More on Video Cards

Archived from groups: alt.games.microsoft.flight-sim (More info?)

I have been running FS2004 on a 2.8 Ghz, 800FSB and dual channel memory
(1G), and an ATI 9700 vid. AGP 8X. XP Home SP2

I had seen on tomshardware site that the ATI X800XT gave a doubling of the
frame rates. So I lashed out and bought an X800XT with 256M ram, and the
troubles began. I uninstalled by current video drivers and fitted the new
card. But my PC couldn't read the supplied CD with the drivers. I tried
the cod in 3 different Caroms, before I found one that could read it! So
loaded up the drivers, rebooted, logged on, and got a tiny dialogue box
showing a red OX, and only one option which was OK. Selecting OK put the PC
into a reboot, only to get the same dialogue box. So I was in an endless
loop. So booted into safe mode, and uninstalled the video drivers. Went to
the website and got the latest drivers. These installed without problems,
and the PC booted up all OK. Then I went into FS2004 and when I got as far
as to have a plane on the screen, the display became unstable, with flashing
vertical stripes. I tried a demo 3D programme that came with the new card
and it suffered the same instability. But the display was fine when not in
the 3D mode. I don't know why, but after two more reboots the 3d images
became stable!

The scenery and aircraft look crisper, but frame rates are a little better.
I used to get 10-25fps, and now it's 14-30, depending on scenery. I have
limited fps to 50

Do you know what I can do to improve performance? Tweaking the settings?
Is there a bottle neck on some of the other hardware?

Regards