I have been doing some research on upgrading my rig and have heard that ATI does not perform will with FSX in comparison to a NV card. I was curious about this.....are their specific aspects of the FSX graphics engine that causes it to choke (if I turn off light bloom gets better...etc).

Any insight is appreciated. I spend a good deal of my time in FSX and want to know if I should scratch the possibility of an ATI card from the list.

Thanks,

BT

I have a stock ATI HD4870 with the latest drivers.

I installed Windows 7 HP 64bit a day or two after it came out. First game I reinstalled was FSX (though it is not the one I play the most). I tried patched FSX with nearly all the terrain and others maxxed. I probably didn't turn on AA because I rarely do. Everything seemed to work in less than 30 minutes of flying.

Then I loaded up all the FS Genesis world terrain (higher detail to 10m in the area I like to fly but no new textures). Everything worked still near max.

Then I loaded up UTX USA Version 1.3 roads and streams (and textures and more) and turned them all on. All was well image wise, EXCEPT when taking off from my airport, the 1.5 mile long runway had texture flickers here and there (say roughly 1 percent of the area). Don't know what to blame that on -- with all the stuff installed.

With roads and streams all the stuff running, the frame rate was no longer smooth at virtually max settings. I did not pursue it. I went on to loading other games. I'm playing Dragon Age now -- its brand new. So, that's all I know regarding FSX.

Of course, I did not try all the same things with Nvidia. So, I don't know if an Nvidia card would have done any better.

Well that tears it. I've been agonizing over which vid card to order with my new Digital Storm rig but not anymore. FSX is a must have for me, so I'll be getting an Nvidia card now for sure.

Well, although I'm a huge proponent of ATI GPU's, FSX just doesn't play nice w/ current ATI video cards. I don't get any of the performance related problems related to clouds that some people are reporting, but I do get crazy autogen corruption that I've yet to rectify...

Makes me glad I'm still on FS9, which seems to run without artifacts.

But on the other hand it's awful to hear that upgrading to FSX might be a bad option for my new ATI card. Can't they sort out their drivers, I mean seriously... Nvidia has none of these problems.

Are Nvidia cards working better with all the stuff I have and all my settings? My setup isn't "vanilla" -- its virtually the 7 course "gourmet meal" of FSX.

To be clear, the stock FSX runs fine at near max settings -- both visually and frame rate.

Having said that, one should get the card they are comfortable with

Well, so far I have two games that don't do Vsync with ATI (which would be a very major problem if not for the nifty little 3doverrider tool, which in turn seems to introduce the occasional crash...)

I have one game (Stalker) that refuses to do FSAA in DX9, where Nvidia did, so I'm wasting performance on a DX10 mode without any additional effects just to get FSAA.

There's also the question of flat panel scaling, which worked perfectly with Nvidia, a bit iffy on ATI.

And now here are two people reporting artifacts in FSX on ATI.

I'm seriously trying to become comfortable with the software and hardware, but none of these games have any issues with Nvidia, and their drivers give much better more convenient control.

There's no arguing that ATI currently has the better hardware, and Nvidia lost me for being unwilling to sell their stuff at the time I wanted it. But it would be nice if ATI gets their W7 drivers sorted and pulls ahead also in the software side. After my initial experiences here, I personally could not recommend ATI to someone if he can get an equal value and performance Nvidia card. Which I couldn't so for now I accept my HD4890 as a given, but I'm less clear if the next upgrade will indeed be a 5870 - thankfully the Intel chipset doesn't prefer either.

I speculate that its not Nvidia drivers, per se.

Rather, its that developers use Nvidia cards for development (and Intel processors) -- usually under the TWIMTBP banner. Naturally, the developer fixes things they see as they go along in the development process. And, under TWIMTBP, Nvidia engineers test the game on many different Nvidia systems during development. Since they don't use ATI (or only use it in a cursory way), they don't see ATI issues. Some issues may be so buried in the original game code that ATI can't do anything about them after the fact.

The small number of games that were developed on ATI hardware ran much much better on ATI hardware than Nvidia (e.g. Half Life 2 and Call of Juarez DX10 come to mind -- both games I played).

Still, its reasonable as a consumer to be concerned only with the "final outcome" -- so the reasons why are less important than the "final outcome"

PS I remember an interview with two Nvidia engineers a couple years back. They said essentially the same thing. They said TWIMTBP gave them inside knowledge of the games which almost always lead to driver mods that gave them a few FPS over ATI in those games. Again, when ATI was helping the developer, the ATI setup had the advantage.

It's funny though when a TWIMTBP title like Arma2 ends up running faster on ATI hardware.

What makes me a bit pessimistic here is that none of the titles with problems are new titles. It's clear that NVidia with their system gets a head start on many games, but after a year you'd think ATI has picked up all major bugs in the newest Catalyst. I found a discussion on the Vsnyc not working in FSX, with an ATI response that FSX was not officially supported by M$ anymore and thus would not see fixes from ATI.

Generally speaking it runs well enough for me, but it's a shame that with such a clear hardware advantage there remains the caveat of driver quality. Although it still beats a card you can't buy (Nvidia).

Thanks everyone, in particular Colonel and Allen.

I have been struggling with what do do with regards to my current system and doing a whole bunch of research. I have bounced all over the place between a x58 system with an I7 to the new I5 1156's and then the phenom II 965 and finally just trying to breath some more life into my existing system (E6850 2.66, 8800 GT 512 MB, 6 GB DDR2, Vista 64.

Based on input here and a fantastic article over at Toms Hardware on a balanced system, I decided to fore-go future proofing at this time and just breath some more life into my system and re-evaluate it again next year (kids will be out of daycare!).

I decided to go with an E8500 3.17 (20% processor improvement) and a NV 260 GTX 216 (80% graphic improvement) for under $400 USD. The article over at Toms showed that at my resolution 1680x1050 that most of the games have very playable FPS (40+) with this configuration.

I figured this extra time will give the ATI 5 series more time to mature , NV 300 series may come out, the intel 1156 line will mature more and perhaps offer more clock options.

Thanks everyone for their help

Well, if you could swing a GTX275, that is the best price for value in Nvidia IMHO - it has more shaders than the 260, reaches almost the performance of the 285, but at a third the price. At higher resolution like you use, shaders to play a part - but that also depends on your games.

The 260 isn't a bad card either, it's just the "budget one" of the current NV gaming lineup.

400USD for an overhaul certainly sound reasonable.