Upgrading Your PC 101

I thought I would share my recent experience in upgrading my PC for FSX in order to help others. To simplify it, I will just highlight the important points I learned in the process.- More memory is not always better. I have 2 gigs of dual channel memory now and my PC runs faster than it did with 2.75 gigs of single channel memory. The difference is when you mix different types of memory, you lose the dual channel DDR feature of the memory. This in turn actually slows the system down. Yes, you have more memory but your system is slower. Go figure!- More memory may mean nothing for increased game performance if you have a slow or outdated graphics card. My old card was an ATI Radeon 9200 with 128 RAM. Pretty lame in this day and age but it worked OK. I just upgraded to an ATI Radeon X1600 Pro with 512 RAM and WOW!! What a difference!! I see things in FSX now that I never saw before - pretty cool.- If you have to upgrade your power supply for the graphics card (I had to), make sure it fits your system! Mine was a little too big and I had to reconfigure my optical drives and cut out part of the false front of my PC, but it works great! I don't recommend upgrading your power supply unless you are quite familiar with the internal workings of a computer.The long and short of it is, my RAM memory and my graphics card memory are all now running at the same speed (400mhz) and the stutter problems and lag times are now forgotten. I now have a lean mean flightsim machine and you can too with a little effort and wisdom. The whole upgrade cost a bit over $500 - not cheap but certainly far cheaper than a new system.