Geforce 5700U vs ATI Radeon 9800 Pro

[longhaul747]

A few days I had asked if I would notice a difference if I replaced my 5700U with a 9800 Pro. I am happy to report that I have seen a huge improvement in both visual quality and performance. With all sliders maxed I don't drop below 20 FPS and most of the time it is pegged at 30 (locked at 30). So far I am very happy with the results.

Only issues I have seen so far is my panels don't looks as sharp. They have this very mild out of focus look. It might just be the way the Radeon card is but if a fix is available I will take it. I am currently running the latest ATI driver (4.10).

Unfortunately the new video card has done nothing for my CTD problem. I have applied all known fixes and it still happens on a regular basis. I know it is a the seasonal CTD problem because it does not happen when I fly during the summer. I have suspected my generic memory currently in my computer but then that does not explain why it does not happen during the summer. It must be a FS9 bug I can't crack. Right now I am very desperate and will take any advice fom the community. I don't have any third party scenery or texture add ons (except the FSW clouds). I have applied the crashto.zip fix by Joachim. My terrain texture size it set to medium. Unless another fix is out there I have tried every known solution. I don't think I am alone even with the fixes. All fixes are only based on theories.

Athlon 64 3200+
Gigabyte nForce3 GA-K8N Pro
ATI Radeon 9800Pro
1024MB DDR400 (PC3200)
x2 Seagate Barracuda 120MB hard drives
MSI DVD R/RW - CD R/RW Combo drive
MSI DVD-ROM drive
Enermax Noistaker 470W power supply

[TheFlightMan]

I've heard others mention the same about panels not looking as sharp. You might want to ask BigShot or others here with an ATI card for their feedback. As for the driver you are using, it is not the latest, ATI has released 4.2.

TheFlightMan

[Qballbandit]

What is this "crashto.zip" file all about? What does it claim to fix, literally? I am curious to know. Is it available on flightsim.com, or just from this Joachim???
Thanks for any info....:7

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3f295fda5ad61e56.jpg

[longhaul747]

Basicly the crashto.zip file was created based on a theory that might have been causing the crash problem. It is a revised terrain.cfg files and some new texture files. It was based on a sound theory that did not work out for me.

You can read about it here.

http://portal.fsgenesis.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=374

Somewhere is a link to the patch.

I would like to see if this works for others. It seems to work for some but not for me. The last thing in my system that could be causing the CTD is my memory. I had very similar problems with FS2000 a long time ago on a P3 500Mhz machine. Tried everything. I discovered the bad RAM when I stuck it in a different computer. On my old computer I put different RAM in and FS worked.

[Bigshot]

Try running 4xAA & switch your AF setting to 16x Performance. I noticed when I tried 8xQualityAF a while back, my panel text seemed to blur up just a bit. I also noticed it on my Desktop Icons. These new ATI drivers may be fast as heck; but the AF Quality seems to have definately gone down from the good ole Cat 2.3 DX8 drivers I used originally way back when the 9700Pro was the new kid on the block. I got one of the first ATI9700Pro cards. The AA is still great though. The AF is still really good too; but not as good as it once was. Course, the framerates have went way up with FS9 compared to FS2k2. Also, try 1400x1050x32 bit res if your monitor supports it. It's an awesome resolution to run FS9 at.

As far as FS9 crashing, mine had never crashed before I installed ZoneAlarm. Since then, it has crashed twice. Both times when a zonealarm message came up on the screen. I've checked the remember boxes on the messages so that they don't reappear again and haven't had a problem since.

[longhaul747]

Bigshot,

I tried 4xAA and AF setting to 16x Performance. It looks much better now. It is still not as sharp as the Geforce cards but I believe it is just the way the Radeon works. The Radeons 3D everything whereas the the Geforce cards only 3D the scenery view and not the panel.

As for visual quality I think I still prefer the GeForce cards but you sure can't beat the performance of the Radeon. It is a keeper but I will keep a close eye on future Geforce products.

As for crashing I have McAfee Firewall that caused crashing problems with the warning and update screens came up. I now disable this utility when I fly FS. It is a bit risky doing so but I never had anyone try and get into my system. I only had a problem with my cable modem getting pinged by my provider.

