hi all,I have been saving some money, and im wanting to get my sim to run smoother shall we say! my current specs are:Intel pentium 4 @3 GHZDell dimension 8300RAM 2gig DDR PC3200 ati radeon 9800 proIm not sure whether the graphics card is the thing to upgrade to get the increased smoothness and "awesome lookingness" :Dcan anyone give me some advice as to what they would recommend or anything at all?thanks in advanceSimon

Well, you are limited when upgrading your GPU,since your on AGP. You could opt for a 7800GS or like an 1950XT, those will give you more eyecandy (depending on running resolution), however that said they won't "speed up" the sim itself, as that requires pure CPU power. Food for thought though..What are you running FS9 or X?.. and do you really want to upgrade to another DX9 card now, with everything starting to focus now on DX10? I dont know if you find your current setup bearable for a while longer, why not wait with upgrading your GPU, instead wait until prices drop (or do it now) and upgrade your whole system,(C2D,Quadfather, PCIe etc..) that way future proofing yourself whilst your at it.., i mean to upgrade to another DX9 from a DX9 seems for me not really a smart choice looking ahead.. Just my 2yen ;)

Simon,I hope this helps. Back in July I upgraded my ATI 9800 to an ATI X850XT 256MB AGP card. The X850XT is and outstanding card and I don't regret the purchase. But to be honest I saw only a little improvement in FS9 performance over the ATI 9800. This was not a problem for me as FS9 was already running with outstanding performance. I was already getting super FPS and visuals with all sliders maxed out with the 9800. I did see a vast improvement in benchmarks with the X850XP and other software game titles showed a tremendous performance improvement. If its only FS9 you are looking to improve you may be disapointed ugrading from that card if you are satisfied with its performace otherwise. As was stated above, like me you are limited to AGP cards for now. Raw CPU power and graduating from AGP technology will be your best hope of marked improvement in FS9. Very good suggestion from the 2nd poster. If you have hung in there this long with your current AGP card, you may want to hold out for DX10.JayDubAMD 64 3500+ATI X850XT with 7.20 DriversWindows XP SP21 Gig PC3200 RAM

Im running FS9, and at the moment im fairly happy with it. I normally have AS 6 and FE and GEPRO running and it does the job very well. I just find that sometimes its slightly jerky and sometimes the far distances are VERY blurry and im the kind of person, who gets annoyed by that (very serious simmer :D) ive tweaked my FS9 loads over the past 6 months and it has certainly made an improvement. I have just ordered the 7600GT mainly for Battlefield 2 but also for FS9. I would just like that my sim loads up textures faster and the dreaded "blurries" reduce themselves. I hate doing a long flight and when your cruising at something like FL360 all i can see is squares of textures. I dont really understand what DX10 does, or in fact what DX does fullstop. I have been wondering about FSX and how it would run on my computer, and so I was going to wait until my card arrived, and then fiddle around with the demo, and see if it would be acceptable to my standards for a sim. I was just trying to see if anyone had a similar system and how it runs on theirs.thanks for the adviceSimon

Simon,All of us suffer from the "Blurries" even with a good card. The only way to cure them is tweaking your FS9.cfg file.... Not all tweaks work for everyone but it you work hard enough and long enough you can minimize the blurries to an acceptable level...... I hardly notice any now. Search the forums for tips ..... I have both FSX and FS9 on my system but after owning FSX from the 1st day I have to say that I just plain do not like it.... No matter what I do I cannot get it to look as nice as FS9 with all my addons and custom textures. I just can't stand the poor look of all the stock airports in the sim. I think I gave FSX a fair evaluation as I worked very before giving up. Also I have owned a copy of every Microsoft Flight Simulator since the 1st one out and grew to like all the others in only a short time. JayDub

FSX wont run great, it will "run" but thats about it. As far a jaggies, we all suffer(ed) from them at one point in time, its all tweaking. And as far as DX, strongly suggest your should have read up and get your self uptodate before having bought a new GPU, point is in due time newer games will want to use DX10 to gain optimal settings. Now in your case if you want to play new games later on, youll probally find yourself digging in your wallet again for another new card. IMHO you better should have waited/saved, for the mere fact you would have future proofed yourself.

Thank you all for the advice, i think i will stick to FS9 and just put up with what ever blurries and jaggies it has, because I have tweaked it so much, i can't be asked to do any more neither do i want to lose what I have at the moment.Appreciate itSimon