Hello,First time posting here. I am constantly trying to speed up FS9 and was thinking about adding an external hard drive for my computer, exclusivley for FS9, nothing else. Do you think a new HD dedicated to one program really would speed things up and would it be worth the investment? I have a Gateway, P4 3ghz processor, 800FSB with 512mb of RAM and a radeon 9600 graphics card. I get 20+ frames in flight but only about 6-10 FPS at busy airports like Chicago, LAX, etc.Thanks!

Hi,Welcome512mb of RAMThis what I will upgrade for the system you have.(go to 1024)A new hard drive will no boost performance (at least not the FPS!)Te only big boost in performance will show with a more powerfull CPU (FS is demanding of CPU power)C'est la vie.Cheers.

1 - 512MB of RAM...BAD, FS optimally runs best at 2 - 4 GB.2 - Radeon 9600 Graphics card...swap it for a faster card with no less than 512MB of video Ram3 - Your processor is maxed as it is.4 - An external HD is always slower than an internal HD unless you are using eSATA. FS9 is 1. Processor intensive, 2. Memory hungry, 3. Video card demanding. HD performace comes into play when loading / swapping graphics but will make no difference if the processor / videocard can't process the data no matter how fast it can get there from the HD. A HD upgrade should be the last thing on your list right now.

I would put 2 gig of ram into the system. Make sure all memory sticks are identical. A Sata drive will help a little too. It helped me with load times. You could also jump to an ATI x850xt card.

>1 - 512MB of RAM...BAD, FS optimally runs best at 2 - 4 GB.I have always heard that for FS9 1 Gb is optimal. But for FSX 2 Gb is minimum.

thanks for the input guys! I will look at the RAM instead of the HD.

I have always heard that for FS9 1 Gb is optimalRight for me...My physical memory usage in FS2004 never exeed the peak of 750 MBCheers.

My system (AMD XP 1.8) originally had 768 MB RAM. Increasing to 1.28GB yielded a 20% boost in FPS. Subsequently, a further increase to 2.0GB didn't have any significant effect on the top end of FPS- but does appear to have improved/raised the lower end of the frame rate spread.That is- puts a better floor under FPS when the going gets heavy in dense scenery.(this with triple monitors/triple views- perhaps a bit more demanding than some systems.)Alex Reid