Of course, never being satisfied with getting every inch of horse power out of my system, I downloaded the latest DNA Drivers for the Radeon 9800XT (ver 3.2.4.10) to test them out vs the latest Omega drivers.Tell you what...the combination of having Bilinear / Trilinear filtering off in the sim AND the latest DNA drivers allowed me to have the MOST FLUID, MOST visually STUNNING, flight I have EVER had in MSFS to date; let me preface that by saying I've had MSFS on my computer since the early 80's.Frame rates are higher than the Omega drivers by at least 4-6 FPS in heavy traffic detailed airports. I flew from KORD (simflyers), full of traffic and it was a dream on takeoff with the fluidity of motion and the smooth rotation into an overcast sky was unbelieveable. At cruise and always with lots of clouds out to 80miles with 80mile vis enabled, frame rates were between 32fps and >88fps both inside and outside views - with a.i. traffic buzzing around. Landing at Flytampa's Miami was just beyond STUNNING. Even with the airport full of American Airline aircraft, none of which are made for AI traffic - i.e. high detail PoSKY etc, frame rates never dipped below 12 fps, but with the fluidity on approach if I didn't know better I would have guessed double the frame rates I actually got! This is with current fog and low overcast skies at KMIA (with AS2004 enhanced overcast enabled) and landing at dusk as the sun posted a BRILLIANT display of colors. Peformance was stunning in the worse case MSFS scenario.Also, with 4x Temoral AA, and everything else turned up to quality, the visual feast was simply stunning...I just can't say enough!RUN, don't walk and download those DNA drivers at:http://www.dna-drivers.nlDisclaimer: This post is directed to 9800 owners with HIGH END SYSTEMS ONLY!!!! By high-end I mean P3.0 or AMD64 3000+ and above. I do not know what the performance or visual increase will be on lower systems, but I would imagine that it is at least worth a try.ALSO, MAKE SURE you clean ALL previous Radeon drivers from your system or you will have big issues. Use "Driver Cleaner" or the similar utility that comes with the latest RADEON drivers.Enjoy,Mike T.

I have this set of drivers also, and I am pretty happy with them. My picture quality is a little more clear and I have noticed the sim is a little more fluid. I have not noticed any ill effects so far.

Omega or DNA, trlinear or none-linear, 4x Temporal AA or 4x AA, etc . - all are fine with me. None offers meaningful performance, smoothness or image quality difference. If there is any difference -I would probably need a lot more effort to find one. Actually - while trying different permutations of different settings I noticed I picked up a few fps when I turned off "Wait for Vert. Sync.". But the price is a slightly shifting ground when you turn.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2

Hmm.... I actually get that kind of performance at FT Miami now... I think I'll wait around to hear more about this driver first.

Ah the search for the Holy Grail of tweaks. The one tweak, driver or fs9.cfg setting that Microsoft, ATI, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Asus, Epox, and every single other hardware company and software developer overlooked or missed in their hundreds, thousands of hours of programming, beta testing and improving their products. The one driver, dll file, registry key or fs9.cfg modification that will suddenly make our systems perform twice as good as before and save us hundreds of dollars worth of hardware upgrades. ;)

No need to start mocking here. As this is well possible if you got the knowledge. The guys from FSGS proove it every day. Because MS, ATI, AMD and all the other guys have to take into account that the computer is used for a lot of things other than flight simming and are forced to compromise in many ways. You however can max out your machine for only one purpose if you want to do so....flightsimming.When I first installed FS9 on my machine it was almost unplayable with my setup. Now after hours, or better days, month of tweaking it performs perfectly. Without any hardware upgrades. In fact I doubt that I could have reached the level of performance with a hardware upgrade of a few hundred dollars alone if I hadn't performed the tweaks.I agree though that many of the tweaks are ill advised and are sometimes specific to one system and don't help with others.Alex

Heheh...well said Jimmi, and I agree 100%. I just can't help but think that sometimes when people report an increase in whatever, it's as much a wish on their part that it will improve their fs, but in fact it remains the same. I mean how can you tell if the sim runs more smooth, unless of course it's a stuttering hell to begin with. It's such a subjective thing and very hard to measure. The same goes for FPS, this on the other hand is easy to measure, but no one ever reprts them, or do a comparison from before the new tweak....well, I've said enough, but let me just add. If you think your sim runs better good for you, plus that's what really counts in the end.

