Holy...

[an-225]

Yesterday, I downloaded and installed SP1. I did not get to test it, due to a module problem. Today, I removed that module.

Now, before the patch, I absolutely loved FSX. However, as much as I loved it, it was quite a chore to fly in it, due to the somewhat low FPS. Now...with the patch, I have had a WHOPPING increase in FPS.

The following figures, are true, and may be hard to handle, for FSX haters. Before SP1: Less than 10 frames a sec. After SP1: I have made a personal record, weighing in at 50 PLUS frames per second. I have all settings on high, except for autogen, which is set to dense, and cars, which are off. I run the crappiest in video cards today...the Nvidia 6800, and I have not overclocked it.

[DizZa]

The 6800 is still a great card.

[Daube]

The 6800 is still a great card.

Nope, I have it, and it sucks:
- medium Anti-Aliasing
- crappy anistropic filtering
- bad general performance
- not enough memory

A "average" card today would be something like a 7900, or the equivalent on the ATI side.

A "good" card today is the 8800.

My 6800 really has to give its absolute maximum to run FSX, and it's just sufficient to run FS9, with some jerky FPS (less than 15) over the most detailled airports with a bit of AI in them...
The 6800 was stil a good card two years ago

[DizZa]

My 6800 really has to give its absolute maximum to run FSX, and it's just sufficient to run FS9, with some jerky FPS (less than 15) over the most detailled airports with a bit of AI in them...

My X850XTPE is slightly faster than the 6800ultra extreme and I run fs9 completely maxed out with every single thing maxed out, detailed scenery and I can run AI at 100% smooth. If it cannot run fs9 well then theres an issue.

- medium Anti-Aliasing
- crappy anistropic filtering
- bad general performance
- not enough memory

A "average" card today would be something like a 7900, or the equivalent on the ATI side.

A "good" card today is the 8800.

Well... The card cards general performance isn't THAT bad. Go play modern games and I think you'll be abled to play most of them on medium settings at a resolution of 1280x1024 just fine..... My X850 is not significantly faster than the 6800 yet I can max out FEAR at 1024x768 and run it on still very high settings at 1280x1024. I can max out Oblivion and get framerates in the 20's at 1280x1024. I bet you didn't know most Oblivion official movies were run on 6800's?

Anisotropic Filtering is OK, however 7900s have the same problem. The 6800 is also 256mb and that's plenty of memory for most things. Hell.... The 8600GTS has the same amount of memory as your 6800 yet LESS bandwidth but can still play most games on max settings.

In my opinion:
High end: 7800GTX, 1800XT and above
Midrange: 6800GT, 16pipe X8x0 till 7800GT.
Low end: Anything below.

SORRY FOR DERAILING THREAD. Just want these guys to know that if you set a 6800 up right it will be amazing.

[Helms]

easy enough to say "6800 is a good card." Better than my 6200.

[GunnerMan]

The 6800 is not as bad as card as you say it is, I was running at 6800Ultra AGP with a AMD64 3200 Clawhammer, and 1 GB of ram and I had FS9 maxed out with 4x AA, 16xAA. It is two gens behinsd but its bot a bad card by any means.

[Katahu]

Hmpf, that's nothing.

Try running FSX on a DX8-based GeForce 4 MX440 with only 128MB.

[garymbuska]

Hmpf, that's nothing.

Try running FSX on a DX8-based GeForce 4 MX440 with only 128MB.

That is funny

[macca22au]

Kia Ora Katahu, I suggest that you don't.  FSX makes a great slide show in old hw, or you can skim over an FS5 non-landscape by pulling all sliders to the left.  I have an 88000 card and it is still barely useful as the whole game is egg-bound; everything is tied up in the CPU and the game is tied to 2 gigs of total RAM.  Egg-bound and constipated.

[Wing Nut]

I sure wish you would tell me what you are doing.  I'm running dual core AMD 3800's with 2 gigs of ram and an ATI X1600 with 512 megs of ram and I STILL get in the low teens to single digits...  :P

[eno]

I sure wish you would tell me what you are doing.  I'm running dual core AMD 3800's with 2 gigs of ram and an ATI X1600 with 512 megs of ram and I STILL get in the low teens to single digits...  :P

X1600....... nuff said...... I would hazard a guess that an X1800 with 256mb of ram would wipe the X1600's botty  :-/ :-/ :-/

[Wing Nut]

Really?  Most people I have spoken with recommended it.  Did I mention it's the X1600 Pro with PCI express (if that means anything)?

[eno]

I'm no expert Kevin ......... However the X1600 was released at the same time as the X1800 and X1850 and for $200-250 less which says to me that it's a mid range card probably with mid range performance.
Having said that ...... my X1900 doesn't seem to like FSX ....but that's with 1gig of ram and only a P4 for a processor.

[DizZa]

The X1600 is a midrange card, no matter what version you get, and how much video memory, it is Midrange. The faster 6800 series of videocards are probably about 20% faster than it though.  ;)

[krigl]

Given that all the responses so far are about graphics cards I suggest moving this thread to the hardware forum...