What should I do?

[cloakster]

Yea, use the freeware version.

Do you have any spare video cards that you can try? There is a chance that you shouldve RMA'd the card from the beginning.

[Jhon]

I'll ask a friend to lend me another (maybe nVidia) videocard, only "spare" one I got is a FX5200

Btw what does RMA mean?

[Sean3]

Make sure u download drivers and shit like that when u install a different video card!

[cloakster]

So......what happened?

[FarePak]

So......what happened?

Yeah... All these people asking for help then giving no updates on the situation.

[Jhon]

Yeah sorry guys, thing is I followed your advice, uninstalled the drivers via Control Panel, then booted in Safe-Mode, uninstalled it from there, came back to the old drivers (the ones that came in the CD) and I noted an improve in everything!

Now, like 3 days ago, I wanted to re-install the latest videocard drivers (Control Panel -> Safe-Mode boot etc), but the ATI uninstall program got stuck and wouldn't uninstall them. After arguing with my PC (it won, somehow I fucked the O.S.), I had format, did the same process again and still got better performance than usual, I must thank you for that.

After all, it was obvious that I was pretending to get top performance with a "not that good" PC, and the game I mostly need it for (FSX) won't run perfectly with this machine: I need an upgrade anyway, so, I gotta wait such a long time this PC isn't even 1 year old.

And a last addition, according to some comments from some people and my own experience, when possible, I'll change/sell this videocard and get an nVidia, I read a lot of opinions in forums etc etc and asked some friends who own ATI cards and they all agree with the fact that ATI's support is extremely poor and the drivers coverage it deficient compared to nVidia... Maybe I'll aim at/to a GTX295 or a GTX300 (if it even comes out) when I have the money.

Back ontopic, although I didn't get what I really expected, it's not hardware's fault but $$$, and still, THANKS for your replies, they helped me out getting a better performance in all the games I use (FSX included)

[cloakster]

What res are you running at?

[Jhon]

1440x900x32

[cloakster]

Im still surprised that FSX won't run well on your comp, especially since your way over the recommended requirements. You would have to find out what kind of performance other 4870 users are getting in FSX to know for sure.

[Jhon]

Well, thing is most of the FSX users that have an ATI 4870 have the X2, which has 2GB VideoRAM, that IS actually power, mine's the lowest one, 512MB; also, from what I've heard, FSX, in frame rates, is more CPU consuming, and so far that kind of games don't have full coverage on multicore processors, so it might be a bottleneck, since it'd be (correct me if I'm wrong) running the sim like if I had 1 2.4 GHz processor, it doesn't use the 4 cores properly, that's why some people with 3.0 GHz dual cores for example might get better performance than me with my 2.4 GHz quad core... I'll check this topic tomorrow since I gtg to bed atm :p peace and thanks