cvearl

nVidia in DX9 with 8xAA and 4xSGSS or even 2xSGSS is hard to beat! Same can be said for AMD 8xSSAA in FSX DX9.. In DX10 mode? 8xAA works with nVidia fine and it allows you to enable 2xSGSS for the gauges and exterior views. 8xAA works fine with AMD as well but with SS enabled (without SSAA, gauges and external views are crap) you sadly get the spikes forcing me to fall back to 4xAA. However, In DX9 mode I fly 8xSSAA all the time. Looks fantastic. Basically equal to 8xA+4xSGSS. 4xSSAA with AMD looks pretty good in P3D v2 (DX11). Even better than 4xSSAA in DX10 mode. If you are going to be full time DX10 from now on and NEED 8xAA with 4xSGSS, swap out to nVidia now. Spikes will not stop in DX10 fixer for me at 8x. If all I did was FSX and I was only ever going to fly the DX10 fixer mode? I would get a GTX780. Charles.

Also, the driver should be 13.11 BETA 9 version 5 http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx If your going to uninstall and reinstall a new driver with AMD follow this. http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/GPU57RemoveOldGraphicsDrivers.aspx This is my REX settings.

8xAA while enabling Super Sample in the driver (either through CCC or RP) gives me spikes eventually. As does does water over 2xLow and having the Water Shader enabled in the fixer. I recently have had a number of 2 - 3 hour flights without spikes. I have never had an OOM in FSX with AMD BTW. I am starting to think this is our kind of OOM of sorts. Not the same technical glitch but I guess both platforms have a cross to bear. I found these are my balance with the DX10 fixer. - Clouds at High density and 70 miles - AA at 4x and SS enabled in the driver - Cloud Shader disabled in the fixer - generally tweak free FSX.CFG (wideview and highmemfix only) - FSX set to unlimited fps - RP locked at 30 with vsync forced

You can go into CCC and push the AA method slider to Supersample. Not Multisample. That will sharpen transparent textures. The in game AA is only geometry. It is edges. SS or Super Sample is transparent textures like those in gauges and on paint schemes. If you enable SS, you will have to drop in game AA to 4X to keep performance where you want it. Charles. I'm waiting for new cards tht dont use the reference cooler. ATI needs to take a page from the book of nVidia and make a solid state cooler at release! Like the 700 series had. That is one sexay cooler! Instead of aiming for cheap cooler to keep the price way low at release. I mean common. GTX780 performance and released at $400. (R9 290). AMD should have added a $50 cooler at launch and temps and volume would be competative and still only $450. Better choice for AMD IMO. Charles.

The screenshots are dead. Where do you modify this? Charles.

Although I do not have an R9 290, I have, for all intents and purposes, an R9 280X (7970Ghz). As for why you are crashing? This should be simple and I hope it is one of these things... Questions... 1. DX10 mode or DX9? 2. What driver version? You SHOULD be using 13.11 Beta9. Not the one in the box that came with the card. http://www2.ati.com/drivers/beta/amd_catalyst_13.11_betav9.5.exe Drivers after the official 13.4 package do not work with FSX DX9. 13.9 and Beta 13.10 and 11 did not work until 13.11 Beta version 9. 3. Does RadeonPro support the new card? I have not checked into that. Would it work without RadeonPro? With RadeonPro... There are two things you can do to crash the driver. 1. Do NOT enable Tripple buffering for D3D. 2. Do not use RadeonPro for injection of SweetFX 3. In DX10 mode, do not enable SMAA. It will black screen the free flight page and the ingame screen if you active it via a hot key. Advice... If you have installed the shipping driver already, fully uninstall it as per these instructions and reboot before installing the new driver. Standard uninstall for AMD driver - http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/GPU57RemoveOldGraphicsDrivers.aspx#Win7 If the uninstall fails, go here... http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=444&threadid=162444&enterthread=y

Um is 2xSGSS not working?

