Some thoughts about graphic card for FSX or X-Plane

[Pegasus1 1]

Dear sim community,I would like to hear your comments and opinion about the graphic cards mentioned in topic headline and following issues. Me, I am using Sapphire's HD-5870 Vapor-X model right now with three Dell 2408WFP displays which I grouped together at a resolution of 6060x1200 (with bezel management, ATI CCC 10.3). Before I owned a GTX-295. There are 3 reasons because I changed from GTX-295 to HD-5870:Reason 1 (no Surround-Gaming possible, bad multi-monitor-support):At the GTX-295 you can only connect 3 simulteanous working displays by disabling the Multi-GPU function of the card (is described by nVidia also). Then you have to connect two of your displays through DVI, and the third display through HDMI-cable. I was able to have all 3 displays working but not as a complete grouped desktop. Instead I was only able to use my three displays at a resolution of 3x 1920x1200. That means, in FSX or other games I wasn't able to enjoy a surround gaming at high resolutions like I do now. So I used the center display for my cockpit view, and on the left and right display I liked to have an outside view and maybe some panels or tools. But: as I had performance problem since beginning of using FSX I had to use the bufferpools=0 tweak to get good frames. The holy praised highmemfix=1 of ******* was not known at this time. When I tried to open a new windows at my right display with outside view of the aircraft, I get fatal graphical errors (black lines frrom autogen objects). That's because of the BP=0 tweak as mentioned by Bojote in his detailed posting. So I was not able to run FSX even on two displays and used for a long time only my center display. I was able to have displayed some panels on my left or right display, but I was not satisfied because I minimum wanted to have an outside view. Conclusion: with the GTX-295 I was not able to use my three displays simultaneously within FSX or X-Plane, I was only able to use one display at a time. But I really wanted to use all my displays at same time and not waste them by only use them on Windows desktop.Reason 2 (too less RAM):Because of the mentioned problem with graphical errors, I thought about the RAM of the GTX-295 which is only 896MB RAM for each GPU. Nvidia is talking always about 1.792MB RAM for this graphic card but this is NOT CORRECT in my eyes and is only a marketing trick. I though that my GPU-RAM is getting overfilled to quick, because of the BP=0 tweak. So the RAM of the graphic card was also a thought that I sold my GTX-295.Reason 3:In so many months spending at various forums I have red so many things about Multi-GPU cards and the flightsim. I also had very bad times with Arma2 when it was released due to the incompatibility of SLI and all that stuff. For FSX and X-Plane I used to disable SLI, that means I disabled Multi-GPU in the nVidia driver. But I thought that a single-GPU card will perform much better for my flight sims, and I have red so many things about that in various flightsim forums. So this was the last reason which pointed me to the HD-5870.This is not a flame, I am really no ATI or NVIDIA fan. I have to emphasize that the GTX-295 is a REALLY GOOD graphic card with AMAZING performance in all my other games I used to. Today I can say, that the GTX-295 performed much much better like my HD-5870 Vapor-X at games like CoD6/MW2, Crysis Warhead, Dirt2, RainbowSixVegas,Grid, etc... especially when having smokes and stuff like that the HD-5870 is having sometimes a lit bit trouble with that. The GTX-295 was a GREAT card, but my intention is to use primary the flightsim. That's why I invested in a good system, because I wanted to use a good performant flight sim like FSX or X-PLANE. I don't give too much weight in all the other games mentioned before. So, I switched to HD-5870.I am quite satisfied with HD-5870. I can now use surround-gaming, the temperature and noise level is very very good in comparison to the GTX-295 (although I don't give too much weight on this) and the card gives more performance now in my flightsims. Especially one point: I can use all my displays at same time with my flightsim. I fly at 6060x1200 and I really love this cockpit view. But as you know this high resolution will need also strong calculating power and I'm still tuning, testing, etc... to get the best possible result for my sim.One problem I have with the HD-5870 is the anisotropic problem I described HERE. I am still not really sure if this resulted from having changed from Nvidia to ATI. I think about of another graphic card, and if it will give more performance to my setup I use right now. What do you think? Which combination should be a good thought? The reason I don't want to invest in GTX-470 or GTX-480 is because they still don't support surround gaming, so I would need to invest also in a Matrix Triple Head 2 Go and I don't want that! When I would buy another 5870, should I have more performance in FSX? I don't think so, do I? Because I am reading always about FSX doesn't support SLI or CROSSFIRE setups and can cause performance trouble to the sims when using themwith SLI/Crossfire. Is that true??? If not, how would a 5970 perform with my three displays? Are there any ATI 5970 users out there using FSX with three displays and can give me some detailed explanation about performance?What are your thoughts about this? I am really looking forward to hear your comments.Thanks and greetings,Pegasus.

[Guest AvioPyric]

Good discussion pegasus1 . Now I am waiting for something like GTX475 or GTX 485 if It is single GPU card with nVidia team solve temp and power consumption problem.

[Clutch Cargo 384]

Sounds like you have set up a system that I plan to do as well. So tell me, what kind of FPS are you seeing? Is the ATI card holding up ok or is it struggling under the weight of (3) monitors? I was thinking of maybe purchasing a 2nd 5870 and have them run 3-4 monitors but not in in SLI or Crossfire mode as it has been stated it will not perform well. But could I have them run together in eyefinity "wrap-around" mode if they are running separately? Not sure if that is possible?Clutch

[Pegasus1 1]

Well, I can tell you that the ATI HD 5xxx models are the only card at the moment which can deliver high resolutions through multi-monitor-setup (surround gaming). With the GTX-295 it would NOT be possible, nO way. As my system has to compute so many pixel (6060x1200) i'm quite satisfied with my FPS rates and performance. It depends on sceneries. Actually I am again testing some scenarios and tweaks. I can tell you following: when I used the GTX-295 the BP=0 tweak gave me lots of more performance (FPS). It was amazing! but I had all these graphical errors, which had drive me crazy. At this time the 'holy' Highmemfix=1 was not known yet. With my ATI card I cannot see any better performance when using bp=0 so I don't use it anymore :) As I have 3 displays and want to use them all, it's not possible with a Nvidia card to achieve this. I would have to purchase additionally a Matrox Triple Head 2 Go and the maximum possible resolution is not as high, as I have it right now with my ATI card. I thought of installing a second 5870 in my rig, but I have red, that I will not achieve more performance with that, but I could connect 3 more displays (I don't want to use 6 displays, I'm satisfied with 3).

[Kogacarlo 0]

On my very old 'puter (Athlon 3700+ OC'ed to 3 ghz) I have an Nvidea 6600GT and an Ati Radeonx700pro.Win7 Ultimate 64 and everything runs fine.I don't even have no drivers installed, only the Windows drivers.The 6600GT does 2 displays, 1680x1050 and 1024x768. The Radeon700pro does one 1024x768.I read a lot on this forum and keep reading two different brands (or cards) won't run but here it does fine!!Now I wanna build a rig based on a I7-930. X58 chipset.Can anyone explain why a 5850 together with a 5770 won't work? The 5770 is not top of the bill but I always thought the CPU was the bottleneck?The 5850 for 2 displays and the 5770 for one.I don't need Eyefinity and Crossfire. BTW I run FSX.Interesting forum this... :(