New graphics card... Yippe!

[Saitek]

Well we broke the bank and went to PC World and gutted for cash for a long time - so please don't go telling me I got a rubbish card and I should have got XXX etc...

Well to get to the point it is an ATI Abit Radeon 9550 128mb Guru (AGP). But the really weird thing is it is registering as a Radeon 9600XTurbo on the computer. We have done no overclocking yet. So I just wanted a possible explanation for that. It works beautiful really and I am getting triple the frame rates I had before at about 30fps on full graphics. Turn them down a bit and wow! I was getting them up to 50! They were stable too instead of jumping aorund!

On top of the Radeon 9550/Radeon 9600 question, can anyone know how to get rid of a grainy/bitty texture that I have. There are loads of settings, if need-be I can take screenies.

Cheers,

Ben

[Gixer]

Glad to hear your sorted mate!

I was trying to source my brothers old FX5600 for yas until u got a card, but the stingey git was tryin to get money outt me lol.

Now to get rid of the sparkly textures go to the 'Harware' tab in the graphics options in the game and turn 'Mip mapping quality' on to 4 maximum.  Max the other two sliders on that page and ensure 'Render to Texture' and 'Transform and Lighting' are ticked.  Set the filtering to Tri-Linear.

As for res if your monitor will do it 1280x1024x32 I reckon on your system.

I dont think the card you have is too bad mate, way better than what was in there.  I have no idea why its coming up as a 9600XTurbo though, maybe due to the BIOS thats used on the g-card??

[Saitek]

Yeah I have the monitor settings as that, but the card insists is is a Radeon 9600XT. It has a turbo option and there is a red light on it to show that it is on turbo mode. The box is clearly a R9550 Guru and the badge on the box is ATI Radeon 9550.
It works reasonable - no lock ups and crazy crashes etc... wonderful frame rates, but I tried the setting you said and it still didn't give the sort of graphics one would expect. The other settings are all maxed out. (Taxiway was different shades in places and ground texture doesn't seem so complex as the old card). We're going to try a new driver, but is there anything on the card properties that should be altered?

Cheers,

Ben

[Gixer]

I am not up to speed on what can be altered via the ATI control panel.

I know the following two can be though:

Ideally you want to set 4x Anti-alias and 8x Anistropic-Filrting.  The anti-alias will smooth stuff out and the Anistropic-filtering will add depth (Kinda like more detail which sounds like what your missing)

If you get a drastic drop in FPS set Anti-Alias to 2x it wont be as smooth but should run better.

[Delta_]

Basically i recommend you use 6xTAA in FS9 and you can use 16xAF if you want but 8x is adequate.  The benefit of TAA is you get AA like 6xAA quality but at 2xAA FPS hit.  Put overdrive on.

Make sure AF is in quality mode.
Texture Preference: High quality
V-sync is off on mine, but i believe TAA turns it on even if you have it set it off, but the FPS hit is pretty much none, so don't worry about that.
Truform: Always off, not that many games support it, all it does is render more pixels on corners etc... which looks amazing if the program can utilise it.

[Saitek]

Thanks very much Hi-D! That is just what I wanted - problems all cured!

Thanks Gixer again. Even on the sim itself though the card is registering as a R9600XT. Oh well. lol Seeing as it is working all fine though I'm content.

Ben