I need to upgrade my video card soon and was looking for recommendations. I've been using a 2002 NVidea GeForce TI 4800 with pretty good results but World Airports and other similar add-ons really hurt my frame rates. I would like to spend about $300-400. Any suggestions or anecdotes would be much appreciated.My system: Pentium 3.2gHz, 1gig RAM, GeForce TI 4800 Thanks.Patrick

Hi Patrick,If you're willing to go for the high end of your price range, I would suggest the NVIDIA 7800GT. I have the "big brother" of the 7800GT, known as the 7800GTX (which is retailing for just under US$500 right now) and the speed of this card is just amazing. I'm getting very smooth performance in FS9 but frankly, that's probably more a result of my processor rather than the graphics card. But if you're into games, even just occasionally like I am, you'll notice fantastic performance in games such as Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Far Cry etc. Strongly recommended. I used to be an ATI fan but ATI has been very slow in getting its R520 chip out so NVIDIA has reigned supreme for the time being.Caveat though: I have World Airports 2 and I'm still getting frame rates below 10. This is not a result of the graphics card (or the processor for that matter). It's to do with the design of the scenery and there's nothing you can do about that (as far as I know).Take a look here:http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=7800gt&page=1http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2496&p=11Hope this helps.Edwin

Patrick, I just put in a GeForce 7800GTX PCI express card and have say that I'm happy (better be for the money I spent on it) with it. I had onboard sound and graphics card not a good thing I would get 20-22 FPS, and 3D clouds would get 6-8 FPS so I had to scale things down a bit. With my new card I get 70's FPS and with heavy 3D clouds 30's and on occasion 20+ FPS when I pan around but it still runs smooth. I have all sliders maxed out and 3D clouds Tri-liner filter and I belive I use 1600X1200X32 setting the max on my PC. My PC is not some hopped-up system its a gateway right of the shelf of an office depot. P4 3.2 Ghz HT1 MB DDR RamIntel Main Board GeForce PCI erxpress 7800 GTX (new)Sound Blaster Aud ZS 2 (new)Double layer DVD burner200 Hard driveMedia Station1 19" moniter but can run 2 if I get one.I have 300 Watts power and GeForce suggest 400 Watts min. but it seems fine.