Results of a double upgrade.

Today I did two upgrades to my middle of the road rig. The results were worth it. FSX is much smoother. FRAPS used to collect data.The rig before the upgrade:P4 3.2, Asus P4P800 Deluxe, 1g DDR 400 dual channel, BFG 6600GT OC 128mb, two 19" TFT monitors spanned at 2560x1024.The test scenario:KSEA, 34R, B737, VC. Take off, climb to 1000, cruise for five miles.The settings:As determined on the original rig by FSX when first run. Pretty much medium high (but really too high.) The autogen tweaks have been applied (the Tree tweak, and the CFG tweak.) Further adjustments of the sliders are needed for a usable flight experience. However, I decided to use these settings as that is what FSX decide my rig should be good at. My guess is that it's too high because FSX can't determine that I'm running two monitors.Performance before upgrade:Dismal. Minimum FPS: 0. Maximum FPS: 11. Average FPS: 3.5.Performance after installation of second gig of DDR 400 dual channel:Better. Minimum FPS: 5, Maximum FPS 12, Average FPS 8.7. The major difference is the smoothness. Ok, 8.7 FPS is not exactly great, but this is just a starting point. What counts is that it is way better with 2 gigs, than 1 gig.Performance after installation of new XFX 7600GS 512mb vid card.No change.Interestingly enough, the new vid card did not increase the FPS appreciably. But!!! After that test, I started moving the sliders related to textures, such as Global Texture, to maximum. When doing that, the FPS did *not* drop. It stayed the same, but the view looked a lot better.My conclusion? An opinion, of course. Adding memory smooths the view. Upgrading the vid card allows that smoother view to look better.Of course, YMMV. :-)I now need to play with the sliders that affect CPU usage to find the sweet spot.My recommendation if you can only afford to one thing is to add more memory.Regards,...jim