The 780 is indeed a monster and I expect it is very Ultimate in FSX for accepting high levels of AA and big resolutions. I am waiting for the equivalent in ATI (the R9 290) to try out. My experience is that both brands are fairly equal in FSX now. Although in DX10 mode, Steve's Cloud Shader and setting water above Low2x was causing spikes. Disable Cloud Shader in the fixer and set water to 2xLow and no spikes. When your system can take it, I give nVidia the nod for AA in FSX. It is a hair sharper with 4xSGSS. It gets rid of all shimmers. If ATI 4xSSAA is 95% shimmer free, 4xSGSS is 99%. Let us know how it does over KJFK with a big thick layer of clouds. Max density, 90 miles radius, FSX sliders mostly maxed in a PMDG plane with 4xSGSS. Budget wise, the GTX780 starts at $519 whereas the 7970Ghz (R9 280X or GTX680) is a $299 card. There is a big gap for sure which is also the performance gap you would expect. You get what you paid for. The R9 290 will be allot more card than the 7970 was and is priced at only $399. Crappy stock cooler though. Waiting on the aftermarket boys to get this done right in another 2 weeks. MSI's and ASUS's version should be really cool. I will not be coughing up over $400 for a card anymore. I've been chasing that tail long enough. Grats on the new kit! Charles.

Confirmed. With ATI cards at least, you must disable Cloud Shader in DX10 Fixer and set water to low 2x. Both are the cause of the spikes with ATI. I have been flying with the Cloud Shader unchecked now for weeks with water at low 2x and not 1 spike anywhere and locked solid at 30 fps. Last flight was tonight in Overcast weather for 2 hours around PNW ORBX region scenery in the Carenado C340II and it was fine. Charles.

Clouds are fine now. Both in P3D and FSX with DX10 fixer. I can buzz through clouds locked at 30 no prob. To be honest at this point, FSX+DX10 fixer is just as good with performance as P3D it seems. I'm waiting for Global and Vector to install into P3D before I can do a good compare. What I CAN tell you is I tested the GPUMARK2 test (4 layers of 8x8 clouds) and I get the same fps in both P3D and FSX DX10 mode. About 26 fps. That is at 1980x1080x32 with 4xSSAA and 16xHQAF. Clouds set to MAX density and 80 miles. Charles.

I am happy with performance in this new platform. My test scenario is KSEA in a Payware plane using generally high settings. Only thing I leave off is cockpit and Autogen shadows. They eat fps. The following shots are locked at 30 most of the time around KSEA in overcast weather with about 15% AI traffic and cars. 4xSSAA (Supersample enabled in the driver and 4xMSAA set in game) Vsync enabled in P3D V2 works Happy about that. Occasional dips to 25 in the extreme overcast weather at Seattle in the Carenado C340II. I truly hope they kill the bugs because my ATI card (7970Ghz 3GB) is eating these clouds for breakfast and the AA is fairly decent and fps are smooooooth.

Well there you go. I thought it was an ATI card issue. I thought of it as a twinkle. But now I think your description is better. A crowd of photographers in the night at the airport. Flash bulbs going off all over the parking lot. It's the headlights of the parked cars. Fly all the way in and at a certain distance it will stop. I hope this can be fixed. Kind of kills night flights for me. Charles.

Just use the new 13.11 Beta 9.2 or stick with 13.4 Dont mix and match Catalyst and driver. Just use whatever is the full package you download. C.

Wish I could test this but I do not have 3 monitors. :(

NOTE: Driver 13.9 does not work with FSX DX9. Current 13.11 v9.2 BETA does or 13.4 WHQL In terms of performance, make sure you are not having core parking... http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=444&threadid=166968&enterthread=y NOTE: Driver 13.9 does not work with FSX DX9. Current 13.11 v9.2 BETA does or 13.4 WHQL In terms of clean wipe of AMD drivers and reinstall http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=444&threadid=162444&enterthread=y TIP - You might want to do this in safe mode. Also when you fully uninstall the drivers as described above, don't reboot right away. Say "no, I will reboot later". Then go into device manager and find the diplay driver. Right Click it and hit UNINSTALL and confirm to remove the files as well. Then reboot. Once back up... Go ahead and install 13.11 BETA 9.2 provided (as stated in the article) that your .NET 4.5 is installed correctly. Good luck. Charles.

Not me. I'm starting my Bachelor in something. Now what to take. Hmmm... let me see..... Hope I finish. Wish me luck. http://www.athabascau.ca/programs/undergraduate.php Hope it's cheap to enroll cause right about now, I'm yearning for some learning! C.

Fitty buks! Me too. Learnin bout flyin. C. I'm going to enroll in something at one of our Universities (might not get in but will try). In which case, do you swear to "learn" about aviation while you use this "simulator"? If so then....

Were any of the BETA testers using AMD cards? Previously stated on your website was that P3D was AMD Eyefinity Gold certified. Any issues with AMD on the new build? With a $400 card (R9 290) that matches or beats the GTX780 in DX11 arriving in the etailer channels by December 15th, it would be a really strong card for P3D being that it is an eyefinity monster and if V2.0 is in fact DX11 Driven and also "tested" on current AMD drivers for any small glitches, could be a go to card for this new platform. Charles.

