New 9800 Pro: 1st Questions & 1st Inpressions.

[rhodges]

Chronology:

1. Installed Driver Cleaner 2.6
2. Removed nic card and modem (Don't really know why?)
3. From Control Panel>add/remove programs, removed NVIDIA
4. Rebooted in safe mode.
5. Canceled auto Install wizard

Note at this point, my computer booted up on my third monitor's display, a Vivitron 17" connected to a Diamond Stealth III S540 PCI card with S3 Graphics Inc. Savage 4 drivers. Primary and Secondary monitors were black.

6. Looked in Device Hardware>Display Adapters, and all that was present was the S3 Graphics card listed.
7. Ran Driver Cleaner
8. Ran Cab Cleaner
9. Emptied the recycle bin
10.Ran a search for "NVIDIA"
11.Deleted any other applicable files from this search.
12.Shut down the computer.
13.Removed my NVIDIA ti4600 card

Note: Put my computer on the workbench and anxiously awaited Santa (UPS Ground). He was about 4 hours later than normal. I guess his Raindeer got lost.

14.Installed my 9800Pro Card
15.Replaced my nic card and modem
16.Restarted the computer
17.ATI 9800 drivers (Unknown version) were automatically installed.
18.Updated drivers to version 3.10
19.Enabled all monitors and made resolution, refresh rate, color settings.
20.Opened the ATI Control Panel.

Note: This is where I got my first strange reaction. I got the old MS error message telling me that something was wrong with the ATI Control Panel and that it had to shut it down, and asked whether I wanted to send a report or not. I closed this window, and the control panel appeared. I discovered that any time I click advanced in the display window, I get this error window, but after I closed it, I cannot detect anything that is missing, or is not adjustable and everything appears to be normal in the ATI control panel. The only thing it shuts down that I can detect is the icon in my tray. by going to display properties and advanced, the panel is still accessable.

21.Removed the ATI control panel.
22.Installed the Omega Version 3.10 ATI driver

Note: The Control Panel now appears without any error windows, and I have all three monitor icons in my tray (which stay there).

First impressions:

The following is after trying various AA and AF settings in the control panel. I really don't see much difference between 4x + 8x and 6x + 16X. (Settings by the control panel, settings by application unchecked). Never tried turning everything off.

The display properties as per my imagination at least are a bit better than they were with my ti4600, but not near as wonderful as some posts might have lead me to believe. I thought they were pretty good with the ti4600 for that matter, however I will conceed this point at this time.

Frame rates are not really noticably different. The certainly are not twice to three times faster than they were with the ti4600 as some are reporting that they are able to achieve. At KLWB, my home airport flying the default 737 or my bird of preference a somewhat customized 717 with all sliders maxed out, 1600x32 and a refresh rate of 85 or 100 I get 35 to a little above 40 fps. (Default weather)

Worst case: I moved to SimFlyers KJFK at the gate and change to the PSS 747, or the new Airbus 340 and frame rates drop to the high single digits. As I taxi to the runway, they slowly increase until they are in the high teens when I take the runway.

My criteria for the decision to buy the 9800Pro is Tom's Hardware evaluation as listed on the benchmarks for the 9600 and/or 9800 XT's. He includes the 9800Pro in his graphs along with NVIDIA cards in the ti4xxx neighborhood. I have tried to duplicate his setup at KSEA, of building weather along with his other listed settings. Of course, we don't know exactly where he had all of his sliders set, to what altitude he climbed etc. In any case, I fall about 20FPS below what he shows, so my conclusion is that I need to keep at it for a while. His comparrisons pretty much confirm the improvements to which other's testify.

The good side is that even under low frame rate conditions, I think that movement is a little bit smoother, however, the only time this was an issue was under the most severe conditions with my old ti4600.

Any suggestions relative to what I may have missed, added that I don't want, or anything else for optimization would be greatly appreciated. I may have missed some settings to which I should pay some attention. I am still in the first 24 hours of this new venture.

P4 3.2 CPU
420 Watt PS
6 Fans + CPU fan
P4C800 Deluxe MB
On Board SoundMax Sound
1G/400 Mem.
Sapphire 9800 Pro
21" Viwsonic Pro Series P815 Primary Monitor
21" Samsung SyncMaster 1100P Secondary Monitor
Diamond Stealth S540 PCI Secondary Graphics Card
17" Vivitron third monitor
Catalyst 3.10 ATI Driver
Savage S4 Secondary Graphics Driver
DirectX9.0b
WinXPPro

Thank you, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.
RTH

[Bigshot]

Remove the FS9 cfg file if you haven't done so and restart the sim. Make sure you have the latest bios and mobo drivers. Go to www.rage3d.com forums/driver discussions for trouble shooting.