I really think this is the seasonal CTD bug that is causing so many problems. I just sucessfully created 5 flights doing all sorts of different stuff and FS is rock stable. I switched the season to summer. The first time I switched it back to winter I got a CTD about 10 minutes into the flight. So this is purely a programming fault and is a critical error that needs to be fixed.

longhaul747

[Bigshot]

One thing you're going to notice right away is that you need to run with mipmapped exterior textures so get yourself that DXTBmp program. There's plenty of references to it and how too's in the general forum. Just do a search. You'll still run into a individual texture that'll blur out once in a while; just replace it with the nonmipped one if it becomes a pest. Your textures will not look very good and will not alais properly without mipmaps and look a hundred percent better with them.

[longhaul747]

Bigshot,

Actually good thing you bring this up. I actually did notice blurry exterior textures today when I was flying around. Everything in my display settings is cranked. I was a little bothered by it but I just figured it was the way it is. I was going to bring this up or search for it at a later date but I think you gave me the fix.

I am totally new to converting textures. Would I just load a texture and save it as something different? Should I just go and do them all? I will search for related topics in the general forum.

thanks
longhaul747

[Bigshot]

Check out this thread:

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/DCForumID21/12080.html#11

Get the DXTBmp and install it. It'll put a shortcut icon on your desktop. And you'll use it constantly. It'll greatly enhance your flightsimming. It's a real easy program to learn. It automatically adds mipmaps upon saving unless you tell it otherwise. So you can mip and nonmip, change textures to DXT3wAlpha from those framehog 32bit textures, change normal images to DXT3, or the reverse. You'll figure out real quite what you want to use on what aircraft. I've made the changes over a couple weeks. To try and do it all at once would be overwhelming.

One nice thing is you can convert textures to 24bit and then photoshop em' or use any other paint program to make changes. Then just convert em' back to DXT3 and use em' in the sim. In other words, you can paint your own aircraft.

[longhaul747]

Bigshot,

I just finished reading that thread.

As an experiment I played with the default learjet 45 textures and converted them. It seems to look pretty good but these were not a problem before conversion so it is hard to say. Interestingly before I converted I would aways get a little stutter when panning in spot view. After conversion this did not happen. So perhaps converting the textures helps with performance even if they are not blurry.

I noticed in the above thread that is was mainly about aircraft textures. Would this utility work the same for ground textures as well? I have noticed several blury ground textures especially at high altitudes. FS has so many it could be difficult finding the offending texture so converting them all might be easiest.

longhaul747

[Bigshot]

Mipmapped textures are designed to decrease in size (1024 will change to 512, etc) as you move away from the object. That could explain your performance question. I'd only remove the mips when absolutely necessary and then only on that particular texture that's causing the problem. A blurry texture that just won't correct itself is a good example of a pesky texture that needs its mips removed. If you were to remove the mips from ground textures, you'd kill the performance in the sim.

If you have any blurred ground textures, the best thing I've found to cure that is to make the aircraft as framerate friendly as possible. DXT3wAlpha is a good way to do that. Another way is to change your cockpit zoom from 1.0 to something like .75 or .80. Look for the weak points in your system. Adjust the sim accordingly. For instance, I like eye candy, AI is not important to me; so the AI slider is set very low or even at zero in my sim. Terrain mesh, another processor hog, is set at 90 percent instead of a hundred percent. Barely notice the difference in visuals; but it leaves considerably more processing power so my PIV 2.53 can feed the video card what it needs cause if the video card isn't getting the data, you'll see it in the form of blurred textures on the screen. If your video card is getting the data, but can't do the job, same thing.

[longhaul747]

I turn down some of my settings a little and it helped a lot. My ground textures still seem a little blured but I think it is just the way the default ground textures are. All other textures are crisp. I will take your advise and not convert the ground textures. However I do seem to find it benficial to convert the aircraft textures even if they are not a problem.

This dtxbmp is an interesting utility. I converted the one of the lear bmp's and I am painting it. I used to paint airplanes back in the FS98 days but I gave up as planes got more complex.