Not being totally sold on FSX yet as to if I want to spend two or three thousand dollors on hardware that is not even out there yet, I decided to wait and see and do the following:First of all, I have a Pentium 3.2 on an Asus P4C800 Deluxe MB.My simple upgrade was as follows:I replaced a Radeon 9800 Pro 128-Bit, 128MB with a VGA Biostar 6800XT V6802XA52RT 256-Bit, 512MB Video Card. The card is available with the newer Interface, but I chose to go with the AGP connection as I am not going to upgrade the CPU and/or MB quite yet. When DX10 and Vista are available for all of us and you folks with it tell me how you are getting performance out of this world and that all the glitches have been solved my eyes may get bigger for the applicable new hardware (and my credit card bill).I then bought and installed a Kingwin KWVC-3 VGAFAN to give additional cooling to the GPU on the new board. This thing is supposed to work reasonably well without them, but it comes with three optional fans. I installed the whole thing. Thus far, I have only seen a peek temperature of 49-50 degrees C under load (FSX running).I increased my memory from 1G to 3G. This is 3200/400 memory, but that is the best my MB will take.So far, as expected I am not seeing any great increase in framerates, but fSX does run smoother, and things seem to load faster. I believe I do see a slight increase in framerates for FS9. In both, I get high teens or low twenties (occasionally thirties) in general areas. Haven't had the fortitude to look at NY yet, but don't expect much. My display has improved, but in all honesty I think my old 9800 has long suffered from over temp.One question I have is what the Graphics Aperture Size can be set to in the Bios setup. My understanding is that it should be set to the memory size of the video card. However, my MB setup only shows a maximum option for 256 MB, so it is impossible for me to set it to 512 MB as per my new card. I have updated the Bios to the latest version available. If anyone has any ideas on this I would appreciate hearing about it.Happy Flying:RTHEdit: Ummmm. So far, getting 16-19 FPS from KJFK. I know all you purest are thumbing your noses, but with what I have to work with I am tickled pink, and she is reasonably flyable. (No tweaks yet either)

That's Awesome!! Sounds like you should be able to enjoy that set-up until things on the Hardware End come about...Here is some handy info reguarding the AGP Apature issue:http://www.tweak3d.net/features/hardware/a...e-size-examinedHave Fun...

Thanks Chuck:Confession time;Sliders were turned down pretty far and when I got into the inner city NY, I discovered not much was showing. Pretty well brought the system to its knees when I started moving things to the right. Have to stay away from the Big Apple pretty much until hardware catches up I guess.Don't want to mislead anybody into buying exactly what I bought thinking that it is a big time improvement. I'm glad I did it, and it helps, but it by no means is the cat's whiskers.Happy flying:RTH

Don't know if this will make you feel any better or not?? My system is't exactly the cat's whiskers either...Maybe we'll all get some relief with the SPI thingy I've been hearing about?? Somethin' anyhow...Have Fun...