Well, i did it. Finallly got some money to upgrade. System wasAMD 64 X2 4600, Nvidia 7900 GS 256Meg, 2 Gig Corsair value ram 667 MHz,Asus M2N mobo. 2 By 256 gig Harddrives. I first upgraded the Video card to Nvidia 8800 GTS 320 meg. Checking framerates at a saved position at London Cit airport, no increase. Actually when i rebooted the machine with the drivers that came with the card my framerates dropped, dont know why so got lates Betas and they worked fine but still no FPS increase. I then updated CPU to AMD 64 X2 6000. Well I gained a whole 5 FPS. Thats it . No more. FPS went from 20 to 25, locked at 30. Semms that CPU is bottleneck but will see when I upgrade mem to 800 MHz. Also waiting to see as Asus board has 2 beta bioses on website, so waiting to see what they might do.Keep you posted.

Upgrading your video card won't (normally) change your FPS, unless you go from a bottom end to a high end.Upgrading your GPU WILL however allow you to crank up your resolution and AA and AF levels without sacrificing frames.The better move for the CPU would have been to save a little more cash and get a new mobo and Intel C2D cpu....like the E6600 or 6700 or even the 4300 and overclock it.

This is ridiculous! :) I mean, is FSX even using the graphics card at all?I have a much lower end system, but I really though I would see some improvment upgrading from a Geforce 4600 card with 128 MB memory, to a 7600 card with 512 MB memory. But no. Performance went down, not up! :( That is just... unbelievable for me. I'm still in shock.The fact that even you can't get reasonable framerates in London (I actually use London Heathrow as a benchmark rather than London City airport, but maybe the framerates are similar) with your high end piece of hardware indicates that something is terribly wrong with this game.

This is interesting,I've got an E6600 runing at 3.2Ghz, 4gb of Kinston 667MHz and a 7800 GT 256mb. I've been thinking of upgrading to an 8800 GTS 640. I don't think I'd go the 320 as I'm of the opinion that the extra memory is half of the point of upgrading the video card. Still, I would have thought you'd see at least some improvment as a result of your upgrade. I think everybody understands now that the CPU is the real bottleneck for FSX/FS9. Lets hope SP1 does something helpful for those with dual core processors.Kael

It's hard to tell if it's the CPU or graphics card. I have a laptop with a lousy graphics chip (GMA950), but with a Core Duo, 2 GHz processor which outperforms my desktop computer vastly (memory bandwidth is also vastly superior). I tried out FSX, just for fun, on that computer, and it ran almost exactly as slow as on my desktop (which had a geforce 4600 at the time) at Heathrow, with the graphics settings tuned down to virtually nil.If the CPU did matter that much, I would think it would be playable at minimum graphics settings. Now I just think there is something inherently wrong with FSX.Nobody seems to be getting the framerates they expect.I'm out of ideas. Also, I can't really make out what's so different from FS2004, which runs great. Larger textures, some animations, nicer sea textures/effects... what else? What is eating performance?

Greetings all!"(...) Upgrading your video card won't (normally) change your FPS, unless you go from a bottom end to a high end. Upgrading your GPU WILL however allow you to crank up your resolution and AA and AF levels without sacrificing frames (...)"Well now, here's the age-old example of flawed reasoning. I've seen it surface in these forums dozens of times, and just as many times have I wondered why nobody "says something" about it.In contrast with what the original poster states in the first sentence, updating you video card will (normally) improve your FPS considerably! Which is exactly what the same poster states in his second sentence. Really, if with the OLD card cranking up resolution, AA and AF levels results in let's say a drop from 30 to 15 FPS, while with the NEW card cranking them up to the same levels results in them staying at 30 FPS, I consider that a mighty good increase in frames per second!Be well.Jaap Verduijn.

Jaap, the reason nobody says something is that the majority of low FPS scenarios in FS any version are much better improved with CPU rather than GPU upgrades. I've benchmarked FS many times across the last three version and I've yet to see a change of more than 10% FPS going from no AA/AF to max AA/AF in such situations, so your example improvement from just a GPU upgrade appears exaggerated to say the least. Still, I'm always willing to learn, so if you want to put up repeatable results from an actual scenario that shows such a drastic (ie. 100%) improvement from upgrading from one GPU generation to the very next, then by all means "say something"! If you want to see my results first (both GPU and CPU changes), just search this very forum.Gary

I disagree with you. Upgrading your video card (unless you go from a 5 or 6 series nvidia to the latest 8800) won't add much at all. You'll gain a couple of FPS, if that, at the same resolution (say 1280x1024). Resolution plays a large role too though - if you are running a huge res, then yes, even a small upgrade from say 7900GT to 8800GTX would allow you to note a few more FPS.It's not like you get a 10FPS boost by upgrading your video card and not changing resolutions and or AA/AF settings. If I were to upgrade to an 8800GTX today, I could prolly run AA and AF max, but I wouldn't gain any frames....maybe 1-3 if anything.Oh, btw, the OP states that his video upgrade DID NOT increase FPS....