Hey All,I have been a long-time lurker in the avsim forum for the past year and some, eagerly reading postings regarding to improving performance in flight sim and trying all sorts of FPS improvements from A to Z. Each tweak would improve performance on my computer but not by much. It was still flyable I would average frames in the high teens to low 20's with the FPS slider locked at 25fps depending on what aircraft I was flying. In the years past, I had been mainly flying Level D 767s all over the world, performance was acceptable on my computer until just a week ago...before I continue, here's the specs of my old setup.. AMD XP2800 Barton, 1GB Kingston DDR ram, a 256mb ATI Radeon Sapphire 9600XT, 120 gig HD and the usual stuff, floppy, CD writer, DVD burner and a 21" flatscreen CRT monitor. I had Active Sky V6, Vancouver +, FSgenesis land mesh, the usual FPS texture improvments, some popular payware airport addons etc. I never did an FS-GS computer tweak as I felt I was capable of doing it myself and save the $70 USD which doesn't exactly come as cheap for us Canadians. Last week after getting a bonus cheque from my employer, I decided it was time to upgrade since it had been nearly 3 years since the last upgrade. After many weeks of research and reading forum postings at tom's hardware, EVGA, Intel etc, this is what I picked up...Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, EVGA Nforce 680i Motherboard, 2gb Corsair Dominator 8500C5D DDR ram (1066MHz), a 768mb EVGA Geforce 8800GTX and 250 GB 7200rpm SATA II HD with 16mb buffer cache and an OCZ Gamestream 700W Power Supply. Not to forget to mention, a good CPU cooler, after much wrangling and research, I chose the Noctua NH-U9F cooler over the more popular brands such as Zalman, Thermaltake, AeroCool etc. Put it all together and fired her up, impressive performance so far, noticeably fast much faster but it didn't stop there. The system I chose especially the CPU, motherboard and memory are what you call an overclocker's dream. EVGA has an excellent forum where you can find details on increasing performance and still not void your warranty, EVGA even encourages you to do so, which is why I chose to go with EVGA. After spending 2 days overclocking the E6600 and the memory, I left the video card at stock speed. I am pleased to say that I've gotten the E6600 to 3.5GHz on air cooling with the Noctua and stable with the memory at 1066MHz (up from stock of 800MHz)!The real test had yet to come, installed FS2004 and all the popular add on, Ultimate Traffic, Ultimate Terrain etc. Most sliders were set all the way to the right except for a few, cloud draw distance, scenery view distance you know the usual things. In real life, you can't see clouds 100km away unless it was a real clear and crisp day when in fact its usually hazy .Anyway, taking the LDS 767 up for a spin at YVR, on my old computer I was lucky to get 14fps with sliders to medim or low sometimes 12 or 8 depending on what I was doing. And even that was with all the FS performance tweaks, FPS textures etc. That was acceptable for me UNTIL my recent upgrade.Now I get 30fps solid, not a stutter, blur or anything like that. Flying around YVR with the 767 and sliders to the far right save for a few that don't make any difference at all. 30fps solid (frames locked at 30fps), no stutters, flying at 30,000 feet, solid all the way, stormy skies, solid all the way no matter what, solid. AND the kicker is I haven't done any FPS tweaks nor loaded those FPS texture improvement packages! Honest, 30fps, I wouldn't lie to you guys. The PMDG 744 performs the same as the 767, 30fps ROCK SOLID. And no I don't have Ken Salter's EnditAll, this is just a straight up installation!I think I have truly found the magic bullet for uber smooth framerates in FS2004. Do yourself a favor and consider getting these specs..Core 2 Duo E6600, EVGA 680i motherboard, Corsair Dominator 8500C5 DDR2 ram, Geforce 8800GTX video card and overclock the CPU and memory, you'll be surprised at how much power you get from it.You may ask me why the E6600? Why not the X6800 or the Quad QX6800? why not go for bigger and faster? Well... honestly...save your money and get the E6600, it overclocks to 3.4GHz (up from 2.4) effortlessly provided you have a good CPU cooler, it can run at that speed with a stock heatsink and fan, but you may hit maximum 3.4 before it becomes unstable. I would strongly recommend a beefier cooler such as the Noctua NH-U9F which fits the 680i motherboard not a problem, the NH-U12F is bigger and won't fit the 680i as the Northbridge heatsink gets in the way. Though you might have heard of issues with the EVGA 680i motherboard, but honestly, I haven't had any trouble with it, all drivers are the latest and whatnot. And no it doesn't sound like a lawnmower, its incredibly quiet, I've got 2 80mm fans at the back of the case, the NH-U9F has a 92mm fan blowing towards the back, the OCZ Gamestream 700W PS has a 120mm fan, real quiet, not super quiet, you still can hear it but its at a comfortable level. ANYWAY save yourself the money and get the E6600, I saved myself more than half the price of the E6700 and even more from the Extreme E6800. Wanna know the funny thing? I'm getting better performance than the Extreme E6800 with my E6600 OC'd to slightly over 3.5GHz (I can push it further but I figure I'd stop at 3.5 for now which is plently enough.)Now I bet you want to know how FSX performs? Well... let me tell you... its fantastic!...so far. Quite smooth, most sliders are all the way to the right except for autogen road vehicles set to off, AI ships set to 30%, commercial and GA traffic set to 65%, I average 28fps, the lowest I've ever seen was 21fps and that was still smooth AND this is BEFORE the FSX tweaks, texture improvements and such that have been posted in the last little while. This is a straight up installation, no tweaks, just moving sliders to what is good enough for me, yes it is smooth and stable, rock solid with the frame lock set to unlimited. And no I haven't defragged the hard-drive yet, but barely any stutters. No add-on scenery or aircrafts yet, but soon I will and I'll report back once I do.So there you have it, an honest and straight up truth. I am really impressed with the performance, especially after overclocking the CPU and memory. Video card is on stock speeds, it can be overclocked but I'll leave it at that, plently fast enough for me. Again the new specs...Core 2 Duo E6600 (stock 2.4GHz OC'd to 3.5GHz)2GB Corsair Dominator 8500C5D @ 1066MHzEVGA Nforce 680i motherboardEVGA Geforce 8800GTX 768MBOCT Gamestream 700W PS.Its the easiest overclocking system I've ever had.Windows XP Home is a straight up installation with all the security fixes and SP2, the latest windows messenger, Office XP, Photoshop CS2, Gmax, 3D Studio Max. Its incredibly fast! Sorry for the long post, I felt that I should write an honest opinion of my setup without all the BS. I will report back once I have performed the usual tweaks to FS2004 and FSX. I doubt I will bother because I'm getting incredible framerates out of FS2004 and FSX.Cheers,JasonVancouver, Canada.

As I've already posted, my experience with a fairly similar configuration is much the same.One thing worth saying on the CPU choice is that your 3.5GHz overclock on an E6600 is exceptional...not nearly all of these CPUs will be able to push that far. I went with the very 'spensive X6800 for OC flexibility and to ensure a minimum level of performance, which I have easily exceeded, with stable clocks up to 3.6GHz here. I leave it at 3.2GHz, however, because the X6800 allowed me to change the clock mult and run my RAM in synch mode with the timings very tight and get nearly the same performance (1-2% slower) but with a much lower CPU temp (~50 deg C as opposed to nearly 70 deg at 3.6GHz). And FS9 is running so well at that speed I really don't need to push further at this point...like you, I have it locked at 30fps dead solid with everything I have been able to throw at it, including dog-slow add-on sceneries, complex panels, high-poly 32-bit models, multiple cloud layers etc etc.But for those that can tolerate some risk that their new CPU will not OC to the extent that your does, it's smart to go with a 6400 or 6600. Also, for those that want the (very useful) flexibility to be able to work with unlocked clock multuipliers on the CPU, you'll have to spend the extra $$ on the Extreme version. I'm happy with my choice...as I am quite sure you are with yours.Bottom line, though, is that FS9 running on one of these machines is absolutely beautiful.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VSantiago de Chile

