Video Hardware: Monitors | Multi-Monitors | Video Cards | Drivers etc

Hey simming folks,unexpectedly, I had to invest in new hardware. Instead of buying another budget laptop, I decided to go with a budget desktop. After some days I decided it's going to be cheaper and more satisfying to buy the parts and build it myself.I got a good deal on a combo. Nothing out of this world:Gigabyte G41M-ES2L Motherboard - G41 Express, Socket 775, microATX, PCI Express, Audio, Video, Gigabit LAN , USB 2.0, SATA1I69-5300Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 Processor BX80571E5300 - 2.60GHz, 2MB Cache, 800MHz FSB, Wolfdale, Dual Core, Retail, Socket 775Seagate 500GB LP Serial ATA HD 5900/16MB/SATA-3G1ULT40089Ultra 2048MB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz MemoryI know, the limit…

I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO PUT TOGETHER AN UPGRADE to a system for the nh aviation museum in manchester nh.they have a current flight sim already.(fs9)..they want to enclose by building a fuse for more realism with 5 monitors running. 1 out the front window 2 at the 45 deg angle and 2 on the sides (left and right)...i have never done this multi monitor thing ..i have no idea what's involved besides 1 or possibly 2 high end systems with high end video cards linked together..can anyone please share their knowledge in this matter...how do you get 5 monitors to give the views they're looking for..i'm guessing each system with the required video cards will be about $4000 apiece to a…

I am getting a new computer that has an ATI HD 4860 in it, and was wondering if I should upgrade my Win 32 system to take advantage of DX 10 on the card. This is the only reason to upgrade, as the computer is an iMac and I use the Mac OSX for all my regular computing needs, but I boot into windows for flight sim and steam games.Specs will be: i7 quad core 2.66, 8 G ram. Does either win XP or win 7 take full use of the quad core technology and hyperthreading?

My spec'sIntel core Duo E8400 @ 3.0 ghz. 1333 FSBM/B Gigabyte GA-73pvm-S2H N force 630IGe Force 7100PC2-6400 (2 gigs) @ 400mhzXp sp3Being it is "on board" video, The video uses 512 M/B of system memory thus leaving just over a gig of mem. to use for apps. like FS9. If i add another 2 gigs of memory will Xp utilize the extra memory in slot 2 (Total of 4 gigs) to achieve better performance? I know on board video is not as good as a dedicated video card but, $50 for memory versus $200 plus for a nice card...... Thanks.....

Hey guys, my current setup is as follows....GIGABYTE MOBO : GA-EP43-DS3LXFX GPU: XFX radeon HD4890 Xtreme 1gbCORSAIR PSU: HX750WGSKILL RAM: GSKILL TRIDENT 4gbINTEL CPU: Q9550CPU COOLER: Xigmatek Dark KnightMonitor: Viewsonic 24"O/S : Windows 7 x64Now i want to change to a Nvidia GPU and my question is, is the GTS250 or the GTX275 better for my system? i know the GTX275 is the overall more powerful card, but will my system benefit with this card over the 250? The reason i ask is because i was told that my CPU would not be able to handle the 275 and it will be creating a bottleneck? thanks guys!

the various profiles which I never use? You can eliminate the splash screen, but the profiles still pop up during initialization, necessitating a cancel or other operation.Thanks,Noel

I've got an ATI X850 - 256 megs video card. I recently upgraded to an E8400 and 4 gigs ram. Me thinks it's time for a new video card. I would like to stay with ATI.What's around for say 300 bucks? My motherborad is a gigabiyte EP45-UD3P if that helps. 512 megs video ram seems to be the norm. Would 1 gig be better?JimCYWG

I figured I'd try the 191.07 NV drivers. Now when the Opening freeflight screen opens I get a little red message in the top left corner where the AC preview screen is. Its something about GTA San Andreas and performance problems. Read the documentation and configure yourself, then I forget the link that is in there something something dot.ru.Its still there even after going back to older drivers. Anyone else run across this. Drivers were d/ld from the NVidia site.

I know the number of FSX+Win7 64-bit+TH2Go+Nvidia8800+ users out there must be small, but I thought I'd give it a shot. My favorite screen resolution with TH2Go for FSX with my old XP Home TH2Go was 3072X768. Apparently that resolution is no longer possible or at least I have had no luck trying to use it with or without FSX for my new Win 7 set-up, it sets up a funny ghost distortion. Wonder if anyone else out there has the same issue or a workaround?Randy Jura, KPDX

I am interested in possibly using a 37"+ LCD TV for my primary display on an FSX rig. While I appreciate the resolution is only 1920 x 1080 and you would have to be around 4' from the screen to avoid seeing individual pixels, it seems to me that this would be more immersive than a shorter triple monitor system, especially if used with Track IR. Is anyone flying with this sort of setup? How do you like it? DAB

elloNhancer 2.5.7 has more catagories than what has been covered in Nick's recommended FSX settings at http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041. Some of the specifics he mentioned for the older versions are no longer included and a number of new settings are required, as follows: In Profile Enhancements - Ambient Occlusion Optimizations - Power Management Mode Compatibility - Direct 3D9 compatibility - Open GL Support 2 - Conformant Texture Clamp (Off, Specification or Hardware) - Single Back Depth Buffer …

