More importantly how long can you live with out it?(that computer that's just barely cutting the FS mustard) The answer for me was simple, not long enough for DX10 and vista that's for sure. I 'feel' like that combo is easily a year off, by the time we can all afford it and the first round of bugs are cleared off. I just put the cherry on my ice cream tonight and i could not be happier. I SLI'd 2 7600GT's oc'dwith my new E6400 core2duo 4 gigs of matched 800MHz RAM -->(overkill... my memory gage never gets above 33%)2 250gb 7200rpm Raid0 I can now happily sit back and watch the DX10 Vista revolution from the sidelines. Maybe this time next year i'll get the upgrade itch again, but until then FS9 and FSX are absolutely rock solid and look incredible. thanks to all the reg's that contribute here, I'm not even close to an expert on these matters and being a regular reader here sure helped me a lot. Now i must fly, i'll be working the next month of saturdays just to pay this off. later, binka

I hear you binka! My only changes would be one 7900 for the two 7600s and 2G instead of 4G ram, but the rest is all good for FS9 in its dying days and FSX in its youth. I reckon the wait for good DX10 cards and performance will be like the wait for a good improvement of performance and OS stability when 32 bit processors first arrived on the scene - ie years and years. Enjoy FS as it is now!Gary