My old baseline systems was - AMD2600(2ghz), 1gb memory 166mhz,128mb 9800SE video card, and three disks one 7 years old. As well as an older case. Gave excellent results in FS9 and marginal in FSX where TileProxy was not really usable.I upgraded my mother board to an ASRock 4Core Dual VSTA. It retains AGP and DDR memory. It also supports PCIe and DDR2 plus SATA for later upgrades as money permits. The 1gb of memory now clocks at 400mhz. Later the CPU can be upgraded all the way to a quad core. I use an Intel Core2Duo model e4400. Stock clock is 2ghz but I can run mine at 2.5ghz with no issues. I found that 2.75 ghz was tops but it did generate more heat. Higher would require more voltage and thus more heat. Not worth it until I become bored and want to experiment.Before only very short trips under TileProxy were possible before the textures blurred without recovery. Now I can use TileProxy without regard to the length of the flight. My FPS is around 40 to 50. I lock at 20 to allow FSX to keep up with processing the tiny BGLs. My Task Manager shows that FSX uses both cores without TileProxy. With Tile Proxy Core0 is almost at max while Core1 is always at max since it is servicing TileProxy and part of FSX. In other words, I am getting max utilization.Non-TileProxy operation yields 30FPS with autogen at dense, objects at normal, texture extent at medium, mesh complexity at 49, mesh at 10, texture at 1m and water at 1-low.The board was $65, CPU $129 and the used eBay case $26. I retained my disks and video card the latter awaits DX10, if it will be worth a new card. May skip DX10 and just get a better reduced price DX9.0c card. I have tried normal flying (non-TileProxy) with all sliders to the max and get 9fps. Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

I suggest getting a 256 MB or 512 MB graphics card - some mid-range or high end DirectX9 model. I would wait before getting DX10 gear. The first generation models don't seem to be so sexy yet...