I have posted on these forums only a few times over the last many many years, but not much. I know that there are some pretty expert opinions here and I can weed out those that are not. I hope some of you will give me some sound advice.My current system is a custom built computer with a P4 3.06 GHz, 1 GB RAM, XP Home, DirectX 9.0c, Radeon X800 Pro AGP 256 MB. I always use my IRTracker 4, or I just won't fly any sim. I run FSX with the following settings:Global Texture - highLens Flare - onAdvanced animations - onLight bloom - off1600x1200x16Aircraft - ultra highTerrain and Water Level of Detail radius - medium Mesh complexity - 51 Mesh resolution - 19m Texture res - 2m Water effects - Mid 2.x Land detail textures - onScenery Objects - normalAutogen - none (I hate that)Special fx detail - lowestWeather Cloud draw dx - 70 miles Detailed clouds, coverage max.Airline and GA traffic density 20%Airport vehicle density - minimumLand and sea traffic - 0 (I hate this too)With these settings on my system I'm getting 13 to 14 fps on a day with broken clouds (using ASv6) and >10 miles vis. over rural north Georgia (between Canton and Lake Lanier). Flying over Lanier doesn't seem to make any difference with frame rates, even with water effects turned up as high as Mid2.x. My question is as follows. In 2006 my region at work hit our profit budget (yea!). I MAY be getting a bonus. I also have some stock options expiring that will be worth a couple thousand $. Given my current system and (hopefully) your expertise, does it make sense to upgrade to a new system, or save more money and wait. That's not a great question. Better - If I DO upgrade now, with current technology, am I likely to see some pretty steep frame rate increases, or just a few? From looking at this forum, it looks pretty hit and miss as to whether a new system will really allow me to start using autogen and higher traffic settings.Your advice is APPRECIATED.

Well, from what I've seen over the years I'd suggest the following:1. Double your RAM, but no more than that.2. Get the highest power AGP card you can afford.3. Optionally, invest in a 24 inch LCD that you can keep for future upgrading of the basic system. This would really tax your existing video card, though.From there, play with assorted tweaks and enjoy the sim at the level that your setup permits. I say this because about a year from now you can move to a 64 bit system with many interesting applications available - and it's fairly certain that a 64 bit version of FS will be available (in Microsoft's effort to round out the Vista offering.I've got a fairly powerful system running XP Pro, and I'm intending to do exactly what I propose for you.You'll get many opinions on this that will run the spectrum. By saving most of your bonus you'll be ready to make a major upgrade in performance and have fun in the interim.IMHOGood luck!

>2. Get the highest power AGP card you can afford.Resurrecting an older thread, I know. :|I'm just curious as to whether or not the same is true with a similar system, but with a PCI-E vidcard. For instance, if the user had a X800 PCI-E 256MB card, wouldn't buying the "highest power PCI-E card" one could afford inevitably result in quite a bit of wasted dollars since there would be a bottleneck CPU-side?I was always under the impression that, while doubling (or even tripling) the Vidram with a new card might be good, a very expensive card that has the benefit of higher mem clock speeds, double/triple the pipes, etc. is basically lost on an older mobo; in other words, the mobo becomes the bottleneck.Just wondering whether some gurus out there think the above is true or not.Thanks for reading.Jay

Unless the FSX DX10 patch (whenever it comes) changes FSX over to have a more balanced split between graphics card and CPU utilisation, the FS series will remain a mostly CPU bound application. IMO, video card is third in the list of what to focus on in FS - CPU speed first and foremost, and RAM amount second (with 2G being the sweet spot). Whilst a faster video card may allow you to run higher levels of AA/AF across the board in FS, it generally makes little difference in really low FPS situations because the CPU is carrying the candle at such times. So yes, the benefits of a super fast video card will be lost on the FS series in its current incarnation, but moreso because the video card is not the weakest link with this title rather than it being a system balance issue. Having said that, if you play just about any other game the opposite is true - the graphics card is the star of the show and the CPU provides backing vocals. You should make your graphics card purchasing decision with this in mind.Gary

Thanks very much for that info. Makes a lot of sense.How about the aforementioned as regards FS9? Although a CPU-intensive game as well, it doesn't have the stiffer requirements of FSX. Any thoughts on how the above would hold true in video card selection?

I was actually referring to any of the FS series, FS9 included. In fact, FS9 is even less influenced by video card speed than FSX. Case in point is that if you set up a complex scenario in FS9 and double your CPU speed, then you get nearly a doubling of FPS. However, if you change from a middle of the road GPU (like X800 or 6800) to the latest and greatest (ie. 2-5 times faster), you'd be lucky to see a 10% FPS boost in that same scenario, and that's even if you have AA/AF turned up to the max. Sure your FPS out over the ocean and looking straight up will head into the hundreds of FPS, but I personally only care about worst case FPS.As proof, I have dug up the results of one of many FS benchmark comparisons I have done when changing hardware, this one when I went from a 9800 Pro to a 6800 GT on an Athlon XP 3200+ / 1G RAM system:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/166365.jpgI was sorely disappointed with this upgrade IN FS (every other 3D game I had lapped up the extra GPU performance). From that time on, I've only bought mid-high graphics cards, moreso to suit other games I play, and have concentrated on raw CPU power. FSX changes the situation a little, with a new twist towards graphics card usage, but until DX10 brings home the graphical bacon, my philosophy will stand. Gary

