I wanted some feedback on your thoughts on if I am going to gain significant performance with this upgrade vs my current setup listed below.I am running XP SP1 with FS9 SP1 with ASV,UT,FSNAV,All USA FkyTAMPA,SIMFLYERS, Imagine Sim KDTW,And Flight Scenery Rhode Island and most commercial small to large jet addons.Thanks in advance for any imput. Upgrade : MOBO to a ASUS A8N-SLICPU: to a AMD ATHLON 64 4000+ SanDiegoGraphics to a Sapphire X850XT PCIEX16 over the Nvidia SLI setupKeep exsisting configuration below minus the above mentionedThanksAndy

Is anyone out there !!!!!

Don't get SLI-configuration! Dosen't make any diffrence. I would recommend more CPU or RAM.CheersJohan "Whats VNAV?!?!" Adolfsson

What you are saying is to keep my current MOBO and increase the RAM or do an upgarde on the P4 ??ThanksAndy

Hi Andy,Quite concidentally, your current rig is quite similar to my old one (I had a P4 3.4GHz Northwood core, ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, Corsair TWINX1024-4000PRO RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB, 2x WD Raptor 36GB in a RAID 0 array, Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS) and your intended upgrade is also similar to my newly upgraded one (AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+, ASUS A8N-SLI, Leadtek Winfast PX7800GTX TDH, all others remain the same) so perhaps I can give you some indication.With my new rig, I can move most (all?) of my sliders to the max (hardware lights: 8, MIP quality: 8, 100% 3D clouds, 512x512 ActiveEnvironment clouds) and get an FPS in the low 20's when I'm on the ground (add-on scenery) and high 20's to low 30's in the air. My frame rate is now locked at 40FPS. All this is with 1600x1200x32, AA and trilinear filtering. The only sliders that are not at max are the sight distance and cloud draw distance (which are at 80mi) and I have kept these low as recommended by ActiveSky V. I find that anything over 20FPS (or even 19FPS) is quite flyable but obviously, that is subjective.Incidentally, those frame rates are with ActiveSky V, FS Real Time running in the background and I am flying the PMDG 747-400 with refresh rates at max (25FPS).All in all, I would sum up by saying that with the upgrade, you can expect to whack up your image quality a LOT while keeping frame rates at a decent level. I haven't tried but I would expect that if you're picky on frame rates, you could lower quality a bit and frame rates would be higher. I'd rather look at prettier skies but that's just me. ;)Good luck and hope this helps.Edwin

Edwin Thanks for the info are you using your board in the SLI config?You RAM seems different than mine since I am using PC3200 XMS do you think I will be OK with that.What is the 4800+ X2 is that dual core ???ThanksAndy

Andy,PC3200 would actually work better with the Athlon64 so you're fine there.No, I'm not using SLI although my motherboard is SLI-compatible.And yes, the X2 4800+ is dual-core (1MB L2 cache for each core running at 2.4GHz).Hope this helps.Edwin

Hi there, I have a fairly uptodate system, but am also looking to upgrade myself, as there been quite a fair bit of new technology released since buying my system. So i have been doing some research myself, looking at what you were thinking of for an upgrade is something similar as to what i'd started thinking was the way to go, however as i contnued to look at the options, i saw that ATI i shortly releasing the crossfire system (equivalant to NVidia's SLI idea) it would technically mean you could have 2 X850 working together (or a slower x800 and the X850). However this is not fully available on the open market yet, I think Saphire will be the first to release a motherboard that will have the Radeon chipset on it and ability to install crossfire, prices for motherboards from what i seen on web site are fairly comparable to that of the ASUS A8N-SLI, and will be 939 boards so accept the new dual core processors aswell as the AMD64.So really the biggest expense would be the CPU and if you choose to the 2 graphics cards, however a second graphics card is something you can get at a later date if necessary. so I'm going to hold off for that system, and see also what the other motherboard manufacturers have to offer when they release the motherboards to support it, as I am a fan of ASUS. It just seems to me that although your suggested upgrade is a good idea, (the same as i had nearly except i was going for dual core) it will be very out of date by september, I know it impossible to always be uptodate, but sometimes it worth waiting, bit like buyig the a new BMW the month before they release the new shape one.Hope that gives you something to think about, if you not seen it already, head over to the ATI site for more info about Crossfire.James