Best Flight Simulator 3D Graphic Card

Are you overclocking?  


When money is not an issue you can do a lot. :)

The chipset:  there are two major video GPU makers
nvidia
ATI Radeon

The Radeon cards are the best on the market hands down.  However, they have some issues time to time with certian games.  
I don't mind Nvidia's.  I currently have one.  however, the newer models FX5200 series and up are very poor overclockers.  With that said they will run at pretty frame rates, but not quite as fast as the Radeons.

As to what brand of video card you get:
I like ASUS they have very high quality products.
ATI also makes good products.

What i would recommend

Asus Radeon 9800 Xt/Tvd    This card is a 256MB card

Asus Radeon 9600 Xt/Tvd    128MB card it is very similar to the card above.

Asus V9980 Ultra                 this is a Nvidia GPU and it is 128MB

ATI Radeon All in Wonder 9800   you can get this card in 128MB or 256Mb  this is the Best of the best, but will cost you an arm and a leg


There are many others that would suit your needs just fine.  The above cards are all top of the line.  If you want some that are in the middle level say so.

if you want to look at prices   www.pricewatch.com  

Lucf:
your really want money not to be an issue ;)

Yep, but it really is the best card available (if you want to spend over $1000 on a videocard)

i know i read something about it like two weeks ago or so.  There is another 512 MB card out that is a 3D card, but the name is not at the top of my head.

buckeyes33  So you are saying that the All-in-Wonder 9800 is better than the XT???

I found it on new egg for 675 not to bad

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=14-124-112&DEPA=1&sumit=property&catalog=48&mfrcode=0&propertycodevalue=4445,3676&keywords=&minprice=&maxprice=

only 175 bucks more than RADEON.  I thought they were more expensive tha that too.

>buckeyes33  So you are saying that the All-in-Wonder 9800 is better than the XT???

Yes the All in Wonder will  should be better then the Xt even though they use the same chipset.  I need to clarify myself

ATI makes better cards from their chipsets then other people.  
there is actually 4 different video cards that are made by ATI that are 9800 series

ALL-IN-WONDER 9800 PRO  256MB
RADEON 9800 PRO 256MB
RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB
RADEON 9800 128MB

The ALL-IN-WONDER is better because it is a mutlimedia card.  You will be view movies and pictures better then the other cards.  That is the reason it is better.  3D graphics wise it matchs up to the others.  

personally if I had the money I would buy and ALL-IN-Wonder card.  however, it would probably be an older version.

buckeyes33,
> I found it on new egg for 675 not to bad
I wish I could find it for that price here in the netherlands ;-)

Well basically for what you get the AIW is a better card, cuz it has multimedia Features.  But if you dont use those multimedia features such as TV Tuner, Capturing, and dont need all the extra input/output,
The 9800 XT is going to be a better gaming card.  the XT chipset is faster than the standard Radeon Chipset.

Although I am big fan of ATI cards, I found a bug with the ATI cards and MS Combat Flight Simulator 2003, it would not run and Microsoft has no plans to fix it.

The problem may or may not carry over into MS FS 2004, but it is worth looking into before you drop the cash.

I have not heard that, but i would not be suprised.  ATI has had problems with several games.

>>ATI has had problems with several games.
And so has nVidia...the release notes for each new Detonator driver (or ForceWare  or whatever they call it now) always list specific game issues.  I'm not bagging on nVidia, but just making the point that both nvidia and ATI have had their share of compatability issues.  With ATI gaining a *lot* of marketshare in the high/mid range 3D market, I think we'll start to see those problems go away as more and more developers develop on ATI cards, or test compatability much more thoroughly.

vantasticman777: http://mirror.ati.com/support/infobase/4112.html  there is now a work-around for that CFS2K3 problem.  Note that you may have to set the version information to be equal to the current driver version you're using, as reported by dxdiag.exe.

-dog*

I have found the 5950 to be better in flight sim's than most ATI cards (up to the 9800 XT). It seems to me that you recieve much less flicker and barber poll on these cards too. Flight sim's are all about frame rates, but if I'm flying my plane I care to see everything, the right way, not some messed up flickering barber polling graphics on the side of every building and window, that just turns me off.

So if your looking for performance and quality in a nice blend, then use the nVidia. If you only care about the frame rates, I "hear" the 9800XT is faster, though I have no proof.

Buckeyes33 recommended the AIW, I strongly disagree. It needs more software on installation and ends up being slower in games (about 5%)than the 9800XT, the 9800XT is the performance card for ATI, there is none better (except for the new X800XT, but you can't get that off the shelf yet).

I have yet to run the 6800 or the X800XT in FS04 yet, I do find that the X800XT is faster in many games, but I think the 6800 Ultra will tank it in flight simulator.

I ended up with the ATI 9800 XT Pro, AGP
2 - ATI 9200 SE, in PCI

Last weekend I was hitting 150 fps...

Glad it worked out for you pspera!

dogztar

Also, if you're getting 150fps...time to turn up the resolution or the Anti-aliasing/ansiotrophic filtering! :-)

It is, I have everything maxed out....

So you're running at 1600x1200x32bit with 16X Ansio/8X AA and still getting 150fps sometimes?  That is really impressive!

Hi Pspera, how do you tell what your fps is ?   I also have a 9800 XT and would be interested to find that out.
 
Also, a comment to vantasticman777:    I've been running Combat Flight Simulator on my 9800 XT for about 10 months now with no problem.   I was curious to know what the bug is that you encountered with it....

LucF: 3DLabs has upgraded: http://www.3dlabs.com/products/product.asp?prod=293
A quote from another site:
The Wildcat Realizm 800 is slated for availability in the third calendar quarter of this year at an MSRP of US$2,799.

$2800!  But what FPS does it get in DOOM3? hahaha...

un1ted:  I think the issue vantasticman777 was referring to is: http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4112.html

It only applies to Win9x.  Also note CFS3.1 update fixes this problem: http://www.microsoft.com/games/combatfs3/downloads.asp#update3.1

dogztar

dog*,
Yeah, I got to get myself one of those, I'd love to run some benchmarks on it :) But I'll probably wait until it's getting a little cheaper...

LucF