Good day fellow simmers! I am planning to buy a system upgrade next week.At the moment I have:- Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe- AMD Athlon 2600+- 1GB PC3200 RAM in dual channel- ATI 9800 Pro videoI am thinking of:- Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe- AMD64 3500+ Winchester- Asus Extreme N6600GT- same RAMI run FS2004 in 1280x960x32 windowed mode, no need for higher resolution. Aliasing at 4x/8x. Addons running during flights are AS2004.5, Ultimate Traffic, Active Camera and FSNAV. Aircraft in use, mostly PMDG 737NG Series and LDS767.Now I wonder if this upgrade is worth the money FPS wise. I do want to upgrade my CPU and therefor want to go the AMD64 way. So a new motherboard is also needed. However, I hestitate because of the videocard. Reading reviews/benchmarks, the 6600GT is comparable to the 9800Pro. Can anybody comment on this statement? Is this true? Anybody with handson experience? There are motherboards available that have both AGP en PCI-e slots. If the 6600GT and 9800Pro perform equally, I can stick to the 9800Pro and buy a AGP/PCI-e motherboard. This would save me about

Hi Henk-JanI was not aware there are AGP/PCI-e boards, I am stuck with the AGP option and probably will buy a 6600GT this week. I must admit I am not sure what it will do for me, there are so many varied opinions. Maybe a slight increase in fps but I'm told the most improvemnt in fps wil be in clouds.You should get a slightly better improvement than me, I had a 30-40% increase in fps going from 2800 to 3500.Nigel

IMO, the CPU upgrade will be well worth it (> 50% FPS boost in CPU intense scenarios), the GPU upgrade will not (marginal at best).Whilst a PCI-e motherboard would make your system more current, you would probably spend as much changing over to PCI-e now, for neglible performance gain, as it would cost doing it later, when PCI-e becomes the only option for new performance video cards. If you get a socket 939 CPU now, you can take it and your RAM to a new PCI-e motherboard and fast PCI-e video card sometime in the future.Gary

Just to clarify the cost-neutrality of upgrading to a PCI-e motherboard later instead of now:Choosing a PCI-e motherboard now, means you have to spend 200 pounds more getting a 660OGT that will perform roughly the same as your 9800 Pro on an AGP motherboard. If anything , PCI-e motherboard will cost you slightly more than a similarly kitted AGP motherboard, adding a few more pounds to the PCI-e changeover cost vs sticking with AGP. This 200+ pounds cost would be offset by whatever money you would get from selling the 9800 Pro, but I would hazard a guess that you would not get more than 100 pounds for it. This leaves you with 100+ pound "upgrade now" cost, which is probably similar to what you would pay for the "upgrade later" cost of a new PCI-e motherboard when you eventually upgrade to a fire-breathing PCI-e graphics card. In other words, it matters not, from both a performance and cost-wise perspective, when you upgrade to PCI-e. Personally, I'd opt to do it later because the effect of time will give you more technology for your pound when you really do need it.Gary

Hi again,First of all thanks for your comments! I decided to go ahead and bought the components mentioned in the opening post of this thread. Indeed the system delivers what I expected, an overall 50% increase of performance. Wow! I definately notice how fluid the sim runs now, even in clouded conditions. However.... (yes, there is a however), I'm a bit disappointed in the Asus 6600GT TOP. Performance decreases -almost collapses- when using AA/AF. The 9800Pro hardly dropped when increasing AA/AF. The 6600GT definately does suffer from it. Image quality in FS needs at least 4x/8x for my taste. FPS drops significantly when using higher settings than 2x/4x. I've been doing some further 6600GT research in several hardware forums. Common opinion is that the 6600GT's AA/AF runs great in OpenGL and games using the Unreal graphics engine. Price/performance is top for 'gamers'. At this moment my feeling is that the 6600GT is a bottleneck (AA/AF wise) in my new system. As I always liked the AA/AF performance of the 9800Pro, I've decided to go for an ATI card again. My reseller agreed in taking the 6600GT back. I'm now waiting for an ATI X800XL card. I'll let you now about the results.Henk-Jan

I notice more of a hit with AA/AF on my 6800 GT compared to my previous 9800 Pro. Nonetheless, IMO the GT does a better job visually (much less shimmer in particular) at the same AA/AF settings between the cards.I hope your X800XL card works out for you. On paper, it definitely should.Gary