I'd just like to say thank you to the good folks at ATI for finally releasing a driver I can get behind.

For months now, I've dealt with the phantom 'cloud FPS hit' from my HD 4850, which pissed me off mightily. FSX with an nVidia card just looks like crud to me, mainly because the color pallette is all wrong. nVidia's looks like a Ted Turner-colorized film where ATI's just looks...real.

So, finally, I downloaded the latest 9.9 driver this afternoon after a complete reformat of my machine and HOLY CRAP THIS LOOKS GREAT and I can now fly through weather without dipping into the single digits.

So, great work by ATI and the Catalyst team. Be sure to download the driver only because the CCC just gets slower with age.

pfunk

I wish my HD 4870 would perform better in clouds. I am running 9.9 too, are you using DX9 or DX10? I am also using REX 2.0 & wish I could get frames to improve, since its has been so cloudy around our parts these days, love to fly with "current" weather.....

SlackAdjuster

I've got DX10 turned off. It doesn't look all that much better.

I'm using stock weather conditions and I'm testing a flight from Meacham to Bergstrom.

Flying in the kind of weather we have right now used to put me in single digits. In cockpit, I was getting about 15-18 fps.

pfunk

Is the FPS gain with Clouds confirmed by others as well with these new Drivers on the 4800 Series Cards?

I'd like to get some confirmation before I switch drivers yet again.

This was the reason for me to lose my faith in the combination of an ATI video card and FSX. Traded my 4850 in for a 9800GTX+ then. Both cards are besically equal, but the NVidia one didn't display any frame rate hits at all when in heavy weather.

Glad to hear that ATI has apparently finally fixed that problem though.

Yet, I still think a NVidia card is the better partner for FSX.

I obtained a significant improvement in frame rates when I switched to nHancer and Nick's detailed instructions on settings for that and in the sim.

NickN's Windows and FSX setup tutorials are essential reads anyways. They excellently cover all the tweaking possibilities.

Unfortunately "NHancer" does nothing for us ATI owners...

But ATI Tray Tools does.

Yes it does! Ray's utility is in many users' opinion much superior to ATI's own card setting utility, and choose not to install it. On my other computer with an TI card, Tray Tools provides great access to all the settings most people would want to tweak, in an very economical environment.
(being free is also a plus!)