RADEON9800 VS Nvidia FX5900 ???

[Guest captandy]

I AM CURRENTLY RUNNING A gfTi4200 64MEG CARD AND I WANT TO UPGRADE.I HAVE A P4 1.9 512 RAMBUS.MOST SLIDERS ARE FULL TRAFFIC IS AT 80-85% USING ULTIMATE TRAFFIC.FPS ARE 5-7 FORWARD IN MY PMDG AT A SIMFLYERS AIRPORT AND ABOUT 9-12 THROUGH THE SIDES.IN THE AIR I AM GETTING ABOUT 7-10 NEAR CLOUDS FORWARD, 3D CLOUDS ARE AT 60% AND THEY ARE 3RD PARTY REDUCED TEXTURES,OUT THE SIDES 12-17.I WAS GOING TO GET A WHOLE NEW RIG BUT I THINK I WANT TO WAIT UNTIL I SEE HOW 64BIT MACHINES DO.MY QUESTION IS WHAT VID CARD SHOULD I GET TO HELP BOOST PERFOMANCE AND GET RID OF SOME OF THE STUTTERS.I WAS JUST AT NEW EGG LOOKING AT ASUS CARDS BUT THERE ARE SO MANY AND I AM BAFFLED SO MY ? IS I WANT TO SPEND UNDER 300 BUT I WANT THE BEST BANG FOR MY DOLLAR.THANKS

[Guest JonP01]

You might have to budget for a new keyboard as well, as it seems the caps lock key on your current one is broken :-)As for the video cards, having used Nvidia cards myself for the last two years (the latest being a Ti 4200) and having just upgraded to a mid-priced 9600XT ATi card, there is no way I could ever recommend an Nvidia card to anyone. The improvement in image quality between the latest ATi and Nvidia cards is chalk and cheese - I can't believe I put up with the relatively poor Nvidia image quality for as long as I did - it was truly woeful to my eyes now that I have seen a comparison with my own eyes on my own monitor. From screenshots I've seen on various hardware review sites, there is nothing to suggest that the Nivida card image quality is improved in the latest cards either. They still use the horribly ugly anti-aliasing used in the Geforce 4, even if the trilinear filtering is slightly better than ATi. And if you are worried about performance, I get far superior performance with the 9600XT at 4 x AA and 4 x AF than I ever did with the old Ti 4200 card at 2 x AA and 2 x AA - even with the Ti 4200 running one resolution lower and stuck in 16 bit colour. The 9600XT also takes effects such as water reflections and animations with no performance impact, whereas it used to kill my Ti 4200. The rain does impact performance in virtual cockpit mode, but not terribly much.As for the 9800 series, since those cards are significantly faster than my 9600XT, performance would really be the last thing you would need to worry about. I think any CPU currently available would have more than it's work cut-out before a 9800 card started to show any signs of runing out of puff. I imagine the advantage would show itself if you run very high resolutions and use lots of 3D clouds and rainy weather.Even if the latest Nvidia card offered better fps performance than the ATi cards, I still couldn't recommend them owing to the relatively poor image quality.

[Guest captandy]

Thanks for your input I am considering the 9600xt and a 9800 pro.AndySorry about the caps

[Guest SlimDady]

if having the best is not a big deal to you, the 9600pro, xt, non pro are the best deal you can get on a video card right now. its the most affordable for the performance it dishes out

[Guest jase439]

I would have to agree. I just upgraded from a GF4 Ti4400 to a Radeon 9800XT and the difference is night and day. The image quality (especially the anisotropic filtering) is far ahead of nVidia. I was getting a spuratic 7-15 fps in dense clouds. I get a very consistent 22-25 now. All this without a process upgrade too.The 2D quality of the ATI is excellent as well. The 9800XT is a pricey card, but the 9800 Pro 128MB is very reasonable and probably the best "bang for the buck" ATI card out there.J

[Guest captandy]

I have read alot since posting this and I am going with a ATI 9800 PRO for 292 at new egg.I am also going to up my power supply from 250watts to 350 and add an extra colling fan .How does that sound ???

[Guest toml]

Andy,Talk about night-n-day! I just finished my Xmas present over the weekend. I moved from a AMD 2.4 with a Gaiward Ti4600 up to a little Shuttle SB75G2 with an Intel 3.0 and an ATI 9800(np).I'm running the ATI with 4xAA and 8xAF, and FS never looked so good. I couldn't pass up the deal I got about two weeks ago at Circuit City, when I found the 9800 at $249! Since then I've seen two postings elsewhere of the same board at Circuit City for $199, but I've been unable to find that particular store! ;-)My son will be very happy to learn that he's getting my old system, as it plays BF1942 quite well. Even though I have been a full supporter of Nvidia for more than 5 years now, going back to the Riva 128, Nvidia needs to pull another one out of the hat if their going to regain the crown from ATI. Tom -KONT

[Guest Rafael Cervera]

Actually, More video card wont make your flying experience that much better. Personally, I prefer ATI cards since they have Direct X built in to them and Nvidea cards rely on Open GL (which is better than Direct X but MSFS is a Microsoft product, and it likes DX).The one hard rule for V-cards is MORE ONBOARD RAM is better although there is some doupt if anything more than 128 megs is wasted but I havent heard anyone with 256 megs complaining.They way to go for better performance in MSFS is a RAID 0 set up or a SATA drive. Or better yet a RAID-0 array with SATA drives.My FPS skyrocketed when I installed a RAID-0 array and I already had a 128 meg card onboard.BTW, for your next rig, get dual channel memory.

[Guest JonP01]

>I have read alot since posting this and I am going with a ATI>9800 PRO for 292 at new egg.I am also going to up my power>supply from 250watts to 350 and add an extra colling fan .How>does that sound ???And I would suggest you use the latest 3.9 catalyst drivers as they seemed to resolve all those menu issues people had in FS2004. My card shipped with the older 3.8 Cat ASUS equivalents and the card is only a week old. So your CD drivers might not be the latest. You might not like the way the menus behave if you don't update to the latest drivers!

[JayDub 0]

I just upgraded this last week from a MSI GF3 Ti200 to a ATI 9800/non pro card. I Figured I got the most "BANG FOR THE BUCK". The ATI 9800 was on sale at Circuit City in the USA for $199.95, the ATI 9700 Pro which is only slightly faster was 279.95 on sale and the ATI 9800 Pro was 299.95. I don't regret going with the less expensive card. FS2004 2D panels that previously I could only get max of 10-11 FPS in all conditions. I can now run at 40 FPS plus in heavy thunderstorms with the rain blowing off the windshield and 18-21 at high detail airports on the ground. Am now seeing FPS I wouldn't have believed possible. Have turned off my FPS counter. I can now use all my favorite 3rd party panels in FS2004, had been restricted to the default VC panels prior to this upgrade due the low FPS with all other panels..... 3D MARK 2001 SE benchmarks went from 7800 to 12500 with no tweaks or over clocking in place "YET" !!! ..... Saw no change in image quality but was already happy with that anyway... Running FS2004 in 1600x1200/32 all sliders maxed but AI which is at 50%.... Very happy now ....JayDubAMD 2400XP/400 Watt Power SupplyWindows XP home1024MB DDR RAMATI Radeon 9800 3.9 Drivers

[rhodges 6]

would suggest you check Pricewatch for additional pricing