Hey Bob,Yeah I had been watching your posting about your new computer in the last while and I was using that as a reference as to what I really wanted. While I didn't have alot of dough to spend thanks to my financial officer (the wife), however after much research I had found the optimal balance without breaking the piggy :-)I am an overclocker, I like to push my hardware to their limit, so far I have never broken any hardware or burnt anything doing so. I had read the E6600 overclocks well and luckily I'm pushing 3.5GHz on air alone with a good solid cooler, the Noctua NH-U9F. My temperature at idle sits at 29C (it'll go down after the 200hr burn in of the thermal grease) and while running FS, the highest I've ever gotten was 41C and fluctuates between 33 and 41C.So far FS2004 is dead solid, 30fps, no matter what I throw at it, 30fps solid. I have the PMDG 744 installed and on my old setup, I was lucky to get 12fps in 2D panel and in VC I get around 8-10 but if I go to LHR, it was tough you know what I mean? Now with my new setup, 30fps solid with the PMDG 744 in both 2D and VC at LHR with traffic set to 90% :-D I would have pushed 100% but I end up waiting and waiting for takeoff clearance becuase there are so many missed approaches!30fps rock solid is all I need, nothing more, nothing less, I'm very happy with my setup. I'll let you know this, I have pushed the target FPS slider higher and I get solid at 35fps, but once I reach 40, it starts to fluctuate a little bit but on average 2-5fps which is hardly noticeable. I haven't really tested FSX much but thats because there's no LDS 767 or PMDG 744s for FSX yet, so once there is, I'll report back.By the way, fantastic job on your 732 add-on, very impressive and I look forward to what else you can do to make it better. The 732 on my setup, rock solid FPS ;-) Keep up the good work!Cheers,Jason

Jason; Agree completely on 30fps as the frame rate "sweet spot." I'm curious how you have your voltages set. I use a Zalman 7700-Cu which is a large round heatsink with a 120mm fan...the heatsink fins actually mesh with the Northbridge heatsink fins on the nVidia 680i mobo. Without the nVidia NB fan installed, the airflow from the 7700 cools the NB as well as the CPU. It's summer here with no AC so that alone may explain why I see temps higher than yours, probably due in part to ambient temps up around 30 deg C in the room during the afternoon.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VSantiago de Chile

One other thing worth mentioning w/r/t to the 8800GTX...I don't like the automatic fan speed control...seems to always leave the GPU running at >60 deg C. I use RivaTuner to set the fan to 80% for normal ops, and when I start a sim session I push it to 100%. Keeps the GPU temp in the high 50s, even in the aforementioned hot room.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VSantiago de Chile

Bob,I'll answer both your postings here...With regards to your post about the cooling, I'm using a Noctua NH-U9F cpu cooler with a fair sized 92mm fan. I was going to go with Zalman until I came across an article about Noctua. They are an Austrian institute for heating and cooling systems, you can check them out at www.noctua.at , I thought I'd give them a try and so far I am impressed. The -U9F fits the 680i mobo not a problem, if I had gotten the -U12F, I would have a problem with the nortbridge heatsink being in the way. The Noctua sits much lower to the motherboard than most coolers. I find its cooling very well, the fan blades are optimized to bite through the air and push a large amount at a lower RPM setting. My temps on the E6600 sits at 29C at idle and averages around 42-43C at load. Although I live in Vancouver, B.C. Canada its cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer, sometimes hot. I am shooting 1.45 volts to the CPU with an FSB of 388GHz. I'll be reducing the voltage as I'm finished overclocking and to take some heat away from the equation, the voltages need to be reduced.Also the orientation of the heatsink plays a huge role in efficient cooling. It is recommended if you have a cooling tower like the Noctua or the Zalman 9500/9700 to orient it blowing front to back which is how I have the Noctua oriented. You should have either 2-4 80mm or one 120mm fan to pull the air out of the back of the case. There is a 120mm fan in the OCZ Gamestream powersupply at the top of my case that pulls air out. I can feel the air being sucked into the case when I put my hands around the front and side vents so my cooling is working well.Ideally, the goal to keeping the case cool is you want to draw air in from the front bottom of the case and dump it out at the back near the top, this creates sort of a vortex inside the case where the air is swirling around, that is efficient cooling. The Zalman 7700 you have, its pushing air down towards the motherboard and that is probably the cause of your higher temps. The best method is to pull air off of the CPU and out the back as soon as possible. Additionally I have the northbridge cooling fan attached, I think that makes a big difference in temps. If you go to EVGA.com and look at their forums, you will see alot of posts regarding overclocking and heat issues. It is very helpful stuff to know about your 680i. Have a look around, there's a wealth of information and how-tos, EVGA techs also post their views and suggestions, the support over there is top-notch. So perhaps if you upgraded to a Zalman 9500, your temps will be much lower since logically, if the heat is blown onto the motherboard and doesn't have anywhere to go, consequently the motherboard gets warmer and performance suffers to a degree. Regarding the 8800GTX, fantastic card eh? Like you, I use rivatuner to keep the fan at 100% throttle, cooler GPU equals better performance. That card is a monster, I couldn't believe how big and heavy it is but it kicks butt. Cheers,Jason

