Hi all I have been looking for a good card to replace the ATI Radeon 9200 se (128Mb) that I've just bought!!!!  for the computer Iam putting together (See New set up further down) I have found an MSI FX 5700 ultra-td 128 that I can just afford (selling one of the children) My question is. is it any good ? Will it be better for the machine Iam building? Many thanks for your time and help. Regards Chris.

Don't kid yourself!

The FX range and indeed the ATI 9000 range are simply obsolete compared to the newer Direct X9 cards such as the 6800 series. The performance differance is frankly staggering!

Very shortly, Nvidia are to release the 6600 cards approx £150 or less but vastly better performance than the existing FX5 series cards.

I'm considering a 6800GT, but am sorely tempted by the 6600.

Suffer your 9200 for a little while longer zeberdee, you'd be silly to waste your money on a card thats on the verge of being completely outclassed by a newer model for a similar price with vastly better performance.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17812

Just a question, how does the 9800 pro fit into this discussion?? is it worthwhile to buy this one now or wait for next release..............I have the 9200 also and graphics is OK but not great

I am starting to really believe that the speed and smoothness of this sim is more dependent on the CPU, FSB, and RAM speed than it is on the graphics card........ once you get to the level of something like an ATI 9800pro or XT and if you are trying to run it "maxed".

I am seeing this thought form a lot of people now that fs2004 is getting on to over a year old.

best,

...............john

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Y? Coz i got nice high res 1600x1200, all settings maxxed par AI @ 75% and amount of 3d clouds @ 60%  Anti-Alias @4x Anistropic is now at 16x image quality set to 'Quality'

FS just hogs your whole system, specially those dam clouds.  Dunno what my temps are I brought the AMD64 3500 retail so it has the stock cooler on it.  Thing is I know this system is fast.  All my other games are absolutely awsome on it.  Its just FS2004 that hits it the hardest.

So yes everything has got better on this system, hell on my old system with the FS settings at what there at I was lucky to hold 3-5fps going into KSEA.  I have run bench tests etc and here are the results:

3dMark01 : 23977

3dMark03 : 13122

So I know this system is pretty good, old system was scoring 18000 on 01 and a meesly 1500 on 03 (Due to GF4 graphics card)  As I have said many times finding the correct settings for FS2004 is all a comprimise, have to turn a few things down just to make it run silky smooth.

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As impressed as you would be with a 6800 Paul, I doubt sincerely, you'd find it £400 (the price of a 6800Ultra) better than your existing setup!

FS2002 Maxxed compared to FS9 Maxxed is,imho, akin to CFS1 & CFS2 if you get my drift. 

Save yer pennies for a 6600 when they come out, me thinks this will be the card of choice just as your ti4200 was a while back, as ever if you have deep pockets, you can enjoy the very best of FS. sadly, that rules me out! 

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Sorry, Yes, the 6600 & 6800's I refer to are indeed Nvidia cards.

Gee, all this talk of max settings and frame rates that a human optical center can't percieve (although a cat could).  What do some of you do? Fly around, looking @ the ground all the time?  What would one learn about what a real life pilot does when flying on the needles and dials???  Me, I would just be happy to set my sliders all the way left and average 24 fps under average ai traffic and average scenery crowding.  Fortunatly, I don't fly into kjfk, kord, klax, or the like very often, lol.  Anyway, since I have right now a very mediocre 9200 rad I have everything slider centered or left.  Not that I  care, I'm a high altitude type who does the high performance singels, twins and heavies and am more interested in procedures and systems than in sight seeing. To each his own.