Turnip Posted March 26, 2008 Share Posted March 26, 2008 Greetings, due to a long story that I will not gt into here, I changed my video card from a 8800GT to the ATI Sapphire 3870. This being a non-nVidia card, can someone with this type of card tell what the settings in the control center should be? Also, some hints on the FSX settings would be nice too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
solareagle Posted March 28, 2008 Share Posted March 28, 2008 You might find this useful for overclocking and stability testing. In fact its the best artifact scanner I have found, and it works with Nvidia cards too. ATItool Overclocking Utility: http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holger Sandmann Posted March 28, 2008 Share Posted March 28, 2008 Hi Turnip, I'd be interested in hearing how the ATI card is working out for you as I'm in the market for a new system soon and thus face the NVidia vs. ATI choice. Cheers, Holger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turnip Posted March 28, 2008 Author Share Posted March 28, 2008 Well, I ran the 8800GT for about a week and have had this one for 2 days. I can tell you that as far as stability and ease of operation, the ATI seems a bit better. I have always had good luck with ATI stuff. The specs on the 3870 versus the 8800 are differant as the 3870 has more pipelines, bigger core clock (775) etc. Because of nVidias architecture tho, they run about the same. If you want my opinion, go with the ATI as it will save you a few bucks, you get the same frame rates, if not a bit better and the graphics look better. That is of course my opinion. You will get 1000 differant reasons to go with another type. In a nutshell, so far I am VERY happy I switched back to ATI. I can't wait to run two of these bad boys in SLI. EDIT: My video card below hasn't been changed yet and also if you run Call Of Duty 4, I am getting about 200 FPS with everything maxed out. FSX is VERY CPU reliant tho and doesn't use that much of the video card. For your new system, CPU power is a MUST HAVE! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holger Sandmann Posted March 28, 2008 Share Posted March 28, 2008 Hello Turnip, many thanks for the information. My current system has a ATI card (X800) and I've been very happy with it these past three years. Looks like the 3870 is a good choice. Good point on FSX being CPU hungry and thus focusing financial resources on MB and CPU. Cheers, Holger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triton Posted March 29, 2008 Share Posted March 29, 2008 I also have switched from an Nvidia card to an crossfire 3870 setup (not for fsx, for other games). Frankly it was massively painful.. The ATI drivers and in particular the clunky control panel software are a nightmare.. It might be better from a fresh install, and I'm hearing favourable things about VISTA (I'll be going there soon). But my install went like this.. Remove NVidia Software from XP and the Hardware from HW devices. Shutdown remove card. Install new ATI card's. Boot into safe mode and driveclean the Nvidia and ATI graphics drivers. reboot System came up detected new cards, Ran the driver installer (8.3 with CCC), both cards recognised and drivers installed. 3 devices show up with no drivers (more on this later). enter CCC enable crossfire. everything works phew painless see that 3 devices have no attached driver.. so reboot to see if they get picked up on the reboot.... :'( system reboots to login prompt. login then BSOD ati2mtag errors..every time :'( remove the crossfire hardware bridge and reboot get into system. research on the web... much pain, rumour and speculation... no answers!! except folks going back to 8.2.. uninstal the drivers etc as above and reboot to install the 8.2 drivers.. 8.2 sli works but the control panel wont! gives MOM.implementation errors :'( uninstall DX 3.5, DX 2.1, DX 2, dx 1.1 reboot install DX again and reinstall the drivers, control panel works and crossfire works reboot BSOD :'( remove CCC and install ATI traytools.. everything's working. upgrade driver to 8.3 with Traytools.. BSOD on crossfire .. roll-back to 8.2 it's fine.. So just now I'm on 8.2 with crossfire.. frame rates in FSX are much the same as my single G92 8800GT 512MB card ( didn't expect much else it's cpu bound, go for fast chips multi core large cache), Frame rates in other games are excellent way higher that the single NV card could achieve.. and the two cards only cost me £159UKP for the pair ;D So I'm going to VISTA next!! Glutton for punishment I know... How's performance in FSX.. well much smoother jitters start at a much lower frame rate (~ it appears to handle big fluffy clouds better! most of the time I'm around 25 locked..And I have most things set high except the AI.. (but then I never did like busy airports).. oh and the 3 devices are the video in/out and the HDMI audio devices... However as I had the XP SP3RC2 installed it wouldn't install the HDMI audio or the Video I/O drivers Remember your mileage may vary.. and I'll wager it's plain sailing from a fresh install.. but the first upgrade.. backup, backup, backup ;D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quinn Posted March 29, 2008 Share Posted March 29, 2008 I too am interested in following this thread for the same reasons as Holger - thanks guys btw - I recently read one of those mag articles (cant remember which one) that tested a new ATI 3870 card that actually had 2 x GPU's on it and they gave it a glowing tick against the NVidia's - bit over the top maybe for FS but for those that like shootemups? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruceb Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 Unfortunately the relative merits of video cards depends on what reviews you select but most of the ones I have seen lately put the 3870 X2 well behind the 8800 series nvidia offerings at least in terms of fps. However, while conceding the fps race to nVidia, the ATI proponents then claim display quality superiority but this is where things start to become subjective and it is hard to know what to believe. Bruceb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurice_King Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 I'd be inclined to remove the ATI CCC and replace it with Ray Adams Tray tools ( Does the same job without the extra baggage) Don't overclock either as this is inherantly unstable at any time IMHO. If the graphics Card was able to run that fast it would have benn sold as a faster Card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 Love ATI (used to be an ATI bigot way back), but sorry to say, the nVidia 8800 Ultra OC'd is still the boss of GPUs. SLI two Ultras for insanity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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