Well I am thrilled!

[jasonX 24]

A real acid test.How is Seychelles International Airport rendered in XPX. XP9 is awful, no idea about FSX [edit] I am meaning the scenery around the airportPete

[fvapres 7]

Hi Geofa.I have very low settings, no HDR. My system is about 4 years old. 3GHz with HD3650. I will build another one when Ivy comes out. TVOS Name Microsoft® Windows Vista™ 64 Home PremiumVersion 6.0.6002 Service Pack 2 Build 6002Processor Intel® Core™2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz, 2997 MhzTotal Physical Memory 6.00 GBAvailable Physical Memory 4.38 GBTotal Virtual Memory 12.2 GBAvailable Virtual Memory 10.5 GBPage File Space 6.29 GBPage File C:pagefile.sysAdapter Description ATI Radeon HD 3600 SeriesAdapter RAM 512.00 MB (536,870,912 bytes)Resolution 1920 x 1080 x 60 Hertz

The 3600 Series is a built-in (integrated into the motherboard) video card IIRC. That's basically nearly as bad as not having one at all. If it is a Radeon HD 3600 actual card, then upgrade it and you'll be flying much better. The 6870s are pretty inexpensive (for a video card of its ability) and would help you get a better flight experience all around.The one thing to remember is computers are pretty much easily upgraded. More powerful video cards can only put out more graphics if they consume more power, meaning you have to have a big enough power supply, watt-wise. Most cards will tell you the minimum just to run that card. The Q6600 is a 130W CPU IIRC (might even be 95W) so add that to your card's minimum PSU wattage and figure out what you have. If it says requires minimum 500W, you're gonna need a 630W-680W just to run the hardware. 5 years down the road, the PSU won't be putting out 100% anymore, so it's best to buy a bit bigger or add a few to your minimums just to make sure you have enough to power everything up.Your Q6600 should be able to keep up with the CPU side of XP10, but your video is way out of date and barely capable. Figure out if you have a real video card or integrated and go from there.

[Avcomware 1]

Hi Aaron.Thank you for your suggestion. A move on the Video would be of some help, but there are other issues that I cannot resolve in order to make that happen. I have the power, but lack the space, I only have one slot available for the Video, my Mobo is full with boards that I cannot part with. I tried a couple of Nvidia and ATIs, single boards, but I did not get much of performance increase. I run the 3650 at 725 x 500, which is very close to max. and it runs in the safe temp zone. I clean and replace the Thermal compound on my CPU and Video at least once a year and things are well within the safe range. All standard cooling.I can run XP9, FS8, FSX and Fly! with good FPS and pretty smooth, FSX and XP9 not maxed out but acceptable. The interesting thing about it is that I have to run my old Video drivers to get good performance. It looks like the new Drivers, like the 11.11 have traded the Ground candy for the Sky candy and I only need them for XP10 and Fly! Legacy which I do not use much. I am not sure investing any more effort in making this system perform better is worth while? I will probably get a 590 or 6990 in the next system. Have a good Holidays. TV

[fvapres 7]

590s and 6990s aren't being produced, as I understand, they were too expensive and didn't pan out dollar vs. performance wise. They were more for enthusiast gamers than realistic people like us. The 6970 is a damn fine card (6990 is basically two 6950s in one card, the 6970 is 25% better for most things) and the 580 OC is a great card by itself. I'm looking to run 3 projectors for my simulator setup and would have to have a SLI setup (as nVidia surround requires dual cards for the triple output) or a single ATI card for EyeFinity (but for performance reasons, I'm considering CrossfireX 6950s for EyeFinity and rendering).

[JasonHarris 96]

I didn't think eyefinity provided any advatage for xplane? I had 2x 6970's and after a while I thought there is no point so I moved on in to another machine that I play battlefield type games on. On all the sims I play there is no benefit, something the FS developers have been a bit behind on. As prepar3d is moving to dx11 it could be the first to change if I am lucky.

[fvapres 7]

Crossfire doesn't...eyefinity is the multi-display version of nVidia surround...ATI Crossfire/CrossfireX = nVidia SLIATI Eyefinity = nVidia Surround ATI Eyefinity supports up to 6 monitors (some cards all 6 from single card, some cards 3 from single card, some cards 2 most from single card - 3rd option requires 2 cards in crossfire for 3 displays)nVidia surround supports 3 monitors, but requires 2 cards unless running a single nVidia GTX295 or nVidia GTX 590

[JasonHarris 96]

(but for performance reasons, I'm considering CrossfireX 6950s for EyeFinity and rendering).

Hi, I have eyefinity running now, I first got it running when I got one of the first 5990's to replace my th2go. I was responding to your quote above where you said you would get performance increases with eyefinity and crossfire. You will for games that support it but if you are just talking about flight sims then most do not gain anything from crossfire. E.g, IL2, DCS a10, dcs blackshark, fsx, from what I have read xplane does not gain any benefit from crossfire but they all work with eyefinity. Thats why a single 6970 will perform better than 2x6950's in this case.

[fvapres 7]

Eyefinity relies on the cards to split the image between the different screens. Having 3 screens running from one card should not be as efficient as 3 screens from multiple cards that can share the load of the rendering of the screen data. The actual rendering of the initial 5760x1080 image is done via Crossfire for multiple cards where the software supports this, or in XP's case the primary card. But I would imagine that having a crossfire solution to then break apart and transform the image properly for display should be better handled by multiple cards instead of just the one thats doing all the work itself.I need the multiple cards as I run FSX, will run Flight, and play WOW and BF3 outside of flight sims, but there should be some advantage to running multiple cards with eyefinity, as the eyefinity is an on-card transform of the rendered full image onto the various displays configured into the driver model.

[JasonHarris 96]

If you are playing other stuff then sure, eyefinity will benefit from crossfire but experience from lots of people has shown that for games that do not support crossfire that eyefinity performance is generally worse if using two 6970's compared to just one. Running eyefinity from one card is as efficient as you will get. Remember, when running eyefinity and using crossfire all monitors must be connected to the same card anyway. As I say, mulitiple cards will not give you any performance improvement and in many cases has shown to be detrimental when running games that dont support it. Many people go to CCC and disable crossfire when running a lot of flight sims. I understand that you are thinking it should be beneficial but it doest work that way for eyefinity. Disclaimer - If I wasnt clear before this applies to games not supporting crossfire.

[fvapres 7]

Awesome news to hear. Been looking at this pretty hard lately and you have given me more food for thought. I've been weighing heavily the thought of one big card instead of two smaller in crossfire for eyefinity as I believed the tech would necessitate a second card for performance balancing, but from what you're saying, there's no difference in perf, Crossfire or not, on a game that doesn't support crossfire. If that's true, then I'm better off getting one big card as the game I play that support crossfire are an afterthought. I like playing them once in a while, but my passion is XP/FSX/Flight(when released).I've only heard the supposition side of things, but as always, the way something is supposed to work and actually does is a big difference sometimes. It's nice to hear from someone actually using what I'm looking to do. Thank you for your information.

[JasonHarris 96]

No problem, happy to help. A single big card still does pretty well for the other games. When I pulled my second 6970 out of my main box and put it in my first person shooter box I still get good framerates. ARMA II was the only game where the fps were not acceptable enough so I ran it with only the middle monitor working.