nVidia/Radeon & FS2004

[Deleted]

All,

First of all thank you for a great forum. I have been lurking for a while and have been able to significantly enhance my simming experience thanks to all here.

Tom if this is the wrong place, pls delete with my apols.

The thread on W7 and FS2004 prompted my post. I recently upgraded my Athlon of 7 years (Radeon display) to an AMD dual core with an Nvidia 9500GT display card.

I am unable to get any kind of decent AA settings to work with FS2004 or FSX for that matter. I have shimmering as well.

I'd post at an nVidia forum, but it seems like these issues are old news and the threads are usually locked, long forgotten, or ignored.

Ironically, the main reason for the upgrade was to increase classic AI traffic. I'm not seeking the perfection I have seen here, just some passable textures and scenery.

Setting AA and AF with the nVidia 3d app is ineffective. The let the application decide box is unticked in both FS. I have tried nHancer to set AA etc, but this takes me into jerk-o-vision mode. I have framerates set to 40FPS and they pinball between 7 and 40 FPS. I have the latest nVidia drivers and have the correct version of nHancer for the drivers. None of the sliders are maxed.

I can run apps like Call of Duty 5 with no problems, but I can't get a smooth Connie or Stratoliner.

nHancer is going. I think my PC performs better with out it.

What do the member here use to control nVidia cards for FS2004 and FSXor is there a Radeon card in my future?

All advice appreciated.

Talbot

[ashaman]

Well, could not care less about FSX, but to have good AA with FS2004 on a series 9 Geforce you NEED nHancer.

I had no problems with my old Geforce 6600GT AGP, then like you went over to an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000 + Geforce 9600GT, and like you, I couldn't get the AA to engage. Search here, search there, it seems that FS9 is a too old a program to interface correctly with some of the more... esoteric options of the more advanced (read: born after) drivers for the Geforce.

Solution? Simple and freeware. Download, learn to use and then apply the bridging options of nHancer.

How nHancer works, I am not going to tell you here, not because I don't want, but because is fairly complicated to write down, that and there are so many options that making a reduction here is almost impossible without leaving out something important.

Reduction that is not necessary by the way, as nHancer has well done instructions available both on the site and in the program itself.

With nHancer I have perfect AA and full control of my 9600GT under FS9.

As for having more performances, you'll have them sure once every piece of the puzzle of this software mess will be in their place. I myself came from a 5 years old Athlon Xp and was blown away.

[emfrat]

Hi Talbot -
I can't buy into the nVidia v. Radeon debate, since I have never used an nVidia card, probably since I have never had an Athlon-based machine. That was not policy, it just happened that way.

I can accept that a GPU can be optimised to work better with one CPU than another. I am quite sure nVidias will work with Intel CPUs, and Radeons with AMDs, but I am equally sure we are talking about 99.99% as against 99.98% performance. If you need a computer to tell you the difference, well, maybe there is no perceptible difference.

I recently upgraded from a 256MB Radeon 9550 to a 1GB Radeon HD4650. This is the AGP version of a card which was only PCIe when it was first released. There is a noticeable improvement - in known 'bad areas' for AI traffic and autogen, things can be seen to 'click into focus' quicker than they used to.
The basic policy for my flying machine (2GB RAM, Pentium Dual Core 3.6 GHz - I think- Win XP Pro SP3) is FPS locked at 25, and all control from the card, nothing in the sim settings.
Just my 2c worth - hope it helps

MikeW

[stansdds]

Unfortunately AA control is broken in many of Nvidia's newer drivers. You have two options.

1. Try a metric ton of drivers until you find one that does work.

2. Download, install, and use Nhancer instead of the Nvidia control panel.

I went with option 2 a long time ago. My current driver for my 8800GT is the 182.50 WHQL driver. It seems to be the best of the newer drivers, but I'm kind of thinking that the 178.22 and earlier drivers might actually be the best for the 8xxx and 9xxx cards.

As for GPU and CPU compatibility, years ago AMD had an agreement with Nvidia for the chipsets for AMD based motherboards. When AMD bought ATI, that agreement went away and AMD made it quite clear that they would be gearing AMD CPU's and ATI graphics cards to work together. The result was Intel CPU's and Nvidia graphics cards being much faster than anything AMD-ATI could produce. AMD is now running on the ragged edge of bankruptcy. ATI is now the profit center as they are producing cards that equal Nvidia in speed and image quality. Many people actually hold that the new ATI cards are the best for MS FS9 and FSX.

[Tom/CalClassic]

I had a 7900GS card and now have a GTX 260, and with both I had to use nHancer to set up AA to my liking. I use the 180.48 driver for the GTX card.

The most important thing to remember when using nHancer is that you have to turn AA OFF in FS, or you may have bad frame rates. But one person I know has to turn it on (but doesn't affect their frame rate).

My settings:

1. Options - check to Allow override of predefined settings.
2. Find the "MS Flight Simulator 2004" profile
3. On the right side of the screen:

Enhancements tab:
AA: Combined 8xS (some use Multisampling 8xQ instead)
Uncheck Enhance in-game AA setting
Check Gamma Correction
Check Multi-Transparency AA
AF: 16X

Optimizations tab:
Texture Filtering - High Quality
Trilinear optimization - Off
Aniso. sample optimization - Off
Negative LOD BIAS - Clamp (important for eliminating blurries and shimmering)

More recent versions of nHancer may have these settings in slightly different places, but the procedure is the same - just find them.

BTW, one thing I have found that helps if I suddenly get jaggies is to switch between windowed and full screen mode (and back).

Hope this helps,

[Deleted]

All,

Thanks for the good advice. I'll just have to persevere.

I have had a play and can get acceptable settings for FSX, but not for FS9 yet.

Its ironic, because its FS9 I use the most.

Talbot