beyond the standard 9800 PRO clock speed even without flahing it with the 9800 PRO BIOS. Apart from the default clock speeds they are apparently one and the same card.Regards,Joe

[Guest JohnC]

Thanks Joe...when you overclock, can you increase the clock frequencies in small easy steps?.....this overclocking is a new subject for me.

[Guest JoeESSA]

The simple answer is yes, you can overclock in in very small clock frequency increments. With the utility Rage3D Tweak v3.9 the increment size is 1.25MHz.Generally any overclocking attempt will involve increasing the clock speed (GPU and memory in the case of a video card) then running an application that will adequately stress your system to see if there are any problems. For video card overclocking 3DMark 2001 is a good test for system stability. This process is repeated using gradual steps until you begin to notice graphics artifacts, usually the appearance of "white snow". Once that point has been reached you need to back off the clock rate a few MHz. This is if you want to achieve a maximum stable overclock. In my case I am a good bit below this since I was satisfied by just getting my card up to 9800 PRO speeds. I.e. GPU clock = 380MHz and Mem clock = 340MHz.Bare in mind that overclocking will lead to higher power consumption and additional dissipated heat. An overclock that yields stable performance in one application may lead to instability in another. Regarding the heat, my assumption is that this shouldn't be an issue for the R9800 as it is physically and electrically the same card as the R9800 PRO or so I've been informed. In any case I wouldn't recommend the overclock in a poorly ventilated case or in a mini PC case. Some enthusiasts go out and by heatsinks that they glue to the memory chips/modules, increase AGP voltages, buy special graphics cards cooling fans etc. and overclock the stockings out of their cards. Also, due to the higher DC power consumption you need to have an adequate power supply. 300 to 350W should be more than enough for a mid to large tower with the average number of peripherals.Overclocking, whether it is the CPU or graphics card, has been made extremely easy to do compared to a few years back. Motherboard manufacturer's have mostly implemented an extensive range of overclocking features that can be accessed in the BIOS as they know that there is a large segment of the market that want to overclock their machines. In the case of graphics cards there are many tweaking utilities available that allow you to very easily overclock the card in Windows.Some argue that due to the additional dissipated heat that the life of the overclocked component will be reduced. This is very true as mean time to failure is dictated by Arrhenius equation which shows a clear time dependency between temperature and MTTF. Nevertheless this has to be put into perspective. One way of doing this is to let you know that I ran my old computer system with a PIII 800MHz processor at a 20% overclock with good stability for 3-years. It's still healthy, but I don't use it any longer since I built my new system.Hope this helps,Joe

[Guest Glenn]

Hi Joe,I have the Radeon 9800 Pro 256, but am having a terrible time with stutters. If I let the card run free, then I get incredible frame rates (seen as high as 210!!!), but even at the normally locked 35 fps, I get horrible stuttering coming down final and taking off from airports. Do you have any suggestions on what you did to get rid of the stutters? I already have my sound acceleration cut back to basic and the fps' locked at 35. The sliders don't seem to have much effect on my fps' for the most part on my machine, but nothing seems to stop the stutters either.Thanks,GlennPS - card is not overclocked

[Guest JoeESSA]

Glenn,The old flight simmers saying that every system is different comes to mind. What kind of system specs do you have? The card needs to be balanced with the system no-doubt. I.e. high end card with mid to high end system. As soon as there are bottlenecks e.g CPU reaching 100% utlilisation then sssstuttering. I certainly see this problem now and again when editing video, i.e. when CPU pegs at 100% it becomes a slide show. I have heard other say that you shouldn't run with the frames locked too high as this hogs the CPU, so maybe you should ease off on the lock. Also what are your display settings?My specs are are follows:WindowsXP ProfessionalPIV 2.4GHz (533) @ 2.96GHzASUS P4C800ATI R9800 Of courseSoundBlaster Live!2x512MB PC3500 Bla, bla (the rest probably doesn't influence FS2004)Running 1600x1200x32, 4xFSAA, 8xaniso. Highish display settings in FS2004. Locking frames at 25.That's about all I can offer I'm afraid. Hope this helps.Joe

