I don't know why I got below 9000 on my 8800GTX 768MB (seemed low to me also -- think the average for that card was 10000-11000) -- are you running Vista x64? I had the latest nVidia Beta drivers but also tried the WHQL with pretty much the same results in 3DBench06. But as with my ATI's, I'm about 10-20% below what various web sites are reporting.
Microsoft had released a few Vista x64 hot fixes that could affect 3D performance:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html
This fix did smooth out FPS in FSX SP1 -- still about the same fps, just no wild fluctuations.
But not trying to compare to other folks systems/configurations -- hard enough getting a good comparison on the same system let alone someone elses -- which is what I'm trying to do with a focus on going from Cat 7.7 and Cat 7.9.
Also discovering that I'm having to setup specific ATI profiles for just about every game I'm testing with (this is getting tedious). In many cases the best game performance (as reported by Fraps 2.9.2) and visual quality is when AA in the game is set to NONE, and use the ATI control panel to force the AA setting -- so far this seems to be the key to many games. Also enabling Adaptive AA in the ATI control panel seems to be a bad idea -- causes many issues with 3D objects disappearing then re-appearing along with horrible decrease in frame rates.
I don't care about anything that averages above 60 fps because my 1080p monitor refreshes at 60hz so anything above that is pointless even if I pretended my eyes could tell. But if anyone can get FSX SP1 to run at 60 fps average @ 1920 x 1080 with everything turned up, please contact me -- I'd pay for that info.
My goal is 60 fps @ 1920 x 1080 with good dose of AA & AF, my acceptable minimum is 24 fps.
Why am I doing this -- pretty obvious, I want AMD/ATI to survive -- without them the world of graphics performance and CPU performance will come to a halt (that is ALWAYS the case when competition is removed or seriously down sized). I got these ATI graphics cards knowing full well nVidia's older 8800 SLI offerings had the upper hand in performance. With that said, I'm actually more impressed that ATI's cards are doing as well as they are on my system -- of course, based on the AMD/ATI down play and all the negative posts, I had low expectations to begin with.
I got both of these cards for $880 shipped to my door with tax (to be honest you can probably do as well going with the two 512MB DDR3 cards rather than two DDR4 1GB cards). Two 8800GTX 768 would be shipped to door for $1090. Two 8800GTS 640MB shipped to door is $790. Is it worth the extra $90 for ATI's cards, don't know -- I haven't tested two 8800GTS 640MB cards.