Im starting to feel that my system is underpowered as I go on with flying on active airports more than just the Russian domestic stuff.. traffic addons, Active Sky. Flying in 30% traffic with Active sky from Moscow to Sochi would get me 20-25 FPS since that what I got it locked on, which Im happy with. But flying out of Frankfurt for example would get my fps down to 10-15 and less. So here is my system..Pentium D at 3Ghz (64 bit, Dual Core, 800BUS, 2MB cache)2GB DDR2 800Mhz Corsair (2x1 sticks)8500GT.. slightly overclocked.2x80GB IDE harddrives (yes.. thats right.)XP Pro x64.Also got a 550W power and Zalman cooling on the CPU and the Gfx card.I have been looking at a BFG 8800GT or a 9600.. will it improve my FPS?Thanks.

Im starting to feel that my system is underpowered as I go on with flying on active airports more than just the Russian domestic stuff.. traffic addons, Active Sky. Flying in 30% traffic with Active sky from Moscow to Sochi would get me 20-25 FPS since that what I got it locked on, which Im happy with. But flying out of Frankfurt for example would get my fps down to 10-15 and less. So here is my system..Pentium D at 3Ghz (64 bit, Dual Core, 800BUS, 2MB cache)2GB DDR2 800Mhz Corsair (2x1 sticks)8500GT.. slightly overclocked.2x80GB IDE harddrives (yes.. thats right.)XP Pro x64.Also got a 550W power and Zalman cooling on the CPU and the Gfx card.I have been looking at a BFG 8800GT or a 9600.. will it improve my FPS?Thanks.

The two biggest issues I see are the 8500GT and the RAM. As far as the PSU goes, be sure to compare it to the minimum requirements on the vid card, and give yourself at least 100 watts breathing room. I recommend since your on a 64 bit os, go to 4 or 8 gigs of ram, NEVER use a 64 bit os without 4 gigs of ram at least. FSX uses a lot of ram, especially with addons such as active sky. The 8500 GT won't be the worst bottleneck on FSX, as it's more CPU heavy, but if you do anything else that uses the GPU, get yourself at least a 8800 gt. The 9800 gt is just a 8800gt rebranded. as is the way with most of the 9xxx series from nvidia. I personally learned the hard way though to always check the size of the case and the power supply before buying a card. I wound up having to buy a full tower case and a 1000 watt psu on top of my new vid card when my old one died because I didn't have enough power or space. I had to move hard drives around in the old case for the gtx280 I got to fit. Please note that the 8800 GTX and up are all MASSIVE cards, and as such, need a lot of space in the case. You might be good with a 8800 gt, but I'd check the dimensions on the NVIDIA site and measure it out first to make sure you have room. The 9600 is just an 8600 gt with a 9 instead of an 8 in the name. so skip the 9600 gt. Honestly, I'd see what the prices are online for every computer part you buy, as usually online retailers, such as tigerdirect and newegg are a ton cheaper than retail stores.

What Peter says is true. However, you really need to think about a C2duo, rather that a pentium dual core. You need more than 800 FSB to run FSX well.Bob

I forgot to mention, I play FS9, and Im not looking to upgrade to FSX either.Thanks guys. Good points, Peter. I just cant see my system short of memory though, I've been using some Rambooster software to check on it, and it seems okay with FS9. One last thing.. will all you said be valid for FS9?

The biggest issue for me, if you just want to use FS9, are your hard drives. You should look at some good (and a bit bigger) SATA ones.8GB RAM is useless, as FS9 or even FSX won't use it. I would get another 2GB, though.The 8800GT will also be a nice addition.Cheers.

Hard disk and Video card it is than. I'm going to keep one of my IDEs in a USB Cooling box and hook up a bigger SATA.Thank you for your input.