AllWe soon will have a couple of high powered video board offerings from Nvidia and Ati and already on the market are some very nice MB's and processor choices. Over the past years by looking at my hardware purchase receipts, I have either purchased a new MB or video card within 18 months of my last purchase. That time again is approaching. The reason I am asking for your opinions is my last purchase was both a MB and a video card (did well at the casino). This year I can only afford one or the other. I do recall a number of threads indicating that FS was really CPU dependent and if FPS is what you wanted to gain, a new MB would be the choice. On the other hand, a new video card would allow you to increase resolution, anistropic and other video related quality settings but on the most part not much gain on the FPS side. After I tell my existing setup, some may say "Geez, I wish I had what he has now". Well Im an older #### and have a little stash I keep feeding so you guys with the lower end systems, Please your opinions are important. So I know I have a nice system but I just cant resist in the upgrade department when some great offerings are in my face. Here is my existing system:P4 2.8, MB Asus P4PE w/1gig ram, ATi 128 pro.I am running 1600x1200 8x Anistropic, 32m mesh,FSScene. As far as my sliders go in FS they really vary. Quality settings are mostly high. AI traffic seems to be a big hit for me so 40% worked for me with UT.Weather is at the default. I do have fairly good frames. I get about 14 -16 in and around KSEA and elsewhere mostly averages about 18 - 20. I do favor quality rather than speed but of course without the Frames the quality is not very enjoyable.So finally what to do. New MB or one of the new video card offerings.Appreciate your guys feedback and hopefully I can do this scientifically by the number of opinions for MB or video card.Thanks much. RegardsBob Ginn

take the money and rent yasself a skyhawk for a coupla hours ;-)

>take the money and rent yasself a skyhawk for a coupla hours>;-)Maybe he's like me..................... and thinks that"Skyhawks" are slugs (slow-moving terrestrial mollusk)... :D L.Adamson

Well, to be honest, your system CPU is already very fast.I disagree with you on the video card not helping frame rates - after I changed my video card from an NVidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 AGP 4X to an ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB AGP 8X, the frame rates definitely went way up!! Don't forget, the graphics processing is done by the RAMDAC on the video card.I would upgrade your video card to the ATI X800X which looks like will beat the new NVidia 6800 according one reliable website - TOM'S HARDWARE GUIDE (www.tomshardware.com). This new card has something like a 25-50% improvement over the Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB under most of the testing done by Tom.John

whatever does it for ya...go rent yasself a mollusk:-lol

>Don't forget, the graphics processing is done by the RAMDAC on the >video card.Uh, no it's not. The RAMDAC (DAC = Digital to Analog Convertor) takes the digital data output from the GPU and converts it to the analog signal that gets sent to the monitor. It has absolutely nothing to do with graphics processing - that's all a combination of the CPU and GPU. The only thing the RAMDAC plays a role in is the quality of high resolution 2D desktop graphics - a lesser quality RAMDAC won't be as sharp. NOT something you have to worry about on a high end card.As for which card to pick - the new ATI X800 series looks like the best of the two, especially in the FS benchmarks I've seen.Ryan

Bob,Your system is already pretty fast. You can keep it the way it is and purchase instead a $60 consultation with this outfit called FSGS and according to numerous reports on this forum (just go back a day or two) they can guide you to tweak your system to achieve apparently spectacular results in FS9. Sounds like a relatively cheap "upgrade" to me. Anyway, just another alternative you may want to look into. But you are running at a relatively high resolution setting so new line of Radeon X800 cards may help too.Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

You posed a good and relevant question, as this next month is a time of big changes after quite a lull.I'm not sure you got any significant answers....BUMP !!!!!Bob (Lecanto, Fl)

