memory upgrade

[Guest geognut]

Quick question with regard to FS2004:What would help me the most in reducing the blurries and improving texture load times?-- adding 1 GB RAM?-- putting all my FS2004 program and scenery files on a new hard drive, separate from the rest of my computer?-- none of the above?I have a limited budget (no more than $80 preferably).My current setup is a Gateway 556G, 3.0 GHz, 2 GB RAM, and GeForce 6600GT (128 MB).thanks!!

[windycloud 30]

My thoughts. Add another 1GB to 2GB won't make any visible difference for you. Many here say it's better to run XP and FS9 on two seperate drives. I have my XP and FS9 on the same drive, but I put the swap file and my FSglobal mesh (12GB of stuff) on another drive. I believe it's a better setup than a single drive. I want to say that's worth trying.Also, I used to have a 6600GT. IMO that card doesn't quite live up to FS9's demands. I retired it for a 7800GT. That card has served me well.Jason

[Guest baksteen33]

Yep, agree with Jason that more RAM won't make much of a difference. The bottleneck likely is the GPU. You can tune FS9 to use less VGA RAM by lowering the Global tetxure quality. If maxxed, you're likely overflowing your GPU with those 1024x textures. Another thing maybe worth looking at with enough RAM, is your AGP aperture - if available in the bios? Increase it to equal the 128MB on the card. FS9 uses ca 170-180MB GPU-RAM max for a single cockpit/outside view (@ max texture sizes). That's almost nothing compared to FSX. :-) FSX uses well over 300MB @ max texture sizes. Hope this adds to thoughts, kind regards Jaap