Jason; Interesting. I built my PC in a CoolerMaster Stacker 830 case, and have a total of 5 120mm fans (plus the 80mm fan on the PS). I'm moving a lot of air through there. I don't think the airflow being directed down to the mobo makes a lot of difference with the large volume of airflow I have--two of the 120mm fans blow directly onto the face of the mobo, one blows in from the lower front over the HDDs, and one blows out the center part of the case back, in addition to the PS fan in the upper rear section, and one blows out the top of the case. The sides are screen mesh.I did a test by blowing some cigar smoke into the cabinet through the front input fan...it's evacuated completely through the case in a few seconds.The NB heatsink is cool to the touch with the Zalman 7700 running...in fact the 7700 fins stay fairly cool as well. With the eVGA-supplied fan, the NB heatsink was pistol-hot.I'm running the FSB at 400 MHz with the clock mult at 8, with CPU voltage down at ~1.32 if I remember right. To get it stable at 3.6 GHz, I bump up the mult to 9, but need to crank the voltage up a good ways, which pushes the CPU temp up close to the 70 deg range on a hot afternoon here. The RAM (1000 MHz Mushkin DDR2 8000) is at 2.2v in locked/synch mode at 800MHz with tight CAS3 timings (3-3-3-9-2T). Synching the RAM with the FSB seems to make a big difference...I get better benchmarks that way than with the RAM at 1000 MHz and 4-5-4-11-2T rated timings.I'm going to wait a few months for the temps to drop here...if lower room temp doesn't make a lot of difference in the CPU temp, maybe I'll look at another cooling solution. But for now, it goes like a cheetah running FS9 with safe temps in the 50s at 3.2GHz, and I'm happy to quit tweaking and leave it that way so I can get some simming in.Agree about the eVGA support...I've been using their video cards for 5 years or so. It's nice to have a motherboard designed to overclock and backed up by support guys that help people get the most out of that overclockability.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VSantiago de Chile

Bob,Excellent reply, I am using a stock case that I purchased with my old system as I was going over budget. I plan on getting a good case in a few months. If you've got that many large fans blowing air around, then you are doing fine. I was speaking as if I were using my case as an example. Cigar smoke eh? never tried that but I've always held onto the belief that having a fan at the bottom front and a fan at the top back equates to good cooling. Never had any cooling issues with my previous rigs. I haven't touched my NB heatsink although I believe you, with the supplied fan, it doesn't get enough cooling however I did a modification that many users were recommending over at the EVGA forums. It required the removal of the NB and SB heatsinks, scraping off the thermal gunk, a ton of it! Enough to fill a 3 gram syringe of thermal paste. Nasty! once I did that, reapplied new grease using Artic Silver 5. Now I get a reduction of 5C on the NB heatsink.My RAM timings on the Corsair Dominator 8500C5D is at 5-5-5-15 2T @ 2.2V locked at Auto. I get 1136MHz out of it, I'll try it synced and see what I get out of it. I believe you the benchmarks will be higher on locked/synced because users at the EVGA forums are reporting the same. I haven't really fiddled with my RAM because its fast RAM so I left it at stock, running stable and only fiddled with the CPU.I haven't run any benchmarks yet, what do you use for benchmarking? Perhaps we can do a comparision using the same software I'll be interested to see the comparisions since you and I have the same mobo and video card, but different CPU and RAM. It'll be a good guide for others to use as a base of reference in future upgrades.Agreed, after a few months the temps will probably drop as much as 5-7C once your system has broken in. There's a 200hr burn in time with the thermal grease on the CPU cooler and NB/SB before you see any drop in temperatures. I'm going to leave the CPU where it is at right now, 3.5GHz stable and tweak with the RAM but likewise, I'm gonna leave it for a while and get some simming in! I have both FS9 and FSX installed, I'm enjoying flying the helicopter in FSX, so much better than helo flying in FS9 especially when the framerates are much smoother and the helo flight model is alot better and stable.To tell you the truth, this is the first time I've had EVGA products, I was an AMD/ATI guy until just now, when Intel came out with the Core 2 Duo and I was seeing much better performance over comparable AMD chips as well as better gaming with the Geforce and better value for your money. Took me long enough to decide who I'd go with, I went with EVGA because they have an excellent warranty, they encourage overclocking and their forums have TONS of how-to and help especially from EVGA techs, so far I am impressed and real pleased with EVGA.Cheers,Jason

