I have at normal Dell 8300/3GHz/2GB/800FSB + Radeon X800/256/AGP Pro that has served very well for my loaded (many add on) FS9 rig. When I added FSX I experienced the usual performance shortfalls that most users have raised, not surprises here. I had the good fortune of obtaining a free Radeon X1650/512 Pro AGP card and thought that this might perform somewhat better than the X800 for texture loading speed and AA and AI. The extra texture memory effect is noticeable in FS9, but not FSX. Also, I noticed that Ray Adam's ATI Tool reports a performance benchmark for the X1650 that is just barely above an older Radeon 9800 AGP and just half the value of my older X800 card. Is the normal and to be expected? Is the X1650 processor and memory speed actually less effective than the X800? Is so why?Any insight will be appreciated, thanks.Todd R.

The X1650 is effectively a 4 pipe architecture so is seriously throttled . The blurb says 12 pipes but this is misleading due to the way the pipes are organised. This is information I found on Tomshardware so maybe worth a rummage there.Get an X1950 Pro!

The X1650XT is available in AGP and would be an improvement, but the 1650pro is not recommended as a uprade. The price of the 1650XT is high enough that you might as well get the X1950Pro which is a defenite step up.Two places I recommend reading the forums for ATI info is Rage3D ( http://www.rage3d.com/board/ ) and HardOCP ( http://www.hardforum.com/ ). HardOCP has info a top notch board on other hardware too. The "ATI Flavor" area of the Video Cards forum has a lot of good info on these cards.