Good G/C for a flightsims.

pieman109 · 10 Mar 2006 at 13:46

A mate has asked me to source him a decent vidcard which is basically gonna be used for flightsims, specifically FS2004 or later. he wants to play with most/all the eye candy turned on at 1280 x 1024 res without too much slowdown. he's got an A64 3200, 2 gig memory, 200g sata H/D. I was thinking in terms of at least an X850XTPE, or maybe even an X1800XL if/when one shows up on MM.
wadya reckon?

Zefan · 10 Mar 2006 at 13:49

Not a flight sim user myslef, but I reckon that sort of card will be needed simply due to the amount of AA and AF he'll want. Without AF I imagine large expanses of ground to look simply awful. These'll do him for a long time I imagine.

Goksly · 10 Mar 2006 at 13:55

Buy what ever Marshy has - think he is a hardcore flightsim freak

smids · 10 Mar 2006 at 14:34

Goksly said:
Buy what ever Marshy has - think he is a hardcore flightsim freak

Haha, probably true though

. I think anything from X850XT upwards will be fine tbh.

pieman109 · 10 Mar 2006 at 14:35

Right then, wheres Marshy went you want him, lol?

KizZ · 10 Mar 2006 at 14:57

Whats his budget?

GAMEfreak · 10 Mar 2006 at 15:15

1800XL or XT methinks, if you intend to run 3rd party addons, with all bells and whistles on at that res, especially considering flight sim 06 is coming soon, and is looking to be a bit of a performance hog. if hes got low budget a 7600gt would be advised.

pieman109 · 10 Mar 2006 at 15:42

KizZ said:
Whats his budget?

£200ish I suppose.

smids · 10 Mar 2006 at 15:46

pieman109 said:
£200ish I suppose.

With a stretch to £217 a 256MB X1800XT can be bought. Stonking good card, but then again, some people can't stretch which is totally understandable.

KizZ · 10 Mar 2006 at 15:51

The X1800XT 256MB is deffinately worth it!

D.P. · 10 Mar 2006 at 16:12

Many flight sims tend to be OGL and tend to run better under Nvidia cards: but check reviews for benchmarks.

And some flightsimes have SM3.0 support, I wouldn't waste any money on an over-prices X80. Maybe look on the members market for people selling X1800Xt and 7800 because of the arrival of the 7900s.

FreeStream · 10 Mar 2006 at 16:31

X1800XT

I went from 6800U to X1900XT and it made a huuuuuuge dif i IQ and FPS at max AA and AF, CPU limtied now

X1800XT is only 20% slower than a X1900XT, so I would go for that.

Conc

Rizz · 10 Mar 2006 at 17:38

I would lean towards the Ati x1800xt over the 7800gt IQ was much better in forgotten battles with my old x800xt, Shimmering is really bad on the Gt infact im going to buy a x1800xt or x1900xt to get rid of the shimmering.

egt · 10 Mar 2006 at 17:47

If you want to see SM3.0 water in Pacific Fighters then Nvidia is the only way to go

welshtom · 10 Mar 2006 at 17:49

EGT, you got any screenies of farcry+hdr+aa?

wanna see what it looks like on nvidia

Tom

egt · 10 Mar 2006 at 17:53

welshtom said:
EGT, you got any screenies of farcry+hdr+aa?

wanna see what it looks like on nvidia

Tom

The OP was asking about Flight sims. Is Farcry a flight sim?

welshtom · 10 Mar 2006 at 17:54

egt said:
The OP was asking about Flight sims. Is Farcry a flight sim?

Sorry for the OT, just wondering if you had any personal screenies of your card doing it?

no need to get upset :rolleyes:

D.P. · 10 Mar 2006 at 17:54

welshtom said:
EGT, you got any screenies of farcry+hdr+aa?

wanna see what it looks like on nvidia

Tom

Can you show me screen shots of farcry + HDR + AA done correctly?
Thought not.

welshtom · 10 Mar 2006 at 17:55

D.P. said:
Can you show me screen shots of farcry + HDR + AA done correctly?
Thought not.

eh??

smids · 10 Mar 2006 at 17:57

egt said:
If you want to see SM3.0 water in Pacific Fighters then Nvidia is the only way to go

My X1800XT came bundled with Pacific Fighters - SM3.0 is on all ATi X1x00 cards.