In reply to all who have posted here:The EVGA Nvidia mobo 680i and EVGA G8800 GPU 700+ is also the way I am going with likely an E-6600 cpu and the corsair extreme memory pc2-8500. Both the EVGA products have rave reviews and have been recommended above all other manufactures implementations of the products. MSI came in a close second on the GPU as I recall.I Still don't know which CPU cooler to buy. Likely I will also purchase some type of GPU cooler, HD cooler, memory cooler, and fans a plenty in the case to exhaust all that hot air. It sounds silly but I have had thoughts of putting the whole PC in a small freezer. Don't worry not doing that but it might be cheaper LOL.The frames you folks are getting look good but I am wondering what each of you have seen before overclocking the components when running FS9 and FSX? It is this figure that will tell me the answer on buying the E-6600 or going with the E-6800 CPU. From all that I have seen FSX looks like raw CPU power is the key to performance with that product. Too bad they didn't make use of a physics API. Where FS9 is concerned the O'clocked E-6600 beat out the E-6800 in the benchmark if I remember right. I may have to go back and re-read that article again.The thing about FSX is aparrently no one can compare it to any benchmark out that I have found. It seems that MS did not really do much to get it running well on Win XP SP2. Maybe Vista, DX10, and the FSX patch (I guess this is still coming) will reveal what MS has actually done to expand on FSX performance.OK! Now its your turn for you folks to post the pre-O'clock data on FS9 and FSX for myself and others to peek at.I also wonder one other thing. Is Core 2 Duo the only CPU FSX will perform on or will it also run well on P-4, P-D dual core, Quads, and other CPU's? If you can comment on this topic I would love to see your thoughts. Monty

Monty,Way to go, I think thats the way to go with those kind of hardware for FS9 and FSX. There are other mobos that have come out which use the 680i chip however the cost is much higher than EVGA and they don't allow overclocking flexibility. I can recommend the Noctua NH-U9F cpu cooler, thats what I currently have installed and the performance is impressive and its nearly half the cost of a comparable Zalman cooler. You can learn more about Noctua at www.noctua.at . Zalman does make good coolers don't get me wrong, I chose the Noctua because I wanted to try something different and the company that makes Noctua is an Austrian company that specializes in heating and cooling products so they know their stuff. They have 2 models, the -U9F and the -U12F which is a bigger model, however it will not fit the EVGA mobo due to the northbridge heatsink, however the -U9F will and the difference in performance is hardly any different. As long as you have good airflow in the case, thats all that matters.Now that I've had my system for 2 weeks and tweaking FS to run efficiently, with most sliders to full and target framerate capped at 40fps, I'm getting solid 39.9 fps rock steady with the LDS 767 and with the PMDG744 averages 35fps but still fluid enough.FSX on the other hand is the same story, smooth, with framerates at full, I get between 35-104 fps, it fluctuates but you hardly notice any stutters, most sliders are near full, autogen scenery at half, lightbloom off (its unnecessary and I don't think it makes the scenery any more realistic but thats my personal preference. I did do some tweaking to both copies of FS with regards to improving performance even though I have a high end computer. I get better performance and it does not look any different compared to the way it runs on a lower end computer, only difference is clouds look more realistic and framerates are rock solid, thats the key, rock solid.My flying experience has improved two-fold, I'm finding it alot more fun flying with fluid framerates its am amazing experience once the stutters are gone.I must WARN you guys, don't have such high expectations of FS having fluid framerates out of the box, you have to do some tweaking to it as if your computer is a lower end system. Yes you will get better performance out of the box without any tweaking. If you expect 40+ fps, you most likely won't have rocksolid 40fps despite how fast your computer is. You will have to spend time tweaking, there's no real magic bullet. My system is considered the ideal setup if you want better performance. It does make a huge difference tweaking for better FPS and having rock solid 40fps with virtually no quality degradation. Tweaking also means you can run more complicated aircraft systems that on a slower computer would be a slide show, but on this system, 40fps solid and you have much more head room to go bigger and faster. When I installed FS9 on a stock setup with sliders set at high and target FR lock at 30fps, no FPS tweaks, I was getting more or less 30fps solid, sometimes fluctuating and some stutters (minor ones) When I set my target at 40fps, I was getting fluctuations between 29 and 35, rarely hitting 40. Unfortunately I didn't do any testing in FSX but I would believe that I would get more or less the same effects but with a little more stuttering. After overclocking, framerates were much more solid, less to no fluctuations and fluid. Overclocking does make a difference, I would say on my system, roughly 41% improvment over stock.Monty, I would suggest go with the E6600, you can overclock it to 3.4GHz effortlessly and you get pretty much double the GHz for less than 1/2 the cost of the X6800 or E6700. I have read that the X6800 and E6700 don't have a wide margin of overclocking potential, highest I've seen the X6800 push was 3.8GHz but thats a 400MHz increase over the E6600 which doesn't make a difference in FS. So I would say go for the E6600 and use the money saved for perhaps a nicer case or a new monitor. Many reviews out there point to the E6600 as being the best value for performance over the E6700/X6800. Cheers,Jason

