Well i just installed a 9600 GT in my machine as my old 8800GTS 320 meg was running out of mem when running FSX. As it stands at the moment i cant say i see much real difference between the cards, except maybe some less blurries but not to sure as yet. Now i have video mem to spare as FSX has gone as high as 380 meg. When i fly the Piper cheyyne X and swich between outside and cockpit view it seems to load a little quicker. Noting that when you do that and stay on external view long enough it swaps the VC textures to ram you can see that happen by watching Mem status, so that comes down to hard drive performance too. FPS seem mush the same, maybe less stuttering when fast panning around. More time to see.

That's great to hear. How memory does your 9600 have onboard?Gary

512 Meg should be in signature now.

>Well i just installed a 9600 GT in my machine as my old>8800GTS 320 meg was running out of mem when running FSX. As it>stands at the moment i cant say i see much real difference>between the cards, except maybe some less blurries but not to>sure as yet. Now i have video mem to spare as FSX has gone as>high as 380 meg. When i fly the Piper cheyyne X and swich>between outside and cockpit view it seems to load a little>quicker. Noting that when you do that and stay on external>view long enough it swaps the VC textures to ram you can see>that happen by watching Mem status, so that comes down to hard>drive performance too. FPS seem mush the same, maybe less>stuttering when fast panning around. More time to see.Any speed difference between the two cards?I have the Cheyenne to and I think they should make the cockpit glass textures more efficient. They should also have an SP1 version.

Havnt really noticed but must do more flying, sometimes putting new things in makes thing seem better, you know that placebo effect, will reply agn today.

Unless you get alot horsepower from a CPU, it almost doesn't matter much what you get for a video card. Yes, the better video card with the most memory does help. Keep in my mind, I said it would "help", and thats it. But whats really gonna dictate how well "your FSX" performs is the horsepower you get from your CPU. There is 2 really easy ways to do that. Spend over a $1000 for the top quad CPU thats out there, OR....get a $200 quad Q6600 ver G0(Gee-Zero), stay away from B3 version, and a P5K-E motherboard for $150.00, overclock it to 3.0 ghz w/ stock cooling in a well ventilated case, something a baby could do after reading countless articles from a GOOGLE search on "overclocking Q6600 ver G0" or clock it to 3.6 Ghz (much faster that the top quad CPU out there) with a $40.00 ThermalRight Ultra-120 eXtreme cooler installed. Going with the 2nd option is by far the cheapest solution. Minimum requirement to properly take advantage of everything FSX has to offer must be, at minimum, a quad core 3.0 ghz. And thats a minimum. A chum of mine from high school that works at Microsoft thinks that a quad 3.6 ghz should be the minimum specs required for FSX. Short of that, most flight sim enthusiasts will always be disappointed with FSX.Intel quad Q6600 (ver G0 only) oc'd to 3.6 ghz ($200.00) (can go to 4.0 ghz)Asus P5K-E/WiFi-AP Mobo ($130.00)Cooler Master case for good ventilation/cooling ($75.00)ThermalRight Ultra-120 eXtreme cooler ($40.00) (don't need water coolers)4 gigs of Apacer gaming ram w/heatsinks ($110.00)Total: $555.00I didn't include the video card as anything above & including a 7950GT right up to the 9800GX2, which I have btw, are almost equal contributors to the performance of FSX.So, you see, for a lousy $555.00, including whatever you have for a video card and power supply, you get a system that outperforms the top mainstream consumer systems that are currently out there, where current pricing is anywhere from $2000.00 - $4000.00With this kind of rig, FSX will deliver everything it can possibly give you.Hope this helps.

I knew that from previous upgrade. NExt machine will be an intel duo, All i am saying is for most people the 9600 GT is a good buy, certainly hadnt slowed things down, main reason for purchase was a mem upgade, old card only had 320 meg new 512 and is certainly needed. FSX is bandwidth intensive and that was dually noted in a mem and cpu upgrade, which is why me son will get this machine and i will get the intel duo with the 1ghz ddr2 ram. I needed the ram the 320 was a bottleneck.

What are you using to monitor real time Vcard ram usage?

Memstatus.

Do you play any other games? Like Crysis, World in Conflict, HL2: Ep 2?I'm curious to see how it works with games that actually take advantage of higher end GPU's....

Thanks for the Memstatus find... I think I now know why SP2 would blur out after a few minutes. I've got a 8800 GTS 320 meg, Memstatus showed I had 291 megs availible, and FSX with SP1 is using 283 to 290 megs. I would assume with SP2, and my settings, those numbers went up... causing what I thought was a driver problem. It's a possibility.

nah, only gameas i play are BF2 which uses 96% of the 512 meg ram, 1946 FB which uses 384 meg of that ram, SH4 and SH3 of which i think 4 uses abt 360 meg, they all perform fine with new card, but im note interested in FPS just smoothenss and except for some areas in FSX its great.