Not to worry! There was a post (can't seem to find it now) by Phil Taylor in his blog where he said nVidia's 384-bit wide memory bus gave it an advantage over (then) ATI's 256-bit wide memory bus. Well, AMD's 7950's and up now for the first time also sport a 384-bit wide memory bus! (that's a blustering 50% increase in bus BW right there...)Also from the 7750 and up all 7xxx cards are PCIe 3 ready, so all you need is an upgrade to an IB CPU and a BIOS upgrade for your MB (if PCIe 3 ready).Cheers,- jahman.

Really wondering if I should move to ATI on my next GPU. I'll have to see if Nvidia can pull it together.

Well, seeing the 7970's have been out of stock as of late I thought I would conduct a little more testing to see one last time if I could convince myself that I could get an AMD card to look as good with FSX before dropping cash on the new 7970's. This was about the 3rd or 4th time I had swapped out my Nvidia 580 for my AMD 6970 previously with no success.A little feedback on my current experience with AMD over the past 24 hours.I cleaned out all releated to Nvidia, installed the new AMD 12.1 beta drivers and right out of gate I noticed improvements compared to older drivers I had tried. I still saw some AA issues and shimmering but nothing like before. I also saw improvement in the sky where with the Nvidia there was some very small line running across the sky. If you looked hard you could see it cut off the lower part of clouds. With the 6970 this is gone so that was noticable right off. I used the settings in CCC that I have seen posted here by JSkorna (thanks buddy) to start with. Without any tweaks I have not seen any tearing, flashing, or FPS issues with clouds like in the past and it looked really sharp, clear and crisp.So I then loaded a tweak fsx.cfg that I had created using the bojote website and dropped that edited .cfg file in there. It cleaned up probably 99% of the remaining AA issues and shimmers. This is probably the bast I have ever seen FSX run on an AMD card on my system ever. It's so close in comparison with Nvidia I would have to drop that card back in to see if I could see any different. I am that impressed.The only thing I have noticed is I have gotten a couple of "out of memory" errors while in the middle of flying. Thios has happened 2-3 times over the past 24 hrs. I fly with very high settings and the card has 2GB on board... not sure if that is related to the issue. I think I have only seen this once in many months of flying with the 580 card.Reason for switching was really to give Eyefinity a go in FSX. It works as others have attested to. Quite an experience the first time. The issue I have with it which I never thought of, my POV was is too close to the cockpit panel while in VC mode. I can't zoom back far enough to get a comfortable position for flying. I assumed Eyefinity would stretch the sides more for that immersive wrap-around feel but keep the front view relatively the same eyepoint distance. It appears it just creates the same VC image but a lot bigger. If I do try to zoom out with the aid of my TrackIR, if I go too far back I find myself behind the pilots seat! Not sure what others are doing if anything, but would luv to know how they are compensating for this? This would be a game stopper for me to run FSX in Eyefinity (or Nvidia's Surround mode for that matter).I guess what I am saying is I have convinced myself that the 7970's would work similarly to the 6000 series cards but if I cannot find a work-around for the eye position, I will probably not persue the Eyefinity route with two 7970's in Crossfire.But I hope this info helps if deciding whether to go with an AMD card or not.Clutch

Well, seeing the 7970's have been out of stock as of late I thought I would conduct a little more testing to see one last time if I could convince myself that I could get an AMD card to look as good with FSX before dropping cash on the new 7970's. This was about the 3rd or 4th time I had swapped out my Nvidia 580 for my AMD 6970 previously with no success.A little feedback on my current experience with AMD over the past 24 hours.I cleaned out all releated to Nvidia, installed the new AMD 12.1 beta drivers and right out of gate I noticed improvements compared to older drivers I had tried. I still saw some AA issues and shimmering but nothing like before. I also saw improvement in the sky where with the Nvidia there was some very small line running across the sky. If you looked hard you could see it cut off the lower part of clouds. With the 6970 this is gone so that was noticable right off. I used the settings in CCC that I have seen posted here by JSkorna (thanks buddy) to start with. Without any tweaks I have not seen any tearing, flashing, or FPS issues with clouds like in the past and it looked really sharp, clear and crisp.So I then loaded a tweak fsx.cfg that I had created using the bojote website and dropped that edited .cfg file in there. It cleaned up probably 99% of the remaining AA issues and shimmers. This is probably the bast I have ever seen FSX run on an AMD card on my system ever. It's so close in comparison with Nvidia I would have to drop that card back in to see if I could see any different. I am that impressed.The only thing I have noticed is I have gotten a couple of "out of memory" errors while in the middle of flying. Thios has happened 2-3 times over the past 24 hrs. I fly with very high settings and the card has 2GB on board... not sure if that is related to the issue. I think I have only seen this once in many months of flying with the 580 card.Reason for switching was really to give Eyefinity a go in FSX. It works as others have attested to. Quite an experience the first time. The issue I have with it which I never thought of, my POV was is too close to the cockpit panel while in VC mode. I can't zoom back far enough to get a comfortable position for flying.I assumed Eyefinity would stretch the sides more for that immersive wrap-around feel but keep the front view relatively the same eyepoint distance. It appears it just creates the same VC image but a lot bigger. If I do try to zoom out with the aid of my TrackIR, if I go too far back I find myself behind the pilots seat! Not sure what others are doing if anything, but would luv to know how they are compensating for this? This would be a game stopper for me to run FSX in Eyefinity (or Nvidia's Surround mode for that matter).I guess what I am saying is I have convinced myself that the 7970's would work similarly to the 6000 series cards but if I cannot find a work-around for the eye position, I will probably not persue the Eyefinity route with two 7970's in Crossfire.But I hope this info helps if deciding whether to go with an AMD card or not.Clutch