RESET MCP ALT (love that nick, btw):Hey, thanks for the response. The information has been most helpful since I had been culling information from here and there and hadn't seen any direct answers.I know that performance measurement (especially with FS) is not an exact science, but I appreciate your summary. It really makes sense.As regards FS9: Given the information above, I'm still wondering whether doubling the power of one's vidcard might actually give some benefit to the flightsimmer. Suffice to say, even if there is absolutely NO improvement in framerate (and no loss either, of course), wouldn't it also be safe to say that various sliders could be put higher in terms of:Anti-AliasingTransparency Anti-AliasingAnisotropic FilteringTexturing Quality (i.e., Hi-Perf, Perf, Quality, Hi-Quality)Scenery ComplexityAutogen Density..and others...I know that things like Mesh vertex values and such are really dependent on the CPU as opposed to the GPU. Nevertheless, I'm thinking that, in addition to the above benefits in doubling GPU power, one could:- Cope with higher-res graphics in the VC- Use 32-bit, high-res clouds; no need for DXT- Have no need to make a choice between DXT and 32-bit for repaints- Load photoreal (e.g., Megascenery) textures MUCH faster- Avoid blurries in photoreal scenery due to larger GPU memory (more cached?)I'm just guessing at all this with meager knowledge. But I'm wondering, once again, if the above is true. I have a choice on another PC that I'm thinking of turning into a FS PC as well. It's a P4, 3.0 GHz with 2 GB of RAM and with an Nvidia GeForce 6800 (specs shown below). Again, the PC would mainly be used for FS9 and a meager amount of other games (first person shooters, most likely, such as BF2).The GPU I was thinking of replacing it with is an XFX GeForce 7950GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150189)(you can see detailed specs on the card on that page). Would I receive any of the non-FPS benefits I listed above were I to swap the old card with the 7950GT? I'd really love to find this out. Or would my mobo/CPU really be a ridiculous bottleneck for it all and a waste of money? Let me state that I have no intention of replacing the mobo or CPU on this particular machine; it's either a GPU upgrade of some sort or nothing.Whenever you have a moment, I'd really appreciate your feedback (and I promise not to bug you anymore). :) And no worries... I'm not looking for a perfect answer or someone to blame if it doesn't work out. It's just that your info was more helpful than several hundred threads I worked my way through. Again, much obliged.Best regards,Jay-------------------------------------------------GPU Info-------------------------------------------------[ PCI Express x16: nVIDIA GeForce 6800 PCI-E ] Graphics Processor Properties: Video Adapter nVIDIA GeForce 6800 PCI-E GPU Code Name NV41 PCI Device 10DE-00C1 / 10DE-0245 Transistors 202 million Process Technology 0.13 um Bus Type PCI Express x16 @ x16 Memory Size 256 MB GPU Clock 324 MHz RAMDAC Clock 400 MHz Pixel Pipelines 12 TMU Per Pipeline 1 Vertex Shaders 5 (v3.0) Pixel Shaders 12 (v3.0) DirectX Hardware Support DirectX v9.0c Pixel Fillrate 3888 MPixel/s Texel Fillrate 3888 MTexel/s Memory Bus Properties: Bus Type DDR Bus Width 256-bit Real Clock 299 MHz (DDR) Effective Clock 598 MHz Bandwidth 18.7 GB/s-------------------------------------------------CPU Info------------------------------------------------- CPU Properties: CPU Type Intel Pentium 4 530, 3000 MHz (15 x 200) CPU Alias Prescott CPU Stepping E0 Instruction Set x86, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 Original Clock 3000 MHz Min / Max CPU Multiplier 14x / 15x Engineering Sample No L1 Trace Cache 12K Instructions L1 Data Cache 16 KB L2 Cache 1 MB (On-Die, ECC, ATC, Full-Speed)-------------------------------------------------Motherboard Info------------------------------------------------- Front Side Bus Properties: Bus Type Intel GTL+ Bus Width 64-bit Real Clock 200 MHz (QDR) Effective Clock 800 MHz Bandwidth 6400 MB/s Memory Bus Properties: Bus Type Dual DDR2 SDRAM Bus Width 128-bit DRAM:FSB Ratio 1:1 Real Clock 200 MHz (DDR) Effective Clock 400 MHz Bandwidth 6400 MB/s Chipset Bus Properties: Bus Type Intel Direct Media Interface

Unfortunately I don't have any quantitative results for what you now ask. My jump from 6800 to 7900 also included a significant change of CPU, memory and motherboard chipset family, which makes it hard, if not impossible, to finger which item made the most difference. What I have been able to do on my new rig is to vary the CPU and GPU clock speed as well as try the full range of AA/AF settings (from off/off to max/max). My experience has been the same as with previous systems in FS9:- changes in CPU speed given nearly a directly proportional change to FPS- changes in GPU speed make neglible change to FPS- changes to AA/AF make some difference to FPS, but only where FPS was otherwise acceptable in the first place- I still get to watch distant textures reload over a few seconds after changing viewsI am sure that the newer card you propose does load textures faster and have more memory headroom to combat the blurries, but it certainly won't knock your socks off. 256M video card memory is pretty optimal for FS9.My personal opinion is that a P4 3GHz, 2G RAM and 256M 6800 GPU is very balanced and acceptable for FS9 use and you would get neglible benefit for the $260 outlay that the 7950 would set you back. I'd save your money and wait for the dust to settle with FSX (ie. post SP1 and maybe even after the DX10/Vista patch) before considering hardware upgrades again.Gary