MemberGroup: MembersPosts: 164Joined: 5-August 03Member No.: 111,849 Hi allI have been reading all of the threads concerning the new i7, Windows 7 computers. I noticed a common thread running through almost all of the posts that I read and that was that almost all of the people using these new very fast computers were also using the high end Nvidia cards instead of the high end ATI cards. My present computer is using a pretty good ATI HD 3870 card because my computer builder said that it was the most compatible with my Mac 32 inch monitor. The plan for my new computer is to use and ATI HD 5850 card, but seeing that so many people are using the end NVIDIA card makes me a b…

I have just got a new computer and an ATI 4870 card and running Windows 7. CCC seems to have stopped working (comes up with an "stopped working" box when I boot my computer). I got Tray Tools and it installed ok and I have set up and FS9 profile. However when I run FS9 I can't get it to go to full screen (alt + Enter) it just stays in windowed mode. When it gets to the main Creat a Flight menu all I see is a blank display and no aircraft spinning around like they do normally. This is very strange because I can run FS9 fine with Tray Tools turned off, I just get loads of jaggy lines etc and it all looks pretty nasty. Anyone know what's the matter with this and now to get i…

I am considering a new Dell PC with Windows 7 64bit Ultimate. The two best video card options the have are either the ATI Radeon 4350 512MB or the Nvidia GT 220 1024MB. Which one would work best for FSX?I have a brand new SATA hard drive available: Should I install FSX on the new computer's Windows 7 64bit disk partition or would it be better to add a second SATA hard drive with Windows XP Pro to run FSX on the new PC with the ATI Radeon 4350 512MB or the Nvidia GT 220 1024MB?Thank you in advance,Kerke

Hi, I recently bought and installed my TripleHead2go digital which I use to run 3 LCD monitors at 1280*1024. Just want to check everything is working as it should. I have noticed that since installing the TH2G that my desktop and applications run slower than before (e.g it takes longer to load windows explorer and Excel/Word are slightly slower than before) - is this normal? In FSX itself my framerates are lower (understandably so as more is being rendered) but it also takes long to change the settings which seems strange. For example in the welcome screen when I click on change plane there is a pause of around 10 seconds before the plane list comes up. Is that normal? An…

The new official Catalyst 9.10 drivers are up on AMD/ATI

Greetings,I was just gonna pull the trigger on my new build but my builder can't seem to find a 2.0GB 285 card. What the heck do I do now? Does anyone know where I can get one or suggestions on a comparable second choice? I want my new build specifically for FS and given the cost, it has to me right.I would sure appreciate some advise. I don't know what direction to go now.Thank you all very much in advance.Cbreeze

I recently had my nvidia card go for a burton and by recommendation had fitted a radeon hd 5750 card but when i try to load FX I get the following message "graphics card does not meet min requirements for shader support producd requires geforce3/radeon8500 class or better . does this mean I have wasted

I think I found a jewel to consider moving up to 1920 x 1200 on: Dell's IPS panel U2140. Looks like a keeper, with low input lag, etc. The only concern I have now is, how hard will that be on processing overhead compared to what I am using now, a Dell 1680 x 1050 display (gr8 in itself, as an IPS panel). I know I can expect some deterioration in other games that are heavy GPU games, but FSX I'm not sure what to expect.Thanks,Noel

I'm currently using FPS limiter (3.0 GHz quad machine, WIN XP SP3 + Nick's tweaks, 8800GTX and 4 GB ram) with no problem and good smoothness results.Of course, by looking the task mgr, you see that the CPU load is well balanced and the first CPU is no longer locked at 100%.Now, if you try one of the following:close the DOS window that starts FPS limiter or stop "FPS_limiter.exe" process via task mgryou see that "FPS_limiter.exe" process is deleted, but the CPU load distribution does not change.So it seems that, once launched, the D3D render hook of FPS limiter keeps working, even if stopped, and one could spare a process.Any thoughts?Thanks in advanceFulvio

So I am looking at two EVGA cards. One is a 512MB with a 771 mhz GPU and the other is a 1GIG with a 702 GPU speed? which is better for fs9? and will I see a difference in visual proformace with a 512MB with a higher GPU speed or a 1GB with a lower GPU speed? thanks

Hello to everyone,Recently my older Nvidia 8800 GT has dead, due to artifacts (probably a vram failure), and I am very frustrated, because this card always has been an excellent option to run FSX a low resolution with very good fps. I have a Core2Quad 6600 running at 3.2 GHZ, with 4 GB RAM and Windows 7 x64, getting beetwen 20-30 fps with very high details (using FPS Limiter and DirectX 9).Now I am searching a cheap video card to move FSX with high details at 1440x900 resolution. I think that now the best options for a low budget are the Ati Radeon HD 4770 and Nvidia Geforce GTS 250. Both cards would fit good with my 500W power supply (the reason why a don

Hi all,Lately I've been getting fed up with the fact that my video card gives me silky smooth performance in every game I play except the one which I play the most: FS9. As a result, I've been considering selling off my HD 4870 X2 and replacing it with an nVidia GTX 285, mostly because I've heard that my ATI can be "outperformed by a clocked GeForce 8800 GTS," and because the 285 looks like its going to be lowest priced nVidia card that I can get that will give me the same single card performance as my 4870X2 in all of the rest of the games which I play. The problem is that I can expect about $200 from selling my ATI card and the GTX 285 costs about $350 - $400, so the ad…

All you need to know...

I just had a hard drive go bad. After replacing hard drive and reinstalling Windows Ultimate 64 bit, I have used the provided CD to install TripleHead2Go (Analog). I've got three monitors to use, each 1280 x 1024. The highest resolution I am offered is 2400 x 600. My video card is a ATI 4870. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.Mike Eppright (KICT)