Thanks for that helpul and interesting post. Not sure about that OOM error, I had it once or twice long ago and have forgotten what the remedy for me was.

Recently saw one myself. I read something about LOD= too high. I set mine to 7.5 and that's when it occurred.

Guys, i want to apologize for the delay on the testing results I promised to show. I have not being able to do the testing because UPS has not yet delivered the graphics card which I was suposed to receive on friday. I believe I will get it by monday. Again, my apologies.

Yeah right! Excuses excuses... ^_^

Reason for switching was really to give Eyefinity a go in FSX. It works as others have attested to. Quite an experience the first time. The issue I have with it which I never thought of, my POV was is too close to the cockpit panel while in VC mode. I can't zoom back far enough to get a comfortable position for flying.I assumed Eyefinity would stretch the sides more for that immersive wrap-around feel but keep the front view relatively the same eyepoint distance. It appears it just creates the same VC image but a lot bigger. If I do try to zoom out with the aid of my TrackIR, if I go too far back I find myself behind the pilots seat! Not sure what others are doing if anything, but would luv to know how they are compensating for this? This would be a game stopper for me to run FSX in Eyefinity (or Nvidia's Surround mode for that matter).I guess what I am saying is I have convinced myself that the 7970's would work similarly to the 6000 series cards but if I cannot find a work-around for the eye position, I will probably not persue the Eyefinity route with two 7970's in Crossfire.But I hope this info helps if deciding whether to go with an AMD card or not.Clutch

I don't really fly in Eyefinity mode (other than some testing) due to framerate on my 5870 not being high enough (one of the reasons I am planning to upgrade to a 7970 or more likely GTX680) but in my testing I am pretty sure I was able to use EZDok to move the eyepoint back away from the panel to make it look good at my normal .30 zoom (I don't use widescreen view to avoid sides being stretched).You may want to give that a try moving the eyepoint instead of zoom (EZDok is great for that).

Edited January 29, 201214 yr by kludger

Reason for switching was really to give Eyefinity a go in FSX. It works as others have attested to. Quite an experience the first time. The issue I have with it which I never thought of, my POV was is too close to the cockpit panel while in VC mode. I can't zoom back far enough to get a comfortable position for flying.I assumed Eyefinity would stretch the sides more for that immersive wrap-around feel but keep the front view relatively the same eyepoint distance. It appears it just creates the same VC image but a lot bigger. If I do try to zoom out with the aid of my TrackIR, if I go too far back I find myself behind the pilots seat! Not sure what others are doing if anything, but would luv to know how they are compensating for this? This would be a game stopper for me to run FSX in Eyefinity (or Nvidia's Surround mode for that matter).

I use EZDOK as well with my Eyefinity setup and was able to set up a VC view exactly how I wanted.Bill

"I use EZDOK as well with my Eyefinity setup and was able to set up a VC view exactly how I wanted."Uooooooo..... that sounds very interesting. Never used EZDOK mostly because I heard it was pain to understand how to set it. May have to take a second look at it. Heard they were gonna have a version 2 with a better/easier setup interface? Did that ever happen?

Version 2 is not out yet but the author said it will be free upgrade for current owners, yeah the UI for the effects is pretty powerful/complex, but I use it mostly for view positioning and management with the default effects so was able to follow the great demo videos on how to set up the views and haven't really had to mess with the effects UI at all.EZDok ranks up there with TIR on my personal list of things I would not want to fly FSX without, well worth a try for the view positioning and management, worst case since it is a Flight1 product you have 30day money back guarantee.

