I've currently got an AMD Athlon XP 1800+,512MB RAM and a Radeon 9600Pro 128MB card. I see from the motherboard doc's that the most I can upgrade to on the CPU side is an XP 2600. What is likely to be more worthwile? CPU, RAM or card upgrade? I know that the cpu can be a bottlekneck but would I see much of an improvement with the motherboard cpu limit? I'm not really interested in something that gived me just a few extra fps. However, like most people, I get lowish frames sometimes in busy areas and I do sometimes get blurries in the scenery when running the PMDG 737NG. How easy is a cpu upgrade? I've done ram and card upgrades but never cpu?Thanks.

i have that same card and right now im flying lax-sfo locked at 30fps with settings nearly maxed.I would for shure upgrade to a A64 3000+ at the least and go with 1gb ram if the wallet allows it.:-wave

I don't think my board can take an A64 3000+. I think 1GB RAM may be the way to go.

Hello Victor..There are many more knowledgable Flight Simmers than I who can help you with this subject. All I can add is that I had a system very similiar to yours and uprgraded both my cpu and card. I know you are wondering about one or the other but this is what I upgraded to and now get really good FPS with my settings on max or very high even with very detailed airports and AI traffic. BYE..T.H. AMD 64 3500+ 939 SOCKET MSI K8TNEO2..MOTHER BOARD 1 GB DDR MSI Nvidia FX 59900 XT

>I've currently got an AMD Athlon XP 1800+,512MB RAM and a>Radeon 9600Pro 128MB card. I see from the motherboard doc's>that the most I can upgrade to on the CPU side is an XP 2600.>>What is likely to be more worthwile? CPU, RAM or card upgrade?I had a Athlon XP 1800+ and 512M RAM and upgraded to a Athlon XP 2400+. I didn't noticed very much improvment. But upgrading my NVIDIA MX 440 64M to a Radeon 9800 Pro 128M gave significantly improved performence.

Thing is, your system is very balanced now. I guess you are familiar with the term bottleneck? Buying either one of those three will not give you much improvement. RAM will surely speed up things ONLY IF the HDD is reading a lot while flying. It will not give you higher FPS, only possibly less stuttering.GPU without faster CPU will give you maybe little FPS increase, though without CPU, you won't see big difference. Exactly the same thing other way around (faster CPU, same GPU).Say you get faster GPU + CPU, 512ram will be definitely not enough, especially if you might start flying PMDG 737 and similar addons + posisbly some addon scenery.Getting all 3 will though boost performance significantly, just see that you again get balanced components.As an example, I got myself 3.4 instead 2.53 CPU (P4), and I saw virtually NO boost in performance. Though, getting GPU afterwards (I already had 1gb RAM), the X850, FPS went skyhigh. Also I tested on my "older" setup, the 2.53ghz, a Radeon 9800pro - no big performance boost, just increased stutters, as the system was unable to keep up.Now, the system gives virtually no stutters, fps holding usually at 40fps and beautiful graphics!

>Thing is, your system is very balanced now. I guess you are>familiar with the term bottleneck? Buying either one of those>three will not give you much improvement. RAM will surely>speed up things ONLY IF the HDD is reading a lot while flying.>It will not give you higher FPS, only possibly less>stuttering.The HDD surely is reading a lot while flying anf giving a lot of stutters. Stutters is more annoying than low FPS for me.