Hello, I'm running FS2004 on a top of the line, 2 year old ABS computer and I was wondering, in your opinion, how much smoother, a new rig like your would run FS2004. I fly in the 30-40 FPS most of the time. The computer is a ABS . AMD 64 FX-55 CPU 2.61 GHz with 2 GB RAM It also had the top of the line Video Card, two Video cards in fact, but I don't remeber their name. Thanks jerry

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Do you really think the 2GB Corsair Dominator 8500 @ 1066MHz makes a big difference over 2GB Corsair Dominator 6400 @ 800MHz? I am not challenging you, I am really asking because I do not know which way to go in my new system. The price difference is nearly $150 when you are considering putting in 4 GB's of one or the other.I have read somehwere (I think CPU Magazine) that clock speeds on memory is not really making a huge difference in actual performance because of, well, things I don't understand. The CPU Magazine article compared the two, and ended up recommending the 6400@800MHz since it would save you money to put into something else that would be a higher performance booster than the faster memory.

Having a higher or lower rated RAM may or may not make any difference to most users. However since I work with CAD and 3D Max software, this kind of RAM makes a difference in 3D rendering performance. On my older computer which was an AMD XP2800 with 1gb DDR memory running at 667MHz, rendering a 1 million polygon scene would take 6.5 minutes, on my new system, a little less than 1.5 minutes. Now I don't know whether it may be the Dual Core CPU or the Memory, but there is a significant difference for me.Depending on what O/S you are running, Windows XP cannot detect more than 2gb of RAM but Vista will detect up to 8GB. That plays a difference in my opinion, anybody is free to correct me if I'm wrong. But I have not been able to tell the difference between 2 and 4 gigs on the same system.. taking 2 gb out, test, put 2 gb back in, test, no noticeable difference, putting 4GB with XP is a waste of money, but not so with Vista.Another thing you should know about the reviews out in PC magazines, they are testing games such as FEAR, War of Worlds, Quake, DOOM etc and those games are performance oriented games where RAM plays a critical part in performance alongside with a good video card. Every magazine review is different because of different setups. Like you, I considered going with the 6400 type RAM to save money but then I thought with the high performance motherboard, CPU and Video card, it would make sense to go with an high performance memory thats my personal preference.The reason I chose the higher RAM is because I'm futureproofing myself in a sense, making the most of my upgrade so I wouldn't have to upgrade in at least 3 or more years. I have alot of headroom in terms of the way FS9/FSX performs on my computer and I'd like to be able to push my computer harder without having to upgrade again in a year. Its just a matter of personal preference. I don't expect everybody to get the Dominator 8500C5D RAM, if you can't afford it and rather save $150, by all means go ahead :-) I wouldn't be surprised if there's little or no performance difference in FS between the 6400 and 8500, however keep in mind, everybody's setup will be different even if we all have the same hardware, each computer will be different because of what software and other hardware is installed and how each one of us tweaks FS, its like no two fingerprints are alike, I would think the same goes for computers :-)Your safe with using the 6400 type memory, FS will run just fine as the 8500, its just a matter of what you can afford to spend and whether you want to go a little longer between major upgrades or upgrade in as little as 2 years. Cheers,Jason

Thanks for the advice. Like you, I have pretty much naturally fell into upgrading my PC about every three years. I very rarely upgrade individual components within those three years, so at the end of the three year period, I usually upgrade the entire PC with all new components.I guess I am still undecided on going with the faster memory as of yet, but I think I will definitely go with 4 Gigs of memory. I just think Vista is going to use a ton of memory, and I am already a FS Add-On freak running all kinds of background programs when I am running FS.