"I use EZDOK as well with my Eyefinity setup and was able to set up a VC view exactly how I wanted."Uooooooo..... that sounds very interesting. Never used EZDOK mostly because I heard it was pain to understand how to set it. May have to take a second look at it. Heard they were gonna have a version 2 with a better/easier setup interface? Did that ever happen?

You're right about Ezdok being a nightmare to setup Clutch. I must have installed and reinstalled the darn propgram about 6 or 7 times before finally 'getting it.' I agree, it's not the most intuitive program ever produced, but my goodness it is the one program which resides at the top of my 'must have' FSX addons. I would drop TrackIR in a flash if I had to choose between the two. In fact once you've got your head around it, it's surprisingly quick and efficient to use. Give it another go mate, you'll be glad you did, I promise :good:

Those are pretty nice accolades I must say. But if it will allow me to really get seated in just the right spot in a cockpit to test Eyefinity properly then it's worth a look. Will research it today. I did heard there are some videos that make it much easier to set up the first time around.So Rockliffe, I heard you have scaped the multi-monitor way for a large one screen look? Can't blame ya as I hear as I hear hi-res displays are great with FSX as well. Don't think I could fit a 30" under my desk hutch even if I wanted to.Let me add a question, I would basically set up a camera view in the VC where I would normally sit (then able to use TrackIR to look around), but even if I move around to outside views, etc., I could then return back to VC at the same position where I left off?

Edited January 30, 201214 yr by Clutch Cargo

Let me add a question, I would basically set up a camera view in the VC where I would normally sit (then able to use TrackIR to look around), but even if I move around to outside views, etc., I could then return back to VC at the same position where I left off?

Absolutely! I only use Ezdok for the primary camera positions, by that I mean inside the VC. I have the Warthog and have allocated twelve Ezdok camera positions to three 4 way rocker switches on the throttle and the stick. That is one sick stick I can promise you :diablo: Basically Clutch,in Ezdok you have an edit mode and once you enter the edit mode, you move the 'camera' to whereever you want to go, once in position, that particular position is saved for that particular camera. You then move onto the next camera position that you want. When you have all the camera psotions you then allocate keys, or in my case, hatswitches on the controller. It really comes into it's own in the NGX 'cos, unlike TiR, where you are limited to simply looking around and cranking your head, in Ezdok you simply click a button and the viewpoint glides across to the predetermined camera position that you have saved in the Ezdok memory for that particular plane. In the NGX I have close up cameras for the MCP, MFD, throttle quadrant, the 2 overhead panels, the CDU, lower set of switches, VC view, left hand view, right hand view and a couple more that I cannot remember!If you have any problems you can PM me and we can walk through things on Skype if you like, as I found no matter how much I read I simply couldn't get my head aroud it. But, as I said, once everything 'clicks' it becomes extremely easy to use.

Howard think how good EZDok and TrackIR are together, if you aren't using both you really are missing out big time.

Howard think how good EZDok and TrackIR are together, if you aren't using both you really are missing out big time.

Hi Andy, sure, I use TrackIR with Ezdok. But to be honest, I don't really get on with TrackIR. I think it's a very overblown product and I much prefer Ezdok. However, I can see where TrackIR has it's place, particularly for those poor souls who only have a yoke :LMAO: I'm only assuming but I guess if you have a yoke, you are limited to how many buttons you have on the yoke to allocate to Ezdok camera positions, where with TrackIR, it maybe works better, don't know, just a guess. I find myself using TrackIR less and less. It mostly gets used around airports when taxiing and so forth. Once in the air, to be honest, I can't see any benefit whatsoever over using Ezdok.

Hello guys, I currently have the video card (HD7970) how ever there are no drivers available at the AMD website so I will wait for them to come up with the 79xx version of their Catalyst software to then proceed with the benchmark. How ever I ran the benchmark, after a clean FSX installation with Service Pack 2 (no Deluxe Edition) and after following all the steps from the PDF file that came with the folder for the benchmark. I ran it two times and my results wereFrames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg (No FSX.CFG modificaton) 5117, 300000, 11, 28, 17.057Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg (Aft FSX.CFG modification as indicated by the PDF file) 5459, 300000, 11, 32, 18.197 My system specs are CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1100T @ 4.0 GHz RAM: 2X4GB 1600 MHz GPU: Power Color HD7970 3gb HDD: Western Digital 7200 rpm 1TB