I guess this post is to get som comon sense out of people. I constantly see posts from people asking will this hardware run fsx and others saying you need this and that and really there is no evidence in what they say. Please if you can prove me wrong then show it.1. FSX will do better with a 3 gig dual then a 2 gig quad. Its all about bandwidth.2. FSX only needs 2 Gig ram especially with XP 32 bit not sure with vista, but if anyone can show me memstatus with some figures that would be nice. I have simply not seen FSX use then more than abt 1.6 Gig of ram total with OS. And thats with most sliders all way to right in heavily populated areas.3. Mem speed. Simpy put the faster the better. I just upgraded my mobo so i could use my AMD 6400 with 1066 ram and it flies now. Due to ram voltage limit i could only get 1033 MHz and CPU is running at3.1 GIg but my FPS stay pretty constantly at 30 dropping to 22 in dense areas airports etc.4. Video cards. I have had 4 so far. Cant remember the first, except that it was a 256Meg of ram and wasnt enough, went to a 8800GTS 320 that was a bottleneck as fsx would occasionaly max it out, so went to a 9600 GT 512 didnt change FPS but was a little smoother, now i have a 9800 GTX 512 and it rocks with the new ram. Note i have never seeing FSX use more then abt 350 or so meg of video ram if someoone can prove other wise show the proof.A couple more things. You can move FSX to another drive simply by copying folder there and then updating the path using utility on avsim, cant remember the name, it worked for me, had to go into the CFg and update some paths etc but it worked fine.Oh and 1066 meg ram. Well i put some in my sons new intel machine i brought him and guess what it id it as 800 meg ram even though the board supposed to support it so i changed the mem divider manually and its all happy. On my AMD machine which i am more familiar with, i had to change the CPU multiplier to 12X up the FSB to 256 MEG and up the voltage on the ram, but it needs .25 V more then this MOBO provides but it is stable where it is at 1033 MHz.

A pic for your viewingAnd it was not paused, went to external view and allowed outside scenery time to draw and snap, no pause.

About the CPUs . . . FSX's FPS is entirely about the clock speed of a single CPU core. Dual or quad will not influence FPS. Only scenery loading (helping "the blurries') is influenced by number of cores. A 4.0 dual will provide 10% increase FPS over a 3.6 quad. However the quad will allow quicker scenery loading. Scenery will be cleaner, further out.I like the quad because life does not stop at FSX. I intend to extend my build as far as possible. I don't have lots of money to upgrade at every cycle. So, the quad provides me the ability to take advantage of FS11's multicore capability (that I'm forecasting will occur). If I had gone for a duel, I'd need the quad to take advantage of the double FS11 will allow with a quad.So, I asked myself, "Is a 10% FPS increase now(20 to 22), worth giving up a - free - double down the road?" The FS fundamentalist with lots of dough will say Yes!! I only wish wish I could too.Here's ram physically loaded to 3.3Gs (WS Private). (Note: This was a test flight - an OOM with Vista64 and FSX/SP2 at a 64bit op system/32bit program 4G VS limit. It Can be done . . . but I had to Really work at it.) I typically run 2G+ physical ram loads for the FSX program only. http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/192618.jpgMemory speeds have only proven to provide subjective improvements. There's nothing DDR2 can do there. It's gotta be DDR3 to even start the conversation.Once you have a 8800GT, FS is happy is fully satisfied. Less will hurt. More will not help.

>Note i have never seeing FSX use more then abt>350 or so meg of video ram if someoone can prove other wise>show the proof.>Enough said ?George

Is that Vista or Xp, 32 or 64 and what is the screen resolution, these all add up.

It's XP/SP3, AMD x2 4800+, 4GB RAM, 512MB 7800GTX, 2*19" TFT 1280x1024, 4*SATA drives with XP on 1, FSX/Accel on another and scenery on a third.

