From a price point perspective, I wouldn't bother with the XT unless you must absolutely have the fastest card in the industry. The Pro is only marginally slower (and it's a very thin margin at that). The only reason I went with the XT is because my credit card company warrantied my old GeForce4 which burnt up a few weeks ago on me - they gave me a credit for the full value I paid for the GF4...I was able to put that toward the XT. Gotta love American Express.

Well, I went from a Ti 4200 to a Radeon 9700 Pro and have been very impresed with the performance increase. The card does a much, much better job of drawing clouds, airports and ai traffic than the ATI did. Not just noticable, but definintely a dramatic increase frames and smoothness. I am sold on the Radeon and the 9700 Pro lies at a very nice price/performance point for anyone upgrading from the Ti 4200/4400 generation of cards.

You have seen some bad ATI screenshots then. I swapped a Ti4400 for a 9800 pro and the ATI is so much better for graphics quality that Nvidia must be embarrased. I have 4x AA and 16x AF and the scenery is clear out to the horizon - I actualy swore & laughed first time I saw the image quality!If anyone is thinking of a card there is no choice to make - the 9800 series is so much better than Nvidia that your daft to go with them and not ATI. Forget all this rubbish about shimmering textures in the 9800's - its all relative. What an ATI user might call shimmering is the sort of quality I was looking for when I had Nvidia!Ray Keattch.

There is no doubt you have a system problem - I experienced exactly what you describe when I changed for a 9800 Pro. You HAVE to re-install your OS to make sure you have no Nvidia rubbish left on your PC. If you do that AND make sure all motherboard drivers are installed you should see a doubling of performance.I went from 6 to 22 FPS to 19-35fps changing the Ti4400 to a 9800 pro. The image quality I see makes the Nvidia card look ordinary - something is wrong with your system if you do not get a doubling of framerates!!!My frames have yet to drop below 19 with many sliders maxed out, Activesky 2004 at max settings and flying online with VATSIM.Dell 8300, 800 FSBP4 3GHz512MB Ram9800 ProAudigy 2 soundRay Keattch.

Guys,Keep in mind this is based on FS2002 not FS2004. FS2002 is strictly CPU dependant, where as FS2004 does off load to the GPU more of the graphics functions. I have seen benchmarking that shows there is a noticable improvement in frame rates with a high end card using FS2004. You just won't see that in FS2002.There really isn't a problem with my set up, I had a hardrive failure a few weeks ago that forced a reinstall of everything. So I have a clean install of Windows XP Pro SP1(fully patched as well), clean install of Cat 3.9's, My motherboard an ASUS P4P800 has the latest BIOS. etc..etc.. I do know what I am doing with computers, I have worked in the industry as a Tech, and as an Engineer, So trust me it's configured as good as it gets. Now I am sure that if I compared frames on other games it would surely be much better with the Radeon, but I only play a few other games other than Flight Sim, and they are not real graphics intensive.(Unless you consider Golf graphics intensive)It's the difference in IQ that I just don't get, I can tell the AA is a little better with the Radeon, but unless you freeze the sim and zoom in real close there just is not a lot of difference in IQ between the two cards. So it appears that IQ is a really subjective and individual preference. Is upgrading to Radeon pro or better worth it? well certainly a Pro is more bang for the buck than an XT, and maybe if I upgrade to FS2004 it will feel more like a worth while upgrade.Scott

You can't judge image quality by using tiny, resampled and higly compressed jpeg images. Everything looks like crapwith those images. The resampling process (resizing to 800x600) smoothes out fine detail, making it impossible to compare FSAA or Aniso quality. Jpeg compression makes colours less vibrant, the image becomes blurry and even more detail is lost. Then, there's the issue of DAC quality, quality of the filters etc. So, until you've SEEN a Geforce and a Radeon on the same monitor, you just can't judge them.All Radeons from 9500 and up have the same level of image quality. ATI does not only make the 9800 XT, you know :)