[thefringe]

RTH,
Thank you for the detailed report. I am having a monster FS system built as we speak, and I am also going from a 4600Ti to most likely a Radeon 9800 256. Keep us informed as you continue your optimization.
Take care,
John M

[rhodges]

Thanks Bigshot and John for your help and interest.

Chapter two:

Upgraded my MB Bios and SoundMax Drivers to the latest. Just about everything else new appeared to be relative to Raid control and newer harddrives than I have so I did not download them. I am useing a SCSI HD for FS and my OS.

I then renamed my fs9.cfg file, let FS create a new one, and copied my critical edits from the old one (i.e. Old Modules and CH Mapping).

For good measure, I then removed and reinstalled the Catalyst 3.10 drivers. I tried several times between the ATI and Omega choices. Neither will allow their Icons in my desktop tray. The Omega MultiRes Icons go in with no problem so I unclicked the tray option under options in the control panel.

Result: Next to nothing. FPS may have increased slightly, but not enough to even be sure.

Conclusions so far: The display is good, and aircraft movement is smooth even in severe conditions in spite of low frame rates (relatively speaking).

Tom's Hardware used FRAPS in defining their frame rates while I am just eyeballing my averages, so I really don't know what their lows and highs were. Trying to duplicate their flight as I described in my original post, I go from the high teens at the runway, to high single digits, teens, or twenties as I move through the clouds depending on density. Once I break out on top, frame rates go wild, exceeding 120 occasionally, and mostly between the 60's and 80's.

The flip side of the coin (AT THIS POINT) is whether the upgrade is worth it from the ti4600 for the $$$ or not. It is not that dramatic an improvement IMHO SO FAR, but I think it does give somewhat a better image, and is smoother in the most severe conditions. I'm reasonably pleased but still scratching my head a bit as to whether it is really worth it or not.

BigShot, I have not researched the www.rage3d.com site yet, but that will be next. The answer may be there for chapter three if there is one.

Again, thanks:
RTH

[Bigshot]

Until I did some tweaking, my 9700Pro struggled a bit with FS9 too. I recommend Chris' clouds from FSW. I also use both autogen fixes. Renaming the default xml file in the main autogen folder to ..._orig or _old and setting the ... vector=0 line in the fs9 cfg file to =0. I also run with 4xAA & 16xAF with the AF running on performance mode. All give a very nice boost in framerates and allow me to run in any kind of weather with Scenery maxed; except that I run Mesh=90%. It's hard to distinquish between quality AF and performance AF in the sim. Not a whole lot of difference. Also run with the texture_bandwidth_mult=400 so textures draw instantly.

[rhodges]

Thanks for the info: Still not seeing a big difference, but she is smooth under ALMOST all conditions. I think I am just about to the point where turning off the fps window may be the best solution.
I have reinstalled directx9.0b just for good measure.

Where is the "vector=0 line in the fs9.cfg file"? That is the only thing I have not been able to locate. I do not see it in my file.

Under (Graphics) I do see two lines which include the word "vector" as follows:

TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_MAP=1
TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS=1

Are these the lines that should be edited to "=0"?

Thank you.
RTH
>Until I did some tweaking, my 9700Pro struggled a bit with
>FS9 too. I recommend Chris' clouds from FSW. I also use
>both autogen fixes. Renaming the default xml file in the
>main autogen folder to ..._orig or _old and setting the ...
>vector=0 line in the fs9 cfg file to =0. I also run with
>4xAA & 16xAF with the AF running on performance mode. All
>give a very nice boost in framerates and allow me to run in
>any kind of weather with Scenery maxed; except that I run
>Mesh=90%. It's hard to distinquish between quality AF and
>performance AF in the sim. Not a whole lot of difference.
>Also run with the texture_bandwidth_mult=400 so textures
>draw instantly.

[Bigshot]

TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS=0

[javelin]

See my specs. I have a similar system as yours.
I am having problems with the 8X setting in the SMARTGART program in the CATALYST software in that when I set it to the 8X setting it will not keep the setting after I leave SMARTGART and reboot my system- it just goes back to the 0 setting. Do you or anyone else have this problem?
Thanks for any suggestions.
Cliff

[rhodges]

Final Chapter (I think)
If I discover anything significant hencefourth, I will add it, but I really don't expect to.

I pretty much have followed the advice given on your kind replies along with one or two from another forum.

Latest MB Bios, SoundMax Drivers, and AGP Drivers were installed.
Created a new FS9.cfg file
Disabled the default AutoGen XML file
Edited Terrain_Use_Vector_objects to equal 0
Reinstalled Catalyst 3.10 drivers
Reinstalled DirectX9.0b

Probably left something out, but I think I made all the recommended changes.