Hi Bob and welcomeI'm flabbergasted..! Love that word! Seriously. Because it looks like you really got everything out of that Ati Pro of yours... I totally second John (Byrna's) reply above. After having used Nvidia cards for years, I plonked an Ati 9800pro/128 into my FlyTendo last week and boy was I impressed!! Exchanging only card and dlls, FPS jumped 40-50%... On a 3GHz P4 and otherwise more or less the same spec as yours. The reason I changed is, my 'old' Geforce4600 was AA-ing the clouds which was driving me crazier than I already am... Besides, I was still hesitating... Having to re-learn dlls, bring my 'ancient' personal Ati database up to date again, etc... Anyway, my final 'Ati click' came with the presentation of their's and Nvidia's technology for the new generation cards. The 2 molexes on the new Nvidia and a 480W power supply... Ridiculous... Soooo, ---> Zzzzzzp. As some have pinpointed, lots of hardware things are changing. Now, trying to put your components and comments into a context and depending on your budget, I would say get either a 9600XT or 9800pro would be a brilliant upgrade. The X800 Michael J. proposed would be a dream! The biggest difference between the three being the reserves at higher resolutions. I.e. I operate my 9800 at 1240x960 at 4AA and 16xAF for which probably a 9600XT would have sufficed. IMHO, a 100% customer for a 9800 would be somebody running performance hungry big screens at native resolutions of 1600x etc. These monster-displays really 'appreciate' the extra pipelines etc. And I'm guessing you have a big monitor... Your CPU is fine. Hope this helps. Good luck and kind regards Jaap Bob, I almost forgot, would you mind telling me which Ati pro dll you're using? Thanks.

Bob,I suggest you look at some of the review sites to get an idea of what stage the CPU and video card become bottlenecks, most of them indicate this in their conclusions.BTW Don't look at benchmarks for Unreal/Doom type FPS as a lot of those use OpenGL and not DirectX.The suggestion to spend $60 on FSGS may be a good idea. Fluid flying with what you have until you can afford a full upgrade of CPU, mo/bo and graphics card.Rgds

I replaced my 9600 Pro 256 with a 9800 Pro 128 and it was a great improvement. FPS improved some, nothing spectacular, but the smoothness imoroved a lot, even high G turns close to the ground with demanding scenery were smooth. And as I kept increasing the load on the vid card things stayed smooth. The 9800 Pro is probably the best bargain in graphics cards at the moment.David

Thank you all very much.I do think there was a little confusion in a couple of replies as to what video card I currently have. I do have the 9800 pro which I used to replace an earlier nvidia card. I did get a few fps increase but the nice part of the video upgrade was the ability to go to 1600x1200 with a high anistropic setting and 4x AA. So even though the fps increase was minimal the ability to increase the quality settings sufficed for me with no loss in fluidity. Now my next goal is to be able to increase the FS quality settings i.e. weather, AI traffic etc. and still maintain a nice FPS fluid experience. I would love to buy the new ATI card and one of the newer MB's and processor but I can only do one at this time. So again I really appreciate the time for your replies and it looks like I will do the new ATI video card offering first and the MB later down the road once the processor prices drop a little. Just cant help it. Im addicted to this Sim.RegardsBob Ginn

Definately go with the video card- you will see a very marginal advantage from a 2.8 to a 3.4 and the cost will be significant. The X800 is the way to go. Again, you won't see a MONSTROUS improvement, but you will see an improvement over a new CPU. The top of the line CPU is what, $700? Plus motherboard, and RAM (don't know what you have there).Jaab, What do you mean when you keep referring to .dlls? Driver versions? A .dll is a dynamic-link-library. It's a code module that can be called by any program, hence "dynamic-link". They are only part of drivers. I use the newest drivers (45?) off the site, and get about the same performance- maybe a little better, but I prefer framerates over quality.* that wasn't a good explanation- .dlls can be device drivers, along with .exes and .vxds- but often there are many .dlls that make up a device driver.

BobSince you already have a decent system maybe you should just continue saving your money for a PCI Express mother board and vid card when they become available. This isn't the best time to invest in a super expensive card since the AGP bus will become obsolete.David