To replace Video Card or not?

[Bubblehead]

I have the opportunity to buy an ATI Radeon HD4890 for around $200.00. I wish to replace the existing ATI Radeon HD 3870. Will that make a significant improvement? I have an Antec 500W PSU and my rig includes a 2.2 Gig AMD Phenom Quad aboard an Asus M3A32-MVP DeLuxe mobo plus 3Gbytes of memory.

[Mazza]

I would go for a 4870, a 4890 is just a little faster, you can just overclock the 4870 and save some money

[NickN]

you would be better off on the 4890 as it has differences over the 4870 no clocking will fix

however I must advise that if you are looking for the best FSX performance, you would be better off on a Nvidia card.. the GTX 275 would run better in FSX than the 4890 and would not cost as much as the 285, and, would be a far better match for your hardware than the 285

But also, be advised.. FSX is about matching the processor and memory to the video card. Throwing any video adapter in the system and expecting huge results may be disappointing. You may have the right card but if the motherboard is an old PCIe 1.1 design (newer cards are PCIe 2.0 which your motherboard DOES support) and the processor/memory is not fast, then the result you get with that card will be limited by those support components.

Like everything else.. when you upgrade a video card you also must be sure the power supply can run that card with the rest of the system as well.. for the better cards and no clocking, that usually requires a minimum of 600-650watts

500watts is cutting it too close in my opinion. If it does run it will run that PSU hot

any of the mentioned cards will run FSX better than the 3870.. so the choice is yours


good luck

[Bubblehead]

I've read somewhere that my two HD3870 crossfired paired no better than a single card so I removed one. I don't know if I'm seeing things but it seemed that I get better performace with one vs the two. I ramped up my settings in the FSX and have encountered no problems and the overall graphic seemed to have improved. The only thing I did not change is the resolution (1280 x 860). Comments?

[NickN]

I've read somewhere that my two HD3870 crossfired paired no better than a single card so I removed one. I don't know if I'm seeing things but it seemed that I get better performace with one vs the two. I ramped up my settings in the FSX and have encountered no problems and the overall graphic seemed to have improved. The only thing I did not change is the resolution (1280 x 860). Comments?

No, you are not seeing things.. Crossfire and SLi are as useless as boobs on a bull to FSX and if the SLi or Crossfire driver is not very well developed you can see a reduction.

You are FAR better off on a single card with FSX than running 2.

SLi and Crossfire are awesome for games like Crysis and others that support GPU shader based games.. games like FSX are CPU bound and dual cards will not provide a better result.