[Dazza8082]

Well, i just bit the bullet an ditched my X800XL an got a 8800GTS 640, first thing i did after overclocking the bol**ks out of it was fire up SCP

and im trully impressed!

ATI really has some issues, im not just talking speed here, of course the 8800 is faster, but the actual image are so much more ....... intertaining! reflections, an glows just seem to jump out more and everything else just looks more polished.  Oh, bar the Overclocking, everything was set to app pref in the driver, so no funny business going on there.

and yup, im using openGL, an as everyone knows OpenGL sucks with vista just now so theres plenty more to come!

Congrats guys, done a great job!

[Mars]

My X1300 seems to do everything you're describing just fine... sure it wasn't a driver issue?

Don't get me wrong...  I wish I had a NVidia

[neoterran]

if you're using vista, you should disable aero glass for the SCP when it runs. Because OpenGL currently renders with Aero Still running which is a major performance hit in the current nvidia drivers.

[Dazza8082]

na, i spent months fiddeling, reinstalling, Drive cleaning, messing with mipmap settings, changing driver AF and AA etc, in just about every config you can imagin, dont get me wrong the x800xl did run the  graphics properly, (well on vista it was shoddy but thats drivers for you) but no where near the level of quality that the 8800 is pumping out with hind sight i should have taken some screen shots, but allas i didnt an i cant be bothered ripping out my water cooling again

Areo was the first thing i turned off, looks great, but utterly useless!

[neoterran]

Actually it's not utterly useless, it enables many advanced video and future app features, you should just disable it with applications that don't automatically disable it, and freespace is one of them.

[Dazza8082]

you are correct, but after spending over 12 months looking at it and judging what difference it makes to my productivity, i came to realise that it has no good use other than to make things look pretty, im quite sure they could set it up to run the overlays, to use these so called future improvments with apps, but to also leave the GUI alone!