Hi everybodyHelp..! I'm starting to feel 'left behind' with my ol' fashion GF4... Next year, when the 9600's hit 'acceptable' prices, it's off to the shop... Would love to get that fanless 9600pro Ultimate Edition... To start with... Maybe by then there's a fanless 9600XT..? I envy you guys... A general reminder, I once read about the ATI series, is, please correct me if I'm wrong (could be a step down), you SHOULD use your 9800 at resolutions 1152x and above. At 1024x and below it caps itself. Maybe the folks not so impressed with ATI's were running these resolutions? A 15 inch TFT (norm. running @1024) or a 17 inch Tube will not really be able to 'appreciate' the full power, a 9800 offers. In this context, the same applies to the 9600pro, I believe. As for the difference in various designs, I'm not a deep techie and somebody asked, the XT represents the latest, and probably last, evolution of the 9800-chip-series. Thus, the most debugged, enhanced power design and stuff like that 9800 chip. This allows the XT-series to generically run at a higher clocks i.e. Since the resulting temperatures will be more or less the same, OEM's don't have to bother too much about the cooling etc. And you and I need not endure those 'monster coolers.' Phew..BTW, tech-news afficionados, check theRegister.co.uk, if you do not already. It's a fantastic source for all kinds of IT, etc. news. Maybe somebody can shed some light on this? Is it possible to span the entire forward view over 2 monitors with the ATI's? Is there a 2480x1024 mode (or something alike)? Thanks for enlighting me in advance. Jaap

G'day John,I'm not trying to make any suggestions about your financial situation and purchasing preferences, which are clearly very savvy and extremely responsible. I admire you for that. I'm sorry if you felt I had taken a dig at you in such a way. I'm just trying to put your comments about image quality and value into perspective. I've known you long enough now to realise you are happy with the gear you use, but at the same time I think people who may be hestitant about upgrading from a Ti 4200 to a 9600XT or better should have no qualms about doing so if they can afford it. At the same time I also feel I am quite well qualified to make a statement about the worth of upgrading a Geforce 4 to a Radeon 95 - 98 series card, because that is exactly what I have done. I curently own both cards - an ASUS 9280S which is factory clocked midway between a Ti 4400 and a Ti 4600 as well as an ASUS 9600XT. I've directly compared both these cards cards - side by side - in the same machine under the same conditions using the same sim. And the Radeon isn't just a little bit better. It completely and utterly wipes the Geforce off the floor both in terms of image quality and performance. It's a first round knockout that makes the Nvidia card look very, very ordinary indeed. It's like the difference between a professional 35mm SLR camera and a $10 disposable camera. And rememember I'm only talking about the 9600XT - the middle weight of the range and priced at under $200 US. I think this about the same price people used to able to buy a Ti 4200 for when they were the king of popular mid range cards. I don't know that I am excessively biased against Nvidia either. I still happily incorporate their video cards into some machines that I build and I am very impressed indeed with their NForce2 chipsets. But when I want the best performance and image quality for gaming, I would now not give Nvidia graphics cards a second look. At least at this point in time.As Jimmi points out, you can't judge the quality by screenshots, because most of what you see on the internet are resized and jpeged. It's also like the arguments from a few years ago regarding the image quality of the Geforce 256 versus the Voodoo 5500. A lot of people said the Geforce 256 was better. The problem was, you couldn't really tell them much apart from the screenshots, but when you saw a series of moving images, the clear advantage of the Voofoo 5500 was plainly obvious for many people to see.Even when I actually purchased my 9600XT, I - like you - was not convinced that buying this card was going to be a good purchase decision. I realised it contained an element of risk. I had spent several weeks researching the card on the internet, and I even private mailed a couple of members here at Avsim who had made the upgrade before I did. Even their encouraging and positive responses did not make me feel terribly more comfortable about going ahead with the purchase. I made sure I had a contigency plan and that was to instead retire my old TNT2 in my secondary machine and replace it with the 9600XT if the 9600XT did not live up to my expectations. I am one of the most wary purchasers of hardware there is. Even as I was installing the new 9600XT, I left the cover off the case half expecting to have to put the Geforce 4 back in within an hour. As it turned out I was stunned for several days as the incredible value of my purchase sunk in. I had finally achieved all the image quality I could ever wish for from a Microsoft Flight sim, whilst achieving the performance I wanted.Not even the drivers were a problem. With my Nvidia cards, it was at least 6 months into ownership before I found a driver that worked properly with every game I ran. With the Radeon card, it took all of 20 minutes. The perfect driver already existed when I bought the card. I just had to download it off the ASUS website.

