FS 2004 and SLI?

Ed Medlin

2008-01-23 13:36:44 UTC

Post by W Spilman
I'm looking into getting a dual-videocard system, but I notice
that MSFS 2004 is not listed as supported by Nvidia on their
site. Since Nascar 2003 (supported) and FS 2004 are the
only reasons I even own a graphics card, I wonder if I would
see any worthwhile improvement in FS 2004.
Is anyone running FS 2004 on an SLI rig? If so, do you
see any improvement, or any degradation of video
quality? Thanks.
WS

I run 2 EVGA 8800 GTX Superclocked cards in SLI (Intel Q6600) and find that
although the increase in FPS is not great, that everything is much smoother
than a single card. I run 1920x1200 resolution and most video settings about
maxed and stay pretty smooth even in high density scenery. The Q6600 is
overclocked to 3.25GHZ and that helps too. Nascar 2003 is probably the least
of my worries with today's hardware. I run it with all video options
completely maxed out and can do that with just one 8800. FS2004 is a
different animal and you need to match up your CPU and Video so that neither
is a bottleneck. The newer Intel .45nm cores are just coming out and the
E8300-E8500s look pretty good for the price with the E8500s overclocking
easily to 4ghz+ on stock cooling. That should help with the SLI rigs a lot.
Even though multi-core support is minimal with FS2004 I have found that the
Q6600 performs much better than my previous E6600 even at slightly lower
speeds (3.5ghz vs 3.25ghz). Stay with the 8800 series cards because even the
7xxx series cards in SLI underperform ANY 8800 card even SLI vs a single
card. The NV9 series is right around the corner, but I don't know any of the
prices.......expect high.

Ed