I can now confirm that the majority of reported issues are completely NVIDIA related.

Santa came a little early this year and this week I received a card for review and testing. This card will not be available until after mid to late January and I can not divulge details about it, however it is NOT made by Nvidia.

The following issues do not exist using that card:

Flashing textures
Black flashing spikes
Flickering taxiways/fences and textures
Loss of lights or boxes appearing instead of lights
Loss of progressive taxi arrows
Crash when accessing the menus
Screen WHITEOUT or Washout
Intermittent poor performance under certain conditions



I suggest everyone who owns a Nvidia card realize your problems are not FSX programming but the result of a company that pushed a poorly designed core on the market too soon, and now can’t get it to work when the programming technology which it was designed for has been released. This was also (one of) the reasons why ATI waited to dive into the next generation market, to make sure their product would in fact meet next generation standards.

And, as Nvidia struggles to upgrade drivers (practically weekly now) in order to try and plug holes in their electronics, they are breaking older cores such as the 7xxxx series causing the menu crashes many are experiencing. (NOTE: Use WINDOW MODE as a workaround for FSX menu crashes with Nvidia cards)

They are also either breaking or introducing new problems with other titles and their drivers updates in order to get the primary target game CRYSIS to work with their poorly desinged core which is why everyone is seeing issues with this manufacture.

I do not know if Nvidia will ever get the 8000 series fixed in software/drivers or if their next release cards will fix their screw ups but I do know that ATi does not display those issues, and therefore you are not dealing with FSX, you are dealing with Nvidia.

Yes ,definaly Nvidia is guilty of all the problems

Bad Card !! Bad Bad!!

,so is useless to have it ,so Instead to put in the garbage RECICLE IT ,DO NOT CONTAMINATE! ,all nvidia cards you may have and send it to Alrot pox box ???? valencia -Venezuela I have the best recicle system ...and Buy this new X card 

Nick, is it possible to say whether it's PCI Express x16 or 2.0?

I want to upgrade video cards when these new ones come out, but idk if I'll need a new motherboard as well. Probably a new power supply too (I doubt 500w will cut it).

Look at my signature for my specs.

Spam Post but also goes with this thread...



And that does not mean the 8000 series or other Nvidia cards are bad, it means people are now informed and if they make the decision to purchase the card, or, come into the forum and post FSX or SP2 is causing them trouble and complain about it, they now know why and who to go talk to about it in order to get it fixed, and it isn't Aces or MS.

NickN wrote on Dec 19^th, 2007 at 8:52am:


Nick, I can confirm that from here as well. What's amazing to me is that even with ATI's earlier DX10 cards (the HD2400 Pro 256MB for example), FSX+SP2 runs in DX10 preview mode with absolutely zero graphic anamolies...

Granted, my new Core 2 Q6600 is now faster than the video card, but it still pumps out an amazing 20-30 fps even in urban areas not known for being frame rate friendly.

Fr. Bill wrote on Dec 19^th, 2007 at 3:50pm:



Bill

If you are observing the same results then there is no question as to the source of the errors. I have confirmed the list of the most common problems do not exist with others running modern ATi adapters and driver testing the same dual GPU card I am. As far as I am concerned, your status and experience as a programmer and MSFS user places all the reports I have received into the status of “confirmed”.


No question about it.

I was testing a single 55nm core earlier this year when ATi canned the release until 08. We returned those dev cards but I was really sad to see that card go. Even the 8800GTX I replaced it with which I modified (hot-rod is more like it) could not touch that dev card for visual quality and overall smooth performance, and that was with 2nd generation beta drivers.

The quad core is a gem, eh?  

Anyone who believes the stories or the 'benchmark' reports that setting affinity to lock out cores from FSX is getting bum info. Those who see better performance by locking cores are overtaxing their system, plain and simple. Its either poor Windows tuning, too many processes, too many startups, bad affinity choice for secondary runtime apps, or driving FSX settings too high.

There is however value in setting affinity (through the task manager) of a add-on application such as ASX weather engine to core3 on a quad or core1 on a dual. By doing so it will offload the primary core where FSX needs as much as it can get.

(note to lurkers... core0 is the first core of a multicore processor, not core1. core1 is the 2nd core, etc)

I run drivers with Vsync "always on" in FSX because I do not run a frame rate of over 60. Setting to 'unlimited' simply restricts the frame rate to 60 and the combination does not cause any performance issues. Most will lock at 24 so setting Vsync ON in the drivers will not have any effect other than to sync/smooth the image. I did not notice any tearing and the sim responed perfectly.

I am not home right now so I am unable to look at it again right at the moment.

NickN wrote on Dec 19^th, 2007 at 8:52am:



I just read through your initial post and the 14 posts that followed with 7 of them being yours. I cannot believe what I read so I am quoting some of the statements and providing an appropriate response.

Quote 1

“I suggest everyone who owns a Nvidia card realize your problems are not FSX programming.”

Response

I, and others, own Nvidia cards and many of us don’t have any problems. Aces has done wonders with FSX, SP1 and SP2. But with a first release and considering the complexity of adding SP1, SP2 into the Acceleration package, there is bound to be some glitches, especially with lower-end systems.

Quote 2

“I can now confirm that the majority of reported issues are completely NVIDIA related
And that does not mean the 8000 series or other Nvidia cards are bad, it means people are now informed and if they make the decision to purchase the card, or, come into the forum and post FSX or SP2 is causing them trouble and complain about it, they now know why and who to go talk to about it in order to get it fixed, and it isn't Aces or MS”.

Response

Are you talking for Microsoft? There are many people in and outside this forum that own PCs with Nvidia video cards who haven’t the faintest idea whether their video card or FSX is giving them a problem. If they should need some assistance are you telling them not to get help from Microsoft?

Quote 3

“Flashing textures
Black flashing spikes
Flickering taxiways/fences and textures
Loss of lights or boxes appearing instead of lights
Loss of progressive taxi arrows 
Crash when accessing the menus
Screen WHITEOUT or Washout
Intermittent poor performance under certain conditions”

Response

I have an 8800 GTX and I don’t have any of the above problems. I bet there are others that can make the same statement.

Quote 4

“I do not know if Nvidia will ever get the 8000 series fixed in software/drivers or if their next release cards will fix their screw ups’”

Response

I just downloaded and installed their latest driver and I am still running problem free.

Quote 5

“As far as I am concerned, your status and experience as a programmer and MSFS user places all the reports I have received into the status of “confirmed””.

Response

How many reports have you received from the thousands of users? Please tell us again what you are trying to confirm?

One last comment, Aces has earned our respect on their own merit by virtue of the overwhelming success of FSX. They don’t need individuals constantly defending their product integrity.