Whats a good graphics card for fs2004 these days.

[Simran737]

Hi,

Just whats the best but not that $$$ graphics card out there now. My Radon 9800x thing, might of blown its stack.

I have a main XP server running fs2004. Using this one for outside views and have 2 smaller ME (yes ME at this time) clients running the PM stuff on the panels.

Something wit nice graphics for the outside views.

Thanks
Randy

[Westozy]

I reckon the best value for money at the moment is an 8800 GTS. 50-60FPS in FS2004, ~ 45FPS in FSX. About AUD$590 (US$495) I've been told to avoid ATI cards and stick with NVidea.

Gwyn

[Kennair]

Depends what your motherboard handles at the moment. Gwyn is right if you have the latest PCI-EX thingy motherboard capable of taking the 8800 series cards. I suspect you have an older AGP slot and I think the fastest AGP card was the 7900 series. Not sure, could be wrong, but certainly the 7600 series cards will place in there no problem. Something with 512MB of memory should see you right. Take a look at the link to Toms Hardware Video card review on the front page of Mycockpits for a comprehensive comparison of all available video cards currently and FSX.

However don't be surprised at the lack of improvement by upgrading just your video card, as most of the video crunching in FS is done by the main CPU. Certainly if you want to run FSX you might find that a total upgrade is in order (is for me!!)

Ken.

[Ray Proudfoot]

Hi,

Just whats the best but not that $$$ graphics card out there now. My Radon 9800x thing, might of blown its stack.

I have a main XP server running fs2004. Using this one for outside views and have 2 smaller ME (yes ME at this time) clients running the PM stuff on the panels.

Something wit nice graphics for the outside views.

Thanks
Randy

Randy,

I changed my 9800Pro 128Mb for a Sapphire X1950Pro 512Mb AGP card for around £150 9 months ago. That card is now available for around £100 in the UK.

Whilst it doesn't offer any improvement in frame rates it delivers the same performance at 1920*1200 as at 1280*1024 thereby allowing me to feed the picture to a Dell 24" display. The X1950XTX is a bit faster but probably more expensive.

Cheers,

[mpl330]

I reckon the best value for money at the moment is an 8800 GTS. 50-60FPS in FS2004, ~ 45FPS in FSX. About AUD$590 (US$495) I've been told to avoid ATI cards and stick with NVidea.

Gwyn

2nd that - running a 8800GTS here with 640Mb - great card! Dont bother with the GTX.
Also easy to overclock it if required...
Mike

[Ray Proudfoot]

Isn't the 8800 series PCI-E only? That won't fit into a mobo that previously had a 9800Pro.

[mpl330]

Sorry Ray - missed your last post...
Yes its PCI-e only...

Cheers
Mike

[Deesystems]

Ati has come out with the HD series the # start off at 2400 to the 2900 They are DX10 cards. Id look at the 2600 series price wise

Product	VisionTek 900178 Radeon HD 2400PRO 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 AGP 8X HDCP Ready Video Card - Retail	EVGA 512-A8-N559 GeForce 7600GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 8X Video Card - Retail
Price	Unit Price: $89.99 Save: -$6.00 Total: $83.99	Unit Price: $124.99
Notes & Disclaimers	Standard Return Policy	Limited 30-Day Return Policy
Shipping	3 Business Day Shipping $5.84	3 Business Day Shipping $6.33
Rating		[4 reviews]
In Stock	Yes	Yes
Item#	N82E16814129096	N82E16814130099
Model#	900178	512-A8-N559
Brand	VisionTek	EVGA
Interface	AGP 8X	AGP 8X
Chipset Manufacturer	ATI	NVIDIA
GPU	Radeon HD 2400PRO	GeForce 7600GT
Core clock	700MHz	580MHz
Stream Processors	40 Unified Stream Processors
Memory Clock	800MHz	800MHz
Memory Size	256MB	512MB
Memory Interface	64-bit	128-bit
Memory Type	GDDR2	GDDR2
DirectX	DirectX 10	DirectX 9
OpenGL	OpenGL 2.0	OpenGL 2.0
DVI	2	1
TV-Out	HDTV Out	HDTV Out
VIVO	No	No
Tuner	None	None
RAMDAC	400 MHz	400 MHz
Max Resolution	2560 x 1600	2560 x 1600
Cooler	With Fan	With Fan
Operating Systems Supported	Windows Vista (all versions) Windows XP Windows XP Media Center Edition
System Requirements	Intel Pentium 4, Celeron, AMD Duron/Athlon/Athlon XP, Sempron or compatible with AGP 8x slot 256MB of system memory (1GB+ recommended for Windows Vista) Installation software requires CD-ROM drive DVD playback requires DVD drive Correct Chipset drivers 270 watt or greater power supply
Dual-Link DVI Supported	Yes	Yes
Windows Vista	Certified for
HDCP Ready	Yes
Features	ATI Avivo HD Video & Media
Package Contents	900178 Driver Disk User Manual Power Cable DVI to VGA/D-sub Adapter	512-A8-N559 Driver Disk User Manual HDTV Cable S-Video Cable Power Cable DVI to VGA/D-sub Adapter
PixelPipelines		12
D-SUB		1
RoHS Compliant		Yes