A bit of advice needed

[beefhole]

Ok, I've been cut off from FS for months now.  When I first got my new computer, FS looked UGLY.  There was some serious visual problems with it, and I couldn't play it.  One day, I stumbled upon the exactly correct display settings, and everything was aok.  Sure, I wasn't getting kickass framerates waith my GeForce 5200, but it looked alright.  Well, a few months back, something was wrong with FS, so without thinking, I did the first thing you're supposed to do.  I deleted fs9.cfg.  And lost my visual settings (yes, I dug it up from the trash can and restored it-no good for some reason).

I tried reverting to my old drivers, I've tried tweaking every single setting available.  Nothing has worked, so I've been suffering in silence for a while.  Well, I'm not going to be doing that this summer.  I will try to get a new vid card by the end of the week.  My question is-is it safe to stay with Nvidia (say like a 6600 or something), or should I get rid of everything Nvidia and switch over to ATI (or other)?

[4_Series_Scania]

I'm more than happy with FS9 & My Nvidia 6800LE. - An absolute transformation from my old FX5600.

No doubt, an ATI owner will give you a similar tale.

For my money, Nvidia.

The 7800 Series launches in 6 days......  8)

[beefhole]

Well, I guess what I meant was would I be running the risk of having the same problem with graphics-the real risk here is that a new vid card doesn't solve the graphics problems and I'm in the hole $250 when I'm supposed to be playing paintball, buying games and flying (RL) all summer.  So I really wanted to be safe.

[4_Series_Scania]

Well, I guess what I meant was would I be running the risk of having the same problem with graphics-the real risk here is that a new vid card doesn't solve the graphics problems and I'm in the hole $250 when I'm supposed to be playing paintball, buying games and flying (RL) all summer.  So I really wanted to be safe.

What CPU / RAM etc do you currently have?

If its a Pentium 4 2.4 / AMD Athlon 2400+ or greater, and you have 512MB system RAM as a minimum, then the card will be a huge jump in perfromance of your current FX 5200 no doubt about it.

[beefhole]

Here's the thing about all this-I'm not necissarily looking for a perofrmance jump, I'm looking for a card that gives me consistent graphics.  The game world looks UGLY right now.  It didn't for a very long time, until I changed the settings again.  It's definitely either my vid card or the game-it's not any of my other comp specs (which are all good-the 5200 is the worst spec I have).  Whatever.  I think I'll just go for it.  Thanks