Graphics Cards

[ducktape]

just wondering what kind of cards everyone has and if the game runs smoothly on it. i have a ATI Radeaon 9250 PCI card and its ok and im thinking about upgrading. just need some suggestions.

[alrot]

Welcome

This is a though question, Depends what are the rest of your system spec, In my case I don't have any complaint at all
I just bought three weeks ago this XFX Nvidia 6200 AGP runs very well ,I recomend you to Buy a DirectX 10 compatible video card like Nvidia 8800 ,but I assume must be expensive,see thats why depends of how much you want to spend though..

[Daube]

Yes, basically for FSX, you need a card wich has a LOT of memory on it. 256 Mb are far from being enough, and I guess 512 is still quite limited.
Of course, with the tweaks and the reduced autogen textures packs available for download here, you can get FSX to run quite well on a 256 Mb video card, but in that way you loose a lot of graphic quality.

If you are to upgrade your hardware, just wait a month or two. ATI is supposed to issue their first DX10 card at the end of March, and NVidia has issued their DX10 8800 card one month ago more or less, so it's still VERY expensive. Once the ATI cad reach the stores, the competition will hopefully make the prices decrease... and anyway, the DX10 patch for FSX will not be ready until at least one month... and I would bet two.

So you have time Save your money for now, and make your upgrade for DX10.

[DizZa]

Ducktape, you have a PCI video card so I doubt you will be abled to upgrade to anything decent. I recommend waiting till the second half of this year. Then you should get whole new computer with:

Intel Core 2 duo
2gb RAM
Windows Vista
ATI R600 (X2000GT or above)

The G80 (Geforce is going to be killed by the R600, and in EARLY benchmarks running buggy, beta drivers, the R600 owned the G80. Oh, and the ultra high end R600 is going to be $620, or so I heard..... I expect the midrange to be $300-$350 when it comes out.

As Daube said, fsX is a VRAM hog. Never fear, the R600 has 1gb-2gb of GDDR3 or GDDR4 with a 512bit bus.

[kilotango]

As Daube says: Wait wait.....

[alrot]

I'll wait to , Im sure by adding 512 more ,having a total 1024 Ram and buying a new DX10 compatible card would be enough to run very fine FSX in my pc,but we have to wait as Daube saids until the competition forces to lower the prices..

[ducktape]

thanks for all the suggestions. im thinking about going with a dell xps system with 2gb ram and a 512mb card (hopefully soon to upgrade to 2 cards). im thinking that setup sounds somewhat decent?

[ATI_7500]

I bought my 8800GTS in November for 500

[kilotango]

It's your choice. Good luck to you.