Good advice to boost overall FS2004 frame rates!

[Guest Boaz]

I thought I had to turn down clouds, autogen and so on, until I get my PC upgraded to a 5000MHZ machine or so...UNTIL!!! I read this:http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031...38-nv36-40.htmlI then bought the number two on the graph, an ASUS Radeon 9800Pro 256mb DDR...And I bought another set of 512mb Kingston PC2100 266Mhz DDR rams...Now clouds and autogen have no impact, there are of course stuff that my CPU has to work with, but I have 20 frame rates on all medium sceneries like The new Simwings Ibiza and so on...And that's with ALL set to max! ALL!!!The PMDG panel has now little hit on frame rate, even the model with out VC has little fps hit...WOW!So when you release the B738/9 with lower poly count VC, it will be smooth sailing!Amazing!I have never bought a Radeon card before and have sworn to GeFore, but now???Good advice!Buy it and you'll even be able to play Battlefield Vietnam in 1600X1200!Boaz...

[virtualstuff 758]

Same here just bought a 9800 pro 128mb smooth sailing far better in the clouds :-) as nvidia :( G4TI4200Andr

[Guest FattyBear]

Im on a laptop, so if I want to upgrade seriously I have to spend $2500 :)

[Ckeatin 0]

Hey Boaz,What's the rest of your system?I have a Pentium 2.4 with Geforce 4200 64meg video and 512 RAM. I'd be curious what the improvement would be for me.Although the $400 for the ATI pro 256 is a bit rich for my blood....Thanks,

[Guest Ray CYYZ]

Craig, you are probably well balanced there ... adding a higher end video card will make you crank up things which will result in your cpu starting to be the weak spot.If you want one of the "my wallet is hurting" cards, you need a "my wallet is hurting" cpus to pair it up with.Now, having said that, my toy, a P4 3.2 + ATI 9800XT + SATA Raid 0 array + 1 Gig of DDR really makes things scream, but "my wallet is also really hurting" :-lolI'm sure you'll get something out of the newer cards, but the card will be trapped in an obsolete system until you upgrade the rest of the parts too.FS/PMDG is cpu + ram + video intensive. There is no one part cures all fix.Ray

[Guest ba747heavy]

>FS/PMDG is cpu + ram + video intensive. There is no one part>cures all fix.Great statement. I have found that as I progress in computer upgrades, if I upgrade a component, the net change is very hard to measure. Change 2 of the 3 'holy grail' components(CPU, GPU, RAM), now the benefit is measureable. 3 of the 3 holy grail components and your golden :)

[Guest Matthias1975]

You might be right considring the ATI but if you compare the FX 5950 Ultra with the 9800XT with no FSAA and no AF then the GeForce is faster.That