Hi Guys,I currently have an ATI Radeon HD 5770 card with 1GB RAM. I am noticing that, under heavy weather and cloud conditions, my FPS suffer quite significantly. I would like to upgrade my graphics card to hopefully get rid of this performance drop in cloudy conditions in FSX. The two cards I can choose from are the ATI Radeon HD 5870, or the Nvidia GTX 285. I would like to mention that I have been running FSX on this ATI 5770 for a few months now, and I am completely happy with the video quality. I am fine with multi-sampling AA, and do not need anything better. With that in mind, which card should I go for? I know that the 5870 is a newer card, and according to the specs it should be quite a bit faster, but is that still true when talking about FSX performance? Which card will give me better performance (and little to no performance drop in cloudy situations), keeping in mind that I am sticking with multi-sampling AA and won't use super-sampling?Also, I do play other games on this machine. They aren't the most graphically intense games, but I do use this system for things other than FSX. Things like Civilization V, The Sims 3, Live for Speed, and some others.One more thing - I can only upgrade to the GTX 285 or the HD 5870. Those are, unfortunately, my only two options at this point.Thanks for the help,Robert Deichert

I know you said only the GTX285 and ATI 5870 - why not go for the GTX460 - thats a great card for FSX. Of course for other games that are GPU reliant, maybe a GTX 570? FSX is a CPU based game, so you may want to OC your Xeon.But for the GPU, at the end of the day, id go for the GTX285 if that is your only option.

Yes, the 285 will pull a lot of weight. Check pricing though, around these parts previous generation cards are still sold at the same price, so you get a new gen. card for the same money.Bjorn

Without the shader3 tweak and the right configuration, the 5770 and 5870 will perform equally bad in FSX (e.g. FPS drop in clouds). With the shader3 tweak and the right configuration, they will perform equally well.

Hi Guys,One thing I forgot to mention in my original post is the reason I can only get the HD 5870 or the GTX 285 is because I am running a Mac Pro system, with Windows 7 x64 installed on its own partition with FSX. Right now, the only cards available with Mac firmware that are better than my 5770 are the GTX 285 and the HD 5870. My big complaint with the 5770 is the horrible performance slowdown when flying in dense clouds. I have heard that, in general, Nvidia cards don't suffer from this problem. Also, the 285, although a few years old, seems like it is a bit faster than the 5770 and might be worth upgrading to. If anyone has any thoughts, please let me know. I can sell my current HD 5770 for about $200 on ebay, so I might be able to get a used Mac GTX 285 for a relatively inexpensive price after the $200 from selling my HD 5770.Thanks again,Robert