>Forget all this rubbish about>shimmering textures in the 9800's - its all relative. What an>ATI user might call shimmering is the sort of quality I was>looking for when I had Nvidia!>>Ray Keattch.Exactly true Ray, and thanks for making this point. In my other post where I bagged the 3.10 drivers, this of course was relative as well. I would have done aything to achieve the worst image quality of my ATi card on my Geforce 4. I now run my Geforce 4 on my FS development machine, and when I fire it up, I just can't believe my poor eyes. I still can't believe that up until a couple fo weeks ago, that was the card I always used for FS. I guess therein lies an important lesson. If you don't want to have to fork out for a Radeon card, then whatever you do don't watch one in action!

>You HAVE to re-install your OS to make sure you have no Nvidia>rubbish left on your PC.I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. I am using XP Pro and did not have to re-install it in order to get the massive benefits of switching from NVidia to Radeon.David

I'd have to agree... I got the ASUS Radeon 9800XT to go with my new 3.2GHz pc (specs same as yours except the hdd and monitor), and it made my jaw drop.... Even with almost everything maxed out (3d clouds not quite max, and I think autogen is only dense), I was still getting 25+ fps flying the default dc-3 around the Manhattan area of New York... While watching an instant replay, I've seen the counter go over 100.....I don't regret buying this system, or buying Radeon over Geforce, one bit..... :( To think I was originally planning on the geforce fx5900.... :(

>Even on my 4200, as long as I apply some of the more popular>tweaks, I haven't seen a Radeon image yet that I would say is>a better image, although I can only use the screenshots posted>in that forum as an example....>>But it ain't worth the extra $$$ IMHO to switch--not until the>9800 starts hitting the closeout phase which is always when>the best deals are had....John,Could you please wander over to the link below and give me your honest opinion. I am interested as I had the machine built in anticipation of FS2004 and would be interested to know if a nVidia card will do better as this is my first non-nVidia purchase.http://www.fsd-international.com/dc/dcboar...g_id=3502&page=Cheers and thanks,Chris Porter:-outtaPerthWestern AustraliaMy "Around the World 4" flight pagehttp://members.iinet.net.au/~portercbp/fly...e%20World_4.htmIntel Pentium IV 3.0GHz (800FSB) Socket 478 pins CPU w/Hyper-Thread Technology MSI 875P NEO FIS2R, AGP 8X, i875P ICH5R Chipset with Gigiabit LanKingmax 512MB PC3200 Double Data Rate (DDR) RAM CAS-2.5- 400MHz Rated x 2BUILT By ATI (Original) Radeon 9800PRO w/TV Out & DVI 128Meg DDRTEAC DV-W50E, 4x DVD-R/ 2x RW, 16xCD-R, 8xCD-RW, 16xDVD, 32x CD-ROM Internal Drive Only Western Digital Raptor 36.0GB HDD IDE, 8MB Cache, 5.2ms, 10,000rpm , S-ATA, w/DataLifeguard WD 40Gig HD for dataATX 470W Pentium IV Power Supply CESkyhawk Jupiter Aluminum CaseHyundai -ImageQuest P910 , 19" Multi-Scan Digital MonitorHercules Game Theater XP, 6.1 speakers Dolby