New video card breathes new life into FS9

[John_Cillis 2,406]

During the past week I replaced my old Nvidia 9500 GT with an Nvidia 650 GTX. I divide my time between FSX and FS9, but most of my time is spent with FSX. That said, I wanted to see how FS9 was with the new video card. What I found was wonderful--I can fly at max resolution, with 32x AA, and FS9 seems like a motion picture. The new video card seemed to improve FS9 more than it improved FSX, although an improvement was noticed in both sims. Not in fps, but in smoothness, sharpness and detail. I flew out of Sky Harbor, which is saturated with AI, and I felt like I was watching a video.

 

I'm happy that FS9 still pleases after all these years. I think I'll be flying it more with the new video card. Today I logged two and a half hours in FS9 (and logged seven hours in FSX). All in all, a great day for enjoying both sims.

 

John

[WingZ 547]

Always nice to see your hard-earned dollars producing a result!

My Core2Duo was built as an FSX machine, and when it failed miserably, I reloaded FS9 and never looked back.

This isn't meant to trigger one of THOSE discussions, however!

 

The machine munched FS9; as you point out, the smoothness is the thing...

I never thought FS9 would get to the point where it would need more computing power, but a year or 2 ago, the video card fried itself and I dropped in a GTS250.

Wow I thought, THAT was worth doing!

 

And the other day, loaded with Active Sky at its most venomous, I saw my fully-loaded FS9.5 sag down to 12 fps at a heavily populated major airport.

 

Can it be, that there is one more computer upgrade left in this sim, almost 10 years on?

[dogtrack 18]

Running a 580 on rig with both Sims....40+ in fsx, 200+ in fs9. REX in both cases plus Photoscenery & Landclass.

[BillCusick 75]

I'm happy that FS9 still pleases after all these years. I think I'll be flying it more with the new video card. Today I logged two and a half hours in FS9 (and logged seven hours in FSX). All in all, a great day for enjoying both sims.

 

John

 

I have just splashed out on a Thrustmaster T1600M for the AirbusX Extended, so thought I'd try the F16 and the Iris freeware Harrier that I have installed in FS9.

 

I usually fly the heavies in FSX, but hey - I'm having a ball with these two aircraft in FS9.

 

The fluid motion is fantastic. Wish I could get the afterburner FX working with the throttle in my FSX copy of the F16 though. FS9 loads very much faster also...

 

I also wish I could get my brain working properly - got so used to hitting F9 - F12 in FSX, I get fed up wondering why FSNav comes up.....I get confused...I agree - feels like a new sim.

 

Regards

Bill

[edetroit 933]

 

Can it be, that there is one more computer upgrade left in this sim, almost 10 years on?

 

My thoughts exactly..... I am feeling there is. :Cuppa:

[Roger Ramjet 71]

Interesting. I've been sitting on the fence for a a while now thinking about replacing my 9800GT 512MB with something with a little more memory. Glad you're happy with the results and you've given me more food for thought.

[flaminghotsauce 1]

Interesting. I've been sitting on the fence for a a while now thinking about replacing my 9800GT 512MB with something with a little more memory. Glad you're happy with the results and you've given me more food for thought.

 

That is exactly the card I'm running. While I'm able to max every setting in FS9, FSX is another beast altogether. I'm curious how much better FS9 will look with maxed settings with a new video card???

 

ACtually, I'm waiting for a few household expenses to go by before I either buy or build an entirely new machine. I want to get a BIG video card so I can also fly my Xplane. I need more Video ram to get out of the perpetual foggy weather on that sim. I'm hoping 2 gigs of Vram will do it.

[PittsS2B 33]

I upgraded to an all-new PC last October, and the effect on FS9 was amazing. I have FSX, but only dabble with it as FS9 is so smooth and clear (almost no blurries!) that it's just a joy to fly now. I can fly into LatinVFR's Miami airport with the photoreal scenery at a constant locked 30 fps with the new computer, whereas the old E8500/GTX 260 would slow down to 10 fps at times in that area. It's really a relief to leave the FPS counter off and just fly the sim now, in any location and AI setting I care to use.

 

So FS9 can definitely benefit from one more hardware upgrade!

[Chase 303]

<strong class='bbc'>This is an automatic message.</strong><br /><br />This topic has been moved from "The FS2004 (FS9) Forum" to "Monitors, Video Cards and Drivers". This move has been done for a number of possible reasons.<ul class='bbc'><br /><li>The most likely reason is that the post was off topic.<br /></li><li>The topic could also have contained images or a video that were not appropriate to the original forum it was posted in.<br /></li><li>The images might not have been "illustrative" or "explanatory" in nature.<br /></li><li>The topic could have been moved because we deemed it to be more appropriately placed elsewhere.<br /></li></ul><br />Please ensure that your posts are "on topic" and contain illustrative images or videos as appropriate. Do not post videos or images just for entertainment purposes anywhere but in the screen shot or video forums.<br /><br />Members who continue to post off topic posts can be denied entry to specific forums in order to reduce and remove the practice. Your cooperation is appreciated.

[paulthorn 0]

Although so many people say that the CPU is most important in running FS9 or FSX, I have always noticed that the bigger and more powerful the video card, the better the frame rate. I speak from about 27 years experience of running MSFS.I now run FSX and FS9 on a Intel i7-3820 CPU @ 3.60GHz using a nvidia GTX 660Ti card. Both run fine with just about everything maxed out, however when I went to a 3 monitor setup, FS9 only loses a few FPS with all three windows operating. However my big disappointment is that FSX with 3 windows kills the frame rate, so I'm assuming FSX is more dependant on CPU than FS9. Even cutting way back on the sliders did'nt really help. Only problem I run into with the 660Ti card is that with three monitors up and running in FS9, the GPU temperture will go into the red unless I turn all fans up to max, then it it runs about 104F just in the green zone. 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                      Paul

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Although this is an old thread, I do feel that video cards still have a positive impact on FSX.  When I went to my latest video card, FSX's performance improved markedly--maybe not faster fps, but certainly smoother with the photoreal scenery I run against it.  Then, I added a more powerful power supply (went from 400 to 500W), and the new power supply made things even better.  Also, FSX became more stable.  I went from having one g3d.dll crash a week (which I guess is good) to one crash a month.  So a good video card must have a strong power supply--it's a must.

 

John