I was almost certain that I had installed Chris' Clouds, but when I reinstalled them, they did update to new files, so either I had an older version, or was mistaken. At ground level at a complex SimFlyers airport taxiing and taking off with a big complex bird like the PSS A340 or 747, they of course have little effect, but airbourne, the addition of this addon was the only thing I found which had a dramatic effect. I highly recommend them. Be sure you get the latest for FS9 (ffpv2.zip). The night textures along with his lighting are nice touches in my opinion as well. Thank you Chris.

Again, my reference point is Tom's hardware. Go to his home page, click on Graphics Cards in the left menu and scroll down to "Facelift: the ATI Radeon 9600 XT". Then scroll down to "MS Flight Simulator 2004". Left click on it and it will give you a graph showing Tom's findings on a number of cards including my 9800Pro. In trying to duplicate Tom's setup as nearly as I could, referencing his 1600x1200x32 graph, my frame rate findings were as follow:

From the runway on takeoff: Low 20's
At 4,500' MSL, 250 Knots, 2000 FPM climb over the city: Mid 20's
AT 8,500' MSL, Hi 20's
AT 10,000' MSL Increasing to 330 Knots: Low 30's
At 12,500' MSL Mid 30's
AT 14,000' MSL Hi 30's
At 16,000' MSL Lo 40's
At 17,000' MSL with some blue showing in the Clouds: Lo 50's
At 18,000' Std. 29.92": Lo 70's
At 19,000' Std. 29.92" entering High clouds Lo 50's
At and > 20,000' Std. 29.92" Lo 80's

Note: the above findings were in cockpit view which was somewhat of an advantage to Tom's configuration. Above about 10,000' minimums were never below 20fps, and highs went up momentarily above 100.

Trials out of the cockpit view as Tom used (Press the "W" Key) produced the following:

From the runway on takeoff: Lo 20's
At 4,500' MSL, 250 Knots, 2000 FPM climb over the city: Lo 20's
AT 8,500' MSL, Lo 20's
AT 10,000' MSL Increasing to 330 Knots: Lo 20's
At 12,500' MSL lo 30's
AT 14,000' MSL Lo 30's
At 16,000' MSL Hi 20's
At 17,000' MSL with some blue showing in the Clouds: Lo 30's
At 18,000' Std. 29.92": Lo 30's
At 19,000' Std. 29.92" entering High clouds Hi 20's
At and > 20,000' Std. 29.92" Lo 40's

Above 20,000' frame rates held pretty steady between the high 30's and low to mid 40's @ 35,000' which probably pretty well matches Tom's figure.

I then reset my display to 1024/768/32 and tried several duplicate flights trying to match Tom's conditions as nearly as possible.

Frame rates increased at all altitudes including at ground level dramatically. They really exceeded Tom's figure somewhat, but I realize that there may have been some setting differences that I did not know about.

Conclusions:

In all default MSFS conditions that I tried, everything is great.

With a big complex bird and panel at a complex airport like SimFlyer's KJFK with everything maxed out, frame rates are brought to their knees. Once off of the runway, everything goes smoothly, but frame rates still are in the teens or even in the single digits when inside the worst cloud conditions with high density a good deal of the time. I guess a partial solution to this is don't fly complex birds at complex airports, and don't go to complex airports with complex birds. If you can stand a little stutter while you taxi or takeoff under the worst of conditions, this is academic, but I believe those that testify that we can't have it all at this time regardless of what you have in a computer.

Whether an upgrade from a ti4600 to a 9600Pro is worth it is totally in the eyes and wallet of the beholder IMHO. Nothing I have seen in my first days of this upgrade has convinced me decisively enough to make a personal recommendation one way or another. I do see some improvement relative to display, smoothness, and frame rates, but nothing as dramatic as some of what I have read. I would highly recommend that Tom's evaluation be read, realizing that from the gate under the worst of conditions as I have described your results
may not be representative of what is being covered and may not be applicable. I guess if I had it all to do over again I would make the purchase in the interest of trying to get all that I can out of my computer for FS9. I don't really guess that the move even fell short of my expectations, but a bit below my hopes for results under the most demanding conditions. Under logical conditions trying to be as objective as possible, I must conceed that the card does everything that it claims to do. In all honesty, I think the old ti4600 performs a bit better and gives a better display than it gets credit for though.

Thank all of you for your contributions. I hope something here helps somebody somewhere solve a problem or improve your performance, or make a decision. Good Luck!

RTH

[thefringe]

Thanks again for your latest report.
A quick question on the ATI 9800: Did you notice any more shimmering in buildings or on the horizon compared to the 4600Ti ?
So far I will be inclined to stay with my 4600Ti, as I use 3D goggles for nearly every flight. I don't believe the ATI 9800 supports these as of yet or vice versa.
Take care,
John M.

