my weekend mini upgrade comments

[clayton4115 56]

well as stated earlier in the thread a few days ago, i was upgrading my system as below, i decided to buy a Leadtek Gforce 6600GT 128 meg card and 512 meg of 2700 Kingston ram,i have to say in the PMDG 800/900 VC i see ZERO difference, what a HUGE disappointment!the only improvement is everything loads faster with the added 512 ram.I guess i will need to upgrade my CPU to see any improvements in the VC, but for now i am flying the 737 800 2D panel only. I'm so disappointed with PMDG it is truely a SLIDE SHOW in the VC on their 800/900 AC.the other thing is i ran 3Dmark 2001SE and i got exactly the same points with this card and the Asus GForce ti4200! Amazing!

[flyerboy 114]

helloremember to uninstall you old drivers, reboot the computer, then install newer drivers. You SHOULD notice a difference in not only the visual quality, but gain a couple of extra frames.

[clayton4115 56]

Yes i did do that and noticed marginal improvement away from highly detailed airports and in the air, however doing a test on the 737 900 VC at Seattle on takeoff roll is a slide show!

[Guest]

On a PIV-2.4 I get performance improvements when running at 1600x1200, not when running at 1280x1024 or lower.At all resolutions the clarity of the textures is quite an improvement, especially gauge clarity.Things I could not read without zooming in close are now clear.

[clayton4115 56]

funny you mention that cause i find the clarity the best in 1024 x 1280 but i will try 1600 x 1200, but i wont hold my breathe.

[Guest vas_yan]

I bought the exact same card for my AthlonXP 2400+ yesterday. It is true that the performance gain is not something to shout about in very stressful conditions. Having said that, the card might just make the difference between playable and unplayable sometimes. It is the difference between say 10-12 FPS on a certain location with my old 4200, and 13-15 with the 6600GT. The above holds true for complex planes in complex sceneries and weather. Flying less complex planes, such as the Marchetti, out of small airports, one can crank it all the way to 8AF 4AA and really enjoy the flight whereas with the 4200 there was much more stuttering, low framerate etc.P.S. Just for fun I tried NFSU II, which is not normally my cup o' tea, with every single detail turned on. It made me go... :( Regards,

[Vulcan 14]

You have discovered what many of us have Clayton, FS9 needs CPU power more than video power with the caveat that you need a blanced system.At least when you upgrade the rest of the system your video card should be OK :-)

[Guest vas_yan]

This is so true...I remember when the 4200 went in on my old duron 850, 2 1/2 years ago, I almost felt like crying.Regards,

[Guest]

I've twice now replaced/upgraded a videocard for no performance gain.Of course after the first time I later replaced my CPU and mobo which didn't give a performance gain either as that was at about the same time I installed FS2004 :) and I'm planning to upgrade my CPU later this year. You guess it, around the time another version of FS is expected :-lolBut as I get the performance I want it doesn't matter... Each time it does look better which is what really counts.

[Guest vas_yan]

I have my Athlon on a 4 yr old Socket A m/b. I knew from the start that the 6600GT alone would not do very much for my setup, but I bought it because it offers excellent value for the little money I could spend at this stage (apparently it performs better than the 9800s and the 5900s and is fully DX9c compliant).If I had more money and more time I would probably change the m/b CPU combo to a very nice 939 A64... The only thing is now that I bought the AGP card I am almost forced to find the time and money to go for the new combo, because soon there won't be an m/b with an AGP port which means that I will also have to buy another graphics card...Tough life... :-roll

[clayton4115 56]

Well i will probably upgrade in another 6-12 months, hopefully there will still be AGP mobos around, perhaps alot cheaper than todays prices.

[Guest]

There should be. Mobos last several years in production (with some mods along the way of course). You could also get the mobo earlier than you envisioned and store it for a few months. Picking up one with PCI-E and AGP both would be a good bet in that case, leaving you room to replace your current AGP card with a PCI-E card at some point without getting a new mobo again.Having had 2 videocards blow up on me in 5 years time, the only things I ever lost that weren't due to outside influences..., I'd have to say having an option to easily replace them is paramount.

[Guest CYYJ1968]

I noticed a huge improvement moving from an Athlon XP 2400+ with 1.5GB DDR to an AMD 64 3500 with 1.0 GB DDR. Same video card in both, 9800 Pro w/ 128MB. Like many flight sims, FS2004 appears to be primarily CPU bound, so the biggest bang for your upgrade buck will be found in upgrading the CPU.

[Guest]

It's not so clearcut. I DO see an improvement with the new card, it just depends on the aircraft.With the Mustang there's little change (except everything looks more crisp), with the Clipper framerats are some 40% higher...At some point upgrading CPU without upgrading videocard won't help you either.I went from a 1.6 to a 2.4GHz PIV and got no performance increase at all until I also upgraded my videocard. The card and CPU had been pretty well matched for the 1.6GHz CPU but with the 2.4GHz the card simply couldn't keep up.Same with upgrading video without CPU.Putting a GF6800GT in a machine featuring a 1GHz CPU won't help, but putting a 3.5GHz CPU in a machine with a GF2 won't help either.

[Guest RsZ]

Well i got XP 2400+,512 Ram,R9550(400/500!) and after a years i just want to say that the system requirements of almost all these superb addons are JOKE (including FS itself:).Man if they are saing that you need 1.8ghz for best performance it means "buy PIV 3.0ghz or better".It's all because of the money as usual.Anyway i can live with that thing and now im not expecting much flying at Simflyers airports with PMDG VC:).