"he guys from FSGS proove it every day."I remember a very informative post from an experienced computer user who tried their service. As expect, the service was not of much use since his system was already configured optimally. So yes, FSGS can help, but only if there's something wrong to begin with. It's the same withh all tweaks and driver changes really. If you suddenly notice a dramatic increase from changing something, it most likely means something was amiss to begin with.I did try these DNA drivers today. As expected, there was little benefit over the normal drivers. The Catalyst driver is written, configured and compiled by skilled software engineers. How could some teenager at home "hack" those drivers, add "DNA", "Omega", "Power", "Voodoo" or whatever other tag to them, mix and match dll files and change registry keys and expect them to perform *better*? The may be able to enable some experiemntal features or improvements that ATI didn't feel were ready for release yet but overall the improvement is mariginal. One thing I noticed was that FS reset all graphics settings because of the changed ID and identifier of the display driver. This meant that FS initially started up at 800x600 with pretty much default settings. This would have the effect of purging a maladjusted FS9 setup and could explain any performance improvement noticed. Once I restored my preferd settings I got about 25-30 FPS over the clouds using the Major Thunderstorm theme at 1280x1024, 4x/16X on my 9700 Pro.

>was not of much use since his system was already configured>optimally. Or in other words tweaked. I rest my case.Alex

Tweaking refers to the act of randomly changing FS9.cfg varaiables and system settings to insane values then convincing yourself that you're seeing an improvement.That's not what FSGS do. They go through the system bit by bit with the user and make sure everything is set up correctly for the best performance. They do not advertise the kind of tweaks that are most common here (ie. hacked drivers, changing this or that fs9.cfg setting from 20 to 2394,34283 etc.).

Ok Jimmi,I guess we are on the same page. It is just a matter of definition. I would still refer to what FSGS do as tweaking a system. For me tweaking is nothing else than fine tuning a system to optimally serve its purpose. And if that purpose is running FS as best as it can the "tweaks" will look differently as they would for desktop publishing. BTW I am happy with my original ATI drivers and have yet to find an insane value in my FS9.cfg :-).Alex

Dudes:You know what; I was reporting what I found to work with my system which is already top of the line; but figured I'd share a POSITIVE experience that is documented to be so.It is just as easy for me to help MYSELF and not concern myself with the rest of the community, I thought that I was being kind by contributing my findings....it appears I was wrong.So, with that said, I will keep my findings to myself, and you guys can keep your "glass is half empty", cynicism to YOURSELVES. It seems that too many here thrive on, or are addicted to, chaos. :-rollNuff said.Mike T.

Mike,Yeah, just makes you shake your head in wonder and ask yourself why you even bothered. Fortunately, not all in this hobby are that way.Hey, there is still you and me? LOLClaywww.dreamfleet2000.com/Previews/727/preview_home.html|http://www.dreamfleet2000.com/gfx/images/Forum_Banners/Dopke01.jpgClayton T. Dopke (Clay)Major, USAF (retired)"Drac"

My flight sim is a lot better with these drivers.Thanks very letting me know about them.:)

Guys, you really should know that the DNA drivers are seriously nothing more than the Omega's with someone else's moniker slapped on them. This has been heavily documented over at the www.driverheaven.com forums, where the Omega's originate from. Mike, I'm not sure how you got an FPS boost from them, but someone at the DH forums did a detailed analysis of them vs. Omegas and found them to have the exact same .inf file with the name changed, but the exact same tweaks copied byte for byte out of Omegas.To the person who called these drivers the work of a teenage "hack." I assure you they're not. Omega's work is officialy sanctioned by ATI, he's a longtime member of their Catalyst test team, and he truly does know the drivers inside out. Some of his tweaks have been incorporated into the official drivers over the time he's been making them too. The latest version has a ton of stuff you can't get in the regular ATI driver - he enabled Catalyst AI without use of the CCC app, which is a memory hog, Radlinker is integrated into the installer and allows you to set per application 3D settings that apply when the game runs without any need to execute profiles like CCC. Also has easy overclocking built in, and an awesome uninstall proceedure that fully rids the PC of any trace of the drivers before installing a new set. The drivers have a proven performance and image quality benefit over the normal ATI ones, and the level of control you have over the settings is awesome and much simplified over the CCC app.