Hello Fellow Flight Sim Geeks!I am considering upgrading from 1GB RAM to 2GB RAM and I am wondering if anyone else has already done this and if so was there an apreciable performance gain within FS9?The main reason I'm considering this upgrade is I recently checked to see how much RAM my system was using while in FS9 and found that I was consuming over 800MB of my 1GB available!FYI, to get an accurate reading of RAM consumption I launched FS9, selected my current favorite aircraft (Beech A36), went to another PC on my network, remotely connected to the flight sim PC and ran msinfo32. This method allowed me to see the available physical memory without having to task switch away from FS9 (which I'm sure reduces resources used by FS9 thus giving inaccurate RAM consumption readings)Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

800 seem normal it

Hmm I don't understand why for many people their FS2004 shows a memory usage of around 800mb. Mine is constantly around 300MB and I have 1GB of RAM. I don't know if that's bad or good.

Hi,it goes only up to 700-800 megs if you use complex planes like the PMDG Boeings or the Flight1 ATR.For default planes this value is OK.Alex

Thanks for the input folks.Well, my RAM upgrade arrived yesterday by mail and I installed it last night.Very interesting results...I have a 3.4 GHZ P4 with a BFG 6800 Ultra (AGP not PCI Express).Most of my sliders in FS9 are maxed, with the exception of MyTraffic (which is at 40%). I also use FSGenesis mesh over the entire US.Detailed weather is enabled, 3d clouds set to 40%, minimal draw distance.I have fps set to "locked" at 30While using 3rd party aircraft (like the A36) I was getting peaks of 29 fps with occassional dips into the teens when flying into clouds.After the upgrade to 2GB of RAM fps pretty stays at 28 fps and rarely dips into the low 20s while flying into clouds.The main difference I noticed was a BIG improvement in accessing the knee board windows (radio, navigation, checklists, etc.) as well as switching between the virtual cockpit and the 2D cokpit.Since the RAM was purchased from e-bay I paid only half of retail so all things considered I think this was a worth while investment.I recommend this upgrade if you have the cash and you already have a good foundation to begin with (high end processor and video card).I've been Flight Simming since FS 5.0 (1993) and have found that the best performance gains come from processor upgrades, followed by video card upgrades, followed by RAM upgrades.