To get graphics like you show, you need to use 4xAA, and some AF would help.  To get nice clouds and effects plus smooth gameplay a high graphics memory fillrate is a must.

You need to look at atleast an FX5200 128MB with 128-bit memory, even though running 4xAA will cause a big hit and FPS.  The best budget option is the 9600 (not se), the Radeon range can run AA with minimal hit on FPS.  Also the 9600 is the cheapest card that will allow you to set the water setting to high and keep it high, which looks amazing with Bill Lyons water effects pack.  Also to get long view distances a high graphics is needed, which will mean looking at higher cards, the 9600pro/5700U atleast to max this setting out (and all others) and not have your FPS crawl. 

I personnelly use the 9600xt and recommend this card, and i am sure others will post here and recommend other cards aswell, so it is ultimately you that decides.
Here are a couple of pics of what my game looks like: (this is how i actually run the game): http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=screen;action=display;num=...

keep in mind Hi-D that i'm a beginner- I have no clue what half the terms in ur post mean ...

also, I'm currently running FS2002 and all the shots in my first post are of that game...

Quote:


Sometimes we forget about the newbies when explaining things. I'll explain some common graphics terms.

AA- Antialaising: This is used to eliminate the "stair step" along the edge of graphics. It can be set to various degrees.

AF- Anioscopic Filtering: Improves image quality to various degrees dependion on what it is set at.

FPS: Frames Per Second: How many frames the card is showing per second. Images on the screen are sets of stills showen at a fast rate to give the illusion of movement. A film at a movie theater runs at 16fps for example.

Memory Bit Rate: How fast the memory can store information and how much can be stored per clock cycle. Video Ram (VRAM for short) usually comes in DDR (Double Data Rate) format.

Core Clock Bit Rate: How fast and how much information can travel in and out of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). 256-bit is the rate at what most common cards run at.

DirectX 9.0b: Developed by Microsoft, DX is the form of graphics encoding that FS2004 and many other games use. Version 9.0b is the latest version and can be downloaded from Microsoft. FS2002 used DirectX 8 but will benefit from 9.

OpenGL: Another form of graphics encoding similar to DirectX.


First of all, that Intel Integrated graphics is no good. Get yourself an AGP graphics card. AGP is a port inside your machine that was designed specifically for graphics processing. Most come in 4X or 8X depending on the age of the motherboard. The board's instruction booklet will tell you what speed your's supports. Most P4's should support the supperior 8X. If you have a fast CPU, get the best card you can afford. It really doesn't matter whether you buy an nVidia or ATI card, they both have their strengths and weaknesses. Just be sure you get one your satisfied with. A better idea still is to visit Guru3d.com's forums. They specialize in graphics and hardware advice and I've gotten a lot of help from them in the past.

Same discussion here!

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=hardw;action=display;num=1...

Don't forget that frame rates in FS depend a lot on the CPU as well. It's making a lot of complex calculations to make that airplane fly realistically.

I'd be interested to see thoes card benchmarks for an Athlon64 CPU. I was going to get one but I don't want to come down with a bad case of buyer's remorse.

DX9 accelerated cards:
Nvidia
FX5200series
FX5700series
FX5900series
6800series

ATi
9600series
9800series
X800series


Nvidia cards do better in openGl mode, whereas ATi do better in Direct3d mode.  This becomes more apparent in Directx9 graphics.

If you do upgrade to a better card, don't forget to deactivate the integrated graphics on your bios.

If you have the money to spend, here's some more details on the nVidia 6800 and the ATI X800

6800 http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_6800.html

X800 http://www.ati.com/buy/promotions/rx800/aib.html

Like Hi-D mentioned, ATI and nVidia both have their strengths and weakesses. ATI has a lot of raw power but less drivers to choose from meaning reduced compatability. nVidia cards have the benefit of being rock stable with a hugh amount of drivers to choose from. However there are rumors that they do not preform as well with DX9 although this was supposed to have been fixed in the 6800. I also found that ATI cards tend to cost more but that may have changed because I haven't looked at graphics card prices in a while.

What ever card you get, with a fast system don't go under nVidia's FX series or ATI's 9X00 series