Hey guys, first I'd like to introduce myself.My Name is Patrick living in germany.Well about my Problem....I'm running FS9 with all my AC-Addons (PMDG,LDS etc.) on a AMD 2800+ Machine with 1gig of Ram (400MHZ) and a ATI X850Pro and WinXP Pro.Actually, it does fine when flying in 2d cockpit offline with the settings set to medium. But online with other traffic around and in 3d Cokpit i ususally won't reach more thean 15fps. Flying the PMDG 747 is even more complicated....7fps! About 15fps offline with all settings low.Everyting without any scenery add-on!!!As this situation is unpleasent for me, I'm about to create a new system! Basic needs: WinXP Prof no VISTA!! Frames, with scenery (e.g. Mega Airport Frankfurt) and Aircraft more than 20 even online with track ir! Money? 800

747 is hard on the system, and VC especially. Should be enough, IMO you would be better off with 8800GT, but if you can't afford, 8600GTS should also do its job nicely for FS9. Though if you push with the Frankfurt, online, IR, 747 VC, clouds... even brings my system to crawl sometimes.

Hello Patrick,Welcome to the boards,Going by your specs, it should be a good setup for FS9+XP.Regarding the GPU you can get yourself a nice 8800 series or a new ATI HD3870 or 3850. Both will have no problems running the 1280x range.PSUwise, the Coolermaster are good units, and while that 460w should be enough for stock use, should you want to overclock your cards down the road, suggest you go with a unit ranging 500w to 620w. Will give you some headroom powerwise for the rest of the system components.Regards,

Hi Davis, I have a question for you about cpu/motherboards/RAM combo's. I am looking at the QX6850 and plan to run it on a Striker Extreme with some Corsair DDR2 RAM. Is the preformance gain worth the $ if I use Maximus Extreme (X38 based)along with DDR3? The cpu difference between the QX6850 and QX9650 is not a whole lot but the ram cost is significant.thank you andHave a Merry Christmas!Kevin

>Regarding the GPU you can get yourself a nice 8800 series or a>new ATI HD3870 or 3850. Both will have no problems running the>1280x range.The HD 3850 is an excellent choice since it's under $200 and performs near or on par with the 8800GTS. It should smoke the 8600GTS.http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=8According to Tom's, the 3850 is the better value. 17% slower than the 3870 but 20% cheaper.http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/15/amd...800/page20.htmlDon't pay attention to the charts Tom's did for FSX though since they're obviously flawed, since they have low end cards beating high end ones of the same generation and brand in some of them.

Hi Kevin,Right now, the gain in going to DDR3 isn't really worth it yet... if you want to go to DDR3 wait a bit longer until prices drop and speeds pickup.Regards,