Tha

 

Thanks Bert! I am looking at that. My current card Radeon 6750 draws about 90 watts. The best among those recommended above is the 660 drawing a reported 140 watts (HWCompare.com). Even the 560 draws more. The 570 is a hog, taking a reported 219 watts!. My power supply is 500W (reported by Gateway in their specs for the FX6860 UR20P. I'm running (3) hard drives. The 660 appears to draw 50 watts more than my current card.

 

I would get this 650Ti

 

It's cheap, quite a bit more powerful than your current 6750, it's nVidia so better in clouds for FSX and if your current PSU can handle a 6750, it should also handle this.

I would get this 650Ti

 

It's cheap, quite a bit more powerful than your current 6750, it's nVidia so better in clouds for FSX and if your current PSU can handle a 6750, it should also handle this.

 

Dazz,

I'm looking through the 650 TI's as I opened my case and found specifically my power supply is 450 watts with 500 peak watts. I should stay lower on power so I am following your suggestion. I read through some articles on video memory and performance benchmarks and it appears with 1920 X 1080 that 1048 is enough.

 

As I look through those available on Newegg and Amazon (I'm a Prime member) I have a question. What does SSC denote?

650 is only 1gig of ram would not be my choice, might want to rethink this power supplys are cheap enough just a thought.

650 is only 1gig of ram would not be my choice, might want to rethink this power supplys are cheap enough just a thought.

 

Humm. Check out this review:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-ram-4870,2428.html

 

I am looking at the 650 with 2048, but mulling it over after reading the article above. See what you think!

1 GB is fine... go for it!

What does SSC denote

 

Super Super Clocked. LOL

PCI Express 3.0 is the latest, my 680 is 3.0 but I have it installed in a 2.0 slot with no problems.

 

Well, there is the quote of the day for my issue. The specs I found for my system indicated PCI 2.0 so rather than take a chance I took my CPU (Gateway model FX6860, 1 year old) on an hour long ride over to the Tiger Direct store in sales tax free Dover, Delaware.

That's where I bought the system in the first place. The tech almost immediately told me his experience with my vintage FX6860 is that it will not work with a PCI 3.0 vid card. That store has sold about 100 FX6860's, and that model has migrated specs and even the standard video card over the past year. Most now come with a nVidia card. All of the 6xx GTX series they had were 3.0. We did some spec checks online and found the 6xx's all appear to be 3.0 so I'd need to fall back to a 5xx GTX. I checked what they had in stock and checked performance on hwcompare.com and the best choice for the money was the GTX 560 TI 2048. 170 watts! So I also upgraded my power supply to a temp and energy management 750 watt Corsair. There was free installation this weekend, so I got a great deal and didn't have to fret over swapping the power supply myself.

 

Got home and did my own "sweep" for AMD video drivers and registry strays, using two different sweepers. Cleaned those up, downloaded the latest GTX driver and rebooted. Loaded REX HD textures and started FSX. Butter smooth now in and around the clouds. All the issues I was having have vanished. I spend about two hours loading various REX cloud textures and restarting FSX and found nothing but highly gratifying smoothness. Thank all of you for the recommendations and the caveats. I wish I could have used a 660 TI, but the results with the 560 TI are nothing short of profound vs the Radeon. The opinions I read about the GTX line's superiority in handling clouds in FSX are not a myth.

Glad to see you're in business. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm fairly confident that PCI 3.0 video cards are backwards compatible with PCI 2.0 slots. My GTX 680 currently resides in a 2.0 slot and is working just fine.

 

I used to have a little trouble in max cloud settings (2048 res/max coverage). I dropped down to 1024 clouds in REX, which allows me to set cloud coverage to maximum at 80-90 miles without any performance hits now. Of course the clouds aren't as detailed but it gets the job done just fine for me.

 

Have fun with your new video card!

"but I'm fairly confident that PCI 3.0 video cards are backwards compatible with PCI 2.0 slots."

 

You are correct it would have worked fine.

"but I'm fairly confident that PCI 3.0 video cards are backwards compatible with PCI 2.0 slots."

 

Man! The two techs there not only didn't know that, they both insisted that a 2.0 card would be fine in a 3.0 slot, but that a 3.0 card should not be used in a 2.0 slot! They insisted strongly enough that I took the advice. At this point I am satisfied with what I got. It is a world better and my issues have vanished. I also saved almost 100 $$$.

A 3.0 capable card will work fine in a 2.0 slot but not be using all its capability - Glad you are happy now, enjoy.