Hi all,I recently bought a new stick of RAM, increasing my 512 megs to 1.2 gigs. I figured this step would eliminate some of the problems I've had with FS9. I thought a whole new world of virtual flight would open up to me as I patiently waited for the new RAM to arrive in the mail. Well, my hopes were immediately dashed upon my first flight with the new RAM.I was hoping that my RAM would help with the instrument refresh rates in virtual cockpit. No such luck. I went through all the threads on that topic, and it would seem that FS9 is just that way. That I can accept, though I wished I'd read the threads before I ordered the stick of RAM.But, the most troubling thing about this expensive upgrade is that I've seen maybe an increase of only a framerate or two. And worst of all is the performance of my Realair Scout. Whenever I'm in the 2D cockpit, and I look to the sides or back, the simulator freezes for 1 to 5 seconds before the view comes up. It often goes black for a portion of the time. Flying in the pattern, this freeze-up is quite distressing. It's the equivalent of a pilot going blind for a few seconds everytime she turns her head. I have to go into full-screen mode (pressing W) and then look around for the runway. Then, press W again to look at the instruments. I thought my RAM would fix this problem.Anyway, I spent a lot of money on this 1 gig stick of RAM, and not getting much out of it. I went through all the tweaks I could find in the forums, but nothing really changes much. Maybe I'm missing something.Anyone have any ideas why more than doubling my RAM would have little to no effect on framerates? Any ideas on how to fix my Scout view-change problems? Any tips are greatly appreciated.Persephone

http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...id=240482&page=Allcott

Pers,There are considerations on ram upgrades. If your mainboard is a "dual-channel" board, you must use matched pairs of DIMMS to get the 4x functioning with DDR ram. Putting a 1gb DIMM in, and leaving a 256 DIMM in, will definitely lower ram performance if not cause the machine to really suffer in throughput. Further, there is much more to the question of performance than RAM quantity. Perhaps your 1gb DIMM is actually defective. More RAM, if installed according to the requirements of your mainboard and system, should help improve overall smoothness mostly, with perhaps some improvement in frames, esp if you are going from 256mb. Try removing your smaller DIMM, and leave in your 1GB new one, choosing the correct slot for one DIMM alone. Again, if you are using dual channel configuration you must have 2 matched modules.On your reply, please post the specs of your motherboard & ram, and OS.Noel

Try removing you're original RAM and just use the new 1 gig memory module.Also, don't expect more RAM to work miracles. Other things like video memory and processor speed also come in to play.Matt

Adding physical system RAM will never, ever, increase the maximum attainable framerate. This has been true since the beginning of MSFS. I sometimes think there should be a sticky at the top of the forums on this one as so many folks have fallen into the same trap. Loading times should be reduced and the overall average framerate may be increased a bit because of lower swapfile utilization but the maximum framerate won't be changed.Doug

Thanks for the information guys.Allcott, I'll post future hardware inquiries on the other forum.Persephone