Hi folks,It's almost a year since I've bought my PC (see details below) to find out that its current performance is less than required to run FS9 on it. Problems occur everywhere: low FP rates, poor loading of PMDG, PSS and other add-on textures (!full-pack installed Concorde from "Project Concorde" has led to system crash!), impossibility to improve FS9 Display features (I stopped thinking of moving sliders to the right ever in future :(, etc.... Before you get familiar with my PC characteristics, I would like to mention that I've tweaked whatever is possible to achive some good results, as advised in a number of current forum threads - nothing seems to cause any significant change in FS9 performance.Although I feel comfortable in almost-non-problematic :) and decent simflying and continue to get valuable expertise and advice from yourselves and helpful Avsim forum community in different aspects of flight simulation, I'm a real rookie in computers to do anything more than above and even can't recognize any significant difference (if any) between ATI or nVidia adapters (ooops, graphic cards maybe ;), CPU, etc.... not to mention my miserable knowledge on other aspects of computer technology. But as far as my STRONG desire to simulate BETTER is concerned, I need your help in configuring my PC in terms of hardware improvement, to be simple. Here is a brief "excerpt" from my PC (sorry for mistakes in terminology!):Windows XP SP2 Home EditionPentium 4 CPU 2.40GHz256 RAM DDRATI Radeon 9200 SE Family (Microsoft Corp.)SoundMAX v5.12.1.3665 (Analog Devices)Graphics Card Memory 128MbMy questions are: 1- Do you find my PC ok at this performance level?2- What should i do to improve my PC to fly BETTER? 'cause I guess an improvement is really required.Note: I do understand that the way someone chooses between two or more brands of hardware to fly BETTER in sim environment is simply selective and I usually come up dozens of forum threads on which hardware to choose. But the problem is my computer knowledge. I tried to seek for a piece of advice among my friends, who i often call "computer aces" but no help as they are not familiar with FS9 not to mention its PC performance to make any reasonable advice in this favour.3- Could you share information about your PC details and performance to suggest reasonable solution to my problem?If you think that some details are missing feel free to ask me to provide more if you need more but please be specific in mentioning the details of your request considering my unsatisfactory knowledge of computer. Thank you VERY MUCH!

Hi BINA, A great post and inquiry.In these very tech times ,I refer to my kids,and grand kids for info.They kinda sound like you.How ever,when in doubt I check out the best stuff available on the market today.I say today,for it will change tomorrow.I study as to what there made of.Look at all their components,see what the current cutting edge in the tech world is being hailed as "THE GREATEST" Like buying a car,some are Ford people and some rather have a Chevy.Both will get you there.The great equalizer ,of course is money.The more ya got the better it can be. The "BIG"Allienware moves me,so to do the "Large" Dells.Each have first rate game players.But like autos,many like to tinker,soup-up,modify,change,explore,experiment,with their equipment. This,FS9,accelerates the need for the best we can get.However, were really never satisfied.And that the way it should be. GOOD LUCK TO YA,I'm sure you will get "real" answers on here. VIN

An Intel 2.4 CPU should give decent performance, but you RAM is definitely low for FS9. You should have a minimum of 512 MB and a Gigabyte would be better. This won't improve your frame rates, but it should make the sim run smoother. The good news is that RAM is a relatively cheap upgrade and you can install it yourself.The ATI 9200 SE card is on the weak side. I wouldn't spend $400 for the latest and greatest on your system, but you could probably get noticeable improvement by moving up to a ATI 9800 Pro or something similar, for a reasonable price.Beyond that, you are probably looking at a whole new system - 3.0+ CPU (or AMD equivalent), new motherboard, state of the art graphics board, etc. In other words, lots of money. Since your system is only a year old, I would recommend a few simple upgrades as noted above, and hold off on a new system until FS10 comes along, hopefully next year.Dale

Hi BinaI have the same question as you but I have to do it considering a completely new system (mobo, cpu ATHLON 3500+ or more, 1GB ram etc)take a look here http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/dis...-27gpu2_26.htmla bit old test but you get an idea...agp and pci-x configs are different. checj first page. Regardshttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/betaimg.jpgSamuel KalachorasAthensGreece

Thank you all for your prompt replies, guys!Yeah, Tanker, as you prudently mentioned, I'm thinking of upgrading the whole system in future. Let's say I do some fundraising now... :) I think your advice on shifting to ATI 9800 Pro sounds well, as almost half of the forum members, as far as I had a chance to notice, use the same product. I don't have anything to further ground this statement - maybe pros could do it better. Furthermore, i got another reply from SLKVP (reply #3). He asks to visit http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/dis...-27gpu2_26.html for some info about graphic cards which may affect one's choice of "reasonably good" hardware as relates to FS9. The question is: is this market analysis reliable? Anyway, I'll try to get in more detail if required.Thank you and good luck! My best regards to the Flying Community of Springboro.Cheers,Bina (UBBB)Baku Intl. Airport, Azerbaijan

Regarding the graphics card performance data from xbits lab, keep in mind that their test systems were AMD 64 4000+ and Intel P4 3.6 ghz, both considerably more powerful than yours (or mine!). Frames per second in FS9 is highly dependent on the CPU, so using their best performing graphics cards on systems like ours will not necessarily produce similar results.Dale

Hi,Thank you, Dale. I think i can feel more comfortable now when rummaging through the hottest hardware products in the market for my FS9 and "splurge" a bit among my friends with my advanced knowledge about the frame dependence and different PC platforms :)Cheers,VuqarBina Int'l Airport (UBBB)Baku, Azerbaijan