I am in the process of buying a new LCD....Dell 22 inch widescreen...native resouloution is 1650x1080. The card I am looking at is GEforce 7600GS 512mb PCI express. My cpu is P4 3ghz....mem is 2 gig ddr2. I have tried the card in my system now.....I currently have an ATI SX300...cheap card and two years old. The GEForce made my sim so much better it made me decide to upgrade to where I can enjoy FSX and FS9. The card made huge differences in the game and I know a new LCD will help even more to the grapics aspect....current monitor is Dell 17 inch LCD with a 25 ms response time. I can only imagine the differnce an LCD with 5ms response time will make. The questions I have are...will the GEFORCE 7600Gs 512mb handle the 22 inch monitor at decent frame rates...IE in the 20's....are there any problems with wide screen in FSX or FS9? I have to watch what video card I put in my system as I only have a 305 watt power supply and it has no PCI compliant connections for a power hungry card. Money is a concern. If I go to a much higher video card then I must replace the power supply and the money just keeps going out. I am looking for the best compromise here. I was able to achieve frame rates in the 30's on my current system in both FS9 and FSX......1280x1024...with no autogen enabled at all but all other sliders maxed out with the GEFORCE 7600GS 512mb. I need recomendations on the card and does anyone think maybe I need to drop down to a 20 or 19 inch size wide screen LCD to stay with decent performance from this type of card. Any reccomendations would be much appreciated.

I wouldn't settle for anything less than a X1900Pro. This card right now is the best value for FS right now and can be found for under $200.The Geforce 7600 is a nice card (have the GT version), but I have read that you can expect a good 5-10fps gain by using a X1900. I will get it next week.I currently run FSX anywhere from 9fps in dense areas up to 25fps with the default Cessna on "Medium Low" to "Medium High" and 30% of MyTrafficX. Not good enough for me yet.If you primarily use FS9, then I'd say the 7600 will be just fine for you.Pat

I think you should be OK with that card. My daughters both have 22" LCD widescreens, and their video cards are ATI 9800 pro's, which is older and I think less powerful than a 7600. They haven't had any problems running anything, although FS9 and FSX are not your average programs. Still, I think you should be able to get into the 20's in FS9, but FSX maybe a stretch. I shelved FSX because it ran like crap, and I have a fairly decent system.When I went from a 19" CRT to a 24" widescreen, I hardly noticed any performance hit. That was going from 1280x1024 to 1920x1200I don't think there would be much of a difference between a 19, 20 or 22" LCD widescreen performance wise, so I would go with the 22"Bill

It will not take that much power to make your 22" yield very nice images. You will be fine with that video card--very fine. Your processor will drive things nicely. I assume it will be 1680x1050 res.Your power supply is pretty small for today's simming world but it will hopefully be OK with such a card. You should go to the DELL online forums, they are really excellent, and post in the video forum or hardware forum. Look in their gaming forum too. I've used DELLs for 10 years and I love their online forums which have been a huge help to me.JS

Thanks for the info. I am going to give it about two more weeks and see if these cards come down any. Can't wait to get the monitor though. This 15 inch 25ms response is over 2 years old and I am sure I will see a huge difference in graphics. Randy

Thanks for the input. I went to the Dell forum and found some threads on some info in the gaming section. Did not get a lot of help in that thread though. Some forums spend more time bashing someone than discussing what was asked. I have thought about the power supply. Seems like this computer money pit grows worse as the years go by. Randy

For what its worth, I just bit the bullet (again) and got the 37" Westinghouse 1080p monitor.........this is the GREATEST!!!, It changes the whole dynamics of virtual fllying, I can't say enough good things about the settup!! To me, this is the best addition I have ever made to this FS, bar none!! I have the X1900 card and I can see the virtual cockpit as clear as if I was sitting in the real plane........if I had to give this up, I would cancel out of FS RRL

The 7600GS is a good card for the price but you should consider getting the 7600GT as it will probably increase your frame rates by 25% over the 7600GSYou can get them for about the same price but the GT is the better card for Flight Sim. It has faster memory chips on board.Compare them on this Benchmark testThey are highlighted in bluehttp://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.htm...2=531&chart=196Typical prices:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814130076http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814130062RegardsJim

Thanks for the advice. I have not bought the card yet and I am trying to figure out about the core memory speed