Just a little tid-bit hereFSX reserves resources based on the system when it is booted. Therefore what one person sees on their system another person may see different however, FSX 'wants' (if it can have it) 512MB for its use and over that depends on the setting BUFFERPOOLS in the FSX.cfg file and a few other items.I could not use a 512MB video card because of my monitor size and setup and because I run close to a 100MB BUFFERPOOL reserve. I use a 768MB card for that purpose.Physical memory used will vary based on installed addons. I see close to 4GB use on XPx64 from time to time especially with a PMDG product

FSX will eat up my video RAM...easy...If had the PSU for it, I'd probably get an 8800GTX Ultra or something....

George,where did you find that hardware monitoring program? As I'd like to see how much MB my GPU is using.

>where did you find that hardware monitoring program? As I'd>like to see how much MB my GPU is using.It is RivaTuner from Guru3d. Note, it works only on XP since Vista uses a different method of assigning non-local VRAM.George

>So, I asked myself, "Is a 10% FPS increase now(20 to 22),>worth giving up a - free - double down the road?" The FS>fundamentalist with lots of dough will say Yes!! I only wish>wish I could too.FPS needs to stay above a certain low limit. Above 25 or so, other factors matter more than strictly frame rate I believe. Texture loading and stuttering, to mention two big ones. If you have frame rate of 28, but stuttering, more CPU may not help. It may come down to other system inefficiencies and latencies. When frames drop down to less than 15 or so, now you have the early makings of a slide show, so that's a problem for which more CPU will help. At least that is my take. CPU & GPU clock and type translate to higher sustainable frame rates, but it's possible to have that, and yet still have issues with texture loading, stuttering, image quality and other parameters affecting what we call "FSX performance." I can attest, with my CPU at 4.2Ghz, I am able to run the MD80 Pro into very dense terminals with full on everything (very dense scenery, 110m max clouds, Med x2 water, etc, and keep frames >24 all the time on the ground and it goes up from there in the air. Usually she will stay on 31 frames even taxing around dense terminals, but occasionally heavy clouds down low can make it slide down to the low 20s. I wonder if a better video card would affect that.

I'm running the new MD between megacity-d LAS and LAX. On the ground and approach, I can maintain a "clean" 20FPS with all high, except AG at 50% and traffic at 100/0/0/0/0/0/0. I finally got Ultimate traffic and it made quite a difference. Got tired of flying alone. Any FPS reference is assuming a no stutters and full-res scenery within a normal field of view. Actually, I find a true 20 FPS is completely tolerable . . . at least with what I'm flying these days. The MD11's flight model is not near as demanding on that pilot as the Boeings. It has a system called LSAS that maintains pitch attitude. When the control input stops, that's where pitch stays. Just let go. It simply doesn't matter where the control column was, the airplane's pitch attitude will hold. Autotrim drives the stab so the elevator will fair-up. It's absolute magic. It's the same 'Feel' I got in the Boeing MD sim at Long Beach. And here I thought I was such a great pilot! However with the MD11, there's no need for that super-touch the Boeings need to maintain glideslope. 20FPS is plenty.I doubt the Vcard would help clouds. I ran that GTX260 with the made-famous 448big-bit memory interface. No help. My 9800GTX+ and I are all settled in. I feel like such a putz. The darn thing only went to 750Mhz before it fragged. If I would just follow my own advice . . . . !

Hi George (GHD):Thanks for the heads up on RivaTuner's Hardware Monitoring Utility; I'd not looked at it for years, and now see it's become an even better app for video card tweaking!:-beerchug It is also an outstanding alternative app for video memory monitoring that previously required using MemStatus in order to get that info.MemStatus: http://nuclearplayground.com/NuclearPlayground/RivaTuner Home Page: http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatunerRivaTuner Download Page: http://downloads.guru3d.com/RivaTuner-v2.1...wnload-163.htmlDerek Woods' great visual "Guide to Using RivaTuner v2.07 to v2.11":http://www.vaguetech.com/index.php?pageid=rt207Hope this helps others get even better FS performance! :-)GaryGB

Glad to have helped Gary. The only problem is that it doesn't work in Vista64 (neither does MemStatus64).George