Hi there, I want to upgrade my computer so FS2004 runs better as I have alot of add-on scenery and Ultimate Traffic.My current memory is 512MB and Graphics Card is Nvidia FX5500.Is it better for me to upgrade my grapics card or just upgrade my memory?Kind RegardsGavin Moss

Upgrade whatever you can, I am a firm believer now that I have.What kind of processor do you have?I had a p4 2.81 Gig pc2700 DDR RAMX800 PRO vid card (256MB)and a 160 gig IDE HDFS9 ran like crapThen I got thisCore 2 Duo E6600 2.4 over clocked to 2.72 gig DDR 667 RAM250 gig SATA HDnVdidia 7600GTHaven't had a problem with FS9 since. Although, there are a few less complicated addons that seem to drop my frames below 30, amazingly the better addons I have don't (in the VC).Jeff

512 Mb RAM is a bit low nowadays. Upgrading to 1 Mb will show a marked improvement. I believe that FS2004 is far more CPU intensive than GPU, so upgrading the video card might not give you any increase in frame rates, you really need to upgrade the computer processor.

The gpu should help your fps around clouds, but for everything else you should focus on getting a very powerfull cpu, with so many addons fs can really need a high end cpu or it will be a slideshow.

I recently went from a 5900 with 128 Megs to a 7800GS with 256 megs ('puter is a P4 3.0 o/ced @3.2 with 1 Gb of RAM) and see a very marked improvement. I can now get thick multilayers of clouds without flinching from my 20 frames a sec target. Now as said by another poster 512 megs of RAM is a little small too. But the benefit would be different. Less time loading textures including shifting exterior view and VC, less stutters etc.Hope that helps.

I'd go to 1 Gig of memory and a 7600GT-256 AGP card (assuming you have an AGP bus). $250 well spent.You did not say, but all this only makes sense if you have at least a P4-2.4..

Go to 2 gig of RAM and keep the card you have. Why? Because several posts from people with low-end cards have shown that using a card that doesn't support Shader 2.0 results in faster performance in the sim. Obviously you lose the eye-candy, but the eye candy cripples FPS anyway.Truthfully, if you're running that setup on RAM and GC, then I doubt your CPU will be up to snuff when it comes to FSX. Allcott

The original question was actually re FS2004 and my experience going from a Ti4200-128 to a 7600GT is that FS2004 is much happier, as well as looking better with 4xAA and 8xAF vs 2xAA and 4xAF which is all the older card could handle.