[Guest Glenn]

Hi Joe,Yup, I'm one of the "oldies" (since 89 :-) ), and yup, it is very true all systems react differently. That's part of the frustration of this (and I'm sure for MS as well). Here's my spec's:Windows Pro XPIntel P4 3.0 GHz 800 FSB, H/T (enabled)ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 256 MBSB Audigy Gamer1GB DDR Kingston RAMFS9 currently running 1600x1200x32, but I have brought it back to 1152 which doesn't seem to do much for the stutters.I normally have it locked at 35 fps and that seems to be a good number giving lots of headroom as I often see over 200 fps' under ideal conditions. What is strange is that I will (and saw this last night in a test) go from 205 fps right down to 7 fps (very briefly) then back up to 150. Something's not right about that one :-). So, I'm not sure where there might be a bottleneck here. I don't have my sliders maxed by any means, but I do have the cloud coverage @ 100% (if I can't run with that, I switch to another sim :-) ), but max vis is 60 and max cloud draw is 80. AA is 2x's but done at the video card control panel, AF is 8x's (again at the control panel).Gotta run to work, but I think I've covered all the essentials there.Thanks Joe, later,Glenn

[Guest JoeESSA]

Hi Glenn,Yes, I'm evidently not an oldie like you. I came on board with FS98. Every time a new version of FS comes out I go through a spurt of chatting at Avsim :-). My interest in FS faded a little when I started my private pilot's training about 2 years back, but it's always lurking in there somewhere and especially when new versions are released.I am definately not an expert on this sim by any means and agree with you that the bottleneck hypothesis shouldn't apply to your rig.Have you seen the postings on H/T? I haven't really paid any attention to those since they don't apply to me, but may impact your situation? I still wonder about your high FPS lock though as this will increase CPU utilisation and could be responsible for the large FPS dips you see. I am locked at 25 FPS and get the dips, but generally just down to 14 fps or so. That's when flying in the DFW area. The only other difference I can see is that I run with cloud coverage at 75%.Hopefully you will find a solution that you are satisfied with.Joe.

[Guest Bigshot]

Glenn; try this:1)Under the smartgart tab in your ATI control Panel, change to 4xAGP and turn fastwrites off. Restart the machine.2)In your ATI control panel run performance anisio. I always run with 4xAA & 16xAF Performance. Max out texture and mipmaps, set vsync to on and truform to off.3)In the sim's settings/display; set your Terrain Mesh down some. I run at 90 Percent. That one is a processor killer. Also, turn AI traffic off and test it to see if the stutters are still happening.There's a great ATI support forum at www.rage3d.com in case you're not familar with it.

[Guest Glenn]

Thanks Guys,I locked my fps' at 35 because I seem to easily be able to maintain that (and a whole whack more) in normal conditions. I did have them at 25 but it made no difference to the stuttering problem, plus I still saw the fps' dip into the single digits with an undercast.I'll have a go at the Smartgart options, etc. you mentioned and see what happens. Just what does the Fastwrite option do, do you know? Anyway, Trueform is off anyway, but we'll check out the rest of the options.Thanks again gents - appreciate the advice.Glenn

[Guest JoeESSA]

Glenn,Apparently fast writes allows data transfer direct from CPU to the graphics card bypassing system memory which should be faster, but in practice appears to make very little difference and may even make things slower and cause stability issues. This was often the case with older systems anyway. I have left fast writes on and have my system set at AGP8x and am not experiencing any problems. Nevetheless, I'd give Bigshot's suggestiong a go. I will probably try it myself to see if it makes any differnce.What specific motherboard do you have BTW? I'm assuming that it's either a Intel 875 or 865 based board?Regards,Joe

[Guest Bigshot]

They just posted a link to this tweaking article over at rage in case you're wondering what all the gizmos and options are for: http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/radeon/index.shtml