ATI Radeon blurred images???

[Hanseman]

Hi!

I am about to get a new 3D card and I have my eyes and cash
on a Radeon 9700 or 9800, but I read from tests and comments that
it sometimes gives blurred images.
This confuses me, since the overall score is so positive.

And.......does anyone know if the new GeForce 5950 PRO is any good?

All this to work with FS9......

Grateful for comments and help.

Thanks!

Hans Hermansson
SWEDEN

[Bigshot]

Here's an example of a blurred image. Mind you, the compression messed up the image. It looks way better in the sim. You gotta read between the lines when folks talk about Nvidia vs ATI. There's an aweful lot of FUD going around.
http://www.x-plane.org/users/mgdbottled/Coastline.jpg
http://www.x-plane.org/users/mgdbottled/FS9Posky747NW-2.jpg
http://www.x-plane.org/users/mgdbottled/Meigs.jpg

[Potatis]

I´ve learned that FPS and clock speeds isn´t all when buying a graph.card.

Went from my old ATI 9700Pro 128MB card to a brand new 9800XT card with 256MB memory and what a disappointment regarding the quality of the picture. Maybe the new card could produce more FPS in ex. MFS-2004 but I´ll stick to my old one. I won´t give a way that superb pic.

Interesting is that I´ll also tried a Nvidia 5900FX Ultra 256 MB card, but also here my old Sapphire ATI could produce less FPS but a far better picture....

[MadMaster]

That is why I tell people to take a look at reviews of cards to see where their performance is.

The best place for this is...

www.tomshardware.com

There are many other places but this place is the best.

[Bigshot]

One nice thing about Nvidia that some folks love and others hate is the Digital Vibrance feature available with Nvidia cards. It would be a nice feature on an ATI card for those who like more color, and whether realistic or not, it should be an individual choice. ATI does not have this and many think it should be added. Color can be adjusted via the control panel; but only if you fly in window mode. And then it's there on your desktop too. Full screen mode is limited to adjusting gamma, brightness and contrast. At least with my current drivers, it is. That's not meant as a slam on ATI's color. It's excellent as is and the 9800Pro is reported to have even nicer color than the 9700Pro series card. IMHO.

ATI beats Nvidia in 2d image quality. Whether the cockpits in FS9 look better or not with an Nvidia card, I don't know. Mine could be sharper; but most anything could be sharper, I suppose. They look OK to me as is. That probably has something to do with the AA & AF settings. I run performance AF because the cockpits look just a bit sharper and there's no real noticeable difference in the overall look of the terrain with quality vs performance AF. At least not with my 3.10 drivers (omega variety); but, there is a very noticeable framerate advantage with performance AF.

Just running Windows and browsing the internet, the color and pic quality on screen is better with the ATI. Very noticeable to me. I suppose what you see is limited by the quality of your monitor too; but if you combine a good quality monitor with an ATI card, you're in for a visual treat just browsing the internet.

I have two ATI cards. A 9700Pro and and 9800NP in the wife's computer. If they weren't better looking, I wouldn't have two. She's into digital photography and her ATI9800NP delivers a very noticeable better picture quality when viewing photos and it's also extremely fast. Never a stutter when she's downloading and viewing any kind of moving video. The one major advantage ATI has over Nvidia is the brute force of the ATI card running AA & AF full on. ATI's AA quality is clearly superior to Nvidia. AF quality is debateable; but the ATI goes to 16xAF which is clearly better than 8xAF. The ATI card delivers the framerate too. The Nvidia does not have that brute force.

Nvidia runs older games better. EAW is a good example. If you still use that sim, Nvidia would be the better card for that sim. If you run newer games, especially DX9 only games, ATI would be the better card. It all boils down to what you prefer. Both are good cards, both have their advantages and disadvantages. Drivers are not an issue anymore, either. ATI drivers are rock solid.