Alright, I just built a new computer, and overall I have been extremely satisfied. I went with the brand new Sapphire Radeon 7970, and it just blows games out of the water. However, FSX seems to be one of its shortcomings. It's not a matter of performance, but rather anti-aliasing. I can crank everything up on highest settings and get a smooth 40-45fps. The problem is anti-aliasing. I think it's working a little, but I see way too many jagged lines in and outside of the airplanes(Scenery looks fine). When I try to override anti-aliasing in the Catalyst Control Center and turn it off in FSX, I get a massive performance drop. I installed RadeonPro (sort of like nhancer), and I will mess around with that when I get some time. Any tips? I know the 7970 is new, but has anybody else had problems with it in FSX?

I don't know, but I guess you didn't ask for an advice before you bought a GPU, if it was for FSX?I'm not out of the ATI world, there might be a tool to set better IQ for FSX, but all I know is that ATI sucks in general for FSX. Should've gone Nvidia.And maybe check this thread:http://forum.avsim.net/topic/366675-ati-anti-aliasing-settings/

ATI cards don't 'suck in general' for FSX, they aren't that bad. NVIDIA cards tend to perform a little faster and have more antialiasing settings to work with. That's all. Radeon's leave lots of jaggies in FSX when doing multisampling unfortunately, but if you're willing to use supersampling it looks great. SSAA hurts frame rates a bit though. Personally I do it since I reckon the jump in image quality is worth it.Busterbunker, since you say frame rates plummet when you turn AA off, something isn't right. AA means more processing for the GPU, so turning it off will lead to a higher frame rate. I have a 7970 but I can't help you with specifics in regards to FSX unfortunately because I haven't played it (been too busy with BF3 and Civ V).Cheers,Mike

ATI cards don't 'suck in general' for FSX, they aren't that bad.

Oh yes they are... I have tested 5 NVIDIA and 1 AMD graphic card in FSX. Performance was horrid in FSX with AMD but, in other games AMD cards perform fantastic.The AMD 5870 is much slower than my GTS450 in FSX.

Oh yes they are... I have tested 5 NVIDIA and 1 AMD graphic card in FSX. Performance was horrid in FSX with AMD but, in other games AMD cards perform fantastic.

 

The AMD 5870 is much slower than my GTS450 in FSX.

 

Months ago I made thorough tests with my HD6970 and my GTX570 (which I sold in the mean time because FSX performance was better with the ATI card) so ATI can't be that bad imho. I think it just needs a different tweaking in order to perform. For me the HD6970 is a fantastic card even with FSX so I cannot imagine that the 7970 wouldn't be good enough...

You are aware that you are basically going against the whole stream of tests and proofs, right? There have been countless tests with ATI cards, and confirmed that they are far inferior to Nvidia when it comes to FSX situations.

 

I won't really fight anyone's opinion, and you are completely entitled to yours.

Why ati cards don't perform too well is IMO the shader mod. I have used only ATI in FSX from HD 3450 / HD 5450 / and HD 6750 , I applied the shader mod when it was 5450 and now on the 6750 and with my current cpu I am pulling 30-32 with fps limiter and all my sets are on max except one.

 

And the perfect setup for FSX would be i5 2500k /560ti.

You are aware that you are basically going against the whole stream of tests and proofs, right? There have been countless tests with ATI cards, and confirmed that they are far inferior to Nvidia when it comes to FSX situations.

 

I won't really fight anyone's opinion, and you are completely entitled to yours.

 

Please don't make me say what I did not... I am speaking only about the HD6970 vs 570GTX. So I never said that ATI in general should be considered equal to or better than Nvidia.

I am no ATI or Nvidia ######, let that be clear.

I was lucky to be able to do some benchmarking with both cards on my own rig without anyone else's opinions about the matter.

I don't know anything about FSX performance with HD 5 series ATI cards or even HD6950 (the texture fill rate of the 6970 is way higher than on the 6950 so that surely can play a role here...)

 

I will put it this way, buy an Nvidia card if you want to play it safe and if you do not play any other game which prefers ATI technology (which btw is not my case).

 

But I maintain that the HD6970 is a very good card even for FSX.

Fair enough. Did you really make extensive tests? Like lots of autogen, many cloudcovers, high IQ (AA quality, jagged edges comparisons)? Even running FSXMark11 as a GPU comparison is quite weak. Because those things is where Nvidia shines and where ATI goes into abyssal.

