With the release of the 8800GT, I am now seriously considering a new card within 2 months...I sorta asked myself, would a new card actually help?Would it help VC texture loading? I usually get a 1-2 delay while loading vc textureshow bout texture tile loading?allow me to run more AA and AF?You can see my current 6800XT 256mb in specsI run single monitor @ 1280x1024What do you guys think?http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/179670.jpg

Apart from the ability to run higher AA/AF maybe, then the answer to all the above IMO is an emphatic no. I say maybe to AA/AF as while I can certainly crank AA/AF up to higher settings with a newer card, FSX turns into a stuttery mess, so I keep AA/AF at the ingame settings.Gary

Well I think going from 256 --> 512 vram will help in and of itself, and so will moving 2.5 generations ahead in video card.But sure as Gary alludes the general idea is that FSX is still cpu-bound so keep that in mind. I wouldn't expect much difference, particularly in frame rates.Also keep in mind a lot of people with DX10 cards seem to be having all sorts of problems with SP2 and drivers right now. I figure all of it will be worked out in the next few months though. I hope so...RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

Hmmm, sorta kinda maybe what I figured to hear lol!My thing is, I do play other games.... #####! There are OTHER games you say? lol(It's late hehe)And I know they would benefit from it, such as, BF2142, UT3, World in Conflict, Bioshock (maybe errrr)In general, I'd think a 512 card would help for texture loading....at least that's what Mike said from FSGS...who knows...So, you guys get the VC textures grayed out at first too?I understand FSX being cpu-bound but find it hard to believe that changing to an 8800 wouldn't do much.....My 6800 isn't the fastest 6800 out there.... IDK, we'll see what happens....

OTHER games! Well, of course an 8800GT will make a WORLD of difference with those other games, and at $200-$250 will definitely be worth the upgrade for you.FWIW, FSX performs just about the same on my desktop 8800 GTS 640MB as it does on my notebook 8600 Go 256MB with the CPU on my desktop held back to the same 2GHz speed of my notebook. And that's at 1440x900 res and ingame AA/AF enabled on both. I have the graphs to prove it if you want to see for yourself!Gary

Tom's Hardware has an FSX benchmark for comparing video cards here: http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_200...2=717&chart=293If it's valid, then you should expect to see a noticeable difference between your 6800 and some form of 8800.

>I understand FSX being cpu-bound but find it hard to believe>that changing to an 8800 wouldn't do much.....>Oh you'll notice better texture loading I'd bet. It was that way when I went to my 7800GT from a 4-series. Granted that was a jump of several generations of gpu, but still, you'd be going from a 6 series to an 8 and that's significant.It's just that in terms of raw framerate I think your cpu will dictate to some extent.Seems like only yesterday that the 6800 was the top line card...RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian