Nvidia or Ati

[mikeallen]

Hi all,

If this has been asked before then i must apolagise.

Could anyone tell me what would be a good upgrade from a geforce Ti4600 128Mb card? I am leaning towards the ati range but unsure which one & if i would see any improvement in perfomance or visual display.

When flying in FS9 & i look out of the aircraft windows left or right, the ground textures appear as brown square patches for a couple of seconds ? it has become very annoying. Would using an Ati card improve this? I have tried most if not all the latest drivers for nvidia but nothing seems to improve on display.

My spec.
WIN XP HOME
P4 2400 GHZ
ASUS MOBO P4B533-V FSB-533MHZ
80 GIG HARD DRIVE 7200RPM
1GB RAM
GEFORCE TI4600 128MB 53.03 drivers
SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY 5.1

CHEERS

Mike.

[MadMaster]

I get the same thing, and my system is almost identical to yours except that I have a P4 800FSB and a MSI mobo. If you want to upgrade I would suggest waiting a month because ATI and Nvidia are going to release their new line of cards.

[Bigshot]

Open the FS9 cfg file; locate texture_bandwidth_mult= and change that number to =400. That gives priority to texture draw. If you get some stutters, decrease it. I can run mine at 250 with frames locked and still achieve instant terrain draw. If I unlock my frames, I have to set it at 400 to achieve instant draw.

[mikeallen]

Hi All & thanks for your reply's.

What would be the correct procedure when installing an ATI card & drivers in place of an NVIDIA card & drivers ?

i.e- How to get rid of all nvidia items on your system before installing the new card & drivers.

Thanks for your Help.

Mike

[TheFlightMan]

Mike,

It wouldn't be any different than other products, just open your control panel and run Add/Remove programs. Then uninstall the NVidia software, reboot and install the ATI software. Don't recommend you use those driver cleaner utilities, they tend to do more harm than good.

Before you install the ATI software, make sure their card has been installed and the Nvidia one has been removed. Again, nothing out of the ordinary, both companies follow industry standards when it comes to their installer packages.

TheFlightMan

[Bigshot]

Add/remove will not get rid of all the Nvidia stuff. There's a good program over at www.driverheaven.net that'll get the left over Nvidia driver files off your system. You can switch from ATI to Nvidia without a driver cleaner; but you should not switch from an Nvidia to an ATI without using the cleaner. ATI doesn't leave files that sabotage the competition. Also, there a good procedural writeup over at www.rage3d.com forums that'll walk you through it.

[mikeallen]

Hi,

I made the plunge & installed a 9800 pro 128mb card & i see no difference between the Ati & the Ti4600 card.

With the 9800 pro i still seem to get these brown patches in the scenery when flying, although it seems worse when flying the pmdg 737 & not so bad when flying the default aircraft.

I have unlocked the frame rates & set the bandwidth to 400 as mentioned, but this seems to do very little.

I am using the 9800 pro card with drivers 6.14.10.6444.

Are there any major settings i should apply in the Ati options within control panel. direct 3d, open gl ETC ETC.

Please help

Thanks

Mike.

[MadMaster]

I would suggest locking the fps at like 20 or something so your system can do something else besides spiting out frames with brown patches.

[Bruce]

this is a usefull thread for me, i was toying with changing my vid card but was not sure if the cost/increase in performance ratio would be worth the extra cost. i have decided i will probably be best of making do with what i have now and waiting a while for the next major upgrades. from what i can fathom i could get more performance but any gains would be relativly small and very expensive.