Guys, I thought most of you would help me out here on some advice. Ok, I have a : 2.3GHz/ 768mb DDRAM / GeForce4 Ti-4600 / 80Gig HD / XP Home. Ok, well and I get not so great frame rates in which a lot of people I know have less specs and get a higher STEADY frame rates. My steady frame rates are usuallly around 20-30fps , however I know some people who get 60! and have a lower spec on their system. Will a better card help? Like a Radeon 9800 Pro ? or what??? because when I logged on VATSIM, I was lagging like crazy and this is not normal. I dunno what it is but I want to update to a 256mb Video card...in which will that improve my frame rates??? What card will help me out the most in graphics and frame rates??ANy help would be REALLY Appreciated....

I once got 85fps on my old PIII800 with a GF2GTS64 card. It's easy. Just turn everything in your display settings off and run without any AA & AF in 16bit color. Don't even listen to those that claim they're getting 60 fps. That's just plain nonsense.Going from a Ti4600 to a Radeon 9700P/9800P will enhance your simming experience considerably as far as eye candy goes. It's awesome. Your rig is really quite good the way it is though. If you want to spend the money and have it to spend, I'd say go for it. You'll still be running between 20fps and 30 fps but with all the bells and whistles turned on. I lock my frames at 22fps on my P2.53 9700P card and its smooth sailing with a beautiful image running 4xAA & 16xAF. The 9700P is going for around $250 right now. It's up to you. You don't need 256mb on a video card. Yet.

So, is it worth it? Now, how do I determine what kind of card I need? I saw it at best buy...

A steady framerate around 20-30 is all most anyone gets. Nobody gets consistent framerates at 60 FPS. Changing the 4600 for another video card, even a 9800Pro or a FX5900, isn't going to increase your framerate much, if at all. FS200x is too CPU-bound for that to happen. But going to a newer card will give you much better graphics and allow your maximum framerate to happen more often. Is it worth US$350? Depends on how you feel about eye-candy. Some like it and some don't. But the look will definitely be better with a high-end card.Doug

Sometimes it is not about the video card. Sometimes it is about the way your internals are running. Check the size of your swap file. Make sure it is at least 1.5 x your ram. Also, if you have a second drive, put it in your system and put your swap file on it. I am running 768 MB too and my swapfile is 1.5GB - 3GB. No, the upper limit does not have to be that big but it does not hurt. The lower limit does have to be 1.5 ram, though. I never build a system without having two hdds on it because I always isolate my swapfile in order to have the fastest internal resources I can have. MSFS uses a lot of cpu clock cycles doing things besides having graphics processed in the gpu. If the bottleneck is in your ram registers, (it shouldn't be with as much ram as you have) then moving your swapfile to a separate physical hard drive will speed the overall operation up, especially if you have a lot of processes going on while FS is running. You indicate by saying VATSIM causes it to drag that this might be the case.I assume the video card you have has 128MB of video ram in it. If that is the case, you are probably ok with the video card for the next couple of generations of systems. 256MB is so new that there is not a compelling reason to spend the money right now in terms of implementation by developers. Remember, programs are "programmed" to use hardware.

Hi,>Sometimes it is not about the video card. Sometimes it is>about the way your internals are running. Check the size of>your swap file. Make sure it is at least 1.5 x your ram. Also,>if you have a second drive, put it in your system and put your>swap file on it. I am running 768 MB too and my swapfile is>1.5GB - 3GB. No, the upper limit does not have to be that big>but it does not hurt. The lower limit does have to be 1.5 ram,>though. I never build a system without having two hdds on it>because I always isolate my swapfile in order to have the>fastest internal resources I can have. Your recommendations are not bad but a little off, He is talking FPS here not waiting for textures to load and you can play around with the swap all you want without effecting FPS with that much ram while using FS2k2-4... At 768 MB ram it would be very rare to touch the swapfile even while running a ton of add-ons, and if and when you do the difference that you may see will be >if< you are running dynamic vs. permanent not necessarily size, dynamic will use a few (tiny) CPU cycles while a perm won't. 1.5 Gig is a bit large let alone 3Gig! I am using a permanent swapfile of 800mb on a system with 512mb ram and I use PhotoShop on a regular basis manipulating huge files in excess of 400mb sometimes much more, and I have never run out of room >MSFS uses a lot of CPU clock cycles doing things besides>having graphics processed in the gpu. If the bottleneck is in>your ram registers, (it shouldn't be with as much ram as you>have) then moving your swapfile to a separate physical hard>drive will speed the overall operation up, especially if you>have a lot of processes going on while FS is running. You>indicate by saying VATSIM causes it to drag that this might be>the case.Unless I am missing something here this won't do a thing, the CPU still is going to process the read and write, the Swap should always be on the fastest drive.>>I assume the video card you have has 128MB of video ram in it.>If that is the case, you are probably ok with the video card>for the next couple of generations of systems. 256MB is so new>that there is not a compelling reason to spend the money right>now in terms of implementation by developers. Remember,>programs are "programmed" to use hardware.FS2k2-4 is actually one of the few programs that can benefit from the 256mb of Vram once you start loading many of the better 3rd party add-ons you can easily start to tap out the frame buffer using just 4xAA on a 128mb card at high res.Take care