Hmmm.... Wonder if a shader flush and FSX.CFG rebuild would have done it? I test a lot with add ons and DX10 fixer versions and things like that and from time to time things get out of jig. Then I wipe those two things and fire it up and like fresh again. Charles.

Super cool! C.

I agree that would be a crappy reply. To bad you got a bad agent replying to you. The rest of us got this (see 2 pages back)... #1) Marc@AMD has posted a message entitled Catalyst 13.11 Beta 8 still crashing in FSX. Fatal Error.. The following message was posted on: Friday November 01, 2013 09:27:35 AM One of my colleagues manages the Issue Reporting Forms. He was able to reproduce the issue, and get the issue off to the driver team. He commented on it being the #1 issue by volume from the reports. A fix is being worked on by the driver team. They never provide an ETA on fixes, unfortunately. ;Marc #2) RE: FSX- "I am pleased to inform you that AMD Driver Engineering is currently working on a solution which will be made available in an upcoming driver." #3) "You had submitted an AMD Issue Reporting Form on an issue you were experiencing with the AMD Catalyst 13.9 beta drivers. Your submission involved issues with certain legacy games – including but not limited to Microsoft Flight Simulator X and Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. Your feedback has helped and I am pleased to inform you that AMD Driver Engineering is currently working on a solution which will be made available in an upcoming driver. Once again, we thank you for your feedback which helps us improve the quality of our drivers." *BAM* 13.11 Beta 9.2 arrives and fixed it. But I agree with you. If you don't like CCC (Catalyst), nothing is going to change that for you personally. Go NVidia and you can be happy. I love Catalyst. Last few years, great Control Panel. IQ settings, Profiles and Overclocking all in one system. C.

Reason I ask is because I am pondering a TH2G and have the eyefinity option built in as do you. I have heard others say eyefinity is easier to enable and set up. That said. If you ever got to try it, let us know if it is better one way or the other! Would love to hear about it. The 7970 is all about eyefinity. Especially with a 3GB framebuffer. As for "spikes", I was on a longer flight last night in the Aerosoft Twin Otter Extended with Opus weather generating some heavy real world IFR weather. About 30 min in, I saw a small spike form on my right. Quickly went into settings and dropped the Cloud density to High (I always use 70 miles). It still looked roughly overcast weather but the spikes disappeared. Never saw another one. Had AI planes and cars and great. While I believe the driver did help, it's like Paul has said in the guide. Spikes are often a product of settings and I think I found my happy setting for IFR. Knock the clouds down a tick. Leave water at 2xLow and I will never see spikes ever again. Charles.

I am going to buy a GTX780 and an R9 290 (non-X) and review them in FSX. I can return either one within 2 weeks to my local store. I want to know how much difference there is if any. In DX9, AA is a hair sharper on NVidia when I tested 660Ti versus 7950 some months ago. But I really want to test them both in P3D v2.0. That's where pay dirt will be. That will matter to me above all else I think. Charles.

There is no auto update in Catalyst I can promise you that. There is an Auto update notification you can turn on and off. http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/amd_to_remove_auto_update_feature_from_catalyst_drivers.html but if you don't like Catalyst Control Panel, no worries. Tens of thousands use it without issues. But murphy's law. Someone comes along and has a problem. Any traffic a person sees on their network card from catalyst is from either of the following... #1. Having the Driver Update Notification enabled (not available anymore per the link above) and #2. The HOME page loads web content and that can be disabled. Understand that they won't fix a "released" WHQL driver for a known reported bug after the fact. It will be addressed in the next driver "had someone filled a problem report" to the driver team. The link is on the driver page. That's how we got 13.11 working with FSX again. 13.9 broke it. 13.10 BETA would not work. We complained and they fixed it by 13.11 Beta 9.2. That's how these things work. People have to tell them when something obscure stops working. No matter which brand, you can wait for answers depending on how obscure the issue is. Charles.

I really wish it has been that easy. I deleted and rebuilt many times. Flushed Shader Cache. No. The real issue was deeper. 13.9 would NOT work with DX9 FSX. 13.4 was fine. 13.5, 13.8. But then 13.9 splat. 13.11 all revisions crashed FSX up until the latest. It was acknowledged by AMD and fixed. It's in the notes of the BETA driver 13.11 BETA 9.2. Although they call it DX9 Legacy apps. It's working sweet now. First bump in the road for FSX and AMD I have seen in a few years. Back to good now. Charles.