[rhodges]

John:

I am afraid I must plead ignorance relative to use of the 3D goggles.

In any conventional view, to me you have named one of the major improvements by the 9800 upgrade. It is not 100% shimmer proof, but is close. I think you would be pleased relative to this subject with the 9800 upgrade, particularlly in trees. To recheck, I just took off from KORD and flew around the city a bit. Frankly, at the low altitude I did not see any shimmer at all. I am sure in the past days at altitude in other locations I have seen some present though, but it was still a big improvement.

The only place that I still get a bothersome shimmer, flashing, or whatever one might call it is on the apron of some of the SimFlyer airports. The lines drawn on the apron, especially at the gates where there is a grid design tend to really cycle from an overhead spotplane view. If the view is rotated to a more horizontal position, they stableize, but of course frame rates decrease with more objects included in the view. This is not true of all airports, and sometimes it seems more present than others. It is unique to the SimFlyer locations, so I think that it is something in their format causing the shimmer, not the card. It is equally present in both cards. Only the paint on the apron has this problem. Everything else is rock solid.

Improvement in the display seems obvious to me, but not quite as wonderful as it has appeared to be for some others. May be system specific, or just in the eye of the beholder, but to me a significant reduction in shimmering is one of the strong points.

Good luck, and I hope that all of your upgrade efforts surpass your fondest expectations.

RTH

>Thanks again for your latest report.
>A quick question on the ATI 9800: Did you notice any more
>shimmering in buildings or on the horizon compared to the
>4600Ti ?
> So far I will be inclined to stay with my
>4600Ti, as I use 3D goggles for nearly every flight. I don't
>believe the ATI 9800 supports these as of yet or vice versa.
>Take care,
>John M.

[rhodges]

John:
Since I gave you my last reply, I have been watching a little more intently for the shimmer about which you questioned. I have seen none. I am almost sure that at some point after I replaced the 4600 with the 9800, there was some, but I sure don't see it now. I assume that after installation shimmer was detered by the setup and tweaking that followed. It may show up at some point in the future, but I sure see NONE since the time you asked.

RTH

>Thanks again for your latest report.
>A quick question on the ATI 9800: Did you notice any more
>shimmering in buildings or on the horizon compared to the
>4600Ti ?
> So far I will be inclined to stay with my
>4600Ti, as I use 3D goggles for nearly every flight. I don't
>believe the ATI 9800 supports these as of yet or vice versa.
>Take care,
>John M.

[thefringe]

Sounds great RTH.
I think I will have the system shipped with the 9800, although I may use my current 4600Ti with it until Edimensional and/or ATI release stereo drivers that will work with the 9800.
This system is being built by a chap in Atlanta who has gone out of his way to research and design the fastest possible system for FS2004 according to my budget using state of the art hardware and cooling. My current system purchased from Falcon NW has been unstable with FS2002 and 2004. I was initially excited a year and a half ago upon purchase of this Athlon 2100 system, but have been happy only with image quality and not with the low frame rates and crashes. System finally crashed almost a month ago for good, hastening my upgrade.
I will post a full review of this new monster system a while after it arrives, with emphasis on image quality and stability over frame rates. Whereas 2001 Mark I scores don't always translate well to FS performance, I have taken note that my current system scored at 10,400 points, while the new system will benchmark around 21,500. More than double. I will however contain my excitement due to the fact I was equally impressed with the Falcon system and it's initial performance with FS2002 when it arrived, only to be let down with almost 2 years of trouble. Making things worse, I am not a computer guy so of course I pay much more for these systems (appx.$3000 U.S.) than others who are adept at building systems themselves.
However the combination of FS2004, Megascenery, and Edimensional goggles when configured propely, especially during a night flight over LA, is just too incredible to describe. This is why I put up with it all. I have placed the goggles on individuals who are not into aviation or computers, sat them in front of the 22" monitor, put them over LA with megascenery cranked up; and these people have uttered expletives of joy while almost falling out of the chair in shock !!
Thanks,
John M.

Current System:

Athlon 2100
1 Gig crappy RAM
GeForce 4600Ti
XP Home

New System on way:

Athlon 64 FX 51
newly patented ducted-air cooling system
1 Gig Corsair 3500 Ram
ATI 9800 Pro 256
XP Home

[Bigshot]

I thought edimensional got their problems with ATI cards worked out??

[thefringe]

I sure hope you are right Bigshot.

As I understand it, no ATI stereo driver is available yet to download, but Edimensional will email the driver if you request it. This leads me to believe it is a beta-type driver. An Edimensional tech told me they are close to finishing the driver for universal release.