Hi,

 

This is going to be my first post, but i have to comment after reading this topic. First of all, i´ve been using nvidia and Ati videocards for 7 years now, and i choose whatever gives me the best for my money, and lately that has been Ati videocards. Since i've been playing on FSX (2 years ago) i had a HD 5850 and just a few months ago a HD 6970 and i MUST say that FSX runs absolutely great with all the settings maxxed out and payware addons, which are:

 

- REX V2.0 (HD textures and clouds)

- ENB series mod

- Several Aerosoft's aircrafts and sceneries

- PMDG 737 and BAE 4100

- ORBX sceneries

 

I'm running with an external FPS limiter to 30 all the time. I want to share my catalyst settings to help ATI users:

 

-Antialiasing: Overwrite application settings, 8x

-Anisotropic filtering: 16x

-Tesselation: amd optimized

-Catalyst AI: highest

-Antialiasing mode: Supersampling

- Antialiasing on FSX settings = Off

 

I dont know why the people talk bad things about Ati cards when using them with FSX, i know a lot of friends that use Ati and never had a single problem on FSX. Maybe the people complaining just want to be nvidia all the time or doesnt like to take their time setting the drivers the right way. In fact, i must say, that by the time i started to play FSX, i had the nvidia GTX 285 and i must say that after using the HD 5850 and HD 6970 the colors and crispness is way better on Ati parts, just saying.

 

Oh, one more thing, i also learned that even with the most powerful videocards, FSX it's STILL CPU dependant, no matter what. The faster the CPU, the better, even more if its an Intel quadcore overclocked to heaven. I will soon upgrade to Ivy bridge hoping to see a performance boost on my FSX.

 

Cheers to everyone

ELNIKA,

 

Since you are so happy with your card, I would really like to know how it performs in cloud situations.

Would you please be so kind and load this flight: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31158446/cloudtest.rar

Press S once to enter external view, and by using FRAPS (google it, its free for FPS measurement), note the FPS.

It's vital that the measurement is via FRAPS and that its taken in the external view, exactly how I placed it. Just press S once after flight has loaded. Its default cessna so you should have it.

 

Then, if you came this far: make a screenshot of the aircraft closeup and post it here for quality comparison.

ELNIKA,

 

Since you are so happy with your card, I would really like to know how it performs in cloud situations.

Would you please be so kind and load this flight: http://dl.dropbox.co...6/cloudtest.rar

Press S once to enter external view, and by using FRAPS (google it, its free for FPS measurement), note the FPS.

It's vital that the measurement is via FRAPS and that its taken in the external view, exactly how I placed it. Just press S once after flight has loaded. Its default cessna so you should have it.

 

Then, if you came this far: make a screenshot of the aircraft closeup and post it here for quality comparison.

 

Sure, there you go:

 

 

Now remember, this is with all settings maxxed out, MTL = 4096 and LOD at 7.5. I uploaded the pic in its original form, so you can all appreciate the Image Quality :)

 

 

 

Now remember, this is with all settings maxxed out, MTL = 4096 and LOD at 7.5. I uploaded the pic in its original form, so you can all appreciate the Image Quality :)

 

Should'nt that i7 be giving you better frames ?

Should'nt that i7 be giving you better frames ?

 

Umm!, it's an Intel i5 nehalem processor, not an i7 or sandy bridge, thats why i'm waiting for Ivy bridge, to get a performance boost and more stable FPS (manhattan sceneriy for example). Although in most of my gameplay scenarios i get rock solid 25 and 30 FPS, i'm no where near those 17 FPS in real practical gameplay, that must be a very picky flight scenario to try to prove nvidia runs it better...

 

BUT, the most important thing is, i like how good my sim runs and looks, that's all that matters ! ;)

 

PS: waiting for more screenies on other systems!

I must say, the image quality appears to be quite good, no jaggies on the aircraft lines, though quite hard to judge, since the pic is smaller.

 

But, what baffles me, are the clouds. You loaded my situation apparently, but you have no overcast. Did you have any cloud engine OR FSX realtime clouds enabled while doing that? I am sure FSX loaded other weather situation for this file than my original, thus giving you completely false result. You wouldn't possibly see blue sky in my situation.