Thinking of upgrading to a 5850 when availible...

Anyone else getting good results with the 9.9's???

Ok, my thoughts. I wish I could agree with the original poster, but I can't.

This may sound like a rant, but its not. These are my opinions only and I am sharing them because they are on topic, and I would like to advise anyone considering a purchase of a video card for use with FSX.

I have been an ATI Booster since I got rid of my 3dfx Voodoo 3 card and got an Radeon 7000, and I have bought "a card a year" from them since then, but the one I have now will be the last, and its days are numbered.

First, a little about my current system. Its an Intel Quad CPU @2.66Ghz w/8 gigs of RAM. Its running and ATI 4650 w/1 gig on the card. The O/S is Vista 64 bit. The system was professionally built for me.

Heres the thing. Red Orchestra? Awesome - looks and plays great at crazy resolutions and frame rates. All of my NFS and other road games? Fantastic. Legacy games, like Janes WWII and Panzer Elite? Great, just great.

However, and its a big however; volumetric clouds in IL2? Nope. Detailed clouds in FSX? No way. Period. In both cases, I can turn clouds off, turn everything else up to max, fill the terrain with all kinds of stuff, and its great, with very high frame rates, but, turn on the clouds, and its over. With the clouds on, even if I turn the rest of the stuff down, my frame rates are in the teens at best.

Others I know with similar rigs and Nvidia cards are simply not having this problem. A trouble ticket to AMD gets the response that, to get to the point, FSX is no longer in production and so although they have heard the reports of these problems, they are not going to re-engineer their drivers to fix them. Thats their decision, and I'm going to make mine.

So, do some hunting on the forums on this issue, I have, and I am done with ATI/AMD.

The original poster sees a huge difference between the previous drivers and the 9.9s, I see no difference whatsoever. It is not a "phantom problem" it is a known issue, and I doubt very strongly it is going to get fixed.

I only wish I had done this research before I spec'd my rig - I could have saved myself a lot of grief and frustration.

My 2 cents....

OK, my second edit. Writing all this down made me pull the plug, and go Nvidia. While I am awaiting my free cookie, I have to tell you I really cannot believe the difference, and NO tweaking required. Wow - I really had no idea.

Anyways, I took my old card and THREW IT TO THE GROUND! Welcome to the real world, ATI!

Tab

edited to correct card type, I said 4600, its actually a 4650..

edited a second time to express my delight.